1976-06-08

OFFICIAL REPORT

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FIRST SESSION-THIRTIETH PARLIAMENT 25 Elizabeth II

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Published under the authority of the Speaker of the House of Commons by the Queen's Printer for Canada
95570 -U/2
Available from Printing and Publishing, Supply and Services, Ottawa, Canada K1A 0S9
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Tuesday, June 8, 1976


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The House resumed, from Monday, June 7, consideration of the motion of Mr. Allmand that Bill C-84, to amend the Criminal Code in relation to the punishment for murder and certain other serious offences, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to continue with my remarks on Bill C-84 which I commenced last night. Last evening I suggested that the abolitionists should become jail guards; I think they would then find out first hand what a precarious occupation it is, especially when dealing with dangerous murderers like Lucas and Kelly.
I was commenting last night on Donald Kelly's latest escapade when he attempted escape from jail with a toy gun. I was pointing out that it was not only a toy gun, it was a gun plain and simple. If a fake gun can be smuggled into or manufactured in a prison cell, then just as easily can a real one. As romantic as he may be at a distance, Kelly is a convicted murderer with experience in prison breakouts. It was only a fluke that he was unable to take a hostage, a procedure for which a toy gun concealed is every bit as effective as a real gun exposed. His overnight seige in the North Bay jail might have ended in an escape or shoot-out; had the gun been real it almost certainly would have. North Bay was lucky this time, but that is all the more reason to ensure that there is no second incident. How did Kelly obtain the gun? Why was he in a cellblock area when he should have been in his cell? Only a thoroughgoing investigation will provide the answers and I think they should be provided promptly.
Members of parliament have received letters from psychiatrists with regard to dealing with these dangerous murderers. I should like to quote from a letter I received from two psychiatrists in New Westminster, British Columbia:
Dear Sir:
We are writing to recommend that you decide upon and vote in favour of retention of the death penalty. We also recommend that you use your influence to ensure that it is implemented where there are no extenuating circumstances to warrant stay of execution. More humane and acceptable methods than hanging should also be considered.
This is a matter I have raised on two occasions in the House of Commons. I presented a motion to the effect that this subject be transferred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs, where we could hear witnesses and discuss alternate methods to the rope. I feel that if we did find a more humane method of executing a murderer, maybe some of the abolitionists would reconsider, but unfortunately my motion was turned down by the Liberals. These two psychiatrists go on to say this:
Both of us were born and grew up in the heartland of Canada. We are well qualified psychiatrists who have spent the past twenty-five years interviewing and treating Canadians from all walks of life. We feel that this background and experience qualifies us to offer you an opinion on this subject, and that we have both a professional and social responsibility to do so.
That is the opinion of two psychiatrists, Mr. Speaker. They say plainly and simply that rehabilitation is impossible in many cases.
Recently there was a news article containing comments by two leading psychiatrists who are experts when it comes to dealing with dangerous criminals. They say that it is better to hang killers than to introduce long prison terms with no hope of parole. Dr. Elliott Barker, who developed Ontario's treatment program for the criminally insane at one of our big mental hospitals, and Dr. Barry Boyd, medical director of the hospital, have said that they are opposed to capital punishment but that the death penalty is a lesser evil than mandatory sentences of up to 25 years as proposed by the federal government.
Among the numerous communications relating to capital punishment that I have received in the past few weeks are many from people who are of the opinion that Bill C-84 symbolizes the permissiveness that they believe is a threat to their safety. To many people it symbolizes a soft-on-crime attitude that is only encouraging further violence. The vast majority of Canadians are calling for a change in attitude and direction.
I wish to make it clear from the outset that I believe capital punishment should be retained in all cases of premeditated murder and other extreme types of murder. I have on several occasions spoken and voted in favour of the retention of capital punishment, and that will be the tenor of my remarks today. There are those who claim that, as a result of nearly a decade of debating capital punishment in parliament, Hansard is full of every conceivable argument for or against capital punishment. Perhaps that is so, but the fact of the matter remains that the murder rate has been consistently increasing and the public is not satisfied with the solutions offered by the government.
A strong conviction is growing among Canadians that we need the death penalty as one way of reversing the permissive trend of the past decade. Indeed, every national survey has indicated that a vast majority favours the retention of capital punishment, including surveys commissioned by this government. Yet, rather than asking

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themselves why so many people are calling for the restoration of the death penalty, the abolitionists continue to vilify these people. Abolitionists should ask themselves why so many good, decent, law abiding people desire a continuation of the death penalty. These people are not cruel, but they are concerned and they are demanding that their government and parliament become concerned too.
Advocates of abolition have never claimed that public opinion is with them. They seem to be satisfied with in playing the role of an elitist minority, and speak as if the desire to retain the death penalty shows some kind of blood lust or a perverse sadism. Very few people would find much pleasure in the sight of someone being executed. The public wants protection, it does not want cruelty. Most individuals want to serve notice on the criminal element that society is prepared to defend itself. They cannot receive such assurances from the legislation presently before parliament.
Everyone knows full well that Bill C-84 is a nothing bill which will do nothing to reverse the trend towards violent crime in this country. I am opposed to this legislation, not out of a burning desire to invoke the death penalty, but because I see Bill C-84 as one more step down the road of permissiveness. The death penalty is, indeed, a subject being discussed widely these days. During the past few months the print and electronic media have been flooded with commentary on capital punishment.
One of the questions confronting Canadians everywhere, and especially those of Christian persuasion is, is it ever morally right for government to take the life of a human being who has murdered. Christians are, of course, divided on this subject, though a candid examination of the Bible shows that both the old and new testament support it. There are those, of course, who claim to have religious objections to capital punishment but avoid the practical consideration of the command "Thou shalt not kill". Thou shalt not kill is better translated as, you shall not murder. It should be clear to every thinking person that while murder is always killing, killing is not always murder. Capital punishment is killing but it is far from murder. To say thou shalt not kill as an argument against capital punishment is a flagrant misrepresentation of scripture. The Bible says society has a right to put a murderer to death. Numerous people in my riding believe that the current government is not fulfilling its moral obligation to society or its Christian obligation to God.
