1976-06-01

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
That this House urges the government to take note of the appeal of the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada for a review of the decision to restrict the growth of Medical Research Council funds, it being the view of the society that it would be a crime against future generations of Canadians to interrupt research in Canada with respect to multiple sclerosis, heart disease, cancer and other ailments, and that this House urges the government to continue to provide the funds that are necessary for the maintenance of a high level of medical research in this country.
Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. This motion pursuant to Standing Order 43 can be presented to the House only with unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43 relating to a current problem affecting our national air carriers; in view of the fact that on March 4, 1975, the group vice-president, sales and service, Air Canada, Mr. Maurice D'Amours, and his counterpart from CP Air, Mr. H. B. Renwick, by a joint memorandum to all appointed travel agents emphatically warned of abuses in agency commission practices, and since I raised this matter in parliament on November 26, 1975, at which time the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport (Mr. Goodale) indicated he would draw this matter to the minister's attention, and in view of the fact that I have since received additional complaints that large amounts of money are still being improperly claimed by travel agents, to the detriment of the financial well-being of our major airlines, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Prince George-Peace River (Mr. Oberle):
That the Minister of Transport take immediate steps to investigate the situation with respect to improper commission over-ride charges and other matters relating to billing practices of travel agents, and the effects of these practices on our air lines, and report to the House before the end of this session.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I ask the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
In view of the fact, according to a survey conducted by the Canadian Press, food prices have kept increasing during the past month to the extent that bread has gone up again by 4 cents to 43 cents, and apples by 6 cents, from 27 to 33 cents a pound, and since also those foodstuffs are essential to all Canadians, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Champlain (Mr. Matte):
That the House instruct the government to look immediately into the possibility of establishing a compensated discount for consumer prices which would apply to all essential foodstuffs so that those who now cost too much be made available to all Canadians.


SUGGESTED PROVISION OF FUNDS TO MAINTAIN HIGH LEVEL OF MEDICAL RESEARCH-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I ask leave to present a motion under Standing Order 43 which deals with matters that are of urgent and pressing necessity. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas):


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent; the motion therefore cannot be put.
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June 1, 1976
Oral Questions


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. The President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) has assured the House that Canada would contribute to the common commodity fund discussed at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. UNCTAD IV is over; however, the participants are to meet again to negotiate a common fund to stabilize prices of commodities in which the developing world is especially interested. Since many other nations are pledging specific amounts that they are prepared to contribute to the fund, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin):
That this House direct the government to state the amount in dollars that we are prepared to contribute to the common fund.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Such a motion pursuant to Standing Order 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF DELEGATION FROM THE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY OF THE COUNCIL OF EUROPE
Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Before beginning oral question period may I ask hon. members to join with me in calling attention to the presence in our gallery of very distinguished visitors in the form of the delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe headed by the very distinguished Austrian parliamentarian Karl Czernetz.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, I hoped to direct a question to the Minister of Supply and Services. I see he is not yet in the House. I have heard of waiting for Godot, but not of waiting for Goyer. In the absence of the Minister of Supply and Services, may I direct my question to the Acting Prime Minister? I ask him how common an occurrence it is for a minister who heads a large and important department to remain ignorant for more than four weeks of an important cabinet decision affecting that department? I am speaking of the cabinet decision to

finance the shortfall in the Lockheed project of last December.


Hon. Mitchell Sharp (Acting Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Supply and Services will be in the House later. I think this question could more properly be directed to him when he arrives.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. Since the drop in export production as a proportion of our total production between 1973 and 1975 was only about 2 per cent, and since in his budget address of last Wednesday the minister based his job forecast figures on a recovery in the export market, I ask, does he think that even if the 2 per cent drop which took place between 1973 and 1975 is fully restored it will be sufficient to produce enough jobs in the Canadian economy next year?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, although I do not have the actual text of the speech before me, my recollection is that we estimated that the export drop last year was at a rate of 7 per cent. Of course, that is in the budget text. The recovery on the export side will be a major factor in creating increased employment in Canada, which will in due course enable the economy to provide jobs for the substantial numbers of people, particularly young people, coming into the labour force.


John Edward Broadbent: Since it is forecast that 250,000 new jobs will be created next year, which is about 100,000 less than the anticipated increase in the numbers of people coming on the job market, is it the minister's view that, even if the international economy recovers as fully as he seems to anticipate, as an absolute minimum during the coming year Canadians can expect an increase of 100,000 in the numbers of the unemployed?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, the estimate is that there would not be that additional number of people coming into the work force. The estimates indicate a rough balance, which is one reason why we did not anticipate during the current year, at least, being able to take the level of unemployment substantially below the levels we have been incurring in the last six to eight months.


AREA IN WHICH NEW JOBS MIGHT BE CREATED
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a final supplementary question? I should like the minister to be specific on my last point when he replies. Is he saying that next year he anticipates only 250,000 more people coming into the labour force? Is that the anticipated increase in the labour force? In conclusion, has the minister estimated where the new jobs are to be created? If, in the main, they depend on improvements in our export business, does it mean that most of them will be
June 1, 1976

created in central Canada? Or can the Atlantic provinces, which will be badly hit by the Unemployment Insurance Act changes, anticipate an increased share in the numbers of new jobs?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I do not think it is useful nor particularly helpful to try to break down into small figures or divisions what is, after all, an estimate only. Basically, the feeling is that the number of new positions to be created will roughly equal the number of people coming into the work force. Naturally, areas of the country which have suffered a downturn in business because of the drop in exports, for example, areas producing base metals, forest products and manufactured products such as automobiles will, with the recovery of export markets, see a recovery of employment. This will, therefore, involve those commodities which we have customarily exported, but sales of which have dropped off in the last year or so.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Mr. Real Caouette (Temiscamingue):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to address a question to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion.
At a time when most Canadian citizens feel that unemployment is growing a little too fast, projects are presented to the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, and there are complaints that it takes an extremely long time before these applications from citizens throughout Canada are answered. Could the minister indicate to the House why it takes so long before reaching a decision which could mean work for many unemployed people in Canada.


Hon. Marcel Lessard (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, first I would like to say to the hon. member that the offers of monetary assistance to industries are issued every week by the department, and I believe the hon. member has been able to realize that there is a substantial number of projects processed each week by the department.
But in reply to the specific question of the hon. member, I would like to say that the department endeavours to reach a decision, make an offer or reject the application within a period of 90 days. That is our objective. Unfortunately this period starts to run from the time when the applicant has supplied us with all the information related to his or her project. Most applications, when received, do not include all the elements required to allow our analysts to assess it and reach a decision. They have to contact the applicant several times and that explains in most cases the long delays before a decision is made.
Of course, there are also exceptional, complex and difficult cases where we have to conduct a detailed analysis, check throughout the country for the types of businesses that exist in the same field, the degree of competition, and to what extent the market is already supplied by Canadian
Oral Questions
producers. For all these reasons, we do need a certain period of time.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary. I thank the minister for the elaborate explanations he has just provided me about it being necessary to have 90 days to make a decision. But let us assume that an application for a summer job has been made, for example, last December or last October. If the minister tells me that his bureaucrats or his technocrats have to go to Vancouver to decide whether a project in Saint-Romuald is valid, then I ask the minister first why the department inspectors do not go to the place of residence of the applicant to know the exact nature of his project or of his construction and to see on the spot the number of unemployed they would be prepared to hire when the department would make a decision. Instead of sending civil servants to check in Vancouver, I think the minister can certainly tell us why they do not send immediately his department inspectors to see the applicant who asks for government support?


Marcel Lessard: Mr. Speaker, I would like to add this. Fairly frequently, our civil servants go on the site but you will understand that it is difficult to do this in every case. I think that normally communications by telephone or simply by letter are sufficient to obtain the information the applicants must give to the department. But you will understand, Mr. Speaker, that despite all the diligence we can ask from our civil servants, it remains that some applications are difficult to process because of specific projects. I admit that there have been shortcomings in the past but unfortunately, there are sometimes human factors involved and we always endeavour to expedite the study and the decisions on all files.


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. John Reynolds (Burnaby-Richmond-Delta):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General. I have already given him notice. In light of today's newspaper reports that the apartment of press gallery reporter, Don McNeil, was recently broken into and ransacked in what Ottawa police investigators have described as a highly unusual manner with overtones of political harassment, can the minister give this House his absolute assurance that no member of the RCMP or his department's security service was involved in any way in this criminal act?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, I checked with the RCMP before coming into the House. They know nothing about this. No complaint has been made to them by Mr. McNeil.


John Douglas Reynolds: Can the Solicitor General also give this House his assurance that no member of the RCMP or his department's security service has been the recipient of any information that may have been gained as a result of this break-in?
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William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, at this point we have received no information as a result of this break-in.


BILINGUALISM
Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board and deals with the fears of the people in the Niagara Peninsula that their area will be designated a bilingual district. In view of the fact that the tranquility and harmony of the region is threatened by this proposal, would the minister assure the House that he will not attempt to have this area designated a bilingual district by Order in Council when the House is in recess this summer?


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, the recommendation made in the Fox report is now being reviewed by the cabinet and we will announce which districts will be bilingual when we are ready to do so. The policy has not been changed, but we want to find a fair solution based on the same criteria used in Quebec to protect both the English minority in Quebec as well as the French minority outside Quebec.


HIGHWAY SAFETY
Mr. Heward Grafftey (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Transport. Last week, officials of his department said that after a five months study carried out both in England and in Canada, it was clear that even a small degree of rust in motor vehicles produced a serious driving hazard. The same officials said that neither the minister nor the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs would take these findings seriously. So, I ask the minister why is it that neither he nor his colleague the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs will give credence to these findings and take action on behalf of Canadian consumers? Will the minister assure the House that the findings of the Motor Vehicle Safety Branch will be made public for the benefit of Canadian consumers and that immediate action will be taken?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Transport):: The main reason for not taking those findings seriously was that those were not the findings. There were reports of a study by someone who was attached either to a department or to an agency but the view of the department is that while rusting is obviously a serious matter in terms of the economics of motor vehicles it is not a safety hazard. Our department has been carrying out tests on vehicles rusted to various stages and has found there is no significant

additional safety problem. Naturally, if the rust has caused defects which are noticeable that is another issue, but in terms of the rust itself as a safety hazard, apart from the economics, it is not such a hazard as the hon. member implies.


William Heward Grafftey: A supplementary question. I also mentioned the British findings which were made in conjunction with the Canadian findings according to which a serious safety hazard was evident. In view of those findings I ask the minister whether legislation will be introduced which would require vehicle manufacturers to rustproof parts before they are assembled. I would also ask the minister whether he would outline to the House the current status of his negotiations with the Ford Motor Company of Canada regarding the rusting problems which affect thousands of Canadian consumers today.


Otto Emil Lang: The studies on which the hon. member is relying, including those referring to other countries, amounted only to an examination of some literature on the subject setting out someone's theory of what might happen as a result of rusting. On the other hand we are performing actual tests and it is upon this evidence that we are relying.


MANPOWER
Mr. Jacques Lavoie (Hochelaga):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
In view of the previous questions I put to the minister concerning the extension of local initiatives projects and the minister's replies, namely that he would advise the House about other projects to replace the local initiatives program, could the minister tell us when we can expect a statement on this subject in order to assure promoters that they can pursue their projects on a permanent or seasonal basis as is the case at present?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the announcement will apply to the local initiatives program which will be in effect the fall of 1976-77; in other words, this coming winter. The program the hon. member is alluding to now has currently been operating and will cease to operate, I think, within a very short time. No extension of the 1976-76 program is planned, though new application for next year will be taken when I announce the criteria within a week or two.


AIR CANADA
Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transport.
June 1, 1976

Due to the surprising allegations that have been made to the effect that Air Canada is anti-French and that Mr. Pierre Nadeau, a CBC broadcaster, has dissociated himself from Air Canada advertising campaigns saying that the company is anti-French, and since this is a rather startling revelation, would the minister make a statement on the charges and inform the House if he is planning any investigation on his own?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I wish that the hon. member would not associate himself with the statement by calling it a "revelation" when it is at best an allegation. The president of Air Canada plans to make a statement clarifying the particular issue which was at the root of the controversy; I understand he will do so later this week.


ANTI-INFLATION BOARD POSSIBILITY OF REVIEW OF DECISION IN CASE OF COAL MINERS AND KAISER RESOURCES LIMITED
Mr. Howard Johnston (Okanagan-Kootenay):: Mr. Speaker, I direct my question to the Minister of Finance. Considering the importance of the export of coal in improving our growing trade deficit, and considering the spreading unemployment caused by strikes in the coal mining industry and related industries, is the minister's department considering a governmental review of the ruling by the Anti-Inflation Board which rolled back the settlement negotiated by Kaiser Resources Limited with the United Mine Workers?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, by way of a preliminary may I refer to the hon. gentleman's use of the term "growing trade deficit". In fact, in the month of April the deficit was reduced. With regard to the decision of the Anti-Inflation Board and the Kaiser Resources wage settlement, no decision has been taken to intervene.


POSSIBILITY OF APPOINTING MEDIATOR FOR STRIKES AGAINST BOARD DECISIONS
Howard Earl Johnston: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of Labour. As there are a series of strikes underway in the mining industry which are not strikes involving workers against companies but are strikes against Anti-Inflation Board rulings, has the Department of Labour considered appointing a mediator in these strikes which are literally without precedent?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, in many cases these matters fall within provincial jurisdiction, as I am sure the hon. member is aware, so it does depend on the particulars of the case to which the hon. member is referring. Although we may encourage mediation through the provincial departments of labour, this is a decision for them to make. I understand that they are assessing the situation.
Oral Questions


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Serge Joyal (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport.
Considering that commissioner-enquirer John Keenan's mandate was considerably broadened to include all aspects of security in bilingual air communications and considering that initially he has been given 90 days to produce his report, can the Minister of Transport tell the House whether he is willing to consider appointing to the Keenan Commission of Enquiry other members whose impartiality and competence in the field of aeronautics would be acknowledged, and whether he intends to assign a time limit to the Commission for the production of their report?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, our basic approach to the commission was to appoint a commissioner and then to invite him to gather such expertise as may be required for him to assess the procedures. I should say that he will be working closely with various people in the department and in the air industry and with the simulator in the national capital region to determine the nature of the procedures which we are establishing. I should indicate as well that the report is expected not in terms of a specific time from now but within 90 days following the termination of those experiments and the determination by ourselves that we believe procedures are available for the safe introduction of bilingual IFR.


MANPOWER
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, some weeks ago the Minister of Manpower and Immigration received complaints that some members of the constituency advisory committee for LIP grants in Middlesex-London-Lambton had expressed opinions about native people who had submitted applications, such as "they are shiftless and lazy", and "you can't trust them with money", etc. These are very serious charges, if true. Will the minister indicate whether he or his department have taken steps to find out the truth of these allegations?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I must admit to the hon. member that this is the first I have heard about it. There may be some correspondence which has not reached me yet. I will have a look into it to see what the details are.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, when the minister is looking into these charges, to which he did reply in the way of a form letter, and if he is given more information about the charges, will he also look into the question of whether in respect of making recommendations the prejudices of the

June 1, 1976
Oral Questions
people concerned have resulted in adverse decisions regarding the amount of money the native groups eventually received in response to their applications?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I will be glad to make that part of my investigation into the matter.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Transport. In light of reports that many rapeseed crushing plants may close down, including the plant at Altona, Manitoba, due to the raising of freight rates on rapeseed products to the minimum compensatory level, and noting that the terms of reference of the Snavely Commission presently underway give instructions in respect of looking into the cost of moving grain, including rapeseed, would the minister for the good of the rapeseed industry in western Canada be prepared to place a moratorium on the proposed policy he has enunciated until the Snavely Commission places its recommendations before the minister, which will be sometime later this year?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, the problem in respect of rapeseed crushing plants really emerged when very high competitive conditions began to exist in the oil industry and they were faced with an existing discrepancy between the low rate on rapeseed and a much higher rate on rapeseed oil. Our recent disposition of the appeal has not raised the rate as such, but has ordered the CTC not to allow rates to be charged higher than compensatory. This will, for instance, lead to a lower rate than the one faced by the Lloydminster plant. It may have a marginal effect on the rate on rapeseed to other plants. Really the problem relates to the long existing differential between the low rate on rapeseed and the higher rate on rapeseed oil. In fact, no change has taken place in the rates. The direction from us was simply not to allow a rate higher than compensatory, and so far no change in rates has been filed. I do not know how many months it will be before the actual filing and assessing of that rate will take place. It quite likely will be after the Snavely Commission has reported in any case.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. In view of the fact that postal supervisors are being compensated at a lower rate than the employees they are supervising because of the recent increase in postal workers' salaries, will the President of the Treasury Board now issue a mandate to post office officials so they can continue negotiations to remove this obvious inequity?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the negotiations are currently going on. I received representations from other members, including the highly dedicated member for St. Boniface, and I am looking into this problem. No later than this morning we mandated our negotiators, but this House must recognize that it itself did pass a legislation fixing the maximum rates applicable under the price and wage control legislation.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that the supervisors' contract expired at the end of March and there will be a further aggravation of the inequity when the terms of the postal agreement go into effect on July 1, will the President of the Treasury Board move immediately to remove this inequity which requires a mandate from the Treasury Board that has not as yet been forthcoming?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I already said that no later than this morning I did authorize offers which were more generous than the previous ones, but these offers, however, must remain within the scope of the guidelines issued by the House of Commons last October.


INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the statement made by the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway to a reporter that the government is imposing itself upon the news media to too great an extent through the provisions of Bill C-58, which could have far reaching effects on the freedom of the press, and the response to that statement by the Secretary of State in Red Deer on the weekend that this was "nonsense", will the Acting Prime Minister state which statement is correct?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Come on Mitch; explain it if you can.
* j|c *	,


EFFECT ON PRODUCERS OF NEW FEED GRAIN FREIGHT ASSISTANCE POLICY
Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to ask the Minister of Transport whether, with the introduction of the new feed grain freight assistance, he has in fact brought out a new policy which will result in a lower return to western producers? I would also ask him how this policy of "producer pay" squares with his "user pay" policy?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, the policy is not new since it was announced first as an intention of feed grain policy in both 1973 and 1974, specifically on May 22, 1974, in this House. It may have a margin-

Oral Questions
al impact upon grain returns, although it applies obviously only to a small portion of the grain market and, therefore, it can only affect that portion. In particular, of course, it can benefit not only the full region of the country but to the whole country because it may lead to more sensible use of transportation than happens when one form of goods is subsidized and another form is not.


Stanley James Korchinski: This feed grain has to be considered in relation to U.S. corn, the price of which in many instances is going to be lower than the asking price the Wheat Board has been quoting. Does that not in turn give a lower return to western producers, and how does that square with his user pay policy which he has indicated as far as transportation is concerned?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, that is a different matter. The question of the Wheat Board's willingness to price on a corn competitive basis is really a choice to use the North American pricing system as a fallback position, because ordinarily grain will be obtained on the open market for the domestic market in Canada. Instead of using its export price it will be using a corn competitive price in Montreal. It would always have been willing to offer at an export price. Over time it is quite possible that the same return will result to farmers from the corn competitive price as from the export price. There will be sometimes an up side and sometimes a down side, but the Wheat Board is perfectly willing to go to this system in marketing grains.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Hon. Martin O'Connell (Scarborough East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the President of the Treasury Board. Yesterday the President of the Privy Council stated with regard to Public Service collective bargaining the Finkelman Report and the recommendations of the joint committee of this parliament, that an interagency task force would be established to examine among other things, the principles to foster good employer-employee relationships within the public service. Will this task force be mandated to examine the principles and practices of fair comparability of compensation of public servants with their outside counterparts as an alternative to the adversary or conflict system which is fast outliving its usefulness?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the statement was made yesterday by the President of the Privy Council who is responsible for that act. Naturally, Treasury Board is involved in the matter and before we introduce new legislation in the House we will consider all aspects of the problem including that mentioned by the hon. member. However, I must say that even now the Senate and Commons committee has prepared an excellent report on this problem on which any new legislation we propose will certainly be based.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. J. R. Ellis (Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, recently the Minister of Manpower and Immigration announced to this House he was going to put UIC and Canada Manpower back together, a policy we have encouraged for some years. Will the minister indicate whether he is physically going to merge the manpower centres and unemployment insurance offices at the local level and, if so, what effect will this have on the regional office at Belleville, or, if he is going to join them together physically at headquarters, does he intend to move the Canada Manpower headquarters to Belleville to join the regional unemployment insurance headquarters there?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, the proposal is to phase this integration probably over as much as three years because we want to ensure that the delivery of service is not jeopardized, and that sort of thing. The local office amalgamations will probably be in the third phase after regional and headquarters arrangements are complete. I cannot be specific with regard to the Belleville operation, which is a pay centre and not one necessarily affected. We will have to await further details of the plan before I can give the answer.


INDUSTRY
Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. It has to do with the Pratt and Whitney case and the potential loss of up to 1,000 jobs in this country. I should like to ask the minister whether or not he has had an opportunity yet since we questioned him last to talk to those companies and to his political equivalents in the United States? If so, can he tell the House what the future is of this contract between Pratt and Whitney and the Rolls-Royce Company?


Hon. Donald C. Jamieson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I did indeed take up this matter with Commerce Secretary Richardson shortly after the matter first came to light in Canada. He undertook to have it examined in more detail in the United States. So far as I am aware the situation is unchanged from the last time I described it to the House, namely that no, in a sense, formal request has been made to the appropriate United States department for a ruling. I think it is fair to say in the best diplomatic terms that I made it perfectly clear to Secretary Richardson that we would look upon this as a most unsatisfactory situation if indeed extra-territoriality

June 1, 1976
Oral Questions
were to be applied to the United States law. I think as a result probably some solution will be found. I might add that I have not yet spoken with the company but propose to do so in a matter of a few days or I think at the outside a week.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs is not in the House and perhaps the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce could answer this question. On May 4 the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs brought this matter to the attention of the Combines Investigation Branch and asked it to investigate whether or not there was a breach of the act. I wonder if the minister could tell us if that investigation is complete, if the Combines Investigation Branch has made its report, and if indeed there has been a breach of the act?


Donald Campbell Jamieson: Mr. Speaker, regrettably I cannot give the hon. member the answer because I have not heard directly from the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. So I am afraid he will have to await the minister's attendance in the House to get the answer from that side of it.


AIR TRANSPORT
Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Transport. Has the minister, who can hardly complain about lack of notice on this matter, looked into the serious matter of long-standing improper billing practices by Canadian travel agents, as set out in a joint letter by the responsible officers of Air Canada and CP Air over one year ago which I brought to the attention of his parliamentary secretary in his absence on November 26 last year?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I do not have a report at hand on that but I will be glad to see what stage the work has reached.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his answer. In view of the fact that only last week I had a very serious complaint from a major travel agent on this matter who also informed me that the RCMP had the matter brought to their attention recently, would the minister continue his not so intensive efforts and report to the House as soon as possible?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I will see if there is anything to present to the House. I am basically satisfied with the way in which the matter is being looked at.


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Solicitor General. In view of the fact that the Olympic lottery is coming to an end to be replaced by Loto-Canada under a Crown corporation could the minister advise this House whether or not an investigation by members of the RCMP and other police agencies is taking place with regard to improprieties and irregularities in the sale and distribution of Olympic lottery tickets, particularly in the case of one Marcel Lambert, not to be confused with the illustrious member for Edmonton West, who is alleged to be selling these tickets in Montreal and elsewhere without having gone through the appropriate distribution sources? If he is not aware of such improprieties is the minister prepared to look into the matter?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, there is an investigation by the RCMP into possible fraud in respect of the distribution of Olympic lottery tickets. I understand the investigation is in Ontario. I do not have more details at this time.


OLYMPIC GAMES
Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Postmaster General and the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs I should like to put my supplementary question to the Acting Prime Minister. In view of the fact that several weeks ago the Postmaster General assured this House that the Olympic lottery program had changed its procedures regarding its draws in accordance with the lottery advertising campaign and because of the fact that the second to last lottery had 980,000 unsold tickets left on its computers thus reducing considerably the chances of ticket holders and at the same time making the advertising program in this case misleading to the public, could the Acting Prime Minister assure this House that for the sake of fairness to the consumer the government will check into the records of Salmon, Blair and Associates in Montreal to determine once and for all the actuarial soundness of the Olympic lottery program?


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, as the House is aware my colleague the President of the Treasury Board put before the House the other day the supplementary estimates A which have been referred to the Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates. I should think that is the place where the administration can be cross-examined and where questions on that case can be answered.
June 1, 1976


TRANSPORT
Mr. Hugh A. Anderson (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. As the minister is aware many residents of British Columbia view the Vancouver-Nanaimo and Vancouver-Victoria ferries as an integral part of the Trans-Canada highway and since the Government of Canada subsidizes ferries operating between the maritime provinces, can the minister advise this House if the province of British Columbia has requested federal funds and is the Minister favourable to financial relief for British Columbia and in particular Vancouver Island?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of a recent request from British Columbia in this connection but that may well be explained by the possibility that they know our answer which is that we are attempting to elaborate a broad policy toward ferry services in this country and will be undertaking discussions with the province about it. It is not the policy to support ferries serving between points within a province. As well as the existing questions there are other questions which apply to the discussion where we are attempting to resolve what should be the responsibility of the provinces and municipalities for ferries of this type.


INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question I should like to direct to the President of the Privy Council. Earlier in the question period he undertook that the Minister of Supply and Services would be in his place today to answer certain questions. We had contracted his office to ensure that he was still in town and he was. Has the minister sent out a search party to find the Minister of Supply and Services and, if not, would he do so because we are quite anxious to ask those questions.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I am glad that the detective-like qualities of the opposition are such that they know that the minister is here. He will be in the House. He intends to make a statement on a question of privilege at three o'clock, according to my understanding.

-


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In a press release issued from the office of the Prime Minister dated May 28, 1976, the Prime Minister announced the establishment of an employment and immigration commission. I would like to ask the minister whether all future immigra-
Oral Questions
tion to Canada, with the exception of refugees, will now be determined on the basis of unemployment rates and job vacancy rates, and will immigrants be forced to settle in areas of high employment activity for a specified period of time?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, the proposed amalgamation of the department and the Unemployment Insurance Commission will not have any policy or process effect on the matter the hon. member is raising. As the hon. member knows, we are looking at some of those options and suggestions which were made by the joint committee of the House of Commons and the Senate which referred to some of those points. We are reviewing that preparatory to introducing the new immigration bill in the fall session.


MANPOWER
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
As some LIP projects will not be completed by the prescribed date, and as there is still money left at the disposal of their promoters, will the minister be willing, in cases where for serious reasons, a project cannot be completed within the time limit prescribed, to make it possible for those promoters to continue the work so that projects may be completed generally without further funds?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I think I could only reply by asking the hon. member to give me specific cases, suggestions or recommendations dealing with individual projects, and while I cannot guarantee an answer which will be yes, I will be prepared to consider this.


PUBLICATIONS
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Secretary of State. The minister has frequently expressed concern about foreign domination of the film distribution industry in Canada and has in fact encouraged provincial departments to initiate legislation in this area. I would like to ask the minister whether he has worked with the same intensity to bring magazine distribution under domestic control and in a way which would limit exploitation of sex and the almost unabated flow of pornography into this country.


Hon. James Hugh Faulkner (Secretary of State):: No,
Mr. Speaker, I do not think I would approach that with the same degree of zest.
14028

June 1, 1976
Oral Questions


Benno Friesen: I would like to ask the Secretary of State why it is that he is anxious to preserve a choice between Penthouse and Oui but not between Time and Maclean's.


James Hugh Faulkner: Because I read the latter and not the former.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Mr. J. Robert Howie (York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. On Friday last the minister mentioned some exciting new research, new programs and new proposals to the cabinet to solve the economic problems of the Atlantic provinces. Does the minister expect to have his budget increased or supplemented to achieve these things?


Marcel Lessard: Mr. Speaker, I am not looking for an increase in my budget this year.


COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. Frank W. Maine (Wellington):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the hon. Minister of Communications.
The next contracts to be entered into between Telesat Canada and RCA Limited will make RCA Canada the major supplier for Anik IV, the first satellite of the Anik B series. Since RCA in New York has decided to rationalize its operations in North America by closing its research facilities in Canada-which reduces Canada to the rank of 51st state-would the minister seriously reconsider the decision to award the Telesat contracts to RCA?


Hon. Jeanne Sauve (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, I do not see what good it would do to the Canadian people if I decided to review the contracts. Under the regulations governing Telesat, it is mandatory that the contracts awarded by Telesat to any company be reviewed by the Minister of Communications to make sure that those contracts have a Canadian content. Telesat has therefore ordered a number of parts from RCA to build its satellite, and if I were to review those contracts, I do not see how I might increase the Canadian content of the satellite. The contracts awarded by Telesat are carried out in Canada by Canadians and will create jobs for Canadians here in Canada.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of National Health and Welfare, may I address a question to the minister answering for him today or perhaps to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. In view of a report in today's Ottawa Journal that the federal government is considering the elimination-not just for 1976 but on a permanent basis-of any further cost-of-living increases in family allowances, may I ask if the government is giving consideration to such an incredible course of action?


Mr. Bob Kaplan (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to inform hon. members that there is no such proposal being put forward by the federal government at the federal-provincial welfare ministers conference, which the minister is chairing this afternoon.


An hon. Member:: Prove it.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Further, no such proposal has been made to Cabinet-


An hon. Member:: How do you know?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: -and further, the minister has no intention of making any such proposal.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


FRESHWATER FISH MARKETING CORPORATION
Mr. Dean Whiteway (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State (Fisheries). In the knowledge of the fact that the capital investment of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation is the money of fishermen and not tax money, would the minister now consent to have an analysis of the processing costs and to have an open and frank discussion with the fishermen whose money the corporation is using?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: Mr. Speaker, I certainly take issue with that suggestion. There has been a considerable amount of money coming from the people of Canada to the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation. With that I do not quibble. I think it is a good idea. The return to fishermen has improved ever since. Obviously, if by hindsight we knew that the lakes could produce only a certain level of catch, we might not have built a plant which would be as expensive as we now have, but we must proceed with the plant we have, and that plant is subject to direction from a board which is representative of the provinces and of the fishermen. The hon. member must make up his mind; either he wants the
June 1, 1976

corporation to try to help the fishermen or not, and on that issue I would like to hear his views.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: In view of the fact that I will be on the late show tonight, the minister will have an opportunity to hear my views.


EFFECT OF NEW FEED GRAIN ASSISTANCE POLICY ON CERTAIN AREAS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport, and it is with regard to the announced intention yesterday to phase out in certain parts of our country the domestic feed grain assistance program. My concern is about the province of British Columbia, and I would like to ask the minister whether consideration has been given to specific regions of that province, particularly the central regions where cattlemen have found this program to be essential to the survival of their industry.
Further, since the goal of the policy is to encourage local grain production, how is the production in the Peace River country, the major area in British Columbia producing feed grain, which is 800 miles north of Vancouver, going to be helped?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, the programs for encouraging grain production will be essentially aimed at those areas where there is a deficiency of grain and a grain potential greater than is now being realized. The province of British Columbia has had a smaller deduction in feed freight assistance than generally elsewhere, recognizing the slightly higher freight cost in view of the difference in cost of moving grain west rather than east in the domestic market, which is something of a long standing anomaly. In fact, most regions of British Columbia may well be better off in terms of being purchasers of grain under the new program because whenever the Wheat Board is selling on a corn competitive basis, the western elevator price will be lower to the extent that feed freight assistance has been removed, and that may end up benefiting British Columbia.


PARLIAMENT HILL
Mr. Speaker:: Before we continue our proceedings, I have an announcement which I feel may be of some interest to hon. members, having to do with a decision to bring the East Block under the jurisdiction of parliament.
I think it is safe to say that a great majority of members on all sides of this House and in the Senate have found it anomalous that this building, which is so evidently an integral part of Parliament Hill, remains outside our jurisdiction, while we continue to occupy buildings outside this
Oral Questions
area as necessary accommodation for members and support staff.
It was, therefore, not surprising that this opinion came through quite clearly during the deliberations of the Abbott Commission on Parliamentary Accommodation which is headed by the very distinguished former minister of this House-in which capacity he incidentally occupied an office in the East Block-and consists of Speakers of both Houses of Parliament, as well as many members, senators and former parliamentarians of all parties of this House. It also came to light during discussions in the Abbott commission that a number of conditions were coming together in this year which might maximize the opportunity to bring this building within parliamentary jurisdiction. After consultation with the Speaker of the Senate and with House leaders and other members, I raised the question with the Prime Minister in a letter dated March 18, 1976, a copy of which I am tabling for the information of hon. members.
The Prime Minister acknowledged my letter on March 26 on an interim basis, and followed that with a letter to me dated May 15, indicating that the request had been favourably received, subject to certain reservations, the most significant of which are as follows:
(1)	the future occupancy of the East Block should be predominantly by parliamentarians and necessary support staff, rather than by support services;
(2)	the historic quality of the East Block should be preserved in accordance with the existing plan developed by the Department of Public Works;
(3)	more particularly, the rooms in the East Block that have been identified as having historic significance should be restored and open to the public;
(4)	amongst these rooms, the East Block cabinet chamber, the ante-chamber, the Clerk's office and adjoining office, should not only be preserved for their historic interest but should be available as required for occasional use by cabinet committees and particularly for ceremonial occasions;
(5)	improved cabinet and cabinet committee facilities should be provided for in the Centre Block.
I should also tell hon. members that, as members of the Senate are obviously involved, the Speaker of the Senate will be advising members of that House of these developments, through a similar announcement at this next sitting.
I trust that all hon. members will welcome this event which will bring this very historic building into the parliamentary ambit.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Crouse:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to raise a point of order dealing with a question I put yesterday in the House to the Minister of State for Fisheries with regard to the government's intention to declare a 200-mile limit and the effect of such declaration on ICNAF quotas. In reply the minister stated that I should read these agreements, and he stated that they make it clear that the allowable catch would be fixed by Canada and not by an international organization. Without burdening the House with all the agreement, Mr. 14030

June 1, 1976
Oral Questions
Speaker, I have in my hand the agreement between the government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on their mutual fisheries relations. The third paragraph begins:
Recognizing that the government of Canada proposes to extend its jurisdiction over the living resources of its adjacent waters pursuant to and in accordance with relevant principles of international law-
On the second page, article II, paragraph 1, begins:
The government of Canada undertakes, upon the extension of the area under Canadian fisheries jurisdiction, to permit U.S.S.R. vessels to fish within this area-
I raise this matter because of the tremendous economic importance it has for Atlantic Canada. I think it is incumbent upon the minister and upon the government to indicate whether the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics recognizes Canada's right unilaterally to declare a 200-mile limit under this particular agreement. If they do, then Canada can declare a 200-mile limit and the terms of this agreement would be applicable.
If the interpretation that I have placed upon this agreement is correct, I think it is mandatory that the minister should also give an indication of whether it is the government's intention to declare a 200-mile limit before all the resources on our continental shelf are raped, pillaged and plundered to the point where they are no longer available to anyone.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. This may be a matter of great interest to Atlantic Canada and Canadians everywhere, but I have the greatest difficulty fitting it into the pattern of a point of order in any respect. The minister may want to contribute, but it is, in a sense, more a legal point rather than a point of order.


Roméo LeBlanc: Very briefly, Mr. Speaker, I would have to look at the hon. member's question in Hansard, and I have not had time to do that yet. We have made it clear that these agreements will cover the relationship that will exist between Canada and those nations with whom we have concluded bilateral agreements when, and if, Canadian extension of jurisdiction takes place without specifying the way in which this extension may take place. These bilateral agreements will come into effect with extension of jurisdiction. As to whether Canada will extend jurisdiction, that is a matter which is before cabinet with the decision on policy to be announced by the Secretary of State for External Affairs.


Mr. Goyer:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to correct a statement that I made in the House yesterday in response to a question from the hon. member for Victoria. This question was in relation to whether a representative from my department on the LRPA project team was aware before December 2, 1975, that Lockheed had given verbal assurance that it could provide financing to meet the Department of National Defence's cash shortfall in the first three years of the project. But first I should like to reiterate two points which I have repeatedly stressed both in this House and outside parliament. First, the financing of any contract entered into by the Department of Supply and Services is the prime and exclusive responsibility of the customer department, in this case the Department of National Defence.


An hon. Member:: Pass the buck.


Jean-Pierre Goyer: Second, on December 2, 1975, when a telex was sent to Lockheed confirming the government's intention to purchase 18 "Orion" aircraft, neither myself nor my deputy minister was made aware, directly or indirectly, of a telephone conversation held between an official of the Department of National Defence and a representative of Lockheed to the effect that Lockheed would furnish the financing for the LRPA project. In any case, I repeat that not obtaining a written agreement from Lockheed was a serious error. It is elementary that an agreement involving a loan of millions of dollars should have been confirmed in a written document. This was not done. Furthermore, the offer never did materialize. In this respect, I refer to the statements of my colleague, the Minister of National Defence, which appear in Hansard dated March 30, 1976, on page 12265 and March 26, 1976, page 12177.
Personally, I might add that it was also a very serious mistake that the minister responsible for negotiating the agreement with Lockheed was not informed of the basic funding difficulties before December 2, 1975, and that the proposed solution rested upon a verbal agreement. The statement I made yesterday was that neither myself nor my deputy, nor my representative in the LRPA project office was aware of the possibility of Lockheed furnishing the financing for the LRPA project. The factual statement is that neither myself nor my deputy nor, as I stated in the House on May 25, 1976, on page 13794 of Hansard, the representative of my department on the management committee was aware of the possibility of that financial arrangement. For the information of the House, the representative on the LRPA management committee was my former assistant deputy minister, the late Eric Booth. The portion of the statement that I wish to clarify concerns Mr. L. H. Stopforth who, as my representative on the LRPA project group, I now find was aware of financing discussions held between DND and Lockheed in mid-November 1975.
During the past months I have repeatedly attempted to ascertain whether or not any officials of my department were aware of the financing negotiations held between DND and Lockheed prior to December 2, 1975. I repeatedly was assured that no one had prior knowledge of this problem, and I conveyed this information to the House. On May 19, in view of the numerous questions raised by members in the House, I personally met, in the presence of my deputy minister, Mr. L. H. Stopforth, who assured me that he had no prior information concerning the financial negotiations between DND and Lockheed. Ministers, acting on the representations and advice of their civil servants, must rely on the information they receive on these matters on the basis of trust. Last evening, however-and it was confirmed to me this morning-I learned that Mr. L. H. Stopforth had modified his version to state that, while he had not been privy to conversations between DND and Lockheed, he was aware of the financing discussions with Lockheed in November, 1975.
I take my ministerial responsibilities very seriously with regard to the policies and administrative practices of my department. Accordingly, I will stand by my officials and I
June 1, 1976

accept responsibility for errors of judgment, mistakes made in good faith and inadvertent errors. But I do not believe that ministerial responsibility extends to cases of misinformation or gross negligence. In this case, a serious error was committed. Not only were I and my deputy minister not informed of financial negotiations between DND and Lockheed prior to December 2, but subsequently, when I personally checked on this situation, I remained misinformed. This is unacceptable. My view is that while ministerial responsibility is of prime importance, every public servant, regardless of his interest in politics, also holds the public trust to some extent. Every public servant is in a position of responsibility, and the responsibility here was to ensure that the minister, the House and the public were correctly informed.
I feel very strongly about officials who misinform their minister. While I am not against any man or any organization, I believe that preserving the integrity and the efficiency of our system of government comes first. The public must believe that the system serves it well. The public must respect the public service. The public has a right to be accurately informed. My ministerial responsibility in this case is to see that these rights are preserved. Consequently, Mr. L. H. Stopforth has been removed from his functions as deputy head of the project office.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, I find it incredible that the minister, having pilloried General Allen for weeks about this matter, has now turned on Mr. Stopforth and criticized him for the same offence.


Mr. Paproski:: If anybody should resign, it should be you, Goyer.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: At least the truth is now beginning to come out. I do not want the minister to think for a minute that this is the end of the Lockheed, LRPA case. Far too many questions remain unanswered. The minister carefully neglected to say anything of his knowledge, or lack of knowledge, of the shortfall in the National Defence budget, which is implicit in the details and record of this sorry case. I wish to express my regret and that of most members of this House for the disservice which has been done to an officer and a gentleman.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Bruce McKinnon: General Allen, throughout this entire case, told nothing but the truth. It was hard going to be the only one giving evidence before the defence committee or, when, everyone else gave conflicting evidence, to see nothing happen to them. That was difficult for him to understand. As one goes over these events, one is puzzled to understand why the two ministers of the Crown were the last to be able to learn from the record, whereas the opposition had only the shards of evidence, the little word here and the small answer there dragged out of the government on which to form the conclusion which the minister eventually reached last night, that he did not know what was going on. I do not wish to go on an length. I suppose we can at least be thankful for General Allen's reputation having been cleared in this. Please do not think this is the end of it.
Oral Questions


Steve Eugene Paproski: The minister shakes his head, as if to say
no.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: I notice that the Minister of Supply and Services shook his head when I suggested General Allen's reputation has been cleared. I hope we shall be able to straighten that out, too.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Say it. Say his reputation is cleared.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Chicken!


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, let me say, in commenting on the minister's question of privilege which strikes me as being more in the form of a statement on motions-but that is a quibble-that we of the New Democratic Party agree with part of the course of action the minister outlined, which was based on the set of facts he described. If a man in a position of responsibility, a position like that of Mr. Stopforth, does not carry out his responsibilities in the way the minister described, the least the minister should do is remove that man from his position. We are in agreement with the minister on that.
I wish to make two further points. First, we do not agree with the minister's description of his ministerial responsibilities up to this point with regard to his negotiations with Lockheed. We cannot understand how he could say, as he did in the House recently-and I am giving the gist of his remarks, not repeating his exact words-that his only responsibility is to pass some kind of final judgment on a financial arrangement which had been principally worked out by another department. He also said, if I remember correctly-and we shall check Hansard with care, as is appropriate in these circumstances-that his department could not be responsible for going into all the details of such contracts with all departments.
If that is his view, a number of questions arise. One may ask, what was his representative doing on the multidepartmental committee which for months, indeed years, was investigating the Lockheed project, if in fact he was not looking into the financial details of the kind of contract which would be entered into. On the face of it, it seems clear to me that on a national, major project his representative on the committee should have been doing just that. Indeed, that is what the committee was all about. I repeat, we approach the question of the minister's description of his own departmental responsibilities with considerable skepticism. We shall say more about this later.
Second, to allude to what the minister said in the House, without question one minister and his officials were clearly at fault. We cannot shift the ultimate blame to the officials in this case. The blame must reside with the minister, in this case the Minister of National Defence. There can be no question of that, and the Minister of Supply and Services reiterated the point this afternoon, that the one man who had immense responsibility, given the amount of money that was involved in not only negotiating but getting in writing the details of the financial commitments on the Lockheed projects, was the Minister of National Defence. There can be no question about that. The minister directly asserted his belief on that point again today.

June 1, 1976
Oral Questions
I repeat, on behalf of my colleagues, that the Minister of National Defence-and we will see later about the Minister of Supply and Services-must now, in the words of a fellow member of the cabinet, acknowledge the colossal blundering on this project. He should at long last assume his responsibility to the taxpayers of Canada and resign his position.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The minister has raised a question of privilege and has taken certain steps which are quite important to the House. I have concern, also, because this day has been set aside for a motion in the name of the opposition, specifically, the Social Credit party. While there is much interest in the topic, it is obviously one on which further information and development will unfold.
It has already been indicated that there will be further questions of this minister as well as the Minister of National Defence on this matter. The discretion of the Chair must be exercised in such a way as to ensure a proper and full debate on the subject set down for discussion in the name of the Social Credit party. My preference at the moment would be to discontinue. However, because there ought to be a spokesman from the Social Credit party on this subject, it will be their option to discontinue the subject completely and get on to orders of the day and permit them to proceed.


Mr. Andre Fortin (Lotbiniere):: Mr. Speaker, I will make some very brief comments on the same point, considering your earlier remarks.
I listened with great interest to what the New Democratic Party leader (Mr. Broadbent) said, which pretty well sums up our own concerns about the announcement just made by the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer). He indirectly held the Minister of National Defence responsible for this whole affair. What remains less clear, Mr. Speaker, is the minister's own definition of ministerial responsibility. As far as I know, any minister is responsible for his department and for the conduct or actions of that department.
Yesterday the minister was telling us that these were the answers he could provide the House, and he was asking us to believe what he was saying. Today, because an incident took place, the minister is asking us again to have implicit faith in him, which I am willing to do, and then he goes on to announce the transfer of a senior official.
Mr. Speaker, he is a victim of the system and the transfer will not basically alter the system. Senior officials are still the ones who actually run the departments. Ministers are only so-called spokesmen in the House. Ministers do not run their departments, they are controlled by their source of information, their senior officials and deputy ministers who have more power than the ministers. They even have a regulatory power which often goes beyond the instructions given by the legislators.
Our party is quite interested in this matter. Today's motion deals precisely with this subject. When we state, among other things, that "this attitude distorts the purpose the legislators have in mind and deprives this House of its real customary powers", this is what we mean.

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to tell the Minister of Supply and Services who is proving to us today, or at least trying to do so, that he is responsible for his department and that whenever he is informed of unusual events, he takes appropriate action. Good for him! However, Mr. Speaker, while he is in such a mood, let him try to convince his colleagues to put a stop to this practice of hiring defeated Liberal candidates to entrust them with official or special assistant positions on account of their political affiliation and not because they are competent.
Mr. Speaker, if the minister and his colleagues are consistent, if they really want to prove that they actually manage and control something in their departments, let them hire people according to their competence and not because of political ties, or else they will continue to be the joke of the system.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 3,965, 4,986, 5,030, 5,143, 5,219, 5,265, 5,290, 5,325, 5,406, 5,430, 5,452 and 5,537.


Mr. MacKay: Were any of the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs' legal or other costs in respect of the contempt of court charges preferred against him borne by the government and, if so (a) what were the costs (b) the amounts involved (c) under what authority were they assumed or paid?


Mitchell William Sharp: No.


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton): 1.	Who is the current Director General of Communications in the Canadian International Development Agency?
2.	On what date was he appointed and with what (a) classification (b) salary range?
3.	Was such appointment made following (a) an internal (b) a public competition and, if so, for what reason?
4.	(a) What was the successful candidate's previous employment record prior to such appointment (b) what was his experience and other factors on which he was judged qualified for the position?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: 1. Mr. Paul-Emile Doucet.
2.	Mr. Doucet was assigned on January 19, 1976, through the Interchange Canada Program, (a)	SX-1;	(b)


[Stage Direction]
3.	(a) No; (b) There was no public competition because the assignment was made through the Interchange Canada Program coordinated by the Public Service Commission. This program provides opportunities for senior persons to broaden their experience in different milieux. In this case it arranged for a communications expert to work within a government Agency.
4.	(a) From 1963 to 1967, Mr. Doucet was Assistant Director of Maintenant, a monthly magazine published in Montreal. Since 1965, he has been a frequent contributor to public affairs programs of CBC (radio and television), in various capacities, i.e. as researcher, host and supervisor. In 1971 and 1972, he was responsible for the creation of a Division of Communications in the Department of Social Affairs of Quebec. He was later a journalist on the public affairs radio program Present of Radio-Canada, and has been following closely events related to international development, including the seminar organized by ECOSOC on Multinationals, the 7th Special Session of the United Nations on the New International Economic Order (September 1975), and the Paris Conference on International Economic Cooperation; (b) Mr. Doucet holds a Master's degree in Philosophy. He pursued further studies in Sociology of Organization and Communication at l'Ecole pratique des Hautes etudes in Paris and McGill University in Montreal. Mr. Doucet has a strong background in the field of communication and based on this along with interview results, he was declared qualified to perform the functions of the Director-General position.
Mr. Whittaker: 1.	Are Messrs. Pratte and Menard, recently resigned from Air Canada, in receipt of a full pension?
2.	Are they receiving first class travel privileges?
3.	What other fringe benefits do they receive?
4.	Are any of the privileges, they presently receive, for life?


Mr. Ralph E. Goodale (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: The management of Air Canada advises as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4. Air Canada does not disclose information respecting pensions and other compensations received by executives.


Mr. Cossitt: With reference to the answer to Question No. 4,023, which stated in part that the Canada Council bases its decisions on awarding grants on the recommendations of "assessors chosen for their expertise in the particular subject or research area" (a) by what methods are the assessors selected or chosen (b) what are the names and job designations of those on the Canada Council who chose the assessors (c) what remuneration, if any, is received by an assessor and for how long does such an individual hold a post (d) what are the reasons that the names of such assessors are regarded as confidential and not available to Parliament?


Miss Coline Campbell (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State):: I am informed by the Canada Council as follows: (a) Operating as it does under a "peer review" system for the assessment of applications, the Canada Council has built up over the years a large pool of international specialists in the humanities and social sciences. The
Order Paper Questions
lists are kept up to date through consultation with scholars and experts in each field and through perusal of learned journals and other academic publications. About 6,000 assessors are consulted each year, including those named as referees by applicants; (b) Approximately twenty officers holding a master's or a doctoral degree in the humanities or social sciences are involved in the selection of assessors and they inform applicants of the comments of assessors. The Council's Advisory Academic Panel, in reviewing all major applications, considers the appropriateness of the chosen experts. The members of the Panel are listed in the Council's annual report; (c) An assessor receives an honorarium of $25 for each project he assesses, although on rare occasions when the proposal is extremely complex, he may be offered $50 or $100. Assessors are not employed on a retainer basis-they are consulted as the need arises; (d) When assessors are asked to evaluate a project, they are guaranteed anonymity. It is felt that otherwise scholars might be reluctant to express judgments on the work of their peers.


Mr. Reynolds: 1.	Are Messrs. Pratte and Menard receiving a pension from Air Canada and, if so, how much per year?
2.	Do they have any free travelling privileges with Air Canada?


Ralph Goodale: The management of Air Canada advises as follows: 1 and 2. Air Canada does not disclose information respecting pensions and other compensations received by executives.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Have any members of the families of Cabinet Ministers or the Prime Minister held Air Canada passes during 1975 or hold such passes for 1976 and, if so, in each case, what are their names?
2.	Are such passes valid on all domestic and foreign routes travelled by Air Canada?
3.	What are the reasons for this free government transportation for persons who are not employed directly with the government?


Ralph Goodale: The management of Air Canada advises as follows: 1. See Following list. Also see reply to question No. 2,315 answered on June 19, 1975 and supplementary reply answered on July 18, 1975.
2.	Term or "annual" passes are valid for all Air Canada routes. Individual trip passes are valid for use only once on the specific route designated on the pass.
3.	These passes are issued so that the spouses of Cabinet Ministers may travel with them on certain specific occasions. 1975: Individual Trip Pass Issues-Family Members of Cabinet Ministers. Mrs. W. Allmand, Mrs. R. Andras, Mrs. R. Basford, Mrs. J. Buchanan, Mrs. J. Chretien, Mrs. G. Danson, Mrs. H. Faulkner, Mrs. J. Jerome, Mrs. D. Jamieson, Mrs. J. P. Goyer, Mrs. M. Lalonde, Mrs. O. Lang, Mrs. D. Macdonald, Mrs. B. Mackasey, Mrs. J. Marchand, Mrs. A. Ouellet, Mrs. R. Perrault, Mrs. J. Turner, Hon. M. Sauve, Mrs. E. Whelan. 1976: Individual Trip Pass Issues-

June 1, 1976
Order Paper Questions
Family Members of Cabinet Ministers (to April 28, 1976). Mrs. W. Allmand, Mrs. R. Andras, Mrs. R. Basford, Mrs. J. Buchanan, Mrs. J. Chretien, Mrs. G. Danson, Mrs. H. Faulkner, Mrs. J. Jerome, Mrs. D. Jamieson, Mrs. M. Lalonde, Mrs. O. Lang, Mrs. J. Marchand, Mrs. A. Ouellet, Mrs. R. Perrault, Hon. M. Sauve, Mrs. E. Whelan.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Was Mr. Eric Miller, former Deputy Head of Information Canada, appointed to study general communications problems of the government for the Treasury Board and, if so (a) is he receiving the same salary as he did with Information Canada (b) what is his salary (c) what is a detailed description of his duties (d) what are all the considerations that led to his appointment (e) what qualifications does he have for the job?
2.	Was such appointment used to keep him on the government payroll following abolition of Information Canada?
3.	What duties will he perform that could not be performed by another recent appointee to the Treasury Board, Mr. Claude Lemelin?
Hort. Jean Chretien (President of Treasury Board): Mr. Eric Miller was appointed to the Temporary Assignment Pool which is housed in the Treasury Board Secretariat, (a) Yes; (b) Mr. Miller is a Senior Executive (SX-3) in the salary range of $35,500 to $47,500; (c) The Temporary Assignment Pool is a pool of executives and other officers of demonstrated high levels of performance, who can be assigned individually or in teams to departments for specific periods to carry out policy reviews and similar activities. As his first assignment, Mr. Miller will conduct an assessment of the experience and lessons of Information Canada. This study will focus on the functional responsibilities undertaken by Information Canada, its successes, failures and the difficulties encountered. After the completion of this study, Mr. Miller, like other Temporary Assignment Pool members will be assigned to another area according to the policy issues and priorities at that time; (d) Mr. Miller, a senior civil servant with extensive private sector experience, was appointed to the Temporary Assignment Pool following established PSC procedures; (e) Mr. Miller's qualifications met those required by the Temporary Assignment Pool's recruitment review procedures (Circular T.B. 727241) and as outlined in (d) the normal PSC procedures were followed in his recruitment.
2. The government has attempted to find positions within the public service for as many civil servants as
possible who were attached to Information Canada. As outlined above, Mr. Miller, the most senior ranking civil servant at Information Canada, was judged to be a suitable candidate for a position in the Temporary Assignment Pool and was therefore offered a position after the termination of Information Canada.
3. Mr. Claude Lemelin is also a member fo the Temporary Assignment Pool with experience in the communications field. He has been assigned to a different task, namely the assessment of the Treasury Board Secretariat's own communication with the general public, the media and employees of the Public Service.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): What is the monthly rent paid by the Toronto-Dominion Bank to the government for the office space occupied in the Fontaine Building, Hull, Quebec?