Naturally one has to ask just what the retention of the death penalty would do. Abolitionists would argue that abolition does not result in crime run rampant, or social peace if the death penalty is restored. They would argue that capital punishment has no deterrent value whatsoever. With that kind of an elitist argument they ignore the real issue at hand. A former Chief Justice and President of the United States, William Taft, once said:
The abolition of the death penalty is a mistake. It certainly is a deterrent for crimes of bloody violence.
In looking at the deterrent factor one must consider it as an attempt to save innocent lives in the future and not, in isolation, in relation to the fate of the guilty murderer. This very parliament considered capital punishment a suf-
ficiently effective deterrent to reserve it for the protection of policemen and prison guards during the five-year moratorium. I have never heard it said that capital punishment is no deterrent to murder. The only question anybody raises is whether it is an effective or significant deterrent. Perhaps we should look at the deterrent factor from the point of view of whether capital punishment would prevent all murders. I think not. Surely, we could not expect that any more than a 25-year sentence in prison would stop murder.
In speaking of the 25-year prison sentence, one has to seriously consider the possibility that such a law could be amended or even repealed at any time. Such a law is no guarantee that society will be protected from the criminal element. In all seriousness, I wonder how effective the 25-year sentence would be and how strictly it would be enforced. Given this government's lax track record I would suggest it would be a risky venture. In this debate one could quote reams of statistics, but he will find the common sense of most Canadians leads them to believe that the threat of the death penalty is a deterrent. It is superficial to even suggest that the threat of capital punishment has no deterrent value.
There are those who would suggest that capital punishment brutalizes society. So, however, does murder and that fact is seldom mentioned. The people of this country would not, I am sure, hesitate to say that a properly carried out execution is less brutalizing than murders reported in the press with the brutal headlines that read: Elderly couple hacked to death with axe; Four children slaughtered by prison escapee; Young woman raped and strangled; Thirteen shot in gangland rampage, and numerous others of a similar character.
It is the growing number of brutal murders that cause the obvious reaction when abolitionists pose the question, would you go and witness an execution? The answer is: Yes, but only if you will accompany the police to the bloody scene of a violent murder in which the victim was beaten, mutilated, knifed or shot. One would then ask which was the more brutal scene. A great deal of the apprehension and opposition to the death penalty is based on revulsion against the gruesome aspect of hanging. In this day and age the medical profession is capable of devising methods which are not only painless but also certain and efficient.
On April 1 I spoke in favour of having the subject of capital punishment referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs to find a more humane way of applying capital punishment. I still stand by that suggestion. I do so because of two overriding concerns: First, the majority of Canadians favour retention; and, second, many people consider hanging barbaric. Some abolitionists say it is asking too much of anyone to enforce capital punishment. I contend that the responsibilities of office carry with them the responsibility of carrying forward the administration of justice.
The death penalty represents the final right of organized society to rid itself of those who will not conform in any respect to civilized life. Such people are a minority and are not to be confused with others who might take a life in a moment of passion. There are those abolitionists who would lead people to believe that those who favour reten-
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tion want a blanket imposition of capital punishment. That is a falsehood. The vast majority of Canadians are normal citizens who find the death penalty a distasteful subject to discuss. Common sense warns them that the removal of the final right of society to carry out the supreme punishment tells the criminal that no matter how horrible and vicious the crime, his own life will be protected.
Several weeks ago I mentioned that in the many letters and phone calls I have received from constituents they share with me their concerns about being safe and that their children will grow up in a safe society. At that time I quoted Mr. William Gold, of the Calgary Herald, who described the type of individual society fears when he wrote:
Contemporary society is producing a singularly savage type of animal, entirely lacking in comprehension of, or respect for, the lives of other people. These psychopaths know perfectly well what they are doing is wrong legally and morally, but the act of murder causes them no sense of personal revulsion.
Society wants guaranteed protection from that sort of individual because who can say where he will strike next.
I have always rejected the notion that society seeks vengeance. I call it simple justice and a desire for safety. Capital punishment has been upheld through the centuries because of the commitment of society to the sanctity of life. It is a principle of law that the penalty must in some way fit the crime. That is the basis of having a penal code.
The death penalty is based on the belief that taking a life is so great an offence it requires the supreme penalty. Having regard to the qualms of those who cringe at the death penalty, Hon. Ernest Manning made a very pertinent observation as follows:
In this respect there is evident in society today a strange and indefensible inconsistency. Many of those who are the most vocal in demanding the abolition of the death penalty because they hold it to be morally wrong to put a murderer to death are frequently the same people who are champions of abortion on demand. In other words, they argue it is morally right to deliberately destroy the life of an unborn innocent child, but it is morally wrong to exact the death penalty in the case of a murderer who has deliberately taken the life of another human being.
Such reasoning is beyond me. If our country is to be consistent about the state's right to impose the death penalty, then we must reject the idea that it is legalized murder. If that were the case a soldier defending this country in war and a policeman using his gun in the line of duty would be guilty of legalized murder. I doubt very seriously if anyone in this House would be ready to say that we should disarm our army and police.
Mr. Speaker, in the numerous articles I have had the opportunity to read on the issue of capital punishment I have searched for the one argument, the one statistic, the one tidbit of new information which could somehow shed new light on this debate. The fact of the matter is that as individuals we have been too concerned about statistics to meet the real issue head on. That issue is that we, as elected representatives of the Canadian people, have a moral responsibility to deal with capital punishment. I for one will not shrink from that responsibility.
Throughout history as organized nations emerged it has been recognized that society has the right to impose any kind of penalty on any offender against the law. In every
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case where the law is broken there is a penalty of some sort. A state that can incarcerate an offender for 25 years surely is capable of applying capital punishment. In the discussions concerning murders we hear such comments from abolitionists as, "the murderer is a product of his environment" and, "society must show some degree of sympathy". It worries me, Mr. Speaker, that we might be heading down a road of uncontrolled permissiveness that would have us take the easy way at the expense of public safety. How much sympathy I wonder has been shown for the family and friends of the victims of ruthless murderers.
Even if parliament does pass Bill C-84 and abolishes capital punishment, I believe that every citizen of this country should ask the government in a resounding chorus: What are you going to do about your soft-on-crime record? This government has gone too far in its efforts to appease an elitist minority who have no concern about crime run rampant. Time and time again we have seen this government shirk its responsibility in the field of law enforcement.