Hon. C. M. Drury (Minister of Public Works):: The
Department of Public Works receives no rent from the Toronto-Dominion Bank for space in the Fontaine Building, in Hull, Quebec. The bank rents its space directly from the owner of the building without the involvement of the Department.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): 1.	From 1967 to date, how many moving allowances were granted to workers in each province by the Department of Manpower and Immigration?
2.	For each year, by province, what were the amounts granted to workers?
3.	How many workers, by province (a) applied for (b) received the $1,500 allowance to purchase a house?


Robert Knight Andras: 1. Relocation Grants-Number by Province (see Statement A).
2.	Relocation Grants-Amounts by Province (see Statement B).
3.	(a) No statistics available for the number of persons who applied for a Home Purchase Allowance; (b) Home Purchase Allowance-Number by Province (see Statement C).
Statement A
Relocation Grants-Number by Province
Province	1967-68	1968-69	1969-70	1970-71	1971-72	1972-73	1973-74	1974-75	1975-76	TotalNewfoundland	584	342	378	329	447	830	1,559	1,404	717	6,590Prince Edward Isl.	22	36	39	21	41	25	37	32	58	311Nova Scotia	214	185	280	184	293	491	426	577	991	3,641New Brunswick	80	142	179	126	228	298	275	273	472	2,073Quebec	1,434	2,242	3,487	2,731	3,975	4,778	4,876	5,514	5,833	34,870Ontario	2,489	2,732	1,989	1,863	1,893	1,856	2,409	1,840	2,294	19,365Manitoba	211	152	198	123	339	261	157	145	269	1,855Saskatchewan	137	236	406	382	593	531	285	208	185	2,963Alberta	120	99	121	229	456	558	353	243	279	2,458British Columbia	466	421	376	380	761	1,025	636	1,078	1,502	6,645Yukon	-	1	3	13	-	-	-	-	-	17N.W.T.	-	3	4	1	-	-	-	47	37	92CANADA	5,757	6,591	7,460	6,382	9,026	10,653	11,013	11,361	12,637	80,880

June 1, 1976

Order Paper Questions
Statement B
Relocation Grants-Amounts by Province
Province	1967-68	1968-69	1969-70	1970-71	1971-72	1972-73	1973-74	1974-75	1975-76	TotalNewfoundland	315,431	253,345	289,358	296,673	262,117	434,962	809,361	615,832	495,554	3,772,633Prince Edward Isl.	6,060	27,186	35,418	20,911	24,182	19,912	33,256	24,887	36,489	228,301Nova Scotia	95,113	124,692	217,614	178,790	209,336	303,186	314,383	247,934	473,521	2,164,569New Brunswick	47,360	108,398	145,920	81,414	115,622	221,490	186,535	178,252	273,227	1,358,218Quebec	548,252	1,183,158	2,236,674	1,803,945	2,291,489	3,258,101	3,178,258	2,841,746	3,849,641	21,191,264Ontario	978,809	1,055,754	959,114	888,862	1,111,577	1,622,165	1,815,265	1,333,415	1,861,948	11,626,909Manitoba	80,917	104,752	156,886	119,339	177,764	307,125	191,108	310,796	377,579	1,826,266Saskatchewan	94,680	174,079	322,058	346,460	426,790	580,406	386,896	199,921	259,667	2,790,957Alberta	93,059	67,687	110,339	176,223	318,350	506,617	454,760	312,647	572,310	2,611,992British Columbia	328,587	348,791	294,976	286,318	435,596	1,021,932	838,088	859,632	1,495,514	5,909,434Yukon	452	14	3,169	12,579	35,908	17,013	10,639	9,343	-	89,117N.W.T.	136	621	20	118	784	4,557	12,417	20,711	25,153	64,517CANADA	2,588,856	3,448,477	4,771,546	4,211,632	5,409,515	8,297,466	8,230,966	6,955,116	9,720,603	53,634,177
Statement C
Home Purchase Allowance
Province	1973-74	1974-75	1975-76	TotalNewfoundland	55	61	27	143Prince Edward Island	4	5	5	14Nova Scotia	43	31	59	133New Brunswick	19	29	35	83Quebec	462	463	571	1,496Ontario	259	210	249	718Manitoba	29	86	72	187Saskatchewan	81	46	73	200Alberta	70	62	122	254British Columbia	123	116	177	416Yukon	1	1	-	2N.W.T.	-	2	-	2CANADA	1,146*	1,112	1,390	3,648
sugar beet production in areas of Canada where such production is refined in Canada for subsequent consumption in Canada. There has been no decision to change such practice. It is understood that Prince Edward Island producers have contracts with a U.S.A. refinery for returns attractive to such producers.
4.	An estimate of 20-30 growers.
6.	Unaware of assistance, if any, provided by P.E.I. provincial department.


Mr. Beatty: 1.	Have Quebec egg producers paid the $190,000 penalty assessed against them for production of eggs and, if not, has the government received any firm assurances as to when the penalty will be paid?
2.	Have Quebec egg producers posted a performance bond promised to the National Farm Products Marketing Council and, if not, have any firm assurances as to when the performance bond will be posted been received?
*Prior to April 1, 1973, workers who received Relocation Grants could receive $1,000 if they sold their house in the old locality and $500 if they purchased a house in the new locality. The worker, therefore, would not necessarily receive the maximum of $1,500. For this reason, statistics relative to the number of workers who received the Home Purchase Allowance during this period are not available.


Mr. Macquarrie: 1.	How many acres are devoted to the production of sugar beets on Prince Edward Island?
2.	Where in PEI are the production centres?
3.	What assistance has been given by the Department of Agriculture to the growth of sugar beets?
4.	How many PEI farmers are at present involved in the production of sugar beets?
5.	Is it the aim of the Department to increase sugar beet acreage and, if so, to what extent?
6.	What assistance has the provincial department extended to this project?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: 1. Planting intentions for 1976 are estimated to range from 600-900 acres.
2.	Farm locations are not concentrated in any particular region.
3 and 5. The Department of Agriculture, under the Agricultural Stabilization Act has provided assistance to


Eugene Whelan: 1. The
National Farm Products Marketing Council has received assurances about payment of the $109,000 penalty assessed against Quebec producers earlier this year but to date the penalty has not been paid.
2.	A performance bond was posted in 1975 by Quebec egg producers and by mutual agreement used to settle certain debts owing CEMA. The National Farm Products Marketing Council has received assurances about replacement of the bond but to date it has not been replaced.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich): 1.	(a) What was the cost of (i) developing (ii) producing "The Know Canada Game" distributed by the Official Languages Commissioner (b) who (i) developed (ii) produced it?
2.	How many were produced?
3.	Was the developer and/or producer selected by tender and, if so (a) in each case, how many bids were received (b) what was the range of such bids?
4.	(a) How was the "Game" distributed (b) how many have been distributed (c) what was the cost of distribution (d) what price is being charged?


Mitchell William Sharp: The Commissioner of Official Languages reports directly to parliament and not through a minister. Questions can be made directly to him.

June 1, 1976
Legislation


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, if questions Nos. 4,961 and 5,409 could be made orders for returns, these returns would be tabled immediately.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): 1.	In 1975, did the government make loans to foreign governments or international agencies and, if so, (a) to which ones (b) for what purpose (c) in what amount (d) what are the conditions of repayment, including interest rates and periods of amortization?
2.	Were any such loans procured by the government from (a) banks located in Canada (b) foreign banks and, if so, what percentage?
Return tabled.


Mr. Beatty: Were any lawyers in Ontario given work by the Farm Credit Corporation in 1975-76 and, if so, what (a) are their names and addresses (b) was the total amount paid to each (c) was the number of cases handled by each?
Return tabled.


Mr. Blais:: I ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Gilbert Rondeau (Shefford) moved:: That this House finds highly deplorable the attitude the government has demonstrated by taking advantage of its majority to draft many of its bills in such a way that different matters are dealt with in a single text, as well as its obvious tendency to extend the scope of regulations under which pieces of legislation are to be implemented, an attitude which distorts the purpose legislators have in mind and deprives this House of its real customary powers.
He said: Mr. Speaker, like some officials that we know quite well, perhaps we have drafted a motion which is a little too lengthy. It could have been summarized as follows-on purpose: that the House finds highly deplorable the attitude of the government which is depriving this House of its real customary powers. We could have summarized this motion with this one sentence.
It is obvious, Mr. Speaker, that if we go back over the history of Canadian Parliament and if we look at what we are doing today, we must unfortunately recognize that at the present time, what the hon. minister of Supply and

Services (Mr. Goyer) stated in this House and the development of the long term policy of former governments and the present administration aims simply at placing the administration of the federal government in the hands of people who were not elected for this purpose.
The statement made today by the minister proves without the shadow of a doubt, like the hon. member for Lotbiniere just said, that he does not know and never knew what is going on in his department, as the other ministers have demonstrated many times before. I think that it is too easy to blame a public servant for a mistake which was made by the government. Yet, two ministers and two departments are involved in the Lockheed affair, and today, the minister of Supply and Services thinks that he will get out of it simply by transferring, by removing- perhaps with a future promotion; in any case, we shall see later-by transferring a senior public servant who is now accused of having been the cause of this serious mistake by the government, without making a further investigation to find out who are the true culprits, when the government seemed well aware of what was going on in the two departments concerned and when the minister tells this House that because of erroneous information on the part of the department, the government, which means the Canadian taxpayer, will now have to pay this mistake between $16 million and $30 million.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to summarize my thinking before getting into a more detailed explanation by quoting part of an editorial published in the Vancouver Sun of January 18, 1975. This article is entitled:
How powerful mandarins confiscated from members of parliament-
-and we could add "from the ministers"-
-the right to legislate
The truth, not easily admitted by the members in the opposition as well as those in the government, is that more often than not the senior officials are those who are running, sometimes interpreting the legislation according to their views and at times in having passed the legislation they see fit.
The Committee on Statutory Instruments has been set up following a 1969 committee report, whose conclusion surprised no one in the capital, that a large part of our laws do not emanate from legislators but from bureaucrats.
Parliament alone may pass legislation but those acts are so general that for the average citizen the noble intention of the elected representatives are often less important than the restrictive regulations laid down by the bureaucrats after the legislation has been passed.
Today, bureaucrats have by law the authority to lay down regulations.
Regulations appear less redoubtable than legislation, but the difference is more in words than in reality. A lot of regulations have force of law because they can be enforced by the court and officers, much like all regulations passed by the House.
The McCleave committee which had a small group of law students at its disposal received no fewer than 1,900 delegated legislative measures, that is regulations which were drafted by people who rule but were not elected and which were applicable in 1972, 1973 and 1974. That is the pace at which bureaucracy is passing legislation and that pace has not slowed down since the survey made in 1969 by the McGuigan committee, the hon. member for Windsor-Walk-erville. The committee found that from 1956 to 1968, 6,992 regulations were published in the Canada Gazette covering
June 1, 1976

19,972 pages, and most of them have force of law. Moses was satisfied with ten commandments but that time is over and it is quite different today.
The hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin) said it is a fact that the many laws governing us are not promulgated by Parliament but scores of departments and organizations which were given the necessary power. Echoing the committee, the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Baldwin) said that the increasing threat posed by statutory instruments, decrees and orders in council are a plague that affects most democracies. The Liberal member for Toronto-Lakeshore (Mr. Robinson) stated that the overflowing activity of the government can have the dangerous effect of bringing specialized senior public servants to run the people they are supposed to serve.
Mr. Speaker, today members of Parliament serve public servants and yet members of Parliament were elected to serve their voters. We are living in a democracy where bureaucracy makes up democracy. Mr. Speaker, a little further one could read:
The committee proposes to demand that every legislation emanating from senior public servants be presented to Parliament so members will discuss it openly before it is implemented.
This article was written many years ago, Mr. Speaker.
If the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments has unlimited powers to investigate abuse resulting from legislation drafted by senior officials, it has none to specifically correct such abuse. Mr. Speaker, this committee has inquired and reported and nothing has changed, so that before tabling the motion in this House, I had to have my secretary do some research to try to find out whether in the federal Parliament, there existed an administrative consolidation of the major social measures. I wanted to know if there was an index through which it could be established that an act on housing and regarding the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation was not inconsistent with-through an indexation or administrative consolidation system- with a regulation or an act on housing in respect to veterans.
Much to my surprise, after some research, I found that several regulations of a given department were completely inconsistent with the same regulations of another department in the same field. We also made several telephone calls which I would like to enumerate: We first inquired of the Department of Veterans Affairs at number 6-4649. A lady, who knew nothing about this, referred us to the public relations section of the department.
We called the public relations section of the Department of Veterans Affairs, at number 2-4234. A unilingual English-speaking lady answered us and seeing that we insisted on speaking French, she referred us to another person. A kind lady, who had much difficulty understanding and speaking French, referred us to the public relations section of Information Canada. Yet, we know very well that the office of Information Canada no longer exists.
After several phone calls, we finally got in touch with the government of Canada bookstore, at 2-4474, where a very nice lady finally answered us. We heard very good French spolen in the Mail Order section of the Publishing Directorate. We were told that the only codification that existed was in the post office department. This is the only
Legislation
information she could give us and, besides, this lady told us: I have already done my own research to try to find some administrative codification in the other ministries but I wasted my time. Lawyer Lise Mayrand who belongs to the regulations and other staturory instruments committee, or orders in council, and who studies the legality of the regulations said that an administrative codification exists for very few laws and that this codification is not official when it does exist.
Mr. Speaker, our motion today intends to show that, as the farmers would say, in this government, in the ministries, in the bureaucracy, as we are told the farmers will be here on Thursday, it is as hard as finding a needle in a haystack for anyone would be completely lost in the maze of the regulations of the House, which have become so intricate that we hired thousands and thousands of public servants this year, as each year, whose task is to try to interpret and apply the regulations.
Mr. Speaker, bureaucracy is the basis of regulations, which it interprets and applies. The drawing up, interpretation and application of the regulations accompany each and every law. Bureaucracy is complicated and ambiguous, and it needs each day a more important number of public servants who, in turn, draft new regulations, the interpretation of which will be done by an even more important number of bureaucrats, and so on and so forth. Mr. Speaker, this is how we get into the vicious circle of bureaucracy which now stifles all public administrations, and this government which claims to be ever more socialist interferes in all areas, controls everything, spells everything out and breeds a bureaucracy which dictates everything, crushes everything and ruins everything. So the worker is no longer motivated and is overburdened by bureaucracy. As a result, socialist countries have experienced a collective loss of motivation. In order to be more readily promoted and to justify their existence bureaucrats devise projects or regulations they consider as brain waves, when their suggestions would not even be taken into account in private industry. In order to implement those brain waves, they find it necessary to set up a new work unit whose head will be responsible for carrying out this bright idea. He has just devised a project to be carried out at the expense of the taxpayers while creating for himself an executive position in a new department. He will need an assistant as well as a task planning officer, a private secretary, a secretary and his assistant and a staff officer.
And there you are, the whole bureaucratic process is in motion. From now on, they will become bureaucratic big wheels with very heavy responsibilities, as they say.
Mr. Speaker, in La Presse of May 5, 1971, Pierre O'Neil made the following comments about Mr. Eric Kieran's resignation from the cabinet:
And what does he say on going?
He suggests that ministers are more influent in Quebec than they are here.
He feels that politics-economic politics at least-are far too much under the control of a certain calcified establishement lacking in imagination.
What happened to the fine and great system developed by Prime Minister Trudeau to curb the establishement, take away the political power from the non-elected specialists and give it back to the politicians who received a mandate?

June 1, 1976
Legislation
Nobody knows.
The civil service tightens its grip on power.
... the civil service adapted to the new method of governing and is in the process of taking back the power from the politicians.
Mr. Kierans' resignation was not keenly felt in the civil service.
It did not have much of an impact.
Five years ago, in an article published in MacLean's Mr. Peter C. Newman said, and I quote:
-the parliamentary process work has imperceptibly shifted a good deal of influence to a largely invisible sub-government best described as the Ottawa Establishment.
The existence of a powerful bureaucratic elite in Ottawa is by no means new; its roots go back to the depression of the 1930s, when Ottawa first became the decision centre of Canada's economy.
... the mandarin class-that race of faceless experts, protected by the anonymity of a government department, operating beyond the range of the people's control...
-a sort of sinister clique of bureaucrats attempting spuriously to rule the nation-does not in fact exist. What does exist is a group of intellectually sophisticated, uncannily like-minded individuals in the top echelons of the civil service. These men set the style and the outlook of official Ottawa.
... the power of the bureaucrat transcends administrations. Governments change, but the civil service abides. Most of the men who make up the current Establishment have been in the forefront of power in Ottawa for at least two decades, many even longer.
... the Ottawa Establishment-like adherents to any elite-disavow the possession of power, though they value its exercise ... invisible barriers are unaccountably raised against people and policies they judge undesirable...
All the serving members of the Establishment hold top jobs in the civil service. But not all the men in the top jobs are members of the elite...
-like the one cabinet ministers have-to bring its members together ... Establishment members are quietly engaged in a process of continuous consultation. Their communications are swifter and more effective than the politicians'. "If you picked the thirty or so men who matter in this town and put radioactive tracers in their pockets, then watched their daily movements on a giant fluoroscope, you'd be amazed how often their paths cross," says one deputy. "And out of these comings and goings constantly flow memoranda with limited but important circulation."
Most of these exchanges take place outside office hours . .. -the only noontime meeting place that counts now is the Rideau Club ... One ambassador who recently left Ottawa recalls: "Whenever I wanted to report on the reactions to any important policy to my government, all I'd have to do was wander into the Rideau Club-

And he concludes with this last paragraph:

It is relatively simple for the Establishment to perpetuate itself. The sixteen hundred government officials who earn more than $13,000 a year-
This was five years ago.
-are rated for promotion every two years, and the final test is the judgment made by a board consisting of a deputy minister, an assistant deputy and one member of the Civil Service Commission. With a majority of the votes, the emissaries of the Establishment can choose those men they find acceptable and leave others to less important appointments.

Mr. Speaker, these few remarks were to demonstrate what Social Crediters believe and have said for many
years, namely that unfortunately the government is a ghost government led by bureaucracy as its predecessors were.
We are surprised to hear the Minister of Supply and Services make a statement such as the one he made a few moments ago and which only confirms what I have just said and what we have been saying for many years.
I would like to deal now with the strength of the Public Service. Almost 17,000 public servants have an income of more than $20,000 a year. They do not care a damn about members of Parliament who must vote their own salary increases and have them rolled back later on, because they have to bow before public criticism. That is not the case for public servants. Statistics show that 16,868 public servants from 28 federal departments had an income of more than $20,000 during the last financial year, compared to 1,225 during the 1968-69 financial year. In the Department of National Defence, 5,663 public servants were earning more than $20,000 a year in last October compared to 241 in 1968. That is to say that from 1968 to 1975, the number of public servants with an income of more than $20,000 a year has increased from 241 to 5,663 in the Department of National Defence alone.
In the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, this number has increased from 145 to 876 during the same period, and in the Department of Transport, from 46 to 1,269. In the Office of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), only one person earned more than $20,000 a year in 1968. Today, there are about 20 of them, including Mr. Jack Austin, principal secretary to the head of the government. The latter's salary is really a shame Mr. Speaker, ranging from $50,000 to $55,000 a year.
In the January 1975 issue of the Reader's Digest, one can read the following, and I quote:
-1.2 million or 1 in every 8 Canadians in the labour force (this includes 727,000 Provincial and Municipal employees) are employed by Government today ...
Before World War I (approximately 60 years ago) Canada had 23,000 civil servants. Since then our population has tripled, and the civil service has increased by 1200 per cent to about 300,000.. . over the past nine years.

And in a Vancouver paper, one could read recently, and I quote:

The government's top civil servants-deputy ministers-may now earn up to $48,000 a year each, according to a cabinet order released Friday ...
Effective last October, the new scale for deputy ministers announced Friday ranges from $39,000 to $48,000.

In the Ottawa Citizen on the same day, it was reported, and I quote:

The number of federal civil servants earning $20,000 a year or more rose by almost 1,300 per cent in the last six years, statistics tabled yesterday in the Commons indicate. The figures show that 16,868 civil servants in 29 government departments were earning at least $20,000 a year-

June 1, 1976



Mr. Speaker, the latest figures for 1975 show that the Public Service numbers 296,467 people; the Armed Forces, 78,000; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 15,000. There are 15,127 other federal employees. Mr. Speaker, the federal government has spent 44 per cent of its budget, that is $12.5 billion for its operation; 5 per cent on investments, that is $1.5 billion, and $14.3 billion on grants, pensions, contributions or transfers to the provinces. This means that the aggregate amount of grants, contributions and transfer payments to the provinces is almost equal to the amount spent on the government's operation with the present bureaucracy.
In 1960 there was one civil servant for 87 farmers. In 1966, there was one civil servant for 59 farmers. In 1975, one civil servant for 44 farmers. It means that the fewer the farmers, the more civil servants. So, if farming is in good health it is not because of the efficiency of civil servants but rather the contrary.
Mr. Speaker, the chairman of the Advisory Group on Executive Compensation in the Public Service, Mr. J. V. Clyne, in a brief submitted on January 13, 1971 to the right hon. Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Trudeau), said on page 5 that civil servants were not badly treated-because he would have made a fool of himself-but he went on to say:
Accordingly, we recommend that steps be taken as quickly as possible ...
. . . Mr. Speaker, because it was urgent. So they were not paid enough.
... that steps be taken as quickly as possible to revise the SX-DM salary framework as follows:
And here is what those mandarins recommended to the government: For DM3, $45,000 to $50,000; for DM2, $40,000 to $45,000; for DM1-SX4, $34,000 to $40,000; for SX3, $28,000 to $35,000; for SX2, $25,000 to $31,000; for SX1, $22,000 to $28,000, Mr. Speaker. If we listen to them, Mr. Speaker, in a few years from now they alone will take the whole federal budget.
I have here the Toronto Star of May 22, 1976 which reads as follows:

"Jack McArthur estimates we waste $5 billion on needless forms and letters every year."

It is to demonstrate the efficiency of our civil servants. [English]
"What do I do when the government doesn't send me my proper old-age pension? ... a few weeks ago, some 50,000 Canadian old-age pensioners were asking the same question. Most had received only portions of their total pensions . .. The paperwork explosion.

Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the Department of Environment that was created to identify and fight pollution in Canada should first study and fight the bureaucratic pollution, the red tape pollution as we are in a situation where in every department, in our offices, we are submerged by red tape because of the attitude of the federal government that wants to intervene in every field, thus forcing private
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entreprise to hire experts, civil servants, accountants, consultants to extricate itself from all that red tape.
And I continue with the Toronto Star:

It was said that annual reapplication forms hadn't been filled out. There was some vague talk of a failure to send out forms and reminders, or the pensioners' failure to respond, or a computer breakdown.

Mr. Speaker, whenever we ask these gentlemen for explanations, we are always told that the fault lies with the computers, whether unemployment insurance or old age security pensions are involved. About two hours ago, I came to my office with more than 150 complaints, and I am sure that a good number of people have not complained yet to my office, I mean, people who, this last month, had further deductions from their old age security pension cheques; all of us members of this House have to cope with this massive red tape, this cumbersomeness, this lack of competence and efficiency which prevails in our bureaucracy and this is why we thought it appropriate today to denouce such a system.

-between 25 and 30 per cent of personal income-tax returns are wrong in some way .. .
More than 3 million forms a year are incorrect. Hundreds of thousands of others are incomplete if you believe the tax consultants ...
If the average cost of correction-in time and money, including both sides-is $25, that bill would be more than $75 million annually.

Mr. Speaker, I could go on and on, but I would like to mention a few specific cases to show that this bureaucratic problem does not exist only in Quebec but also in the other provinces.

J. A. Thomas, of Thomas Nameplates Ltd. of Orillia, complains in a letter to the independent business federation about the delays which become possible.
He says he became interested almost a year ago in PAIT-Program for the Advancement of Industrial Technology-a federal program.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. I regret to inform the hon. member that his allotted time has expired. He may continue with unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Gilbert F. Rondeau: Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, and I also wish to thank my honourable colleagues for allowing me to complete my remarks.

"We responded," Thomas writes, "and have since been involved in a continuing Orwellian struggle with bureaucrats. We have complied with suggestions, acceded to requests and patiently attempted to supply data as required. In return, we have been diddled by departmental people who take weeks to reply"-A century ago, almost all you needed to be a success in business was that old get-up-and-go.
Now, it's absolutely necessary to have a mountain of paper, combined with a vast expertise and devotion of time to collecting the information wanted by scores of government departments and agencies, by internal paperwork collectors and by associations, customers and suppliers. Some companies, for example, are filing thousands of annual compliance reports with the Anti-inflation Board-one of Canada's most

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flourishing companies is Toronto-based Moore Corp., the world's biggest maker of business forms.
Its sales top $1 billion a year, at last report making it Canada's 16th largest industrial company.
Mr. Speaker, those paper manufacturers are doing extremely well thanks to our bureaucracy. In The Guardian of October 27, 1975-I believe this is a newspaper published in P.E.I.-here is how are described the frustrations of a businessman.

Mr. Sark says that in June of this year he made an application for a housing loan under the Indian off-reserve and Eskimo re-establishment housing regulations. But he said to even have this application looked at he had to send a cheque in the amount of $835 to the Department of Indian Affairs for survey costs, legal charges, property tax adjustment and insurance premiums.
Mr. Sark said he was told his money would be refunded if his housing application was not approved but on July 15, Mr. Sark received word his application had indeed been approved.
Believing he could have his house completed by the end of this month he took a loan of $835 from the bank. He said the reason he did this was because he had been told by CMHC he would be eligible for the $500 grant from the federal government for new home owners.
By the middle of this month Mr. Sark says he was told by CMHC the $500 grant had been used and he did not qualify for the assistant home ownership plan. Mr. Sark said CMHC explained to him he did not qualify because his salary was too high as a result of a part time job.
He said he also found another amendment in the same report stating 'make loans to Indians for the purpose of assisting in the purchase, improvement or construction of housing projects on Indian reserves'.
Mr. Sark said he now 'wonders if it is possible that there are two NHA acts, one for CMHC and a completely differently one for the public. It is also strange indeed that the Department of Indian Affairs and the Department of Veterans land act were not notified of this particular CMHC policy'. He added, 'CMHC should make public their policy regarding Indian off reserve housing, but before they do, they should educate their staff so that one hand will know what the other is doing'.

Mr. Speaker, if we go on like this, we will find out that one department's regulations are in conflict with those of another.
I could quote a good many examples of people who have had to fight for weeks, months and even years with bureaucracy, of corporations who have had to spend thousands of dollars in order to avail themselves of an existing statute, because the bureaucratic process is so confusing, so huge that it has become almost impossible to satisfy those mandarins.
I therefore suggest that my hon. colleagues should reconsider the federal government's policy, that the government should revise its attitude towards bureaucracy, in order that Parliament may have more power and that regulations may no longer be hatched behind closed doors because of the powers handed over to civil servants.
Whenever we want to utilize our statutes, we unfortunately find that the legislation in this House have enacted for a good purpose has been totally rehashed and has been-made inefficient by an army of bureaucrats who are exceedingly well paid, compared with us members of parliament. They do not have to meet standards set by the population while we the elected representatives of the

people, have to deal with the general public which does not understand the spirit behind the statutes passed with good intentions but enforced contrary to the purpose debated in parliament in committee and in this House.


Mr. Robert McCleave (Halifax-East Hants):: Mr. Speaker, I think it is always a pleasure when a number of beautiful parliamentary performers such as myself have a chance to speak in such an important debate. I wish to thank the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) for presenting the motion which allows me to participate. I shall be dealing particularly with the part of his motion that relates to the obvious tendency to extend the scope of regulations under which pieces of legislation are to be implemented.
I speak, sir, from the standpoint of being chairman of a committee of both Houses of Parliament, the Standing Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments, which deals with what I call the conduct of the subordinate parliament in respect of orders in council and the rules and regulations which flow out of that subordinate parliament. I note that the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) is here. I understand he will follow me. I understand, also, that his parliamentary secretary will speak later in the debate. All I ask is that the parliamentary secretary be allowed to get out of here in due course so that he can attend a meeting at which he is to be a principal witness this evening at 8.30.
This subject, surprisingly, can be of a great deal of interest among the members of the press at certain times. I note that one of them is in the press gallery now. I commend him for being present. I shall not say anything about those who are not. This is a subject that can exercise Canadians. It exercises them, for example, with regard to the subject of the gun control provisions of Bill C-83, now before a committee of the House, and yet when one proceeds from the general thought of whether there should be a subordinate parliament and what we should do about this subordinate parliament, then the numbers, as they say, tend to fall off.
I shall make some points this afternoon thanks, again, to the motion proposed by the hon. member for Shefford. I look around and note that the party which has proposed the motion does not have a member in the House at the moment. In any event, I shall be making some points and suggestions. I hope that if I should run out of time some member of parliament will be good enough to stand and suggest that I might have the floor for one more moment of suggestion.
I think it is true that parliament should not be overburdened with details concerning legislation. I think this is perhaps why orders in council, rules and regulations and the like as well as directives, have grown in our time. I do not think there can be any question about the need for that. Otherwise, we would be meeting 24 months every year instead of 24 months every two years.
May I start my dissertation about a practice which has grown up in the past 12 or 15 years. I do not comment about the governments which brought this practice about,
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but let me start with a letter which was written by the Hon. E. A. Forsey and myself, as joint chairmen of the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments, to the Auditor General. It was written on April 26. I will quote part of it but, of course, anyone who wants to see the whole thing may do so. It is to Mr. Macdonell and reads in part as follows:
One of these abuses is the drawing of the subordinate law-making powers in such a way that the documents flowing from their exercise are not regarded by the Crown as statutory instruments and are thereby excluded from parliamentary scrutiny.
That, by the way, is a big problem, but perhaps I should not burden the House with the technical detail of it at the moment. I will burden the House with this from the same letter:
The other is the making of statutory instruments under a series of votes commencing at some point in the immediate or distant past and amplified in scope or altered in some one or more particulars by successive votes.
I will give an example of this sort of thing later on, if time does not run out on me. The letter goes on:
These successive votes are often expressed "to extend the purpose" of an earlier vote and the extensions in some instances are but barely related to the particular objects of the original vote.
That is really an amendment to legislation, but the legislation in itself happens to have been a vote, so nobody becomes particularly exercised about it. The creeping camel's foot suddenly becomes the whole camel in the tent. The letter goes on:
The combination of the accumulation of extensions and the extreme generality of language in which almost all enabling powers in votes are expressed renders the task of the Standing Joint Committee so difficult as to negate any effective scrutiny. To the extent that scrutiny is rendered ineffective, parliament's control of the purse is subverted.
I underline those words. The answer of the Auditor General of Canada, Mr. J. J. Macdonell, is interesting indeed. On May 14, 1976, he wrote to Senator Forsey and myself to say the following:
-we have been concerned with any practices which lead to uncertainty about the nature of expenditures that appropriations are intended to cover because, in addition to affecting adversely parliament's ability to control expenditure, it makes it difficult for my office to discharge its statutory responsibilities under the Financial Administration Act.
Skipping over a couple of paragraphs, he says:
To sum up, it. is our view that to the greatest extent possible vote texts should be specific and unequivocal, contain all wording having legislative effect and any delegations of authority to the executive. We also feel that legislating by means of dollar votes and altering the purpose of previous votes by a number of successive votes should be discouraged in the interests of clarity and good parliamentary control.
I know when I say that that my good friend, the President of the Privy Council, who has the responsibility of trying to get a certain number of measures though parliament, is going to ask what else we can do. My suggestion- and it does not fall within the ambit of this particular debate-is that somehow this parliament has to come to terms with itself and we have to impose upon ourselves certain restrictions as far as debate goes.
I have argued this before in the House of Commons, and perhaps I am a lone force with regard to certain of my associates. But I also say that we have to have provision for good housekeeping measures and the like. However, we still must have regard for parliamentary practice, and the
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Auditor General and I are as one in saying that the practice which has been followed about the $1 votes, the votes upon appropriation bills, and the like, is not in keeping with good parliamentary practice. I say, also, that there is no other legislature or parliament of which I am aware within the so-called British system which does what we try to do here.
I have quoted Mr. Macdonell, and when we deal with things later on in the procedure committee and in the House of Commons arising out of the procedure committee,
I hope we will pay some heed to what he has said. It is perhaps the strongest criticism he has made, and yet in a sense he is echoing what many of us within this chamber have said-that somehow we have to find ourselves a better way of doing things.
In the few minutes which are left I would like to draw examples of the points I am trying to make to the attention of the House this afternoon. First, may I quote from a letter which Senator Forsey and I sent to the President of the Privy Council, the minister who is listening so avidly now. It is a letter dated April 8, 1976, and it reads in part as follows:
-the committee objects to the drawing of enabling powers in votes in such a way that the resulting exercises of delegated law-making power are not regarded as statutory instruments by the legal advisers to your office.
This is one of the fights we have had, and it has been going on for some considerable time. Probably since the fight is still going on, I will not overburden the House with that particular point. It will come before us as a matter of debate at a future time. I will now turn to some of the difficulties we are facing in terms of the Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments, Issue No. 56, to be found at page 38, where our counsel made comments about the Indian off-reserve and Eskimo housing regulations arising out of Appropriation Act No. 4, 1971, as follows:
Finally, by Vote L16a, Appropriation Act No. 4, 1971, the purposes were once again extended, in respect of both Indians and Eskimos, to authorize loans "for repairs or improvements to houses at the time of purchase in areas other than Indian reserves".
It is not clear what this last extension means: must the loans (for repairs and improvements) be made at the time of purchase; must the repairs and improvements be projected at the time of purchase; must the repairs and improvements be carried out at the time of purchase? The last is in any event probably a legal impossibility. What is clear is that the loans and advances under the several appropriations are to be made to members of the class, Indians, and to members of the class, Eskimos, on the same terms and conditions, subject to the same provisions, (and for the same purposes). Yet section 3(1)(b) imposes a restriction on a loan to Eskimos which does not apply in the case of a loan to Indians, namely that the location of the house must be acceptable to the Minister.
These are broad powers, are they not? Mr. Speaker, you and I would probably be free to move about if we could meet the necessary conditions with regard to mortgages in the marketplace, but what I have just read, if hon. members will examine it, will be found to be a pretty strong infringement on the rights of individuals. Our counsel went on:
(The restriction that the house must be on land outside a reserve exists in respect of loans to members of both racial groups. It is expressed in the case of Indians. It need not be expressed in the case of

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Eskimos for they, like any non-Indian person, would, in any event, be unable lawfully to build or acquire a house on an Indian reserve.)
So that point was made with regard to the regulations we have under an act we ourselves passed years ago. Mr. Speaker, I have three or four more examples, but I am running short of time to develop this argument. There are many questions that can arise with regard to these particular votes within appropriation acts, and I do not think we have given ourselves a procedure capable of dealing with them. I have a remedy, however. May I deal with SOR/75-24-the home buyer grant regulations which were passed more than a year ago. Our counsel, Mr. G. C. Eglington, wrote to the Department of Urban Affairs on July 14, 1975, as follows:
-this provision amounts either to the payment of the grant to the association, a provision ultra vires vote 12B of the enabling statute which specifies grant payments "to an individual", or to a condition of payment, namely that the payment be applied to a specific purpose, the reduction of the indebtedness of another. The committee was doubtful as to whether the terms and conditions which the governor in council might properly prescribe under Vote 12B can extend to requiring that payments be used in the manner specified in section 5(2).
The committee referred to is the joint committee. The letter goes on to say:
The committee will appreciate your response on this point and, after considering it, will also deal with the further point as to whether or not such substantial rules should be made by regulation1-
That is the point made by my hon. friend in opening this debate:
-pursuant to skeletal enabling powers in votes.
That is the point on which I should like to base my contribution this afternoon. I am coming to the end of my time so I will not burden the House, but there are two more instances, both important. May I suggest that in dealing with the procedure of the House, in order that the House may have some control over what I call the subordinate parliament of Canada, we probably have to take one more step. I realize that the work of the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments is very important. As a matter of fact, I am dismayed that the press gallery has not sent people to it. I am also dismayed that members who are not on that committee have not used it more often. Only one member has used it so far. The committee has procedures and remedies available to approach some of the problems which exercise myself and other members of it.
In supporting the motion of the hon. member for Shef-ford, I should like to point out that there are committees of this chamber and the other place which have special interests; they deal with fisheries, mining, energy-and if one wants to look at a catalogue of horrors, they need only look at the regulations affecting energy and mining. When we make changes in parliamentary procedure we should find a way of referring the regulations to a regulations committee for examination and also to the committee which I have the honour to head. They could then be referred to the appropriate standing committee which could pronounce upon them.
This is a new procedure that I am suggesting for the House of Commons, Mr. Speaker, I hope I have made a case

that can find its way into the hearts and minds of hon, members.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I believe that this motion aims at drawing the attention of all hon. members, whatever their political party, on the importance of reassessing the role of Parliament in a democratic society, in a country like ours. The hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) explained quite clearly and accurately the objectives of his motion, and the hon. member who just sat down also supports the reasons for presenting this motion today, that is to clearly show the important role that Parliament must play in administration, in the administration of national affairs, of Canadian affairs.
Mr. Speaker, this afternoon, we had a striking example of the inefficiency of ministers, and even of hon. members as concerns the implementation of legislation. A minister makes some statements in the House, some bureaucrat does the opposite outside the House, and we suddenly discover that the minister has been fooled, that he has not been informed, and the deputy minister of a certain department is transferred. He is transferred to another department, in a manner reminiscent of that in which ministers are appointed. Someone is appointed minister, he keeps his portfolio for three or four years, afterwards when he starts to bother the bureaucracy, it is the deputy ministers, simple secretaries who force the government to appoint another minister. The bureaucracy if not accountable to the general public, we do not know individual deputy ministers, we do not know the secretaries of the deputy ministers, and they do not have to be elected. Moreover, they are employees.
Mr. Speaker, we must not play politics at certain times or allow public servants to do so. I am a politician. I would not want Crown corporations, like the CBC, to be accountable to a political party. I recognize that these corporations must be absolutely independent from political parties, but not from the Canadian Parliament. Those are agencies or corporations created by and responsible to Parliament.
Those people are sometimes seen mocking the minister, or members of Parliament. In certain cases indeed, in nearly any constituency be it represented by a Liberal, a Conservative or a Social Crediter, constituents come up and ask their M.P.'s help to settle a problem they cannot solve in matters of unemployment insurance for example, of welfare or that sort of things. When those constituents call at a government office saying that they have consulted with their member of Parliament, they are immediately snubbed and told there is no use to consult with a member, because members account for nothing, nobody needs them and they have no business coming up and telling public servants what to do in government offices. Mr. Speaker, I will relate something which happened to us, the members of the Social Credit Party of Canada, in 1974. We had passed a legislation here in August-


An hon. Member:: That does not happen only to you!


David Réal Caouette: The legislation-yes, yes; that happens to you too!
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Mr. Speaker, the Canada Elections Act clearly provides that any political party has the right to receive donations and to issue receipts for these gifts in favour of their electoral organization. The act provides that rendered services may be included. This means that the travel expenses of a constituent or party worker who goes from one riding to another or anywhere in Canada can be figured out and deducted on one's income return as political contributions, under the electoral legislation passed by Parliament. That is what we did under the terms of the act.
But the bureaucrats the Department of National Revenue, and namely those of Sherbrooke, said that the act of Parliament was no good and that the legislation concerning bureaucrats is the valid one. They say that rendered services are not deductible. And it should be noted that they refused to refund some taxpayers certain amounts claimed as gifts to political parties, namely our party. Maybe the same thing happened to other political parties.
Mr. Speaker, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police was even used to intimidate our respective constituents, the Mounties went into the homes telling the electors of taxpayers that they were thieves, that they had submitted false returns and that if they did not sign a document to the effect that they had not helped the party, they would be thrown to jail!


An hon. Member:: Right on!


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, if the RCMP want proofs, I have witnesses in my own riding where they went one night to the home of Mr. Maxime Lord, 2345 Saguenay Avenue in Noranda, and his wife, my chief organizer. Take note of this: two RCMP agents went in saying that they were liars, crooks, that they had lied to National Revenue, that they had claimed $200 which they had never given the party. The devoted work of those people, Mr. Speaker, is worth much more than $1,500 or $2,000 a year; but the two Mounties, two youngsters, went in there calling them liars and thieves. Fortunately, my two fellow-citizens, who are not easily intimidated, told them in turn that they had better sit down and be polite otherwise they would get thrown out! Then, things calmed down somewhat.


An hon. Member:: That is not the general reaction!


David Réal Caouette: No, indeed, everyone would not greet them that way. Mr. Speaker, when that happened, I went to the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) in this House, I went to his seat-


An hon. Member:: He's never understood anything!


David Réal Caouette: How true! He told me that there had been anomalies, irregularities that some of our people were not honest.
That is what Solicitor General Allmand said to me, and I challenged him to prove it. Anyway, the whole file is in the hands of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Basford) who said that he was not aware of the matter, that he would enquire to his official to ascertain what had happened, but that the whole matter might be in the hands of the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Cullen). I went to see the Minister of National Revenue at his seat and asked him a progress
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report on the matter. The minister told me that the file had been sent to his office but that it had been returned to the Minister of Justice, who, in turn, would return it to the Solicitor General.
Mr. Speaker, as to the tax returns made in 1975 for the 1974 taxation year, some people were in fact granted the recognized deduction for donations to political parties, after which the RCMP was asked to inquire. The ministers know nothing about the whole matter: three dummies they are! Deputy ministers do know what is going on, and they are the ones who decided to sue people. Now, in 1976, we file our returns for 1975. Apparently, 1975 political donations are accepted more easily. That is not all: assessment notices are presently being sent to some taxpayers requesting them to pay back what they received in 1974 for donations made in 1974. What nerve the National Revenue people must have to ask for the repayment of amounts paid out after May 1975.
Mr. Speaker, it is surprising that the ministers should not be aware of that. At this very moment, we have three representatives with the chief commissioner of income tax to check the record-


An hon. Member:: The RCMP.


David Réal Caouette: The chief commissioner of the RCMP, that's it, Mr. Nadon. Three of them are there this afternoon to check the record. What is in it? We will know tomorrow probably, or later today. But the trouble we are having, I realize that other constituencies may well have it too. I simply want to state that Parliament is being laughed at. We passed that legislation here in this Parliament to allow your constituents to give you donations deductible for income tax purposes, not from the taxable income but the income tax, the tax payable. The act was passed here. But bureaucrats say, you, members of Parliament, are not right. They are the first to come here and beg for salary increases, higher pensions, to live fatly at the expense of Canadian taxpayers while members of Parliament who are elected representatives responsible to the people are being laughed at by little secretaries in the office of the deputy minister or minor employees who actually rule the roost.
Mr. Speaker, I am talking about the elections act. There are others. The CBC, a Crown corporation-there are other Crown corporations-but the CBC was asked in this Parliament to be more explicit, more national, to talk more about the role of the Canadian Parliament. I will give you another rather recent example: on May 25, when the budget was tabled by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald). The whole Parliament was here. I am sorry I could not be here. However, my colleagues were here and most members also. That evening, on Radio-Canada, when the news came on, I said: Now we are going to hear about the budget. I listen to the news in my area; we have freedon of choice.
We have a television station, Radio-Nord Inc., which is affiliated to Radio-Canada. Therefore we have one alternative: either we turn off the set or we turn it on. That is our only choice and we must hear the news on Radio-Canada because there are no other stations. So, in the evening, I listen to the comments about the budget. In the afternoon some hon. members were locked in for 2, 3 or 4 hours

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before the budget was brought down at 8 p.m. My colleague for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) was one of those along with other Liberals, Progressive Conservatives and New Democrats who studied the budget beforehand to be able to comment on it in the evening. So, in the evening I listened to the commentaries. They introduce the budget, they talk about the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) and then they give the comments by federal representatives of other political parties. I think my colleague for Shefford was asked to record a three-minute commentary which was taped in the afternoon or evening-


Gilbert F. Rondeau: No, five!


David Réal Caouette: -or a five-minute commentary on Radio-Canada-


Gilbert F. Rondeau: In colour!


David Réal Caouette: ... in colour, besides. At least, they have it colour! Not our political colour, the actual colour. Mr. Speaker, in the evening, I think the hon. member for Shefford was allowed less than half a minute . . .


Gilbert F. Rondeau: 40 seconds; on channel 10, 4 minutes.


David Réal Caouette: ... 40 seconds on the government network and 4 minutes on channel 10, a Montreal private company's station. The other party representatives were not allowed more than 2 minutes.


Gilbert F. Rondeau: Not even the Minister.


David Réal Caouette: Not even the Minister. I do not think he even had his 2 minutes, the Minister of Finance! This is the measure of CBC's impartiality, a coporation which is totally independent from political parties as well as from parliament. That same evening, the Inquiry Commission on Organized Crime, CECO as it is called, was allowed about 7 minutes to show the notorious Dubois family from Montreal. What the hell can that mean in Winnipeg? How does that concern . . .


Eudore Allard: Halifax!


David Réal Caouette: . . . Yes, Halifax!


Some hon. Members:: There are Frenchmen there!


David Réal Caouette: Or how do scandals in Montreal concern the people in Vancouver? Even in toronto, they do not want to hear about it. People have enough troubles of their own, they have no need for Montreal's problems. Mr. Speaker, those in charge of the CBC do not to give a damn about members of Parliament. They are the first to laugh at us, they are the first to send us to hell...


Some hon. Members:: And ministers for that matter!


David Réal Caouette: ... yes, both ministers and members of parliament. They say "We may or may not give them coverage". Who in CBC are those powers who decide that? They are the same people who come here "wacking" for their votes, not thousands, but hundreds of millions, to pay for those pale-faced people in the CBC's

Montreal offices, for giving coverage to those awful organizations. "We must go everywhere, we must cover every organization", says the Corporation. And to every organization they go. But the CBC should be held responsible for the division that now exists in various regions of Canada. It was shameful the way Canada's Parliament was treated last week on the occasion of the budget speech, which is of concern to every Canadian. The CBC cast aside such a serious issue, in favour of the Board of inquiry on organized crime, to show Justice Dutil and witnesses stating that they attempted to kill someone, they sold marijuana or haschish or what have you, that they had a prostitution ring in Montreal. That is quality indeed to improve the standard of public morals. Directly on TV it went.
Do they say anything about Parliament, about the important role played by members? No, they do not give a hoot. And I will tell you why. Because we, members of Parliament, we are not named for life. We have to get elected. Come the next election, we cannot take it for granted, we are not elected for life but for one term only. There is a new election every two, three or four years. Who knows what can happen in four, three or two years from now? Job security, that is not for us.
Employment security is requested for the CBC employees, employment security in journalism, employment security in the damned bureaucracy, employment security for civil servants. By the way, there is something else I would like to say. From all the members who were in this House when I was first elected in 1946-49, only three are still here: the member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefen-baker), the member for Winnipeg North Centre and myself. Out of 264 or 265, only three members from those days still have a seat in this House. This is to show that we know what parliament is all about.
If we are here, it is not because we had employment security but because we fought hard in each election. But I do feel a little bit sick whenever I hear the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), even rightly so, say: "We have to treat our civil servants well." Employment security and better salaries are things we hear discussed every so often. "When are we going to increase their pensions, pay them decent salaries, and so on and so forth?" Good enough. I agree that our civil servants should be well paid. However, whenever federal members who have no employment security ask for a small salary increase, the civil servant is the first to object. I just cannot figure that out.
Federal members are paid $24,000 a year. Some of our civil servants earn as much as $40,000, $45,000 and $50,000 a year and we are still asking salary increases for them. Whenever a small increase of $2,000 or $2,400 is requested or suggested in Parliament civil servants are the first to fight against it despite the fact that members of Parliament do not have any job security and are never assured of being returned to the House at the next election. As soon as members start talking about a possible increase, the press objects to it. The newspapers then say that the members voted themselves a salary increase for their expenses in their ridings. Mr. Speaker, why is it, if it is so interesting to be elected member, that those fellows from
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the press do not run for Parliament? Why do they not come here to sit as members?
First because they do not have the ability and second because nobody wants them. Third, they should just shut up and show some respect for the Canadian Parliament instead of trying to ridicule everything that happens here, to ridicule the members of Parliament who do something, to ridicule the ministers in front of civil servants and deputy ministers. I have great respect for deputy ministers. The organization-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but his allotted time has expired. He may continue only with unanimous consent. Is there consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Réal Caouette: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues but I think it is true, I just started to be good. Mr. Speaker, I shall not take too much of the time of the House but I had to clarify the role that Parliament must play in this country so that the bureaucrats "stay in their hole." It does not mean they should be ill-treated but they should be respectful of Parliament and the ministers. Today, we have a Liberal government but tomorrow I hope we shall have a Social Credit government.
But we should be respectful of the authority at a time when everybody complains about the lack of authority, the lack of respect for those who are supposed to administer public funds and the nation's business. Mr. Speaker, we should be respectful and we should start in the media for instance where they always call out for the freedom of the press, yes, the freedom to lie to the people as filthy beasts can do. It is the freedom to deprive others of their freedom. Let us see who is calling louder for freedom in Montreal: the common front, Charbonneau, Pepin, Laberge. What respect do they have for the authority? What respect do they show for the National Assembly in Quebec? Those people are stirring up public opinion against law and order. But the freedom they are asking for is the freedom to deprive others of it and to end up with the kind of freedom they enjoy in Moscow or in other socialist countries in the world where people no longer have the right to speak loud, to say what they have to say.
Mr. Speaker, thank God we have not reached this point yet in Canada or in the province of Quebec. Should we however let the bureaucracy get hold of power in Canada we will be in exactly the same situation as those socialist or communist countries in the world. Mr. Speaker, I want to add that all the world countries which have allowed their bureaucracy to gain power are in a desperate situation today. They would like to restore this parliamentary freedom which still exists in Canada, thank God.
Mr. Speaker, let the ministers take their responsibilities and we, parliamentarians, we, members of Parliament, let us require at least that government agencies be respectful of the Canadian Parliament. We have the duty to pass the votes concerning their salary, we are responsible for all
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these people. And we are going to allow those officials who work in small offices, in riding offices here and there, to make a mockery of us and tell us: Just watch, Mr. MP, your case will not be dealt with because you mixed it up with politics. Mr. Speaker, politics is not an electoral policy nor a party policy between elections. It is a government policy, a Parliament policy and therefore public servants should be respectful of members of Parliament. They should consider that the law has to be enforced.
I referred earlier to the electoral legislation. In this regard, I suggest it is time-and I draw the attention of the President of the Privy Council to it so that he stresses the fact to the bureaucrats of the Departments of National Revenue, Justice and the Solicitor General-that Bill C-74 be strictly enforced instead of being tampered with as these people are doing at present.
Mr. Speaker, the members, whoever they are, should demand that public servants perform their duties and give the results expected and required from them, not golf games, yacht trips or extra-parliamentarian activities. What we want from them are results reported in Parliament and then Parliament will be brought back into favour before public opinion; we want the mass media to be attached to Parliament, be made available to the Canadian public so there will be no more deceptions by individuals who want to destroy us instead of promoting the selfdevelopment of the country.
Mr. Speaker, my appeal is directed to the members of all political parties and to the government to assume its responsibilities and put bureaucracy at the service of Parliament which will legislate to meet the needs of the people.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. 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 Egmont (Mr. MacDonald) Transport-Rationalization of transport policy; the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Whiteway)-Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation-Proposal to grant export licence to sell fish outside corporation; the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie)-Air Canada- Allegation of poor billing procedures.