In the area of law enforcement, Mr. Speaker, I would like to briefly mention one segment of our society which will be especially endangered by the abolition of capital punishment,-our police and prison guards. There was a time when the boys in blue were held in high regard, indeed respected, and it was the boyhood dream of many to some day be a policeman. In view of the way our law enforcement officers are being hindered and threatened, must we say that those law enforcement officers who die in the course of duty will do so in vain! I should hope not.
The Nuremburg trials, Mr. Speaker, showed the world that no one can shrug off responsibility. The free nations had a responsibility to show the cold-blooded Nazis that wholesale murder will not be tolerated, so we must tell the criminal element that murder will not be tolerated in Canada. This parliament will not solve the problem of the cancer of crime by merely voting for or against capital punishment, but I contend that a vote for retention will be the beginning of an all-out battle against the ills of crime.
Now that I have put to this House my reasons for asking for the re-instatement of capital punishment I wish to return to the subject of public opinion and the will of the public. Some day all of us who have been elected to this parliament will be judged on our decisions in regard to bill C-84 and indeed on the attitude that we have towards crime. We live, supposedly, in a democratic society in which the government must express the will of the people. It certainly is a sad commentary on the members of the government when their arrogance makes them believe they are more knowledgeable than the vast majority of people. When this happens I fear that we have only seen the beginning of rule by elitist minorities.
As we head toward a decision on capital punishment I hope that every member of this House takes into account that this is not only a vote for or against capital punishment but that it will determine the attitude and direction of this country in years to come in regard to crime. A society without the ultimate protection might some day find itself in the sad state where the law of the jungle rules. When I say that, I can almost hear the professional liberals accusing me of being a prophet of doom. I believe

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the time has come to stop lulling the Canadian people into believing everything will be fine if only they blindly follow. I for one have more faith than that in my fellow citizens. I would certainly derive no pleasure or satisfaction from saying I told you so, but I do wish that this parliament would face the fact that our society is not perfect, that crime does exist, and finally that we do have a responsibility to fight crime. Mr. Speaker, let us express the will of the people and continue capital punishment.


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, lest I be accused of benefitting from yesterday's order to prolong this debate, I will be very brief. My primary intention in rising is to correct an impression that was left by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie) when he indicated that the Donald Kelly case, as I see it in Hansard, almost bankrupted the municipality. I trust he was speaking of North Bay. Mr. Speaker, I should like to indicate for the record that the total cost of that chase was somewhere in the vicinity of $101,000, $92,000 of which was paid by the province of Ontario. Out of a total budget of $20.5 million for the city of North Bay, even if the Province of Ontario had not paid the amounts to which I have referred, surely there was no indication of an insolvency on the part of North Bay, a city by the way which is on a very sound financial basis and enjoying a fruitful economic life as well as a social life.
Also I should like to place on the record my intention to support the government's bill in this instance.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Blais:: I have listened with a great deal of attention to the arguments advanced by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre. I have heard those arguments before. I am not persuaded by them and I am sure he has not been persuaded by the arguments advanced by the abolitionists from whichever side of the House they may have been made.
In order to shorten my remarks I would simply adopt those arguments which have been advanced by the abolitionists that an act of hanging or execution, whether public or private, is in effect a collective act of violence. By such an act society condones violence and by condoning encourages it. I could not accept such a collective act of violence. Secondly, I am persuaded that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent in any sense. Statistics have been presented on both sides of that argument. I am persuaded it is not a deterrent.
The third argument flows directly from that, namely that I can see capital punishment in instances where it would be required as a means of self-defence, that is a method of self-defence available to society. I fail to see, when we have one of the most advanced systems of criminal justice and one of the most elaborate and sophisticated systems of the administration of justice, that indeed collective killing can serve as a means of self-defence.
Those are my comments. I will not vote in favour of capital punishment. I am pleased that the government has presented in this instance a bill proposing total abolition and I commend it for that measure.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, may I speak on that point of order?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. Is the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre asking a question?


A. Daniel McKenzie: I did not hear the hon. member's original remarks. Was he speaking on a point of order?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: No. He was recognized as a speaker for a short period of time.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, may I speak on a point of order? I will apologize and withdraw the remark about bankruptcy in the honourable area of North Bay, but the area certainly was subjected to some financial problems. I believe the latest news reports show that the city is trying to negotiate more funds from the Ontario government to help pay for the excessive police costs. I will put this on the record and withdraw the bankruptcy statement.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same point to indicate that there is a dispute between the provincial authorities and the municipal authorities relating, I believe, to some overtime costs and statutory payments amounting to $9,000. However, that is a very small amount in comparison with the total budget of the police commission of $9.2 million.
While I am on my feet, I should like to indicate that indeed in rising I did not wish to demonstrate bravado in response to those of my constituents who have indicated that they wished me to support capital punishment. I would simply like to say that I have received correspondence from both sides, from those who wanted me to support capital punishment and from those who wished me to support the bill now before the House. I have dealt with them both on the same basis. I indicated to them that in accordance with parliamentary tradition my responsibility is to exercise my judgment in accordance with my conscience. If we agree that there is to be a free vote on this bill in the absence of whips, which means that hon. members will vote in accordance with their consciences freely and openly, then that is the way in which I intend to vote.


Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Mr. Speaker, I will not say in my opening remarks that it is a pleasure to be able to speak today on Bill C-84. It has never been a pleasure for me to rise in this House and discuss the pros and cons of the death penalty. However, I feel now as I have always felt that it is my responsibility to take part in these debates. It is my responsibility as a member of parliament, my responsibility to my constituents, and my responsibility to myself as a concerned Canadian.
I call again on the government to reinstate the death penalty for premeditated murders. I do so in the full knowledge that it is the will of the great majority of Canadians that we take drastic and serious measures to protect them from those people in our society who would take the life of another. I ask for the reinstatement of the death penalty for capital murder not because I have a low regard for life, but rather because I have such a high regard for life. I believe sincerely that we in the House
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have a higher responsibility to the law abiding citizens of Canada than to those who take the law in their own hands.