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GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau):
That this House finds highly deplorable the attitude the government has demonstrated by taking advantage of its majority to draft many of its bills in such a way that different matters are dealt with in a single text, as well as its obvious tendency to extend the scope of regulations under which pieces of legislation are to be implemented, an attitude which distorts the purpose legislators have in mind and deprives this House of its real customary powers.
Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the motion which is before us-and I should like to remind the House of this-is not exactly the same as the subject which has been discussed so eloquently by the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette). However, I can sympathize with the hon. gentleman. Having been a bureaucrat myself at one time, I can understand the situation very well. Having been a bureaucrat, a member of parliament and a minister, I understand what he is saying.
I suggest to him, however, that we should preserve as an essential principle of our democratic system the notion that the government should be responsible for its acts. This is a principle which is sometimes extremely difficult to interpret; As my colleague, the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer) said earlier today, there are circumstances over which ministers can have no control. However, I hope the House will agree that in general ministers should be accountable to the House for their actions, and this includes the actions of their departments. It is a principle which has been accepted by the government ever since I have had anything to do with it, and it has been adhered to on numerous occasions when the opposition wished to go behind the government and begin to deal with civil servants. I believe such efforts should be resisted and that ministers have a responsibility to the House for the acts of their departments as well as their acts in a personal capacity.
May I now refer to the very interesting remarks made by the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants (Mr. McCleave) who is joint chairman of the Committee on Regulations and Statutory Instruments. I am sorry he is not here now. I should like to congratulate him and his committee, including the senators and, in particular, Senator Forsey who is the co-chairman, on the very useful work they have been doing. They have had some difficulty in defining what constitutes statutory instruments, but that is to be expected. I hope we can clarify this situation so that the committee can carry on its work effectively.
I was interested in the suggestion made by the hon. member toward the conclusion of his remarks, that iye might adopt new procedures to deal, not with the question whether regulations and statutory instruments are in the proper form and within the ambit of legislation but, rather, whether they touch on substantial matters which are of importance to policy rather than simply to the carrying out of a statute. The suggestion that we might set up a procedure to carry the matter further if the statutory instru-
ments committee felt certain regulations were of such a character as to justify a closer examination in another standing committee is one which I would not reject out of hand. I believe it is a proposal well worth considering.
Mr. Speaker, the motion in the name of the Social Credit party deals with two matters, the first of which has not been debated at all, as yet. Neither the first speaker for the Social Credit party, nor the hon. member for Temiscamingue made reference to this part of the motion. I would remind the House of the terms of the motion itself- the first part. It reads:
That this House finds highly deplorable the attitude the government has demonstrated by taking advantage of its majority to draft many of its bills in such a way that different matters are dealt with in a single text-
In other words, as I understand it, the motion condemns the government, for bringing in omnibus bills. I believe the House is right to be cautious when asked to consider bills which cover a number of unrelated matters. But I suggest the government has been careful when bringing forward what are loosely called omnibus bills to observe consistency and confine the subjects to closely related matters.
I could pick out one or two pieces of legislation to illustrate my point. One is the measure presently before the House, Bill C-83, which deals with certain aspects of the criminal law. It has one theme-measures to provide greater peace and security. If it is argued that it would have been better to have brought forward a whole series of amendments by way of separate bills, I would answer that not only would we have found greater difficulty in dealing with the essential and urgent legislation which is before the House, but we would be repeating the debate on each of the items of legislation. I suggest the government has done the House a service by bringing forward in one bill amendments to the Criminal Code concerning peace and security.
I should also refer to another bill introduced some time ago early in the session, Bill C-16, dealing with the status of women. That bill did amend eight separate statutes, but the common theme was to provide equality of status for male and female persons. Surely the House would not have thought it desirable for the government to have introduced eight separate pieces of legislation simply because the bill purported to amend eight existing laws.
Various speakers, particularly the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants, have referred to the rules of procedure of this House. As President of the Privy Council and, for the time being, chairman of the House committee on procedure and organization, I should like to express my hope that we will bear these considerations in mind when we are dealing with changes in the rules which are now under consideration in the committee.
We do not as yet, in my judgment, have rules that enable us to deal effectively with the legislation that comes before this House, nor with the bills that we are being encouraged to introduce nearly every day to deal with other matters and for which we have not the legislative time. Moreover, I thought the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants was quite right in saying that under our present rules we do not have adequate time to deal with what he called the subordinate legislation made under existing statutes.
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I believe that these comments are well justified. It seems to me that in this House we often substitute length of debate for careful consideration. There are so many occasions when an attempt is made to hold up legislation rather than to bring it to a conclusion and reach a decision. I can understand, Mr. Speaker, the desirability of giving the public time to understand the nature of the proposals that are put before the House so that members of parliament can get the reaction of the public; but there comes a time when an excessive dependence upon that particular principle simply inhibits this House from doing the job for which its members were elected.
I am quite satisfied, in my own mind, that this is not a contest between the government and the opposition. So often it seems to me that the proposals that are made for changes in the rules are represented as an attempt by the government to push its legislative proposals through the House. I, personally, do not think that is so, nor that the opposition should look upon it in that light. Perhaps some day they will be in government and will understand the problem from our point of view. If they work hard and show responsibility, they will have a better chance in the future, I suggest.
At any rate, one of the problems I feel we have encountered in amending our rules is that there are stereotyped reactions to proposals. The opposition says, "This is a government move to expedite undesirable legislation", and they take that attitude toward it. In the United Kingdom, where the rules are so much tighter and there is much greater control over time in the House of Commons, there is very little difficulty on that score because the two major parties alternate in office and know that one or the other will either be in government or in opposition at some time in the future.
May I also point out that there have been changes in the rules which enable us to deal much more successfully, and with less risk, with omnibus bills-for example, the provisions now in the rules enabling us to bring matters back into the House at the report stage. This was not so easily done in the past. Prior to this rule change, bills were considered in committee of the whole. But as someone has pointed out, there is a great deal of difference between considering a bill in committee of the whole and voting upon it in the House. Nowadays, a member has the right to put down amendments at the report stage and these are voted on individually and a recorded vote is taken. This is why omnibus bills can be dealt with more effectively than they were in the past.
I could say a good deal more on this subject, Mr. Speaker, but I believe hon. members are familiar with the problem and the changes that have been made in our rules enabling us to deal with omnibus bills without risking the possibility of dealing with a whole series of unrelated matters in a single piece of legislation.
Another development that has occurred recently and which is reflected on the order paper is the introduction of a bill to deal with technical amendments of a non-controversial character. This will be, in the truest sense, an omnibus bill. It will deal with many, many statutes. I look upon this-and I think the House should, too-as a very great improvement in the procedures for dealing with legislation. I hope in the future it will avoid the necessity
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of bringing in a whole series of minor bills to correct technical errors.
I come now, Mr. Speaker, to the second part of this motion, which deplores the "obvious tendency to extend the scope of regulations under which pieces of legislation are to be implemented ..We are all aware of the increasing complexity of government. I should like to read to the House the opinion of one of the acknowledged experts on parliamentary procedure, Professor J. R. Mallory, who appeared before the special committee on statutory instruments on April 29, 1969. He put the problem forward in very clear language, and this is what he said:
The development of delegated legislation is one of the things that is necessary in the kind of modern urban and highly technological society in which we live. But necessarily parliament itself does not have the time or the capacity to produce all of the regulations which are necessary for the regulation of living in modern conditions. It is more important that parliament should devote itself to the big questions and keep a constant and wary eye on major questions of policy.
This, of course, was not in the beginning. At the time of confederation we lived in what is commonly called the night-watchman state. Nobody thought in those days that much regulation was necessary to protect the essential interests of the citizen. But now so much needs to be regulated to protect our health and welfare and safety because of the complexities of travel by air and sea and land, because of the need to develop provisions for the health and welfare of people under modern urban conditions. Also this kind of regulation by its nature requires very often rapid adjustment. We cannot live forever with a set of regulations about aircraft safety which were designed in 1918. We may have to change them with some rapidity. So that parliament simply has to delegate the power to make many regulations to subordinate bodies in the executive: ministers, government departments, the Governor in Council or some other kinds of Crown agencies.
That is the nature of the problem, Mr. Speaker. All of us who are members of parliament, including the government, may deplore the necessity to delegate in this way to ourselves, to our agencies and to other bodies the right to make subordinate legislation. But when we come to deal with practical issues that are facing us, we really have no other alternative.
That is why I believe the arrangement of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Regulations was a great step forward. First of all, it reinforces the government's own efforts to ensure that regulation is within the authority granted by parliament. Secondly, it does open the way for a review of what is done under this subordinate legislation.
As I have said, I thought this was a very useful suggestion made by the co-chairman of the committee, that there might be some new procedure developed which would enable a committee of this House, if not the House itself, to have a look at substantial measures enacted under regulatory authority.
As you know, Mr. Speaker, we now have a system whereby all orders that have legislative effect are tabled here in parliament, are automatically referred to the standing joint committee and are also published so the public can know what is being done. So we have established the machinery:
I do not think we in this House can ever be less than very wary of the extending power of government. We must always be very careful to ensure that it is this House of Commons which makes the ultimate decisions. I must say,

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however, that there is no way-indeed, even if all the rule changes I might favour as a member of the government to promote the reaching of decisions on government proposals were to be adopted-by which this parliament could avoid granting to the government delegated authority, because it could not legislate in time to deal with the changes that arise because of changing circumstances.


Mr. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to enter this very high-level debate during which we shed our partisan clothes and look at this resolution of the Social Credit party on this opposition day, at the time when we are apparently pressed for time in dealing with more important matters facing parliament. I must admit, with the greatest deference to the Social Credit party, that I find some difficulty in interpreting the subtlety of the motion, particularly when the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) referred to the fact that the lead-off speaker for the Social Credit party had not been speaking with reference to the motion. My own interpretation and assessment of the motion leads me to the belief that there is virtually nothing which could be said in this House today that would not come within the ambit of the resolution. It is a very broad resolution indeed.
This is a resolution which deplores a tendency which I think any member who has any sensitivity toward this institution would have to assume is a downgrading of parliament and this institution. I say that without pointing the finger of accusation at this or any other government. It deplores the tendency to, in fact, abdicate our responsibilities as parliamentarians by accepting the suggestion far too often that we should delegate responsibility by way of regulation and by other orders to the civil service or members of the public service of Canada. This is one thing that certainly has impressed me in my short time as a member of parliament.
I have had what I suppose is the distinct pleasure and honour of serving on that Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and Regulations, referred to many times by the President of the Privy Council. I like to mention on each occasion we have a debate relating to that committee that it was my initial impression that the whip of our party, who is now my seatmate, sent me there for the purpose of administering a form of punishment, in the belief that a new member had to go through his own form of purgatory by sitting and looking through the mounds and mounds of regulations and orders in council which are promulgated by the government from time to time.
I was rather interested, from that point of view, in determining what kind of experience we have had in Canada in respect of the enactment of regulations and statutory instruments. The information I have from the Canada Gazette, part II, indicates that during the period of years from 1972 to 1975 there have been a considerable number of regulations promulgated. To give the House some idea of the scope and the extent of this delegation of power under statute to officials of various departments, it is interesting to note, for example, that in 1972 there were no less than 580 regulations and statutory instruments published in the Canada Gazette. In 1973 the figure was 755; in 1974 there were 560, and in 1975 there were 780. This is a very substantial number of regulations for any govern-

ment, let alone the government of Canada, to have promulgated.
This does not tell the whole story. The fact of the matter is that in addition to these documents which are published in the Canada Gazette there are, as yet, an undetermined number of orders passed which have the effect of regulations affecting the citizens of our country on a day to day basis.
As I indicated at the outset of my remarks, I think there should, and will be, on both sides, of this House a general approval of what I perceive to be the intent of this resolution. It is not good enough for the President of the Privy Council to have pointed out that we have, in terms of parliamentary time, simply not enough opportunity to deal with the technical aspects of legislation, or that things are getting so complex in the society of this country that we have to turn over the responsibility of passing regulations to the bureaucrats, the civil servants and departmental officials. That is an oversimplification of the situation and an easy "out" for the government.
We must be extremely vigilant in parliament regarding this growing tendency which is a very easy way for government to deal with matters. We must try to encourage the government to propose legislation which has not just a skeleton or bare-bones outline of principle but, rather, gives us in some reasonable detail the kind of information we, as parliamentarians, require in order to make a proper assessment of the merits of the proposed legislation.
One of the prime and most important pieces of legislation we have dealt with in current days, it seems to me, was the legislation relating to the anti-inflation program and the Anti-Inflation Board. I do not want to go over that debate as the facts have been repeated on a number of occasions. However, I think this is a good example of the situation.
We now see the anti-inflation legislation in operation. The Anti-Inflation Board and its administrator have been given a mandate under the act. We find that parliament has effectively lost control of the anti-inflation program, with the exception of one or two instances where the government of the day feels inclined, for whatever reason, to give instructions to the board or the administrator. When this happens, the government does so as though it were infringing or impinging upon a god-given right of the Anti-Inflation Board.
The government seems to take the attitude that it wants to avoid any form of leadership in respect of decisions by that board, sort of removing itself from the political considerations that go into the decisions of the Anti-Inflation Board. It seems to me that in the legislation creating the Anti-Inflation Board we have a prime example of legislation that affects the vast majority of the people in this country and the country itself in terms of its future economy.
We find that although the bill consists of very few clauses, it contains an important clause relating to the ability of the governor in council to pass regulations to give effect to the over-all principle which is stated in, practically, one clause of the bill. It refers to the government's intention to fight inflation. It seems to me that this

example and the resolution of the Social Credit party at this particular time, when we have had an opportunity to assess the work of the Anti-Inflation Board over a period of some months, at least gives us an opportunity to consider the direction in which we are moving in respect of this kind of legislation, and an opportunity to remind ourselves of the general alarm we all felt about the Prime Minister's statement about the end of the year in which he said we should continue to look at a new society with the idea that perhaps controls might be a way of life. We should take a second look at the situation on this basis and hope that we will be able to bring this concept to an end before the next election.
As I have said, I wish to keep this above partisan politics, so I mention that merely as a possibility. The fact of the matter is that there have been some fundamental changes in parliament over the years. I had the opportunity to work, not as a civil servant, as did the President of the Privy Council, but as an executive assistant in the government when the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) was prime minister. At that time I had an opportunity to observe the role of parliament and the role the opposition played in that whole scenario.
I recall that the government at that time had a majority consisting of 208 members. I believe there were something like 48 or 50 members of the official opposition. I remember very well the situation at that time. In those days there was a very fundamental prerogative of parliament which now has been removed. I refer to the whole question of supply. I remember when the ministers came down to the treasury benches, to pass their estimates, how concerned they were about having to face the opposition at that time because the opposition had the right to withhold the granting of supply until such time as answers were forthcoming from the ministers concerned.
Simply because I am a member of the opposition, I am not suggesting we should have any greater rights than the government. However, I suggest there is a role the opposition plays in the parliamentary system, although the idea apparently has now being given up of returning supply to the House and giving the House the ability to withhold the granting of supply. This idea of returning supply to the House is not a bad idea at all. We have had the experience of the past few weeks and months of seeing ministers delegate their ministerial responsibility.
I suggest to the government House leader and to members of the cabinet who are present today that some of the problems we have had may not have arisen if, in fact, supply had remained in the House and if, in fact, the ministers were not in a position to slough off their responsibilities. As I say, some of the problems we have had would not have occurred had we had supply in the House and an opportunity for the opposition to withhold supply by carrying on the debate. Of course, the opposition has a responsibility in this regard because of the need for supply to go forward at a certain time and because otherwise certain people might not be paid.
As I say, that is a responsibility which rests with the opposition. I suggest that the minister, at least, should be in the position of having to answer for the activities of his own department and not be in a position to slough off any part of that responsibility by saying he received improper
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or unreasonable advice from some poor career public servant.
I think it is unfair, as we saw today, for the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer) to suggest that a public servant in his department, Mr. L. H. Stopforth, had given him wrong information. I wondered then, and I wonder now-aloud-whether it is good practice for a minister to get up and simply blame someone under his authority and have him moved to another position, as opposed to the minister taking the full responsibility for his department and suffering the consequences even to the extent of tendering his resignation if his department is not functioning.
I think we will pursue the whole question of ministerial responsibility on subsequent days, because it is not clear to me that the Minister of Supply and Services is completely fault-free in this regard. There are other circumstances which have come to our attention which indicate that the minister either did know or ought to have known the full circumstances of the LRPA negotiations and should not have used one of his civil servants as a scapegoat in order to avoid responsibility for his department.
As I say, I intend to deal with this motion on a nonpolitical basis. I am sure hon. members opposite will agree that I am doing very well in this regard. I think our committee system, which is part of the over-all process of government, is relevant to the motion the Social Credit party has brought forward. One thing I have noticed since I have been here as a member of parliament is a tendency, which I do not recall being apparent at the time I was here previously as an executive assistant, of ministers not to appear even when their estimates were before the standing committees but, rather, to send their deputy ministers.
I notice that there also has been a tendency to send deputy ministers to field, and occasionally attempt to answer questions of policy. I think, first of all, we should take a look at this development in respect of our committee system. If we do not have supply in the House of Commons, I think at least the minister should appear at each committee meeting, without exception, to deal with matters of policy. If the hon. member opposite thinks it is an exception to the rule when ministers do not appear, I suggest that he look at the situation in respect of legislation. The tendency there is to have the deputy minister appear and answer questions concerning particular legislation. I could give an example of occasions before standing committees when a member of the public service has come in and has been asked questions relating to government policy or, as we refer to it euphemistically, departmental policy.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, may I ask the hon. gentleman a question? I have been very interested in this line or argument. My experience was that when I appeared they did not want me; they wanted the Clerk of the Privy Council. Does the hon. member support that point of view, or does he think it should just be the ministers?


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I am glad the minister raised that interesting observation, because what I think should be the case, and what the practice is, are different. I think there should be consistency, and the President of the Privy

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Council (Mr. Sharp) points out in very vivid form the defect in the course the government is following because the fact of the matter is-


Ralph Goodale: Inconsistent.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Inconsistent is the word, and I am glad the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Goodale) brought this word to my portfolio of ammunition for this particular point.
The fact is that the government has allowed deputy ministers to come forward and give evidence in these cases as a matter of practice, but in certain instances they have denied that right. The outstanding example was when the Prime Minister refused to let the equivalent of his deputy minister come forward. You cannot have it both ways, and I agree with the minister that when you open up the proposition that deputy ministers and civil servants are going to be speaking on behalf of the government, you should be consistent and have it right across the board. All I am saying is that we in parliament should give consideration to whether this is in accord with the parliamentary tradition we have in this country. Should we be allowing deputy ministers to answer on questions of policy, or should it be the strict responsibility, with some sanction attached, of the minister always to answer and to be advised by his civil servants and his deputy minister?
I simply pose that, not in a partisan manner, but simply to point out that the tendency, at least while I have been here, has been to have the civil servant appear before these committees, and I wonder aloud whether that is a good development as far as our parliamentary practice is concerned, and whether it does not lead to some of the questions with respect to ministerial responsibility which have arisen in question periods and in debate in this House over the past few months.
I want to endorse what was said by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) yesterday with respect to another tendency of the government, to deal with matters without legislation and bills passing through this House. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre quite rightly brought to the attention of the House the question of Loto Canada. Whatever our point of view is with respect to that initiative and whether or not we are in favour of the way the government is proceeding, we in this House have been denied the right to speak about Loto Canada on the floor of the House or to deal with it other than by reference in a supplementary estimate to a standing committee.


Mitchell William Sharp: Or on a supply day.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: As I understand the Government of Canada, the cabinet gives leadership and the opposition tries to give constructive criticism. I suggest that the overriding responsibility of any government I know is to initiate legislation so that it can be considered by Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and other opposition parties for the purpose of their giving constructive criticism. However, in this case a tendency which I do not appreciate has been followed with respect to Loto Canada. It has been a tendency to shove this particular initiative through the back door.

I see that you are moving to your feet, Mr. Speaker. In conclusion may I say that I appreciated the opportunity of participating in this debate, but I did want to make that one point with respect to Loto Canada. I would have thought the government would have had a sense of responsibility and leadership, and would have brought forward specific legislation so that we would know exactly what we were getting involved in and so that we could argue the merits of the case. Unfortunately we have been denied this right, and I think the Social Credit resolution, for that and other reasons, should be supported.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, anyone following this debate today without making reference to the motion which has been put down might not know what it is we are discussing. The amount of time which has been spent debating the actual terms of the resolution has certainly been at a minimum.
There are a few things I want to say which I think are related to the essence of the motion, but first I want to take three or four minutes as an individual member of parliament to protest very strongly against the attacks made in this House today on public servants.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: I not only resented those attacks, I also resented the amount of applause which came from government supporters across the way when those attacks were made. We were told that public servants treat members of parliament with ridicule, that they laugh at us, and that they tell us where we can go. I have been in this House of Commons for more years than any other member except one, the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), and I want to say that I have never been treated with discourtesy or lack of respect by any public servant. Like other members of parliament, I have a great many dealings with them. I write them letters, I call them on the telephone, and I go to see them.


An hon. Member:: What about judges?


Stanley Howard Knowles: I do not telephone judges. If I telephoned a judge, I hope he would say something critical.
My friend, the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald), is sitting here. I pick him out because he is here, as he is so often, and I pay tribute to him for his attendance.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: He can be
proud of his officials. As he heard me say in the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs the other day, I think he has a tremendous staff in his department. I deal with them a great deal. I deal with the chairman of the Canada Pension Commission, with the chairman of the War Veterans Allowance Board, with the chairman of the Pension Review Board, with those who are charged with treatment services and with the Veterans Land Act and all the rest of it.


Mr. Knowles (Norfolk-Haldimand):: Hear, hear!
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Stanley Howard Knowles: My namesake is echoing what I said: we get nothing but courtesy from them. They do not always grant us what we want or what we ask for, they cannot always accede to our requests, but they treat us with the utmost respect and courtesy.
I have the same multiplicity of dealings with the Department of National Health and Welfare, particularly on the pension side. I receive service and courtesy all the time. I could go on and speak of the Department of Labour and the Department of National Revenue, those tax people. Even those nasty tax collectors treat us with respect. I also deal with the Department of Manpower and Immigration, particularly the immigration side.
I will go on and say that I can remember that 25 or 26 years ago, when I was on a very important committee on social security, there was a relatively senior civil servant in the Department of Finance who was more or less attached to that committee. I do not know what he thought of some of my ideas-and if I may say so, we pushed our ideas at him until we won-but even that senior civil servant-they were civil then, not public-in the Department of Finance treated us with respect and courtesy, and he sits here today as the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp). In fact he has said things about me-not to me-since he has been a minister which he never said when he was a civil servant.


Ralph Goodale: He is right.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Which time?


Ralph Goodale: All the time.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is a popular indoor sport to blast the public service, and I think we should remember this is one place where they do not have the chance to fight back or to defend themselves. I ask all hon. members, where would we get and how would We make any headway in our attempt to play the ombudsman role of representing our constituents if we did not have the help and co-operation of the Public Service of the Government of Canada?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: I am glad to have a fair amount of support from other members, but speaking for myself I want to pay tribute to our public servants. I said something else privately a moment ago and did not intend to say it publicly, but having got this far I might as well. On occasion some retired public servant will write me a letter and say that now he is retired he can say something he could not say when he was in the public service-that within his particular department they appreciated the way I presented my case and fought for my constituents. I tell that not just to put on the record a bouquet that has been given to me but to suggest that this is a two-way street. If we treat public servants as they deserve to be treated, they will give us service; but even if we do not treat them that way, they treat us with courtesy.


An hon. Member:: What about members? What about respect?
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Stanley Howard Knowles: I am sorry that my hon. friend has not understood me. That is exactly what I am saying-my experience is that the public servants treat members with respect and courtesy. I object to the tirades against them this afternoon.
Part of this motion has to do with the multiplicity of regulations, the amount of governing that has to be carried on in that way. I have the same concern as everybody else that there are too many regulations and that too much is done by way of order in council and regulations. But when you have an operation as gigantic as that required to govern 22 million or 23 million people, an operation that is carried on by 250,000 or more public servants, you cannot settle every last detail in this Chamber. You have to delegate some of the authority to make some of those decisions.
That leads me to say that I think one of the most important statements made this afternoon was that made by the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants (Mr. McCleave) about the way we use our time in this House of Commons. It is a plain fact that we cannot deal with everything. That being the case, I hope we may yet come to the point where we can use our time to deal with the most important things, the major issues of policy. Let us deal with them here on the floor of this Chamber. The ministers should be responsible to this House, but let us face the fact that details will have to be worked out at the administration level. As the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants pointed out, that means we must find some way of coping with the problem of time.
The President of the Privy Council and others can turn up certain pages of Hansard and show where at times I have resisted the government's attempts to impose closure or the use of Rule 75C. I simply say to them that my aim is that we come to a means whereby we can co-operatively decide on the use of our time. What I cannot accept is one side saying how we should use our time. To me that is closure or dictatorship. We must have enough sense on both sides of the House to plan the use of our time so that we do not waste it in great lengthy debates on unimportant issues, and thus deny ourselves the right to debate issues that are really important.
I have said that I think a government should tell us at the start of a session what its total program is. The government pretty well does that now, except when it keeps the session going for two years. Then we have lost track of the beginning of things. Having given us the list of what is to come before us, then the opposition parties should have the right to pick four or five items on which we want unlimited time. In return we should agree that there are 10, 15 or 20 items that are so routine they ought not to have debate in the House at all but should go to second reading committees, consideration in committee, and even third reading outside of the House, and in between the very crucial issues and the relatively unimportant ones there are issues to which we could give some maximum time limit.
The purpose of this is not to accommodate the government-although the government is always seeking accommodation-but to accommodate parliament so that we have time to deal with the major issues and not feel, as is being expressed so many times today, that we do not get at the issues and that therefore the public servants are doing
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things by administrative methods, getting orders in council and regulations and so on. There are times they have no option. When matters have to be dealt with and cannot get on the floor of parliament, the administration has to go up through the deputy ministers and ministers to try to get something done. I want to commend the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants for his suggestion, and I hope the House will take it seriously.
The third thing I had intended to speak on has already been mentioned by the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar (Mr.. Hnatyshyn), and I do not quarrel with his having done so. I suspect that he might not be as opposed to state lotteries as I am. I shall put my cards on the table-if that is the proper phrase when speaking of lotteries.
I do not believe we should have a national lottery at all, but apart from where we stand on that basic principle, surely we must all accept the fact that this Loto Canada, especially if it is for all time-and I have a suspicion that is what will happen-but even if it is for three years, is a totally different way of raising funds than the parliament of Canada has ever authorized. It is a form of taxation, in my view; it is not levied according to ability to pay, it is levied according to the instinct for gambling, the desire to win something for nothing. The result is that the tax bears heaviest on the poor.
The first time this parliament of Canada goes in for that method of raising public funds we are doing something pretty crucial. For it to be done in a way other than the standard practice of a bill that comes into parliament, has second reading debate, committee debate, and third reading, is scandalous. For the minister to say there can be debate in the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates is begging the question; to say that the opposition can bring it back on an opposition day-since when does the government get out from its responsibility to bring its measures before parliament?
What happens is that the government wants this; the government is boss; the government is king; the government is God. It wants Loto Canada, and it sees it is not going to get it by the end of June through the normal process of bringing in a bill so it brings in a supplementary estimate, shifts it to committee, and knows through the way things have been working this month that come the end of June it will be back here in a supply bill and we will not have a word of discussion about it on the floor of the House of Commons. Mr. Speaker, I submit that is playing fast and loose with the way this place ought to operate.
That is all I want to say today. At first I was not even sure I would take part in the debate. The wording in the motion seemed a bit obscure to me, and as the debate got going I was not sure what it was all about. But I did feel I had to answer the charges against the Public Service, and to emphasize again, as the hon. member for Halifax-East Hants has done, the importance of our coming to grips with the problem of how we use our time.
I also want to protest again the way in which the government is bypassing the normal processes of parliament with respect to a change in the methods of raising money a change which I think is very sad.