Our responsibility is all the greater in that we cannot pass the buck along to someone else, and wipe our hands of the unpleasant duty of making a firm decision on this matter. The buck stops right here. It is an awesome responsibility to have to assume the responsibility of deciding whether or not a person convicted of deliberate, premeditated murder, should pay with his or her own life. I have never pretended that it is easy to say simply that someone or other must die by order of a court, and ultimately by order of the parliament of Canada.
We can make it easy though, if we want to, Mr. Speaker; we can say that state-ordered executions are murders in themselves, and pass the buck along to our courts, our prison system, our parole boards and along to the sociologists and criminologists and the rest of the bleeding hearts. We can wash our hands of this matter easily enough, and in fact the cabinet has been doing just that since the majority of members in this House decided several years ago to adopt this government's compromise solution to the problem of capital punishment. We decided that only murderers of policemen or prison guards should suffer the death penalty, but although several death penalties have been imposed by our courts under that law, not a single penalty has been carried out. The cabinet has commuted every sentence imposed during that period.
I said that we could make it easy on ourselves by passing along the responsibility for making a decision on capital punishment, Mr. Speaker, but that is not the same as saying that we have a moral right to do so. We know that no one else will make a decision, even if we were able to give them the authority. We know that everyone else, except our courts, takes the easy way out by adopting the holier-than-thou position of opposing capital punishment on moral grounds. This great liberal morality does not extend to the victims of murderers, however; it extends only to the murderers, as though they suddenly become a part of some higher civilization, or a cult of people who are above the law and above the condemnation of the very society against which they have raised their hand.
I maintain that we cannot avoid the moral responsibility before us any longer, Mr. Speaker. We must make a decision without too much delay that we will not and cannot look upon deliberate and premeditated murder as anything but what it is. Wilful murder and treason against one's own country are capital crimes. The argument that a civilized and sophisticated society does not condone state-ordered executions does not hold water. As the member for Frontenac-Lennox and Addington (Mr. Alkenbrack) pointed out'a few days ago in this House, a state that maintains a judiciary like ours, with its avenues of appeal and our reverence for justice, cannot commit murder.
Some people have used the argument that the state commits murder if it sentences its own citizens to death for capital crimes, but I consider that argument to be feeble and baseless. I consider it to be a cop-out. If the time comes when we consider murder and treason to be less than capital crimes, then I think that our days as a free and democratic country are numbered. When we decide that we do not want to fight back, that we do not consider it important to win the war that is being waged within our
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country between the law abiding and the lawless, then this great country of ours from that time on will be less than great.
When we are elected to parliament, those who vote for us must surely believe that we are capable and competent, and that we have the courage to make decisions and stick by them, no matter how distasteful those decisions might be to us personally. Not all of the decisions that we make here can be entirely to our liking. The alternatives to avoiding unpleasant decisions usually are more unpleasant in the long haul, and this is one of the reasons I insist that capital crimes in our society must carry the death penalty. The alternative that has been proposed by the government, 25 years in prison, has already incurred the wrath of the do-gooders and the social experts. They say that this is just as inhuman and inhumane as the death penalty. They wonder out loud how any civilized society could even think of caging up one of its own citizens for 25 years. Of course, Mr. Speaker, none of these experts and bleeding hearts propose any credible alternatives to the death penalty, or to the longer prison sentence. The best they can do is to condemn our proposals, and renounce our decisions.
When this House adopted the government's compromise solution to the question of capital punishment, it was a trade-off. In place of abolition we adopted selective capital punishment for murderers of policemen and prison guards. This presumably satisfied the abolitionists and the reten-tionists as well. The abolitionists could feel satisfied that the majority of murderers would escape the noose, and that in the cases where the death penalty applied, there was always the possibility that the cabinet would commute the sentences of convicted murderers of police officers. They had everything going for them, including a justice minister who was a public-avowed abolitionist.
On the other hand, the retentionists believed that the government would live up to the mandate of parliament. We believed that the government would honour their own commitment to execute convicted murderers of policemen and prison guards in exchange for this limited application of capital punishment. The fact is that they did not live up to their mandate from parliament, and they did not honour their own commitment. We have de facto abolition of capital punishment, and this speaks louder than anything else I can think of against the conscience of this government.
The trade off did not work, except to get the Minister of Justice (Mr. Basford) and the Solicitor General (Mr. All-mand) off the hook. I have always maintained that we do not have a moral right to engage in trade offs on an issue as important to our society as capital punishment. We have a moral responsibility to face this issue head on, and if we are called to make an unpleasant decision or if we are called upon to decide that persons convicted of a deliberate murder should pay with their own lives, then we must do that and live with our decision. It would take a lot more courage to do that than just to pass the buck along, but I hope that we possess that much courage.
During the years that the capital punishment issue has been before parliament many members have suggested
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that this is a matter for the people of our country to settle by way of a national referendum, and I am one who believes that this is the only way it can be settled once and for all. In a survey conducted recently by the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association 55,282 people responded that the issue of capital punishment should be decided by a national vote, while only 3,444 felt that it should be decided in a forum such as the House of Commons. In this survey 55,374 people said they believed that capital punishment should be applied in the case of anyone convicted of the murder of any citizen during the commission of a crime. I would take this a step further and say that the act of premeditated murder is the crime which is being committed, and so I cannot distinguish between this premeditated murder and a murder committed during another type of crime.
The hon. member for Provencher (Mr. Epp) pointed out in his remarks on Bill C-84 that the abolitionists are playing down the overwhelming public support for capital punishment. The abolitionists say that we should not be influenced by the opinion polls which have been conducted on this subject around the country by various groups and agencies. If the polls were to show that the majority of Canadians were opposed to capital punishment, we would see and hear an awful lot of statistics from the abolitionists. However, they and we know that the polls show that anywhere from 75 per cent to 95 per cent of Canadians want to return to capital punishment, and the majority of them want a return to capital punishment for all premeditated murder.
The survey conducted by the Metropolitan Toronto Police Association indicates that 87.6 per cent of the 68,745 people responding to the poll favour a return to the death penalty. In my own riding of Victoria-Haliburton, of the people who contacted me on this subject, 95.66 per cent were in favour of retaining the death penalty for the crime of murder. They are concerned about the alarming rise in violent crime in Canada today. These people are concerned about the fact that the murder rate in Canada has doubled in the past ten years, and that is the actual rate per 100,000 people, as noted by the hon. member for Provencher.