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise at the beginning of this debate, at least I thought it would be the beginning, but of course there have been unexpected interventions. I simply would like to state that I disagree with the last remarks by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) who said that indeed the motion was ambiguous and left much to be desired.
At the beginning I tended to share his opinion but as I was preparing my contribution to this debate, it became more and more apparent to me that the Social Credit Party had spread a very large net which might include a series of comments such as those which were made by all the hon. members who took part in this debate.
Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Social Credit Party for giving us the opportunity to present our views on the operation of the House and the relationships between the diverse parts of Parliament, that is to say the political and administrative aspects of our institutions.

I take issue, as well, with the hon. member's comments relating to Loto Canada. If, as was suggested by the opposition House leader, an understanding could have been reached whereby we would debate a bill for a limited time while remaining fully conscious of the time limitation we face, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre might not have found it necessary to make the comments he made this afternoon.
In presenting legislation affecting this summer's Olympic Games the government has been badly served. Hon. gentlemen opposite will recall that after the 1972 election we debated-the hon. member was not present but he will recall the publicity-bills providing for coins and stamps. Hon. members opposite agreed that that legislation was essential, that it represented the federal government's minimum contribution to the success of this summer's Olympics. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) indicated that it was the extent of the contribution we were to make. It was recognized that our contribution would be ancillary, not direct, and that that would help with the financing of the Olympic Games. But by keeping the legislation in committee for an unreasonable period while saying they approved it, the opposition impeded passage.
It is recognized now, in light to the present day situation, that the Loto Canada provision will do no more than continue for three years a system which has been working and in place for two years.


Stanley Howard Knowles: But not at the
federal level.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: And that is the big difference.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Effectively, the legislation will establish a national lottery, which will do no more than continue the system which has been in place for two years. We are seeking start-up funds, and the minister introduced the measure in a way the hon. member finds objectionable. I point out that the measure will be debated in the Miscellaneous Estimates Committee and, as in the past, action
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could be taken to permit the appropriation bill to be debated in the House. This could be done through a special House order. There is nothing to stop that happening. It has already been done during the present session.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, will the hon. member permit a question? Does the hon. member suggest that, any time the government is in trouble because the opposition does not agree to something, it can deal with the matter with a supplementary item in the estimates?


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, we are dealing with this summer's Olympics. The Olympics will take place this coming summer. As the government House leader has already said, the government would like the House to adjourn by June 30. The Olympics will begin in July. It is recognized that we are dealing with a matter of considerable urgency. If it were presented in the form of a bill, we know on the basis of experience based on other legislation that the opposition could use the fact that the government wishes to adjourn as a lever by which to prevent passage of the legislation and to achieve such other things as it deems appropriate. The government, in accordance with its own responsibilities, has chosen not to pursue that particular course of action.


Stanley Howard Knowles: So you did it
the wrong way.


Jean-Jacques Blais: The opposition can incite public opinion against the legislation as much as it wishes. I merely say that the government has chosen a particular method of proceeding, and is acting in accordance with its executive prerogative. Surely the last judgment must reside in the Canadian people.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Give us a chance.


Jean-Jacques Blais: You will have a chance.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: When?


Jean-Jacques Blais: I made my first point. I come to my second point. I take issue with something the hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar (Mr. Hnatyshyn) said. He suggested that a practice has developed in committee hearings whereby civil servants enter the meetings and make declarations on policy. Mr. Speaker, with respect, I have attended more committees than the hon. gentleman has, and have participated in committee meetings more than most hon. members of this House but I have never seen a member of the Public Service even try to make a declaration of policy. I fail to see why, in his partisan speech, the hon. member would make such unfounded allegations.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I will give you chapter and verse.


Jean-Jacques Blais: As is evident from the hon. member's question addressed to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp), the hon. member fails to see the inconsistency of his position. He wondered if the Clerk of the Privy Council could appear before the committee studying the Privy Council estimates. No doubt the hon. member wanted the clerk to make policy submissions. But the President of the
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Privy Council quite properly said, "Look, I am here. I am the President of the Privy Council, and I am responsible for the Privy Council. Therefore direct your questions about my department's estimates to me." But that did not satisfy hon. members opposite. They wanted the public servant to appear. Mr. Speaker, they can't suck and whistle at the same time. When the hon. member was an ordinary backbencher I might have excused that kind of comment, even though it would have been irresponsible. Now the hon. member has been appointed to a responsible position and I therefore ask him to refrain from making such statements, and to be consistent. May I call it six o'clock?


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, as I said before supper, the motion presented by the Social Credit Party of Canada was in fact motivated by their frustration in the face of bureaucracy.
As a matter of fact, they situated the problem within the parliamentary context and stated that backbenchers, which they all are, had serious problems whenever they wanted to discharge their responsibilities as ombudsmen, law-makers and spokesmen for their constituents. I feel justified in discussing this question, Mr. Speaker, since the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) has shifted the debate in that direction. I admit that there are rather serious frustrations and that the number of civil servants has increased quite significantly since World War II.
Of course, it has become obvious from the questions they put on the Order Paper, that the members of the Social Credit party are really anxious to see that their constituents avail themselves of all the programs. Of course, they are aware, as I am, and as are all hon. members, that there has been an increase in the federal programs of assistance to the electors. I need only mention the LIP projects, old age security benefits, family allowances, and subsidies to the farmers. I could spend hours listing them. Of course, such achievements require a substantial increase in the number of civil servants.
Actually, some way must be found to monitor those people more efficiently. I recognize, as do the other hon. members, that means are already available by which the House may monitor the bureaucracy and the executive. One need only mention the method used here, that is, questions that are put on the order paper. This year, Mr. Speaker, over 5,642 of them were put on the order paper. Improvements are necessarily needed. But the information used can help hon. members in their questions to the ministers, either here in the House or in the committees of the House.
It is obvious that if in answer to a question an hon. member is satisfied to be told how much money has been spent in his riding, he will not have enough information to
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June 1, 1976
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be able to ask intelligent questions. There is also another way. Hon. members may submit a notice of motion for the production of papers. This would yield additional details which could be used when hon. members put questions to ministers and officials in committees. But members of the Social Credit Party of Canada must recognize that they should take a more active part in the Committees of the House, because that is where things happen, where hon. members can get relevant information from officials.
The first point raised by the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau), which I consider the most important, relates to the lack of a codification system in public administration. I agree entirely on this point; there is a gap and we should remedy this situation immediately. As you know, the Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments is now sitting. I shall appear before this committee tonight at 8.30 p.m. This committee is responsible for producing or suggesting to the government the legislation to be introduced.
I think a portion of this legislation should provide directly for the obligation for the government to codify their services, to offer a reference source to those people who want to know where to ask not only for information but for services.
Thus the hon. members of the Social Credit Party of Canada think that this codification should concern the Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments, while they are not regarded as that much important. Mr. Speaker, the second point raised by the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette) relates to television. The members of the Social Credit Party of Canada consider that-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: The hon. member for Rimouski (Mr. Allard) on a point of order.


Eudore Allard: Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the hon. member. He said that our representative did not very often attend the meetings of the Standing Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments. I would like to point out to him that Mr. Laprise was our representative on that committee, and as we all know, Mr. Laprise had been seriously ill and unable to attend all meetings.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I readily admit that Mr. Laprise has been ill and I do not want my remark to reflect on him in any way. All I want to say is that there are means which members of parliament may resort to in order to have the situation improved. I am willing to help things improve. I invite the members of the Social Credit party of Canada to make their own contribution.
I will now deal with the introduction of television into this House, Mr. Speaker. The member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Caouette) has indicated,-and I can very well understand-that he was offended by the fact that, on budget night everything was happening outside the House while we, were here listening to the speech delivered by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald). Indeed, our contribution was quite small, if not nil. I object to that. I think it is not fair that we, as elected representatives of the people, had to sit in this House to listen to a speech which lasted 90 minutes while in fact the press was already informed of all
the content of the budget in order to broadcast this information over television.
I suggest to members of the Social Credit party that they too support the measure to introduce television in the House because if indeed our proceedings and debates were on television, this question would be at most an abstract question and we would wonder what to do with the press since everything obviously would be reported from the House. There would be no more need of a lock-up, or to hold interviews outside the House during the budget speech since everything would be done inside the Parliament. Of course-


Walter David Baker: Oh, go on! You think they would listen for 90 minutes?


Jean-Jacques Blais: I can see why there is such a negative reaction on the opposite side. Looking at their pusses day in and day out I can understand why the electorate of Canada would never wish to elect again such poor figures.

Mr. Speaker, to conclude, all I wish to say is that, obviously, things should be improved in this House but I am not one of those who say that the House of Commons is losing some of the importance it used to have. It is not true. The Canadian public is already better informed, more interested and is asking for still more information. People want to know what is happening in this House. They want to get the information we can supply them.
Obviously, Mr. Speaker, we must use the means at our disposal and let them know what we do in this House. It is not just a matter of using telephone, newspaper, and television facilities outside the House; but we should also use electronics in the House to convey to the population at large the information that is requested from us.


An hon. Member:: To the public at large.


Jean-Jacques Blais: As for those who think that actually the House of Commons is no longer interesting, they are totally wrong, Mr. Speaker, since the major part of the federal government's business is carried on in this House and the major decisions made by the government are echoed here. It is also here in this House that the government replies to the accusations brought by the opposition and it is here that we account to the country for the management of the public affairs of Canada. All I ask the members of the opposition is to admit that the best way to let people know what happens in this House is to use the method acknowledged by everyone as the most sophisticated, the most advanced information media, that is television.

I wish to thank members of the Social Credit Party for giving the House the opportunity to engage in such a wide-ranging debate. I am sure no two members have talked about the same issue since we began this afternoon. It shows the importance of the place this House holds not only for the members of parliament within its precincts but for the electorate generally and all Canadian citizens wherever they may be.

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Eudore Allard: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate and to have the opportunity to congratulate my hon. colleague for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) for presenting this motion.
I would like also to thank all hon. members who have spoken so far for taking the trouble of learning more about the procedures and orders of this House. I would like in addition to reassure the hon. member for Winnipeg North Center (Mr. Knowles) that, in my humble opinion, the motion put forth by my colleague for Shefford was not intended to blame civil servants but rather to draw the attention of the government on some of the powers of bureaucracy. I for one can vouch for the honesty, sincerity and devotion of most if not all federal civil servants. Besides, the remarks I intend to make shortly will not aim at blaming civil servants but rather the present government and the preceding ones, which, in my view, gave far too much latitude to some high officials.
This being said, Mr. Speaker, the question that i would like to raise now is who is leading Canada, who is conducting the affairs of the country?
In general, I think it is not difficult to admit that senior officials and bureaucrats are now managing the business of our beautiful and big country, either by interpreting our legislation according to their views or sometimes by passing the legislation which they consider more convenient.
As all members of the House know very well, since 1969 the Parliament in Ottawa has had a committee whose duty is to consider all regulations. It is usually called the Joint Standing Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments. Its duty is to review all regulations normally called "delegated legislation" to make sure that regulations are not contrary to the British common law. By the way, I must say that I am not altogether against regulations, but the fact is that when those regulations are drafted by bureaucrats, they should come to the House so that the legislators might compare the regulations and the legislation and, if the former sometimes take precedence of the latter, the legislators should have the power to correct them.
We must find out whether those regulations do not actually violate the British common law, the Bill of Rights or the intent of the statutes themselves under which they are enacted, because their contents may never go beyond the terms of reference stated in the delegating statutes. Therefore it may be considered that in some way the so-called "delegated legislation" is also "subordinate legislation".
In 1969, the committee headed by Mark MacGuigan, member for Windsor-Walkerville, made an inquiry into that matter. I would like to show, through statistical data, the numerical importance of the process of delegating authority. To illustrate, I shall quote from the report by the House committee that inquired on that subject in 1969, concerning the extent of regulatory powers delegated to the federal Civil Service:
The administrative authorities and their staffs play an important role in the preparation of the statutes enacted by Parliament itself, since that vast majority of legislative proposals originate in the Administra-
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tion. However, it is also now commonplace for the Administration to make laws directly, without having to observe the complex but safeguarding rules of parliamentary procedure.
Four hundred and twenty of the 601 Acts of Parliament examined by the Committee (constituting substantially all of the statutes now in force) provide for delegated legislation. Moreover, a substantial majority of the answers given to question No. 2 of the Committee's questionnaire stated that statutory powers to make regulations have been used very extensively.
The following statistics confirm this impression: 6,892 regulations covering 19,972 pages were published in the Canada Gazette during the period from January 1, 1956, to December 31, 1968, an average of 530 regulations a year. This does not take into account those regulations which are expressly exempted from publication and also some documents which are perhaps in fact of a legislative nature but are not officially considered to be so by the regulation-making authority.
So during the past 22 years, 6,892 regulations were published in the Canada Gazette, included in the unbelievable number of 19,972 pages of the publication. Let there be no amazement if I state that most of those regulations covering a number of fields have been and still are in force unless abolished or superseded by others, without ever coming before Parliament.
I remember a few particulars: in 1969, 638 regulations were passed; in 1970, 540 regulations; in 1971, 656; in 1972, 564; in 1973, 729; in 1974, 676; in 1975, 709; and up to May 12, 1976, 291 regulations were passed. In all, since 1969, 4,803 regulations were passed for the federal administration, 600 per year on average in the past eight years. As far as Quebec is concerned, it is felt that there are as many.
Indeed, excluding the numerous municipal by-laws in force at the present time, the following data taken from au article by Mr. Raoul Barbe in the Revue du Barreau, on page 386, give some indication of the quantitative significance of the phenomenon of delegated authority, and I quote:
The development of the rule of law by the excutive is an important source of law, since in 1972, there were some 1,400 pages of legislation while the regulations covered over 3,000 pages of the size of the Quebec Official Gazette. (A) search has permitted the consolidation of some 950 regulatory texts (in effect in 1972) covering nearly 8,000 pages and published in 10 volumes known as the Legislation Implementation Regulations.
About 450 regulatory texts are approved annually by the Executive Council and about 150 regulatory texts are approved by other regulatory authorities: either a minister, the Treasury Board or a regulatory board.
Now, after demonstrating the qualitative importance of regulatory power delegation, I would like to show the qualitative importance of this delegation of powers by using an example taken from the War Measures Act which reads as follows:
(1) The Governor in Council may do and authorize such acts and things, and make from time to time such orders and regulations, as he may by reason of the existence of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection deem necessary or advisable for the security, defence, peace, order and welfare of Canada: and for greater certainty, but not so as to restrict the generality of the foregoing terms, it is hereby declared that the powers of the Governor in Council extend to all matters coming within the classes of subjects hereinafter enumerated, namely, (a) censorship and the control and suppression of publications, writings, maps, plans, photographs, communications and means of communication; (b) arrest, detention, exclusion and deportation; (c) control of the harbours, ports and territorial waters of Canada and the movements of vessels; (d) transportation by land, air, or water and the control of the transport of persons and things; (e) trading, exportation, importation, production and manufacture; (/) appropriation, control, forfeiture and disposition of property and of the use thereof.
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Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I believe that we should urgently get involved in this area, as we are being invaded by bureaucrats.
The Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments I referred to earlier came to the conclusion, to nobody's surprise, I think, that a great many pieces of legislation do not proceed from legislators but from senior officials, bureaucrats who earn $30,000, $40,000 and $50,000 a year. Mind you, I have nothing against such salaries.
Mr. Speaker, only Parliament can pass laws, but they are so vague that for the ordinary citizen, the noble disign of the elected representatives is very often less important than the restrictive regulations established by officials hanging out in their ivory tower of Tunney's Pasture or Wellington Street, or elsewhere in the national capital.
Before going any further, I would like to quote from a speech made by the hon. Guy Favreau, former federal Minister of Justice, on January 11, 1965, before the Lawyers' Club in Toronto and entitled: The State, the Citizens and the Ombudsman:
Our laws are more and more like preambles. The detailed provisions remain to be drafted and amended at will by public service experts.
You know no doubt that quite often the law authorizes bureaucrats to make regulations. At first, the regulations seem less formidable than the statutes in general, but it can be said that the difference lies more in the words than in reality. The great majority of regulations passed by this House are in effect and quite simply because they can be enforced by officers or still by the court. I would like to give a rather concrete example, more specifically section 172, 4(b) of the unemployment insurance regulations. Unemployed are divided into three categories-unfortunately one is excluded, and I refer to farmers. That regulation provides that 50 per cent of the farmer's net income is deemed to be gains, even if his operations are in a deficit position. I think that is illogical and unfair, and I do not think this is what the legislator had in mind. In any event, that is not what I had in mind, I can assure this House.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the purpose of today's motion is not to deny the necessity for the government's regulatory action because, in the first place, it is readily admitted that Parliament does not have time to draft all regulations that become law, on the one hand, because Parliament does not have the technical knowledge and, on the other hand, because it does not have the flexibility and the capability to make quick and wise decisions. Suffice it to think only of two bills now being considered, Bills C-83 and C-84, to realize that it takes sometimes two, three or four months to consider a bill.
No, Mr. Speaker, this motion is aimed rather against the huge volume of regulations and particularly the dangers inherent in that legislative effort. Consequently, I would like to refer to the third report of the House of Commons Special Committee on Statutory Instruments, dated 1969, that is the MacGuigan's report which reads as follow:
The more fundamental of the criticisms can be summarized as follows: the parliamentary tendency to enact statutes in skeleton form, leaving the "details" to be filled in by regulations-such regulations being often the very matters that are of most importance to the citizen; uncertainty in enabling statutes as to the extent of the area regulations are intended to cover; sweeping or subjective terms used in enabling acts which exclude the judicial control of the regulations made under their authority; lack of public debate, and inadequate consultation of all

interested parties before the making of the regulations; lack of precision in the form and content of the regulations; inadequate publicity given to the regulations ...
In other words, not much publicity. There may be some about legislation but when it comes to regulations nobody even hear about them. I continue to quote:
... inadequate publicity given to the regulations after they are made; inadequate parliamentary control over the regulations; and the danger that civil servants may be transformed into our masters.
As a matter of fact, it is possible that the great activity of the government could have serious consequences and in saying this, I think of the fact that bureaucrats could one day direct the people they are supposed to serve.
Mr. Speaker, what is the percentage of regulations which are passed by high officials and which are sent to committee? In fact, I cannot answer that question now but I would be very surprised if there were many. In my humble opinion, the regulations are the servants of the laws and they should not receive more consideration than their masters. I sincerely think that the government must in the future submit to Parliament all the regulations drawn up by the bureaucrats so that the hon. members may get acquainted with them and debate them as openly as possible before they are enforced.
At present, the civil servants are rather more responsible for the government of our country than the representatives whose role is consequently less and less important. The civil servants have the opportunity and full discretion to draw up regulations which are often inconsistent with the spirit of the laws adopted by Parliament. Once again, I sincerely think that the present government must take all the necessary corrective measures so that members of Parliament will no longer suffer from the interference of civil servants, I mean the bureaucrats, and also to restore to them all the dignity they deserve.
Another point draws my attention, namely the various committees which are created. What is the real use of the hundreds of committees which are supposedly created to solve the various economic and social problems? Their only use is to spend the money of the people as a reward for the privileged classes of the present system. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is unbelievable to see the slump in which all the classes of our society find themselves. For example, in Quebec, it is not by setting up all kinds of committees that the future of Quebecers is going to be decided, because if we consider one moment the seriousness of these committees, of the inquiries launched by governments, we note that it is only an orgy of spending, of useless redtape, a waste of human energy, and all these committees cost millions of dollars. And with what result? Those who pay the bill would like to know!
Now, Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak about the staggering increase in the number of civil servants in Canada in the last few years. Before World War, I, around the turn of the century, the Canadian government employed an army of 23,000 public servants or so who were responsible for the administration of our beautiful country. A few years later, during World War I, it could be noted readily that the number of public servants had doubled, which was understandable since the country was going through a national crisis, and insurrection. But, since that time, one realizes that the population of Canada has
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more than trebled but beyond that, we can see as well that the strength of the public service, except perhaps-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. I regret to inform the hon. member that his allotted time has expired. He may continue with unanimous consent. Does the hon. member have unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Eudore Allard: I want to thank my colleagues for granting me a few more minutes. I will try to be brief, Mr. Speaker.
I was saying that we note as well that the strength of the public service, except perhaps for Crown corporations, is made up of 300,000 people, that is an increase of 1200 per cent or so.
Mr. Speaker, surely it is during World War I that Canada has witnessed the fastest increase in this area-there were then approximately 46,000 public servants. Some time later, around the end of World War I, the number of public servants which was, as I have just said, about 46,000, had come down to about 40,000.
Thereafter, it has been noted that the strength of the public service remained constant until World War II. As soon as this one broke out in 1939, the number of public servants more than tripled, while continuing later on to show an upward trend.
But it must recognized, Mr. Speaker, that it is under the administration of former Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, for whom I have always had a lot of respect, that the federal state in which we are living has taken the most new initiatives and that the growth of the public service as such has shown the highest rate.
Besides, it is easy to realize when we know that Canada has now at her service about 1,200,000 Canadian civil servants, that is one worker out of eight or 12 per cent of the labour force. How much does it cost the state in salaries and annual payments? Around $10 billion a year or almost 13 per cent of our gross national product. One can say therefore that government is the sector of the economy with the fastest growth. One cannot deny the fact that governments, whether at the municipal, provincial or federal level, is one of the most important tools in our country and is easily competing with the service sector, the manufacturing industries and so on.
When the right hon. Prime Minister came to power in 1968, the total number of civil servants was 50 per cent more than what it was in 1960. Then, in 1969, when the Trudeau government was fighting inflation, our Prime Minister promised the country to reduce the number of public servants by 24,000, or about 10 per cent. Once again, in its usual manner, the federal government broke its promise and after a whole year, it barely managed to eliminate 535 jobs, or one-fifth of its original objective. Later on, one could see that the public service had rapidly regained the lost ground.
Mr. Speaker, we are not in a state of national crisis and we wonder why the red tape is taking as much expansion
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as if we were in war time? According to University of Toronto Professor Richard Bird who had the opportunity to study these questions for the Canadian Association of Fiscal Studies, this constant race would be the consequence of pressures or of the tolerance of the public who demands more and more services from the government, influenced by politics or by officialdom. But does the Canadian taxpayer who demands more and more services from his government realize that he is thus putting himself in a position where he has to pay more taxes?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: The hon. member for Okanagan-Kootenay.


Howard Earl Johnston: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised at the subject chosen tonight by the Social Credit party of Canada. There was a time when the Social Credit Party of Canada would speak only on the monetary question. Perhaps this choice shows a new maturity, a new skill in the House or again perhaps a closer link with the Progressive Conservative party? I do not know.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Howard Earl Johnston: But I am a little surprised at the choice because it seems to me there were such excellent choices. I would have thought perhaps the Social Credit party might have chosen the common fund, for example, which is a monetary question and we could have had paraded before us this evening the unedifying spectacle of the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen) being dragged silently screaming, commodity by commodity, digging his heels at every commodity, into the common fund of the Third World, protesting all the time that that is what he really intended to do from the beginning. Or perhaps we could have had a resolution on the special drawing rights being discussed at the UNCTAD Conference at Nairobi and the special drawing rights in relation to the Third World because that, Mr. Speaker, is the closest thing to social credit the world has seen since Mr. Aberhart printed his own script in Alberta.
There are other areas that might have made a choice for the Social Credit party this evening. On the other hand, they have proposed this interesting motion that finds highly deplorable the attitude the government has demonstrated by taking advantage of its majority to draft many of its bills in such a way that different matters are dealt with in a single text. That I would submit, although unusual perhaps coming from that direction in the House, nevertheless is a problem for us all and one that deserves our attention this evening. I think the members of the Social Credit party have done us a service this evening by putting the finger on a problem which is not only a parliamentary problem but one which has widespread ramifications for the Canadian public.
I should like to mention, not bill by bill, a few of the topics which have been so-called omnibus bills. We had a
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bill on abortion and I think the public saw it as that, but it contained a number of other things as well. After it was passed I think many citizens were surprised by some of the other things that were removed from the criminal law, or placed in it, through the passage of that omnibus bill.
More recently we had a bill which at the same time combined rape and bail. It had an interesting passage through the House. I do not think the two subjects were served equally by their inclusion in the same bill. I should like to refer to the bill on citizenship which was not really an omnibus bill although it presented some of the same problems, because while it removed sex discrimination it also reduced the waiting period for citizenship. I know some members who were opposed to the second of the two clauses in the bill were criticized for holding up some very worth-while legislation to remove sex discrimination which has been on imposition on women in this country for many years.
One of the most flagrant and the most recent is the bill known to the public as the gun control bill, but known to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Basford) as the bill on peace and security. While I do not wish to renew the debate on that bill which has been passed on to committee, nevertheless I might say that this relates to the subject of the motion. The problem that besets not only the House but the public is that the bill dealt with such disparate subjects as gun control, wiretapping, and dangerous offenders, all in the same omnibus bill.
There is a lack of clarity in the public's conception about what is happening in the House and what is before the House. I am quite sure that when the gun control bill is out of the way a good many people will wonder when if ever did parliament deal with wiretapping and dangerous offenders. There will be a sense that somehow those important parts of the omnibus bill did not receive the sort of treatment they should have, because one part absconded with all of the attention.
It is terribly important-and here again I think the Social Credit people have done us a service-that in the legislative process the public not see something as having been traded off for something else. Yet increasingly this is the perception. It is not a very flattering perception either of the government's ability to draw up legislation or of the way this Chamber should function. Never has the trade-off been so blatant as in Bill C-83. One would have a suspicion that the government, having tried omnibus bills a few years ago and finding that they work, has been using them increasingly until it has realized that it could get passed through this House something that would not normally pass this legislative body by combining it with enough other factors, with enough other issues. It would seem that the government realized that in this way it would be carried along because there would be a reluctance on the part of members to seem to oppose some rather worthwhile bits of legislation.
There is another thing I should like to mention as well, that is, the certainty that parliament has passed the unpopular part, that when one part receives too much attention then there is a losing sight of the fact that the other went through as well. One of the problems the Canadian public has at the present time is the sense that what is the law of the land did not seem to have been
observed going through parliament, and yet was carried along in the wake of some popular items.
The real question always remains, do we really learn the will of parliament when it is confronted with four, five, or six highly different items in the same bill? Each of the items is defended by the government in committee, and although the government House leader talks about the opportunities which present themselves at the report stage to amend, I have found that by the time the government has shepherded its bill through second reading and through committee stage there is a fierce determination that no further change shall take place at the report stage.
I think the government House leader is suggesting something really quite illusory, almost as much of an illusion as that which was presented to us a short time ago by the deputy House leader when he talked about television in a way which was irresponsible at worst and terribly funny at best, when we consider the role of that technological marvel in North America at the present time.
This situation is particularly abhorrent when the government has a majority. There may be some excuse for this practice during minority governments. Some of the legislation which was discussed was put through in minority situations, but if the government has a majority I think it has a responsibility to present legislation which is clear cut, to defend it, and to see that it moves through parliament. The responsibility then is where it should lie.
The government House leader said the government should take responsibility for its actions, and I say "Amen" to that. Of course it should, but if it were really accepting the responsibility it would separate some of these items and put them through on their own merits instead of putting them through with something else.
Let us consider, for example, the amendments to the Criminal Code which dealt with rape and bail. The hole in the Bail Reform Act was so appalling and the things which were happening as a result of people charged with murder obtaining bail, and of people charged with drug offences being able to go out on bail to continue their trade, were so appalling that there was a great need for a rapid movement of that legislation through parliament.
However, with regard to the section on rape I have a feeling it did not get the full and complete treatment it should have had, and having sat last weekend in Nanaimo and listened to some women's delegations there I know that they are not happy with the law on rape as it now stands. I think it is unfortunate that in order to plug one hole with a desperately needed amendment something else was moved through which will now remain on the books for quite a few years as rather bad law. This is one of the penalties the government and the country pay for this kind of preparation of bills.
No more clearly is this evidenced than in Bill C-83. I attended a meeting about a month and a half ago at Invermere, and the large public gathering there voted unanimously to urge that the Minister of Justice (Mr. Basford) separate the gun control sections from the rest of that bill. I passed that on to the Minister of Justice, and he replied saying that Bill C-83 as a whole is aimed at protecting the public against violent crime and that as legislators