The government has only itself to blame for the present public demands that we reinstate the death penalty for all types of premeditated murder. This government was given a mandate by parliament ten years ago, and this was reaffirmed four years ago. That mandate was about as simple and straightforward as a mandate could be. It called for the death penalty for murderers of police officers and prison officials, but as has been pointed out over and over again in these debates, not one convicted murderer of a policeman or prison guard has been executed.
In every speech I have made on this subject I have asked why there are so many people in our society, in the government and in the private sector who rush to the defence of murderers, while the victims of those murderers are ignored, forgotten and in most cases hardly even given a thought. I agree with those who say that executing a murderer will not bring his victim back to life, but I am convinced that it would serve notice on others who might plan to commit murders that the price is high, too high to make it worth the chance of being caught. I am one of

those who feels that the death penalty would be a deterrent to premeditated murder.
I must add my voice to those who ask where our society is going. I join the chorus of those who ask how we could devote so much time and effort to securing the comfort and wellbeing of those convicted of murder and other violent crimes. It is obvious from the volume of mail which all members of parliament are receiving on this subject that the Canadian people are concerned about the kind of society this government is creating in Canada, and it is just as obvious that the great majority of Canadians are not prepared to accept that kind of society.
Much has been said about the manner in which the government should execute murderers, and I know that many people feel uncomfortable about even discussing methods of implementing the death penalty. I share that feeling to some extent, but I do not allow it to influence my thinking on the necessity for applying the death penalty. If anyone has such strong feelings about the inhumanity of hanging, then let us establish first of all that the death penalty will be retained and then seek an alternative to hanging as the method of applying the penalty.
I would like to say a few words about the study commissioned by the Solicitor General on capital punishment. Judging by the negative results the minister obtained from the report on that study, I suggest that the minister would like to forget the report. However, the fact is that the minister did commission a known abolitionist criminologist, a person who presumably came to Canada from Egypt and who quite obviously does not know very much about Canadians to make this study. This criminologist, Ezzat Fattah, who now teaches at Simon Fraser University, was apparently quite upset to learn that his own survey revealed that 70 per cent to 80 per cent of Canadians favour a return to the death penalty for all types of murder.
Mr. Fattah then proceeded to write in his report that these people are vindictive, bloodthirsty, unforgiving, uneducated, insecure, ignorant and harbouring right wing political sentiments. He had other unpleasant things to say about Canadians who feel that those who commit brutal and vicious premeditated murder should pay with their own lives. Mr. Fattah's bias destroys any credibility and any value his report might have had, and I simply put it down as a disgusting spectacle. I must add that I am appalled that the Solicitor General would associate his name and his high office with the report.
By way of contrast I would like to read into the record a few comments which I have received from constituents. A doctor whose son was killed by one of the participants in a fight wrote me a letter which will stick in my mind for as long as I live. The son was an innocent victim, was, in fact, almost a block away from where the fight was going on and was struck by a bullet meant for someone else. The doctor was on duty at his hospital and when his son was brought in hon. members can just imagine his shock at seeing that it was his son realizing that he did not stand any chance of surviving the gunshot wound. The son died in his father's arms, and it is very likely that the murderer will be back on the streets before we resolve this issue of capital punishment. The doctor said in his letter that he was afraid that many hon. members would vote on Bill C-84 according to their own consciences rather than
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according to the consciences of the thousands of Canadians in their ridings.
Another letter, signed by 12 responsible and respected constituents, states that opinion polls indicate that the vast majority of Canadians want a return to capital punishment for capital murder as a deterrent to the rise in terrorism and murder. Another writer says that Canadians are not motivated by a wish for revenge when they demand the return of the death penalty, but rather because they realize that a law is only as strong as the penalty prescribed and imposed for infractions of that law. Still another writes: "I wonder how the Solicitor General would feel about coddling murderers if some of his own kin were murdered."
In conclusion, I would like to point out that there is a very great concern in our country that murder will become a status symbol among criminals if we continue to allow murderers to escape the consequences of their actions. As we lessen the severity of the penalties for violent crimes, and especially murder, the commission of murder is not the risky business that it ought to be. I am concerned about the evidence that already exists that cop killers are considered peers among the criminal fraternity. It is a sad commentary upon our government when it becomes a symbol of status in a segment of our society to be convicted of beating up a policeman, or even murdering a policeman.
We can remove this status symbol through the simple expedient of executing these people. It would not take more than one or two executions to eliminate this cancer from the side of our society. I say to this government that, while it would be an extreme measure, we cannot do any less than that if we are to live up to the mandate that we have been given by the people of Canada, a mandate from parliament is a mandate from the people. We cannot ignore them.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the subject of capital punishment with mixed feelings. Even as a freshman member of this House I recognize that this subject has been debated by more members of this chamber than any other subject. It would seem from this that there is nothing left to be said; that any avoidable repetition is thereby also a waste of the valuable time and energy of members of this House. There are two reasons at least, however, why I feel compelled to contribute to this debate.
First, the nature of the subject is such that all of us are urged on by the sobering effect of its dimensions, as well as the strength of our convictions, to make personal representations. In this debate more than any other we recognize again that "no man is an island unto himself" and as we continue in this debate we become subtly aware that to some measure at least we are talking about ourselves as we recognize the possibilities for violence within ourselves. Perhaps that helps to explain why every thinking and feeling member of society yearns for a time when capital punishment will be no more. All of us cling to immortality and none of us embraces the prospect of death; therefore when someone else dies a part of me also dies. So,
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because I am inextricably joined to the subject I must participate in its discussion.
The second reason I entered the debate rests in the fact that I believe a number of arguments favouring the abolition of the death penalty have been based on false arguments or a false premise. One argument, which on the surface seems indisputable, is the fact that most convicted murderers come from the lower half of the social economic scale. Statistics would support this. It is an argument of inequality in our system of jurisprudence. There is no doubt that the rich can have legal counsel which is unavailable to the poor. There is no doubt, in my mind at least, that with the influence of money on the side of the accused he may be freed by means of trickery or by means of minor technicalities. In all too many cases legal counsel is just as interested, if not more so, in the legal fees as in justice. In this way justice becomes not so much blind as blindfolded. Caught in the act of winking, it sees only one guilty party and not the other.