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we cannot present one bill for law abiding citizens and another bill for the criminally inclined. That was not at all the request at the public meeting to which I referred.
They asked clearly, as this party did through the efforts of the hon. member for Calgary North (Mr. Woolliams), that the gun control section simply be removed so that it would not be discussed along with wiretapping and dangerous offenders legislation, and so that parliament could deal with that one main issue free from the responsibility of the other two or more sections in that omnibus bill dragging along at the same time. We know from the furore those sections stirred up across the country that the public was very much in favour of having them separated. It does not matter what else happens to Bill C-83; it will always be known as the gun control bill. The words of the minister were particularly ironic because the bill does have something to do with law abiding citizens because they are being asked to bear an added load for the sake of the criminally inclined. Put together with Bill C-84, in a double back-to-back package, the situation becomes almost intolerable.
I think it would be better if the ministers would caution themselves and prepare pieces of legislation which are more specific. I feel that in the end it would shorten debate in this House rather than lengthen it. There are some bills-for example, the revision of the Bank Act-which will be before us in a year or so-which are enormous in themselves, and not much can be done about that, but it makes little sense to load up the legislative docket with maxi bills which contain so many clauses that many of them are almost lost sight of as they move through the House.
With regard to regulations, hon. members from the Social Credit party also have a point because too much is dealt with in this way. An example is Bill C-83. We members of parliament have to go out and talk to the public about such bills. We are asked how much it will cost, how often it will be applied, whether it will be varied according to the weapon, and what will be meant by due care in locking these things up. If we members of parliament over and over again have to say we don't know and that we will have to wait until the regulations come out, eventually this institution will begin to look a little ill informed generally, and we will again run into a problem which results from the approach to legislation which has been used far too much already and is being used too much in this parliament right now.
Examples of legislation which have to be separated are the redistribution bills and the Canada Elections Act. I am sure if this were not laid down by long practice and tradition, the government would have lumped the Canada Elections Act and the redistribution bills all together, along with several other items. If the government could have rounded this up in time, put it together and presented it all as one great mess to this parliament, it would have done so, but by the very nature of the redistribution bills and the process which has been traditionally used, this has to be dealt with province by province, and certainly that marvellously clarifies the debate on that rather far reaching move.
I think a service would have been done to parliament and to the country if several of the recent omnibus bills
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had been divided into their separate clauses and dealt with as individual bills, certainly none more so than Bill C-83. We know that it was only through the strongest protests from this side of the House that we did not get one single bill dealing with the abolition of capital punishment, the extension of prison sentences, gun control, wiretapping, and dangerous offenders. It was not planning on that side that sorted it out but only a fierce determination on this side that the abolition of capital punishment at least should go. Even then, it was sadly messed up, and as we debate it now on second reading we see the government was not prepared to put it as a central issue.
Again the government weakened and succumbed to the temptation to trade it off for the greatly lengthened prison sentences that are of concern to many serious thinking people in this country. Even there, Mr. Speaker, it was a clouding of what should have been a very simple, very straightforward bill on one topic and one topic only.
I congratulate the members of the Social Credit party- in a way they surprised me but did not displease me in presenting this motion to the House. This is a problem to which I hope the government will pay a little more attention. One thing is for sure, as long as this sort of general untidiness is presented to this House then televising the whole mess will not improve it in any way.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. John M. Reid (Kenora-Rainy River):: Mr. Speaker, I think this is an interesting resolution. It condemns the government in its majority position for producing bills that are not conducive to the understanding of hon. members.
The first thing we should do, if anybody is serious about this, is examine the bills produced in the last minority parliament and compare them with bills produced in this and the previous majority parliament. If we did we would find that the form of the bills and the content were not changed at all. Basically the same kinds of faults are found in bills produced in either a minority or majority situation. It seems to me, if you make the effort to look at the quality of the bills, it must be something deeper that causes bills to be written in such a way as to give rise to this motion and debate. I submit there are indeed a number of pressures at work which cause bills to be written in the way they are.
Without any difficulty at all I think one can identify at least five different kinds of bills. The first I would categorize as those which establish something new, something we did not have before. An example would be the creation of Petro-Canada or the Petroleum Administration Act. The first establishes a new institution and the other sets up the mechanism for an administrative tribunal.
The second kind are those which I would classify as amending acts. We have had a number of those in this parliament, perhaps the most prominent being the amendment to the Anti-Inflation Act. We have already passed a series of amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act. These acts may touch on a number of points within the main act, some of which may be related and some of which may not be.
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The third kind are those which provide new provisions within an already existing legislative framework. Perhaps the most prominent one in the last few years was the amendments to the Canada Elections Act, called the Election Expenses Act. In this case we grafted something totally new onto the framework of an existing act.
Lastly, we have what might be called omnibus bills. Perhaps the most flagrant examples of omnibus bills are those we get after each budget. These are the bills that deal with the amendments proposed by the Minister of Finance-the sales tax in one sequence, in a second bill all the amendments proposed to the Income Tax Act, and in a third bill a set of amendments to the Excise Tax Act. These are omnibus bills in the true sense because those amendments will touch on a variety of things and have almost nothing in common except that they are presented by the Minister of Finance as part of a budgetary package. So it is with the ideas behind the peace and security package. They present a series of ideas in a package framework for amending the Criminal Code and are designed to deal with certain problems.
One of the problems we have in the House of Commons is that all members of parliament want to be loved; we do not want to vote for anything that might be nasty or might not have the unanimous support of our constituents. We do not want to vote for those things that may be necessary to accomplish certain aims and so we find it extremely difficult to vote for packages, some parts of which we may agree with and some parts with which we may disagree.
The point is that in the imperfect world in which we live we often do not have that kind of choice. We have to take some of the imperfections along with the perfections, and the perfections that I might see in a particular bill are not necessarily going to be the same as any of my colleagues on either side of the House might see. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is never that way so much as when one is contemplating legislative packages.
The point I want to make, Mr. Speaker, is that if you look at what is going on you will find that the government behaves in the same way in a minority situation as in a majority situation when it is drafting and presenting legislation. The main pieces of legislation fall within the five categories I have given, and there normally is something to tie them together.
The previous speaker complained about amendments to the Citizenship Act when he was prepared to vote, according to him, for the amendments within the act dealing with sex discrimination, but had certain reservations about that provision which reduced the length of time a person had to be in Canada in order to apply for citizenship. That is an amendment to one act which is part of a package series. It does not seem fitting to me that it would be necessary for the government to present two legislative sets of proposals to deal with a series of amendments to one act. Surely you have to take amendments to the act and look at them as a package, because you are dealing with an already existing package and are providing amendments to it.
The way our system operates, members have an opportunity to vote for or against individual components on two occasions, once in committee at clause by clause consideration, and in the House of Commons there is the opportunity at report stage to vote against specific clauses. There

is also the possibility of doing something in limited fashion at third reading.
I think if one looks at these speeches tomorrow, judging from what I have heard today, one will find that the fundamental problem members have, which has elicited this complaint from members of the Social Credit party, is a dislike of the way in which the House of Commons utilizes its time.
As an example, opposition parties have 25 days on which they are allowed to dictate the business of the House. We have set it out in our Standing Orders so that five days are used in the first term, seven days in the second term, and the rest in the third term. That means that 13 opposition days are jammed into May and June. This is simply too much, and we do not use that time properly. We should revise our Standing Orders so that this time is used more evenly throughout the year.
Instead of ending up in a situation where we run out of ideas and start seeking things to talk about because we have too much time at a particular point in our procedural year, we should be revising our Standing Orders so as to spread opposition days on an equitable basis throughout the year. That would leave the opposition parties far more flexible, and it would leave the government far more subject to attack by the opposition parties. It would be much better for the health of parliament. That is an example of what we have done in our Standing Orders.
Let me look at bills, Mr. Speaker. If one looks at the way bills are handled in the House of Commons it is important to realize that, by and large it is the opposition parties which dictate how much time is spent on legislation. The function of the government in our system is to produce an agenda of work, or bills, on which the House is to decide. The job of the opposition is to determine how much time we shall spend discussing each piece of legislation and which portions of the legislative package it wishes to comment on and object to. That is only proper and right. Taking any piece of legislation and dividing it into 25 separate bills does not mean that this process will change. Members will still pick and choose the parts on which they wish to comment.
One of the most difficult decisions we must make in any reform of our procedures is to decide how long the House of Commons shall sit, and how much time we are prepared to spend in the House. As members of parliament we have duties other than sitting in the House. In the last eight to ten years the average session has lasted 180 sitting days. Do we want to sit more than 180 days, or less? How long do we wish to sit? Further, how much legislation is the government to be permitted to bring before the House? I am speaking of legislation in addition to work already allocated to us under the Standing Orders. The question is, should the government be allowed to bring in 70 pieces of legislation, 80, 100, 50 or 40? How can we decide how long the House should spend discussing each legislative proposal unless we first decide how much time is available? Only then can we decide how much time to spend on each item.
As an institution one of our big faults is that in allocating the time we spend on legislative proposals we do not distinguish between what is important and what is not
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important. If you listed all legislative items on a priority scale running, say, from one to ten, you would find that we probably spend as much time discussing items low on the priority scale, say, occupying position No. 10, as we do on items high in priority scale, say, No. 1. This means that we are not really thinking about how we ought to operate this institution, and not thinking of how to get the best results for our time and effort.
Let me now deal with the point raised by the Creditiste speaker who preceded me concerning the question of regulations. This House, in Canada, produces legislation more detailed than that produced by any other legislative assembly in Canada. Anyone examining legislation passed by the provincial governments of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, or any other province will find that such legislation is loosely defined, which means implementation at provincial level is a matter for the cabinet. Usually it is done by way of regulations. On the other hand legislation we pass is most detailed and, because it is detailed, much of it must be amended each year. We face this problem because the government, in order to bring such legislation up to date, must constantly change legislation previously passed by this House.
After all, society is not static. It changes. The focus of our concern changes. People move; economic conditions change, and legislation and the impact of legislation must also change. You can do this two ways. You can ask the cabinet to make the changes or you can bring the legislation back to the House of Commons for amendment. In our system we use both methods, probably on a 50-50 basis. That is why, as the hon. member preceding me said, we have established the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments. It tries to keep track of regulations and the statutory instruments which flow from the cabinet, to make sure they are compatible with the legislation on which they are based. The committee has a difficult job to do and is, I think, doing a fair job. It is difficult to say how successful it will be in the long run; at present we have to give it full marks for enthusiasm and effort. But our difficulties will not go away. We must amend existing legislation to make certain that the law reflects the changes taking place in Canadian society.
Considering the overcrowded agenda of business with which parliament must now deal, and the ever increasing demand for time to be spent on ever more legislative proposals, it becomes most difficult to justify putting more detail into our legislation. I argue that this process entails trade-offs. Members on all sides accept more regulations as the price for the privilege of playing around longer than necessary with legislation going through the House. We can sing to our heart's content about what is in the legislation and what is not, but if we take more time than is really necessary we are allowing the government more regulatory making powers. I feel this is a bad bargain.
I feel that the House should examine the agenda placed before it and put more pressure on the government to produce its legislative list. We should know far in advance what bills we are to discuss so that we can sit down together, as a group, and work out an appropriate timetable, then ensure it is covered by an order of the House so that we can all know what is to happen. Not only will we
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settle many of our difficulties in terms of length of debate but we shall all discover far in advance what is to happen in the House. At present, apart from opposition days and budget debates, there is no way of finding out what is to happen here on any given day.
We are given no document on a daily basis which tells us that some matter is to be taken up at three o'clock, five o'clock, or eight o'clock. We operate by guess and by gosh. This is not good enough for an institution as big and as complex as parliament. That ought to change. But we can only eliminate the problem when we decide finally to move into the twentieth century. We must deal with the problem of the parliamentary agenda, with how much time we are to spend discussing government legislation and how long speeches are to take, so that we can program our time in a way which makes sense to us and to the Canadian people.
I recall when the House of Commons sat one summer, shortly after I had been elected to this place. I was visiting my constituency and somebody asked me "Well, Reid, what are you doing? I guess you are enjoying your summer holiday?" I said, "Hell, no, the House of Commons is still sitting." He said, "Do you mean to say you guys are not smart enough to be able to take the summer off?" Mr. Speaker, we do not get any marks for staying here because we have wasted our time. That only indicates our own inefficiency.


Mr. Stevens:: Then why is the government keeping us here?


John Mercer Reid: When we hear people making comments about the House of Commons we wish they would not make, we must take a certain amount of responsibility. We are in the dark ages when it comes to deciding what we should do with our time, and how much time we should allocate to the consideration of all our business to make sure there is fair disposition.
My last point concerns the changes to which we should look forward in order to bring us up to date. It seems to me that our legislative style can change only if we move to the point at which all members of the House understand what the government's legislative load ought to be. That means that we would need to put certain restrictions on the government. We should try to determine how long in any given year the House of Commons should sit. That would put restrictions on us all. We should also decide how long individual members should speak on any given item, and the length of speeches could vary from item to item. One can see the foolishness of permitting 40 minute speeches on second reading and 20 minute speeches on opposition days. There is no logic to it. Perhaps we ought to limit speeches to 15 minutes; we ought to deal with that problem.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Sit down, then.


John Mercer Reid: We must also grapple with the difficulty of providing appropriate mechanisms for deciding how long we should spend on any particular item, and for ensuring that the opposition, whose duty it is to oppose legislative items brought down by the government, is satisfied that it is not being short-changed. This means that the opposition parties must act far more responsibly than they have in the past in allocating the time of the House and determining how that time is to be used. If the opposition parties are
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unwilling to accept that responsibility, or unable to work out such a system, it seems to me we must provide for a "fail safe" mechanism.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Just wait until you are in opposition.


John Mercer Reid: Certain possibilities have been suggested to the procedural organization committee by one of its subcommittees. I recommend them to hon. members. They are not perfect; in some respects they are flawed. We would appreciate your comments, and particularly your support.


Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the fine oration by the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River (Mr. Reid). He talked about a topic that he thinks he knows, procedure in the House of Commons.
We hear government members speak on this topic, and members of the opposition parties. It is unfortunate that we never get a balanced argument. For example, the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River referred to the fact that there are 25 opposition days, 5 in the first semester, seven in the second, and so on. He neglected to explain that in 1969 a majority Liberal government introduced those proposals and forced them on this House of Commons by closure. Now he is trying to say that the House did all this in a very nice way. That is not quite the fact. If he had explained further and given the proper perspective, there would have been more truth.
The hon. member also stated that the opposition sets the timetable. Although I was not a member of this House in 1969, I recall reading in the papers that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) said that the government was going to introduce all bills at the beginning of the session so that the opposition would have an opportunity to examine them. That has never happened. The Prime Minister does not force his cabinet to do that.
With regard to bills that are to be dealt with before we adjourn for the summer recess, a week or so ago there was talk about two bills which the government desperately wants passed, but which members of the House have not even seen yet. If it so desperately wants them through, it should table them. In fact all bills should be tabled at the time of the Speech from the Throne, unless there is a genuine emergency. That would be a rare occasion, and a rare bill.
The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River tried to put the onus on the opposition. He did not mention that in 1972 there was an election. To a large extent that revolved around unemployment insurance. The government remained in power with 109 seats and the major opposition with 107. Even though the election was on October 31, the government did not convene the House until mid-January. What happened to November and December? I guess there was no urgency.
There was another election on July 8, 1974. The government always talks about its timetable and how it wants to get things done. However the House did not sit for the remainder of July, August or September. In fact it did not sit until October. We could at least have associated ourselves with school boys and girls and commenced at the

beginning of September. The government must bear certain responsibilities which it does not bear at the present time.
One of the great concerns of the opposition is that the government uses railroad tactics to get legislation through the House. An example is the Time and Reader's Digest bill. The committee was frustrated. The committees do not work in the way they were intended. Concerns must be expressed on the floor of the House of Commons.
There were a number of government members on the committee which considered the Time and Reader's Digest bill. Some had been on that committee for two years. In fact one had been the chairman. The government removed them from that committee because they were going to oppose the bill.


Mr. MacFarlane:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. member has mentioned an area over which I have some responsibility in the committee. No one was replaced on that committee unless they were absent at that time.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the point of order is there. The hon. member should take his turn to speak on this matter. The fact is that there were Liberal backbenchers who complained because they were hoisted off that committee. One rose in the House of Commons on a question of privilege. That is funny. Members change on that committee. Everyone knows, including the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. MacFarlane), that the memberships change back and forth on that committee. However, if a member is absent one day that does mean that member is kicked off for good, and that happened.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: On a point of order-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I will recognize the hon. member who is seeking the floor on a point of order. However, I hope it is not the same point, which is not in fact a point of order. It is an opinion that the hon. member can express later. If he disagrees with the hon. member, all he has to do is seek the floor and express his own opinion in due time.


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: The hon. member referred to the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain saying that he would know that another member stood up in the House. It is not true I would know that. That member was never on the committee. Therefore he could not have been taken off that committee.


Paul Wyatt Dick: The hon. member has just pointed out something, Mr. Speaker. I did not say he would know much. From the comment he just made, it is obvious that he does not know much.
I do not want to spend my entire 20 minutes on matters raised by the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River. I just want to put his comments into the proper perspective to show that the government bears a certain responsibility, including the fact that when the government wants to railroad something through it will hoist members off a committee who might be opposed so that a bill will go through sweetly.
Governments in general, and this government in particular, like to run the country by means of orders in council,
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regulations, directives, and so on. Ministers try to get rid of the burden of being in the House where they must answer to members from all parts of the country. They would rather the bureaucrats run everything with some tangible or some intangible control, depending on how effective a cabinet minister might be. In the area of awarding contracts, they make sure that the right person receives them. This puts the cabinet in a more powerful position and keeps members of the House away from issues of concern. This is a substantial weakness in our democratic process.
Over the years governments have tended to use regulations, orders in council, and a number of other procedures to get around passing substantive law, or amendments to substantive law. It would be preferable for the government of the day to introduce short bills, possibly housekeeping bills. If necessary there could be a time limit such as that in Great Britain. However, a bill should be brief and deal with only one topic.
Making regulations or orders in council and having them published in the Canada Gazette is not a good way of reaching decisions which affect thousands of Canadians. Most Canadians do not see the Canada Gazette-they would probably be bored to tears after reading the first page of it if they did. These are not laws or guides for conduct which have been passed after discussion in the public forums such as the House of Commons. Regulations and orders in council are passed after private discussion in cabinet committee or in the cabinet as a whole. The public ends up not knowing about them.
I am particularly pleased that the Social Credit Party should have introduced this topic. It is a most worth-while subject of discussion because it goes to the core of our democratic system. The resolution expresses concern on two grounds, the first being that the government introduces omnibus bills. The second is that too much power is exercised by means of regulations and orders in council. With regard to the second point, which relates to an extremely debatable area affecting not only members of parliament but all the people of Canada, may I remind the House that in 1972 there was an election and that the government just about lost its right to sit on the treasury benches. One of the key issues in that election was the unemployment insurance fund.
Back in June 1973 the government announced its intention of introducing two bills on unemployment insurance. The first was to provide some $800 million to cover a deficit which had been hidden during the election campaign because the party opposite did not wish to explain that they had been dipping into the till to cover runaway costs. The second was Bill C-125 which would have had the effect of cutting out many of the misuses of the scheme. In a speech on television in the Kitchener area on February 3, 1973, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) indicated that Bill C-125 would be introduced into the House within a few weeks.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It was Bill


Paul Wyatt Dick: I am sorry. Bill C-25. I am corrected by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles).
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On February 27 I asked the then president of the privy council when this bill would be introduced. He said it would be very soon. On October 22 of that year, some eight months later, I asked the President of the Privy Council again when the government proposed to bring in that bill for debate. On that occasion the minister said he was trying to find some time in which to do so. Remember he had only had seven months or more, and this was a key issue in the election. What did they try to do?
I represent a constituency where unemployment happens to be running around 22 per cent in one community. Generally the unemployment rate is about 10 or 12 per cent. The main centres are only 40 miles or so from Ottawa and they happen to be on the Ontario side. People do not realize that there happens to be unemployment and considerable poverty in the Ottawa Valley. Mr. Speaker, the government tried to hold back that bill because it was afraid it would not get the support of the NDP to which it was wedded at the time-it was a minority government. What did it do? It then tried to change the regulations and alter the directives by order in council so that it could achieve the desired result without legislation. It did a lot of tinkering, but it could not come up with a satisfactory solution in the absence of legislation.
Then there was the election of 1974. Last year, in 1975, it introduced an unemployment insurance bill which, among other things, to the discredit of the government disqualified people aged 65 and over. It tinkered again with a number of areas, but at least this was substantive legislation. Now, in this budget delivered some three years and four months after it had promised to take action, the government has stated its intention to do something about misuse of the unemployment insurance system and the rip-offs which it is alleged are taking place.
I should like to ask whether the people of Canada know what is happening under the regulations which govern this scheme. For example, do they know that under the regulations they can find something like this-regulations pertaining to assistance to displaced workers in the textile and clothing industry. I would refer to one regulation which was passed in 1974. Its effect was that in certain areas where the textile industry had gone into depression any person who had worked for 15 years in a factory and who was between the ages of 54 and 75 could end up with a pension from the unemployment insurance fund for life. How many Canadians know there is a pension fund in ' there? This was made possible by regulation, not by legislation.
How many Canadians know there are regulations which give special status to certain individuals? About 9 per cent of the workers of this country belong to unions which have hiring hall agreements. These agreements fall into two categories as far as the Unemployment Insurance Commission is concerned. There are some who will not co-operate with the Commission, and the people who use those hiring halls are allowed to draw unemployment insurance benefits for up to 16 weeks without having to complete a job search form or take an interview. Then there are a privileged few who go to hiring halls and who are not obliged to search for a job in a different type of employment because work cannot be found for them in the industry to which they belong. They can go on unemployment insurance for

June 1, 1976
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52 weeks, stay at home drinking beer and watching television, and never even ask for a job anywhere, because there are union hiring hall regulations.
This practice discriminates against the remaining 92 per cent of the people in the work force. If they go on unemployment insurance they have to hustle around and prove to the commission that they have been out looking for work. If they cannot provide a job search form, or if they do not undertake to travel 30 or 40 miles in the event they get a job, they are disqualified from benefit. But the union hiring hall people have special status under the regulations. This decision was not made openly in parliament; it was a nice little thing done by regulation.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I should like to say something about omnibus bills. Take the bill we have before us now called the peace and security bill, Bill C-83, which deals with firearms and offensive weapons among other things. I hope I shall be able to support that part of the measure if it were amended properly and intelligently.
Another subject dealt with in it is invasion of privacy-I objected to the form in which it was introduced and I see that further amendments have been introduced. Another topic dealt with is dangerous offenders. Then we come to special crime inquiries, a section which the government has now decided to wipe out. We find a fifth item in there having to do with the customs tariff. We also see the Parole Act, the Penitentiaries Act, and the Prisons and Reformatories Act amended. As it is, there happen to be about five of the minor items that I want to vote for and four I do not want to vote for, yet I am stuck with an omnibus bill that covers such topics as the customs tariff and special crime inquiries. I say that is wrong.
Lastly, I would point out that the government is proposing to insert an additional 24 clauses or subclauses into Bill C-83 under which it can delegate power to 13 different persons in the country to regulate firearms. Presently there are only three clauses. If the government gets its amendments through, there will be some 27 clauses granting regulatory authority under the Criminal Code. That is bad law. The Criminal Code should be clear and distinct, be in one book, and should not depend on the governor in council passing orders in council, or on the Minister of Justice granting regulatory authority, or the commissioner of the RCMP and the lieutenant-governors of the ten provinces. In this way we end up with a balkanized Criminal Code in this country. I object to the government's introducing this kind of regulatory authority and discretionary power into the Criminal Code; this is the wrong approach.
I could go on to other topics, Mr. Speaker, but I see that my time has now expired.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: The hon. member for Maisonneuve-Rosemont.


Mr. Claude-Andre Lachance (Lafontaine-Rosemont):: Lafontaine-Rosemont, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) charged yesterday that the Liberal back-

benchers were not speaking often enough to state their views regularly. I merely wish to point out that it is the third time I have risen in two days to state my views on issues before the House.
Indeed I feel that the motion under consideration today can be considered as an extension of the matter raised yesterday during private members' hour when we had the opportunity to resume the debate on the motion of the member for Rocky Mountain (Mr. Clark) who is now leader of the opposition and who asked us to set up a committee which would examine the privileges of the Prime Minister's office with respect to its ability to control and supervise the House of Commons. I think it is an extension because we now realize that the House should really take a closer look at several mechanisms which have steered its operations for over a hundred years.
There has been a sudden awareness in the 20th century: perhaps the methods which were adequate in the past will no longer have rationale in the future. The tools we had to deal with the problem were good until very recently, but they will have no more use to serve in this capacity in the years to come, with the acceleration of life and the new values of society.
Why am I speaking in this manner on a motion which on the whole is expressed in rather specific terms, in spite of the rather woolly ideas it contains? Quite simply because opposition days evidently serve to discuss supplies; members thereby have the opportunity to indulge in reflections on their role and examine a little every topic which is of concern to them.
There are two points I want to go back to in the speech I delivered yesterday in the House of Commons, a speech which was precisely questioning some of the principles taken for granted by this House. Those two points are of course the House procedure which is deficient in my opinion, and the information available to members to carry out their business.
First of all, let us talk about information. It is commonplace to say that members of Parliament, although flooded, overwhelmed with various information, seldom have the means to make an exhaustive and in-depth study of the legislation they are asked to discuss and check. And it is precisely that lack of information which often results in situation like those we see in committee, where members ask for additional hours or days to have the opportunity to study the bills or receive the advice of independent experts. I do not want to deal at too great length with that problem of information, Mr. Speaker, but I think it would be advisable for the House, once and for all, to seriously consider giving members of Parliament access to adequate expertise, so that they may fulfil their duties as legislators, do what they were elected to do, that is to review and judge legislation with full knowledge.
The second problem is, of course, that of procedure. The hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River (Mr. Reid) mentioned it and of course the Committee on Procedure and Organization is now in the process of looking into it. It may be that the House will know some changes, that the procedure will become more flexible, especially in view of the ever-growing load of legislation that comes before us, in view also of the restrictions now imposed upon us, in particular with regard to the very long hours we have to
June 1, 1976

put in. It is now 9.50 and the House is still sitting while most Canadians are at home. To my mind, the procedure in this House must be looked into, and I trust all parties will prove their good will in this. That good will of course does exist to some extent but it must be even greater if we want to bring the House to change in ways that are absolutely necessary at this time. That is how I wanted to tie in the speech I made yesterday.
But with regard to the motion on the order paper, it really surprised me precisely because opposition days are so few that I was amazed to see the Social Credit Party of Canada move a motion in such general terms which, as I said earlier in my remarks, in fact is somewhat woolly. This brings up a problem, if there is in fact a problem, which has always existed in the House of Commons, problem which, as pointed out by one of the previous speakers, is neither new nor exclusive to this government. Even as early as between 1972 and 1974, the omnibus bill existed, or it was called thus; similarly the existence of regulations is far from new. Indeed, the Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments was not created yesterday, nor have regulations, as such, shown up recently in our statutes.
In fact, the purpose of these regulatory powers is to give a greater administrative latitude to the executive, which is necessary and which has been recognized by many countries. Hon. members are probably aware that in France, for example, the National Assembly legislates only in extremely general matters and leaves it to the executive to implement the general principles so that the regulatory power is excessively wider than the power our executive enjoys in some circumstances only, when it is expressly provided in the statutory instruments.
Thus, this regulatory power is not a problem as such except that the statutory instruments in question ought to be reviewed periodically in the House of Commons and this is the role the Committee on Statutory Instruments gave itself or which has been attributed to it and I think it does an excellent job. I had the privilege to be a member of this committee for a certain time, and I must say that its members have an expertise I want to praise here.
The second point is that of omnibus bills. And since I want to extend to my colleagues of the Social Credit Party the courtesy of concluding the debate, I shall end my intervention on that. I merely wanted to emphasize that the omnibus bills involved should have been defined. What is an omnibus bill? Every member has his own perception of the word or term. I made a quick calculation of bills that I could call omnibus bills. As everyone knows, we now have 89 or 90 Commons bills besides the 30 or 35 from the Senate which have been considered by the House, and I found five bills that can be called omnibus bills.
I shall take only one as an example. My predecessor referred to Bill C-83. It is an example that is perhaps a little particular, because it is now before the House and has been the subject of a second reading motion to divide it into two parts.
But as an example I shall cite Bill C-16 which was, as we recall, and I quote:
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An Act to amend certain statutes to provide equality of status thereunder for male and female persons.
That was the famous International Women's Year, as it was called. This bill amended 11 Acts. And I shall simply ask my Social Credit colleagues if they would have preferred to see 11 bills put forward in the House to amend the Canada Elections Act, the Criminal Code, the Immigration Act, the Public Service Employment Act, the Pension Act, the Civilian War Pensions and Allowances Act, the National Defence Act, the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971, the Canada Labour Code, the War Veterans Allowance Act, that is altogether 11 acts which were amended simply to provide equality for male and female persons, the objective being specifically equality of status. Was it not really an omnibus bill? I ask the question. As far as I am concerned, it was a bill with only one purpose: to amend e'->ven acts. Therefore, technically it is an omnibus bill, but practically, is it really necessary to have or study eleven bills to change one legislation?
May I give other examples: the famous Bill C-44, on members' salaries amends four acts. Bill C-52 amends about ten acts, such as the Public Service Superannuation Act, the Canadian Forces Superannuation Act and so forth, a bill on which my hon. colleague for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) spoke on many occasions. Then there is Bill C-87, and Act to amend or repeal certain statutes to enable restraint of government expenditures, and which also amends five or six Parliament acts.
Mr. Speaker, in conclusion I would simply say that there is room here for interpretation, and I do not think we are justified in criticizing the government for all evils, to criticize it especially for introducing omnibus bills, while this has been a practice in effect for a long time and which we did not initiate; on the contrary, I find it very useful.


Mr. Armand Caouette (Villeneuve):: Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to take part in tonight's debate, although it is quite late. Before making my comments, I would like to congratulate and thank my colleague the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) for having put forward the motion now before us on the opposition day alloted to the Social Credit Party of Canada under the Standing Orders of the House.
I think that the motion of the hon. member for Shefford deserves the attention of all hon. members who sit here in the House of Commons. We were elected to represent our fellow citizens and to pass legislation governing all Canadians.
That responsibility, Mr. Speaker, is very great, and I believe that all members are aware of the consequences of decisions taken here. Each and everyone of our fellow citizens has to obey the laws voted by Parliament. The basic principle of the parliamentary system can be sumed up in one sentence: Parliament is sovereign.
This means that Parliament can vote laws, and does vote the laws it wants. Parliament is subject to no outside authority except for the will of the people expressed at election time. It has been said by parliamentarians, to describe that reality of a sovereign Parliament, that Parliament can do anything except change a man into a woman. This means of course, Mr. Speaker, that Parliament can do

June 1, 1976
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anything it wants, except for what is physically impossible.
Mr. Speaker, as it is getting late and my time is limited, I would like to give some specific examples of what we put forth by presenting this motion today. We only have to look at the Unemployment Insurance Act. Mr. Speaker, this act was published as a separate volume in 1974. As we all know, several sections of this act allow the Unemployment Insurance Commission to make regulations. If we look at this act as published in 1974, we see that the act itself extends over only 67 pages, while the text of the regulations covers double that amount of pages, or 140.
If we continue in this direction, we shall come to a situation where Parliament will approve legislation containing generally a page or two, and then an agency made up of public servants will prepare under the form of regulations hundreds of provisions which will modify the form, the spirit and the scope of the original legislation.
Mr. Speaker, there is another example that I would like to give, even if several members here tonight perhaps found the motion of the hon. member for Shefford (Mr. Rondeau) ridiculous, that is an act that was passed in Parliament and to which 90 to 95 per cent of all members, including Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats and Social Crediters, were strongly opposed, the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act, when we, the Parliament, had given a commission full power to redistribute the ridings. Several members, including myself, had to drive distances of 500 miles to represent about 60,000 people.
This commission has now submitted a project which, for myself, gives me about 800 miles to drive in my riding to serve a population of about 88,000 people. However, an exception has been made concerning part of the constituency which was not included in the 1971 census, but the people of this area would like a representative who can serve them. I believe that all hon. members will agree that the spirit of the legislation that we passed was very "grand", and that it is not only Parliament which will suffer, but especially constituents who will have to choose a representative in the next election.
Mr. Speaker, another issue has created a lot of controversy among the population. It is Bill C-83 now before the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Once again, Mr. Speaker, in this same bill, the government-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Unfortunately, I have to interrupt the hon. member.
It being ten o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 58(11), 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.

Mr. David MacDonald (Egmont):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: I am grateful for the support. Obviously members realize the importance of the question that was raised last Thursday and that I wish to raise at a little greater length this evening, having to do with co-ordination of transportation policy and the sensitivity of the government at the present time to the situation in respect of transportation problems in the Atlantic provinces.
This is not new information, I assume, either to the minister or his parliamentary secretary who will be responding this evening. However, I would be less than frank if I did not say the comments last week by the Council of Maritime Premiers, and the appearance of the P.E.I. minister of tourism at one of our standing committees in Ottawa on Tuesday, gave a real indication of the depth of anxiety and, perhaps, the extent of neglect that currently exists in respect of those transportation problems in the Atlantic region.
First of all, I wish to elaborate slightly on the question I put last Thursday. I wish to place on the record some quotes from the communique from the most recent meeting of the Council of Maritime Premiers. Incidentally it was the fifth anniversary of the Maritime Premiers' Council, which is a most valuable body in terms of effective policies and programs for the three maritime provinces. In their communique the premiers said they were requesting an early meeting with the federal Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang). The communique stated:
The premiers re-affirmed their position that transportation systems should be used by governments as positive tools for the attainment of national and regional objectives ... They stated that despite the federal government's agreement with their position, there is an alarming lack of hard evidence that transportation is, in fact, being used as a positive development tool. Indeed, there are examples of just the opposite .. . The premiers expressed concern that the federal government is increasing cost recovery within some transportation systems without considering the effects of this on the over-all economy.
Later on in the communique we find this:
The premiers expressed disappointment that a revised intra-regional freight assistance program advanced by the Atlantic provinces to the federal government in February of this year had not as yet received an official response ...
The premiers expressed disappointment in the federal budgetary restraint program as it applies to transportation expenditures.
Members will recall that the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Stanfield) then asked a question in terms of this particular part of the communique. The premiers

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took issue with the discriminatory nature of the transportation sector of the announced program, noting that of a total reduction of $41.2 for the whole of Canada, $21.9 million or 53 per cent would affect Atlantic region transportation programs exclusively.
If we just think for a moment, this means that in fact over half the reduction in expenditures directly affected Atlantic transportation where we have somewhat less than 10 per cent of the population. Considering the frequent occasions on which the federal government has paid lip service to the idea of co-ordinating transportation policy with its regional development program, this seems at the least to be shortsighted and perhaps even somewhat disastrous.
The premiers concluded their statement with these words:
In view of the present economic situation in the Atlantic provinces and the effect which transportation has upon it, the announced allocations of transportation expenditure reductions was deemed to be inconsistent with programs designed to correct regional disparity.
That was on Wednesday last week. The previous day when the P.E.I. minister of tourism appeared before our Standing Committee on regional Development he said a number of things having to do with the difficulties he had encountered in co-ordinating federal-provincial policy in the area he administers, but in referring to the over-all problem of co-ordination of federal-provincial programs he said:
We could spend the complete afternoon discussing these in details, but I will simply say that there is not much evidence of co-ordination policy-making between federal entities such as the Ministry of Transport, the Canadian Transport Commission, the Canadian National Railways, Air Canada and Parks Canada, just to name a few.
I will not restate the question I put the other day, but all of this seems to fly in the face of what the federal government has announced for some years as its prime intention. I wish to bring to the attention of hon. members a paper presented in November by Mr. H. Ropertz, a member of the transport policy task force on the matter of inter-governmental co-operation in transportation policy. I shall quote two or three things from that document because it is an indication of the commitment at the official level in respect of dealing with the transportation problem in some sort of rational and sensible way.
He said there is, and I quote:
... a growing realization on the part of the federal government for the need to consult and not take unilateral action, even though jurisdiction at times is federal.
He went on to speak about a specific federal-provincial committee, known as the Federal-Provincial Committee on Atlantic Region Transportation, which was organized as far back as 1969. That is an important date because it followed the passage of the Atlantic Region Freight Assistance Act, the establishment of a new national transportation policy, and perhaps more important, the establishment of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion. The committee has been composed of senior federal and provincial government officials from the Ministry of Transport, the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, and from the provinces of New Brunwick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward island.
He went on to say that although the committee was mainly concerned with transportation problems as they affect their specific regions-and he was speaking, in effect, about three similar committees-one of the most
Adjournment Debate
significant aspects of the terms of reference of each of these committees is that they are working toward economic or regional goals and objectives. He also said that the idea that the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang) would sit down at least two or three times a year with each individual member to go over progress and tackle pressing problems was envisaged.
If there has been anything useful raised in this latest series of questions, it may be the frank admission by the Minister of Transport that he was somewhat surprised that the premiers should be unaware of the steps which are being taken by the federal government to co-ordinate transportation policy with the provinces in the Maritime region, and perhaps adding to that surprise there may be additional encouraging information from the parliamentary secretary about this problem this evening.


Ralph Goodale: Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy an opportunity to respond at this point during our proceedings to my friend, the hon. member for Egmont (Mr. MacDonald), and I hope I can satisfy some of his concerns this evening.
Tonight, and on previous occasions, in at least a part of his argument he has suggested that the Government of Canada has disregarded a request by the Council of Maritime Premiers concerning the intra-regional freight assistance program. Rather than a disregard in this area, or in any of the other areas which have been touched upon by the hon. member this evening, there has been careful consideration of the position including, in the particular case of the freight assistance program, a possible position which had been generally agreed upon at one point between the Atlantic ministers of transport and the federal Minister of Transport with regard to freight subsidies.
In that connection the original idea involved a $5 million cut at one point in the subsidy and, as I have said, there was agreement on this point from the Atlantic ministers. Our combined hope was that the smaller amount of money thereby available would in fact obtain more positive results over-all. After further reflection on this point at both levels of government, and some assessment of the technical challenges involved in that original suggestion, it has now been concluded that the desired beneficial impact of the arrangement is not likely to be attained in the time frame available, and action on the whole matter has therefore been postponed to allow for further analysis and genuine discussion between the two levels of government involved.
There is certainly no need for the kind of anxiety which has been expressed this evening and on other occasions in the House. There has been every assurance that the Government of Canada is taking regional problems-in this case in the Atlantic region-very much into consideration. This has been made patently clear during the course of a series of very frequent meetings at the officials' level and certainly also at meetings involving the ministers as well. We have an ongoing and regular system of meetings in place and under way. This will continue in the hope that during the course of the summer, in relation particularly to the intra-regional freight assistance program, an appropriate program can be worked out to the satisfaction of all involved.

June 1, 1976
Adjournment Debate


FRESHWATER FISH MARKETING CORPORATION-PROPOSAL TO GRANT EXPORT LICENCE TO SELL FISH OUTSIDE CORPORATION-REQUEST FOR ANALYSIS OF PROCESSING COSTS
Dean Waldon Whiteway: Mr. Speaker, where is the minister? Where is the Minister of State for Fisheries (Mr. LeBlanc)? Does he dare send only a messenger? Sir, that characterizes the attitude of this minister with reference to inland fisheries since he has taken on the portfolio of minister of state. Not only are the fishermen in this country intimidated by having something less than a full ministry but the minister has refused to stand squarely in his place in the House of Commons and articulate his policy on inland fisheries.
I tell you, Sir, I give him full marks for going around the country and the world and signing agreements with all nations, but when there is trouble on the home front he ought to face it. On this very day the minister stood in his place opposite and challenged me to stand and give my position with reference to inland fisheries. Here I am, Mr. Speaker, and I want to know where he is.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: He is with the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Goyer).


Dean Waldon Whiteway: No doubt. Mr. Speaker, I want there to be no mistake and no misjudgement. I do not want the parliamentary secretary to be in any way in the dark as to where I stand on this matter. The minister ought to look at the historic facts and their relationship to inland fisheries. The agreement-and I have it here tonight-signed on June 4, 1969, between the Government of Canada and the government of the province of Manitoba, in section 2(2) reads as follows:
The amount payable by the province pursuant to subsection (1) shall not exceed the sum of 25 per cent of $100,000.
That was the original amount of money-of capital investment by the federal and provincial governments to set up the inland fisheries known as the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation by the Freshwater Fish Marketing Act of 1969. That has grown from $100,000 to $5V4 million. At the time of the inception of the corporation it was signed by a minister of the Progressive Conservative party, the Hon. Harry Enns who originated the concept of a single marketing agency for orderly marketing. That was what the fishermen expected and that was the intention of the Freshwater Fish Marketing Act, but this government along with its counterpart in the province of Manitoba, Premier Schreyer, and on June 25 twisted the act, invested $5!4 million, and decided not only to go into orderly marketing or a single desk marketing agency but also to get into the processing business.
Neither in this House nor outside have I quarrelled with the concept of orderly marketing. What I have quarrelled with, and upon occasion have asked the minister to justify, is the existence of a corporation in respect to the processing. This is fishermen's money, not tax money. The minister was dead wrong this afternoon when he suggested tax money was involved. I will tell you why there is federal tax money and provincial tax money involved; it is because this government-perhaps not this minister-set up and

spent $3'/2 million. I want to know who authorized that because the agreement was for $100,000. They blew it, Mr. Speaker. They could not administer it, and caused the corporation to lose $2 million in one year. The only reason federal tax money was involved was because they had to pick up what was their fault-not the fault of the fishermen.
I want to know who authorized the additional $2 million over and above the $314 million that was never authorized. I want the minister to answer that. I do not want his parliamentary secretary to stand up and give me some song and dance about how great the corporation is and how great the concept is, because it was my party that originated the concept. What I want the parliamentary secretary and the minister to answer is who authorized the $514 million. Who authorized the additional expenditure? I want them to agree to ask the corporation to open its books and do an audit-not the kind of namsy audit that the government is familiar with, but to answer the questions of the fishermen. This is fishermen's money and they have a right to know.
The minister claims to be the great knight in shining armour who fights the dragons that would gobble up the fishermen and their profits, yet refuses to give the kind of information that it is only reasonable to expect from such a corporation.
The fishermen want to know by species what it costs per pound to process the fish. Surely that is the right of people whose money is being used by this corporation. We are not asking for anything to be changed until we know the facts. If the minister who is in charge of the inland fishery as well as the offshore fishery refuses to provide that kind of information to the fishermen, he will be acting irresponsibly. I ask the parliamentary secretary, when he speaks on behalf of the minister, to answer this question: will he or will he not cause an audit to be undertaken so that, at the very least, the fishermen will know what they must pay to process their fish, and how those costs compare with those entailed in the orderly marketing concept?


An hon. Member:: This whole subject is very smelly!


Mr. George Baker (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries):: Mr. Speaker, I can inform the hon. member that the corporation intends to provide the fishermen with a newsletter containing the information requested concerning production and marketing, information to which the hon. member referred.
It ought to be kept in mind that the corporation is not run by the minister in charge of fisheries. It is not run by any one group on individuals. The hon. gentleman has just criticized the people who provide an input into the corporation, all the provinces and the authorities concerned in the Northwest Territories, and the advisory committee of fishermen.
On several occasions during several question periods the hon. member went far to point out the problems he has encountered in connection with one particular group of fishermen who are within a relatively small, confined area. But there are other problems relating to fishermen in Saskatchewan. Those problems loom so large that the province to date refuses to contribute toward the deficit of the corporation, something which no doubt the hon. member
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knows. There are problems throughout Manitoba concerning transport costs. On each side of the hon. member each province was contributing to transport costs, but the hon. member's province was not. There are also great problems in northern Manitoba.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: Why does the parliamentary secretary not deal with my question?


George Baker: There are also problems connected with marketing and production. The hon. gentleman talked about an offer which was made in Motley. Mr. Speaker, the corporation thanks the hon. member for the information and says it will investigate the particular offer. That, essentially, is what the hon. gentleman requested.
Essentially the corporation as it exists today enjoys the support of all the provinces concerned, as well as of the fishermen concerned who act through the advisory committee. It certainly has the support of every single fisherman who was fishing before the corporation was set up when there were great rip-offs involving distributors, collectors, and buyers in certain parts of Canada and the United States.
It is important to remember that the corporation cannot exist if its efforts are splintered here, there, and everywhere. The minister responsible for fisheries and the present management of the corporation, which is perhaps one of the best management groups ever to have been in charge of the corporation, are working consistently with all provinces concerned and the Northwest Territories to work out the best possible deal.
If the hon. gentleman were to ask fishermen in the general area covered by the corporation if they are generally happy with prices, I believe the answer would be yes, despite the existence of problems. There are problems concerning provinces which have production plants which produce final products. Some provinces do not have such plants. Therefore adjustments must be made, within the accepted criteria. But it would be irresponsible of the hon. gentleman to suggest that the corporation should be disbanded because of the complaints of a small group of fishermen, I believe 21 fishermen of a total of 300 in the Lake Winnipeg area.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Our adjournment debate procedure does not allow for the raising of points of order. If the hon. member wishes to raise a point of order, perhaps he can do so tomorrow before orders of the day are called.


AIR CANADA-ALLEGATION OF POOR BILLING PROCEDURES IN FINANCE BRANCH, WINNIPEG-GOVERNMENT POSITION
A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, coincidentally two Manitoba members this evening are asking for a proper audit of a Crown corporation. Of course the answer given to the request of the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Whiteway) constituted complete evasion. We are used to that.
Adjournment Debate
I have been asking for the Auditor General to conduct a complete audit of Air Canada's finance branch at Winnipeg due to the financial fiasco there, the huge deficits being faced, and the requests for fare increases. I received a most unsatisfactory answer from the Assistant Auditor General who stated, and I quote:
As you are probably aware, parliament has directed that the accounts and financial transactions of Air Canada be audited by the same auditor that parliament appoints to audit the accounts of Canadian National Railways. Therefore, in my opinion, the Auditor General has no authority to conduct any inquiry nor has he any right of access to the financial records or documents of the corporation.
That statement is completely false. It is signed by J. R. Douglas, Assistant Auditor General. I wish to point out to Mr. Douglas and the parliamentary secretary that under Section 67 of the Financial Administration Act the Auditor General can be appointed as the auditor or joint auditor of the corporation. However, that has not been done in the past. It is certainly time that it was done, especially with regard to Air Canada.
There was a report of the independent review committee of the office of the Auditor General which was completed in March, 1975. In that report it states that the Financial Administration Act defines a Crown corporation as:
-a corporation that is ultimately accountable, through a minister, to parliament for the conduct of its affairs.
When a Crown corporation such as Air Canada has a $12,473,000 deficit, an audit and accounting system that has completely broken down, and has the nerve to state they want a fare increase, the Auditor General should move in immediately. A directive should be issued by the government to have an immediate audit conducted. All the contracted work should be returned to the finance branch in Winnipeg. There were further recommendations by this committee. I quote from chapter six, page 116:
The Auditor General should audit the financial accounts of all Crown corporations whose expenditures directly affect the budgetary accounts of Canada.
On page 117 it states:
The Auditor General should have the right of access to the financial records and documents of all Crown corporations of which he is not the auditor, as he deems necessary to the fulfilment of his responsibilities as auditor of the accounts of Canada.
The Assistant Auditor General made reference to the auditing done by the firm of Cooper and Lybrand of Ottawa. In their submission to the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang), in the 1975 Annual report, they state:
Our examination included a general review of the accounting procedures and such tests of accounting records and other supporting evidence as we considered necessary in the circumstances.
We are not interested in a general review of Air Canada. We are interested in a complete and proper audit. This document should be questioned as to whether it is worthwhile. I imagine it was very costly, yet all we get out of it is a general review.
One of the issues I raised two weeks ago was the War-nock Hersey account which had 400 tickets not accounted for. The following day after I raised the matter in the House, Air Canada received a statement for $44,000. The parliamentary secretary informed the House that the account covered a period of several months. That was not

June 1, 1976
Adjournment Debate
correct. It was for a period of three years. All that was showing on Air Canada's books was $1,600 owing, not $44,000. That account has now been closed. Therefore it can be seen why the Auditor General should move into Air Canada. This statement has, I imagine, been supplied by Air Canada, so the parliamentary secretary will see he has been misinformed by Air Canada.
A further reason for the Auditor General to move in was given by the hon. member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay) during the question period today when he pointed out that travel agents are not adhering to Air Canada warnings about improper billing practices and procedures. My hon. friend first raised this matter on November 26, 1975, and the Minister of Transport has been most negligent in taking no action to rectify the problem. This is a matter which I myself have raised. I pointed out there are no longer any enforced controls on the reporting of ticket sales by travel agents. As of October, 1975, in excess of the 96,000 travel agent ticket sales were unreported. This represents a minimum of $2,208,000 unpaid for transportation. Air Canada's lowest fare is $23-this is the basis of the calculation by which the figure of $2,208,000 is reached. Further, billings to Air Canada from other airlines do not receive a complete audit inasmuch as items billed for $75 or less are assumed to be correct and are paid for without question.
I might say also that there are in excess of 180,000 tickets which have been used but in respect of which there is no record of sales ever having been reported to the finance branch. At a dollar a ticket this represents a lot of money, but when one considers that the lowest charge on Air Canada flights is $23 there is cause for concern to the tune of a possible $3,843,000. Can anyone explain the many hundreds of thousands of ticket sales which have been reported but in respect of which the fares collected are insufficient to cover the cost of the transportation used? I hope the parliamentary secretary will give a satisfactory answer tonight, along with an assurance that we are to see a proper audit and an end to this financial mess in Winnipeg.


Ralph Goodale: Well, Mr. Speaker, in reply to the argument raised by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie) this evening I hope I can offer some reassurance by making three or four brief points.
On the general question of the financial management of Air Canada, its auditing and other procedures, the House
will know that the whole subject was examined very thoroughly not long ago by Mr. Justice Estey, and his report, which was published last year, is a very helpful and important document. I know the hon. member has studied it closely and I know it has given some guidance to the government in connection with what future action might be taken to correct what difficulties or apparent difficulties were revealed in the course of Mr. Justice Estey's study.
The hon. member's second point has to do with the general accountability of Air Canada to parliament, or more particularly to a standing committee of this House. This was referred to, at least in passing, by the hon. member a few nights ago when he and I had an opportunity to discuss this same question during the adjournment proceedings.
The steering committee of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications has considered the question of an appropriate time at which to invite Air Canada to appear before members of parliament for a thorough discussion of the corporation's operations. I would imagine that such a discussion would include the subject raised this evening. Although a specific date has not been fixed by the steering committee, this is a matter which is receiving active attention and I do not think it will be too long before we can come to some agreement as to when an appropriate occasion will present itself.
On the question of auditing procedures which presently govern Air Canada's operation it is true that the Auditor General is not generally involved, simply because the present statutory requirements do not put the Auditor General or Air Canada in that position. The books of Air Canada are, of course, officially audited every year by a firm of chartered accountants, and that auditors' report is carried in every annual report of the airline as a matter of public record, so the House and the country can be well assured that the financial operations of the airline are subject to auditing procedures.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, with reference to the question put earlier today by the hon. member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay) to the minister with respect to certain problems in connection with travel agency matters, the minister indicated that he is following the question very closely and that if there is anything to report to the hon. member or to the House he will be doing so at the very first opportunity.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.32 p.m.

Wednesday, June 2, 1976