But this argument is directed to the system, not the penalty. Do we take away or reduce the penalty for embezzlement because a few have been sharp enough never to get caught or, when caught, get off on a technicality? No, Mr. Speaker, if that argument, the argument of reducing the penalty because of inequality before the law, were applied to every level of criminal justice, there would be chaos in our entire system of jurisprudence. And, furthermore, it would remove the necessary incentives to remove those inequalities.
What the government needs to do, Mr. Speaker, is to make sure that in our courts no one will have special advantages. Penalties must be based as much as possible on rightness and on justice, not on the identifiable and gross inadequacies of the system which we could improve if only we had the moral courage to do so. And it does no justice to logic to seduce the debate by talking of the wrongness of the penalties when all the while we are talking of the wrongness of the system.
Another argument which has been voiced here is that there is always the possibility that an innocent person will be convicted. We cannot take such a charge lightly; it has happened within our lifetime, although the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) says it has not happened in Canada in the past several decades. But, Mr. Speaker, we must keep in mind that the present law carries the death penalty only for those convicted of killing police officers or prison workers while in the line of duty. We are no longer talking about the death penalty for all murderers. We are talking about murders which take place under completely different conditions from former years, and about the kind of crime that completely rules out a conviction based solely on circumstantial evidence. The argument that innocent people might be convicted was no doubt valid at one time, but we can no longer accept that argument with the narrow terms of reference in the act now.
A third argument voiced frequently is that capital punishment is uncivilized and a holdover from a more barbarian age. Now to begin with, Mr. Speaker, that argument has an element of psychological blackmail in it. No one wants to be thought of as barbarian; all of us want to be, and want to be seen as, enlightened. So anyone with any kind
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of self-esteem will shrink from any kind of belief or practice which could be labelled as barbaric.
But even those who argue that the practice of capital punishment is uncivilized would probably agree that the two most prominent characteristics of a civilized society are a pervasive sense of humanity and a sense of order. Historically, the sense of humanity in a civilized society could probably best be described as the "Good Samaritan" spirit. It is one of those curious ironies, however, that that particular story places no emphasis at all on the criminal. As a matter of fact, in that story the criminals were long gone-they got away and no attention was paid to them. Should we infer from that that we ought not to pay attention to the criminals? Hardly. The point of the story is that the Samaritan, considered a barbarian by his sophisticated neighbours, gave his total attention to the plight of the victim and his rehabilitation. And to this day, Mr. Speaker, the so-called primitive people of this world could often teach us something of humanity by the way that they care for the victims of distress.
We are barbarians, Mr. Speaker, not when we have a law calling for capital punishment; we are barbarians when we do so little for the victims of violent crimes. Where is the far-reaching legislation for the rehabilitation of the victims of rape, or the familites of those that have been murdered?
There is a man in my riding who was mauled by a bear which was attacking his fiancee. He saved her life but became permanently disfigured. They have spent all of their savings to pay for plastic surgery and now they have no more; but he needs more surgery. I have asked the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) for some help but have been refused. Meanwhile, there are hundreds of convicted criminals who are given every possible opportunity to appeal, at public expense, if necessary. And we continue to open rights of appeal. But what about their victims and others such as the one I have just mentioned. Do they even get scant attention? Perhaps the most appropriate opprobrium here is "These things ought ye to have done and not to have left the other undone". The Minister of National Health and Welfare will vote against capital punishment, probably because he things it is barbaric. I suggest to him that it is not the death penalty that is barbaric, but our lack of compassion for the abused in our society.
A young RCMP officer in my riding was shot several years ago. He was to have been married in a week or two. What about his fiancee who has to reconstruct an entirely new life? What about the mother of two small children here in Ottawa whose husband and the father of the children was killed in the line of duty? How do we measure the heartache and loneliness, the unanswered questions, the shattered relationships and dreams? Have we become so blindly passionate in our pursuit of justice for the criminal that we have at the same time forgotten the pursuit of equity? Somehow, we seem to have come to the place where we feel that, since we cannot measure intangible and personal anguish caused by crime and codify it accurately by statute, there is, therefore, nothing we can do. It is with this casual glance at equity that our barbarism really becomes glaringly obvious. No, Mr. Speaker, it is not our call for the death penalty that makes us uncivilized

but, rather, the disproportionate attention given to the deliberate murderer, in relation to what we give his victim, that exposes our latent barbarism.
The second characteristic of a civilized society is a desire, even demand, for crder. It does not matter on what basis you become an apologist for government; it is not long until you appeal to natural law. I will have more to say on this later, but suffice it to say here that our restless search for order has caused us to give authority to governments to instigate laws that will preserve order as much as possible.
Now, the most fundamental right I have is the right to live unmolested and undisturbed. Murder is the ultimate violation of that right; it is anarchy, the annihilation of order. The murder of police officers or prison guards is deliberate rebellion against the right of the government to establish and to maintain order. In light of these two arguments involving the inadequate, and often misplaced investment of compassion and the destruction of order, how can we say that to retain capital punishment is to return to an uncivilized state? The fact is, when we reject capital punishment we, in the most real and tangible way, develop a more subtle barbarian condition.
A fourth reason frequently given in rejection of capital punishment is that it is not a deterrent. The argument is usually based on statistics and is probably the most specious of all the arguments, if for no other reason than that the argument of statistics is the most abused and hackneyed of all. Presumably, if statistics clearly and unequivocally proved that capital punishment was, in fact, a deterrent, the abolitionists would become supporters of capital punishment. Hardly! They know that the argument of statistics is, of all tools, most malleable, capable of being twisted to any design that is needed. But beyond that, the whole argument of deterrence has become a totally utilitarian one, in a very pragmatic sense. If something is visibly useful, use it. If not immediately and visibly useful, reject it. It is for this reason that statistics become so vital to the argument of the abolitionist. Statistics are supposed to establish value on the basis of concrete and irrefutable data.
I suggest that pragmatic arguments have been functional and useful in supporting technological advance on the American frontier. At that time pragmatism became popular. But it is hardly fair to apply philosophical arguments in support of technological advance to a moral question, and to use the argument of pragmatism in moral issues. It is the utilitarian philosophy which ushered in the whole array of arguments attempting to justify relative morality and situational ethics. I read, recently, a statement of a man justifying situational ethics by saying that there are times when it is much kinder to tell a white lie than to tell the truth. It sounds ever so sweet and understanding until you realize that if it ever happened to you, you would feel humiliated and embarrassed when you realized someone else's attitude of condescension toward you.
But it is much worse than that. All of us need reference points to guide us in life. We need absolutes. This is where the intangible dimensions of the utility of the law come in. If the reference points are continually shifting, we become
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totally lost in our direction in life. Imagine, if you will, a ship setting out on a journey across the Atlantic. The captain wants to know where he is, so he measures his position by another ship, or by an iceberg or any other floating object. How absurd! He may get away with it as far as any accident is concerned. He may never flounder or shipwreck. But he will never know where he is, and he most certainly will not end up where he had planned to go. That is the way it is when we guide our lives by situational ethics.
That, too, Mr. Speaker, is the way it is with moral issues. If we are going to know where we are going, we must have some fixed reference points to let us know where we are. We need a law to warn us, long before we approach the danger zone, when we are headed for trouble. It is not simply a question of whether the death penalty has made an impending murderer stop to think of the consequences before he commits a capital crime. It is just as much a matter of a well-defined law, with its well-defined implementation, saying to every one of us, "This far, and no farther." Who knows how many people have stopped earlier in a life of crime because they began to realize what the ultimate penalties would be. Statistics will never measure that. It is easy enough to find out how many people have been killed by speeding, but we will never know how many have been saved because the speed limit sign or the radar trap was there. We will never know where we are going if we, at the same time, do not know how we are going to get there.
Another point that has been made frequently is that capital punishment is murder and that you cannot correct one murder by committing another one. Mr. Speaker, that is the kind of oversimplification that, again, is supposed to intimidate the retentionist and frighten him from becoming involved with so-called legal murder. Usually, those who argue this quote one of the Ten Commandments which says, "Thou shalt not kill."
In every other issue, Mr. Speaker, we are encouraged to eschew the oversimplified generalization. It is no credit to any intelligent, thinking person when he participates in thoughtless repetition of any oversimplification. Man simply is not satisfied with that, which is why we have built universities and why the best universities inevitably have the best libraries. The libraries are one of the most important elements of any place of learning. It is no coincidence that the best libraries are those that have the most original manuscripts. If we are going to examine any statement, we must begin with what it says. To be sure of that, we must go back as far as we can to the original, to make sure that the statement is accurate.
When we check the earliest manuscripts of the Ten Commandments, we find that it does not say, "Thou shalt not kill"-that is inaccurate. It actually says, "Thou shalt not commit murder." Immediately, someone says, "That's the same thing." No, it is not. It cannot be. Linguists tell us that it is impossible for two words to mean exactly the same thing. If that ever happened, one would become redundant and pass into oblivion. Since both words have been with us since the beginning of time, there must be a difference between them. And there is. All killing is not murder, any more than all sexual intercourse is rape. Rape is the violent rejection of, and rebellion against, the insti-
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tution of marriage. It is the rejection of order, and there is not a culture in the world that tolerates it. Murder is the rejection of order at an even more intense level. As I said previously, it is rebellion against the right of the state to impose and to maintain order. Capital punishment is not murder but, rather, the restoration of order.
Justice, historically, Mr. Speaker, has been pictured as a lady seated and holding a pair of balance-scales in exact equilibrium. Murder does violence to that equilibrium and throws it off balance. The death penalty restores the equilibrium and gives society the assurance that, to a degree at least, harmony and balance will be restored to our everyday lives. To illustrate further, frontier justice sometimes was enacted by way of a lynch mob. It may well be that the lynch mob condemned the guilty party; but that kind of retribution disturbs the balance-scales almost as much as when the guilty go free. It is the function of the state to deal in a non-emotional, non-vindictive way by basing convictions on fact and law and thereby restoring equilibrium to the balance-scales of justice in society.
There are some members among us who have said that they must vote by their conscience and this may mean that they will have to vote against the majority wishes of their riding. Who could argue against the right to vote by conscience? I would simply point out, however, that conscience, by itself, is not a dependable faculty. Our conscience depends, for its expression, completely and totally on the information fed into it. It is only an accurate and sensitive reflector of all we have learned about moral values. To illustrate, mothers in India for centuries threw the babies they loved into the Ganges River. They did it with the highest of motives because their conscience told them to. Meanwhile, mothers in other countries protected their babies from drowning, sometimes at the cost of their own lives. Again, for conscience sake. We must all vote according to our conscience; but we also owe it to ourselves to examine the reasons our conscience convinced us of a decision.
However, to vote against the wishes of the majority of the constituency is another matter. A number of speakers have justified this by quoting Edmund Burke who felt he had to do that. Edmund Burke, however, does not provide very good refuge in this case. He lived just after the high point of the age of rationalism, the time when man seemed to have an almost unshakable faith in the powers of reason. One of the spin-offs of that age was a very elitist attitude, on the part of leaders, toward the common people. For example, it led Burke to support the American revolution as an act of independence, but oppose the French revolution because it was an uprising of the commoners against the aristocracy.
The American ideal of this spirit was Thomas Jefferson, Burke's contemporary. Jeffersonian democracy is the hallmark of all that is good in a free society. But I would remind hon. members that while Jefferson championed the popular franchise, he also designed the electoral college. Why? Because he wanted all men to be free to vote, but he did not trust the masses to elect a president. So they elected an elector, one a little more sophisticated than the rabble, who could be trusted to elect the president. You see, both Jefferson and Burke were, in a real sense, elitists.

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Hon. members, you had better not hide behind Burke when you vote against your riding, unless you wish to be seen as an elitist, far removed from the people you represent.
I took particular note of the remarks yesterday by the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Horner). He pointed out that as countries move more and more to a centralized government, there is a corresponding rise in the crime rate. At first there would seem to be no relationship between the two, but on closer examination there may well be. We do know, for example, that as governments become more centralized, by doing so they take away opportunities for individual decision-making. Since the ability to make decisions is one of our most human faculties, there is an irrepressible desire to make choices, even at the risk of making wrong ones. However, when those choices are taken from us, the process of dehumanization sets in. That, in turn, increases the frustration level for all citizens and the larger possibility of criminal activity. Could it be that the hon. member for Crowfoot is right; that the government's recurring determination to bring in capital punishment stems from an overriding guilt complex for dehumanizing man, perhaps helping to drive man to a life of crime, and now cannot therefore bring itself to punish man for becoming what the government itself has made him?
Related to this is another factor, however. Governments, by their very nature, devote their attention to material solutions of man. This is their mandate. However, as they do this they leave the growing impression that those are the only issues that matter. It is the growth of materialism. It begins with ignoring spiritual dimensions of man, and ends with denying spiritual dimensions in him. It seems to me that there is another correlation which may have been overlooked. There appears to be a strong correlation between the rising demand for abolition of the death penalty and a steady decline in a strong belief in immortality. What do they have to do with each other? Simply this: if you believe that all we have is here right now, if there is no more after this, then it follows that you must squeeze out every available minute in this that you can. It follows, also that if you are committed to this materialistic view, the worst crime you could commit would be to take away even a part of the remnant of time left to a criminal. That is what was at the heart of the Greek and Roman tragedies- not that a person might die in the prime of life, but that he would die and go into the black mystery of the beyond and no one would know where he was. It seems that our society has come almost full circle to that one.
Members may call me a medievalist if they wish, but I am here saying that there is more than just this life, that this life is just a preparation for, and in anticipation of, the life to come. The pronouncement of the death penalty may be the last chance the convicted murderer has to learn something about finality; to learn, without any equivocation, that there are inexorable consequences to our actions which we cannot escape. All our lives we spend looking for ways out. This is the one time we have to look ourselves squarely in the face, with no side-glances.
The former solicitor general said that religious convictions are not valid justification for retention of the death penalty. I wonder, would he accept religious convictions for building a hospital, or a school, or for the composition of some of our great music, or the design of great architec-

ture, or art? I am not sure whether he is being a total materialist and would reject religious convictions on all grounds, or whether he seriously wants to isolate them only from this issue. Does he want only the pleasant and attractive elements of religious faith, and not recognize the features that are unattractive for him? It does not work that way. The evil that we see is not the effect of our faith, but the consequences of our behaviour. It is our religious faith that makes us confront that behaviour.
Again, the former solicitor general's statement is symptomatic of another problem we must face, the problem of our identity. There is no doubt that in private life we get ourselves into a pack of trouble when we try to deny our past, when we try to pretend we do not have the background we do. That is the way to mental illness, to a life of pretence, living in a world of illusions. Mental health involves a glad acceptance of who we are, our appearance as well as our family backgrounds. The same holds true on a national scale. We must, and I know we do, embrace our history, appreciate it, and then we can enjoy, as well as understand, our present.
I have, as I know all other members have, been thinking about this debate for many months. Several weeks ago, as I walked toward the parliament buildings, I saw inscriptions above the windows on three of the sides of the peace tower. Above the front entrance I read, "Give the King thy judgements, O Lord, and thy righteousness unto the King's son". On the one side entrance I read, "Where there is no vision the people perish", and on the other, "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea".
These are quotations from the Bible. Our founding fathers made certain that they would be eternally chiselled into our history. To deny our past is to deny our identity. One of the great and overriding problems we face as a nation is the fact that absolutes were accepted as a fact of life when our nation was founded. That concept was in the air and was part of a spontaneous thought-form which has become part of the fabric of the British North America Act. Since that time, however, and as John Donne once said, "The new philosophy calls all in doubt". The philosophies of relativism and existentialism deny the existence of any absolutes.
So we are in a state of constant ambivalence, living with a document based on one set of suppositions but debating legislation within the framework of that document from an entirely different philosophical base. That ambivalence leads us along a certain course of madness. We, as a nation, will sooner or later have to decide who we are, what kind of a people we want to be. Let us call a spade a spade and go on from there.
One of the premises on which the present bill is based is the suggestion that we are on a steady path toward an improved civilization, that things are getting better and better, and all we need is a little more time, a little more education, till we come to the great day when violent crime will be on the decline and this kind of a debate would be totally anachronistic. That, Mr. Speaker, is a delusion. It used to be the preachers who were the prophets of gloom and the announcers of Armageddon. Now, they are no
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longer alone. The scientists, as well as others, are now the leaders. Let me quote William Butler Yeats:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
the blood-dimmed tide is loosed. And everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack of all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.
That was said 40 years ago. Since then we have seen the Second World War, Korea, Viet Nam, four Middle East wars, Lebanon, Biafra, Bangla Desh, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Berlin wall. We have seen assassinations, terror-, ism, indiscriminate murder. On the local level, there is an increase in crime, murder and flaunting of the law and growing civilian fears. Surely, no one can say we are getting better.
A call for the death penalty is not an emotional cry for vengeance. It is, rather, a call for the self-preservation of the human race. All of us need boundaries for our behaviour. To institute abolition of the death penalty for calculated and premeditated murder is to remove those boundaries, to give the murderer an indefinite "maybe". Capital punishment is a clear statement to all of us, wherever we are, that says, "This far, and no farther".


Mr. Dean Whiteway (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, this is a serious debate that demands sober judgment. It has to do with life and death, justice and mercy, love and retribution, peace, orderliness, condemnation of evil, preservation of the state and the triumph of right. I have been impressed with the wisdom and the in-depth understanding that other members in debating this issue have shown. I have not always agreed with the premises or with the conclusions, and in some cases have disagreed with both; but for the most part it has been a high-level debate. The abolitionists have not been accused of being misguided do-gooders, and the retentionists for the most part have not been accused of being barbaric, sadistic or savage.
I intend, in the few minutes allotted to me, to put forth my own case, my own argument, not necessarily to rebut any particular member's point of view, but in doing so to let the debate fall where it may. In the spring-summer 1975 issue of Inkhorn was a quote that I think was very apropos to my remarks in this debate today. It is as follows:
Anyone with a facile pen and an axe to grind can write compellingly and exert much appeal. And since axe-grinding will always produce sparks, undiscerning readers will see only the flash of indignation.
In regard to this particular issue, as a lawmaker I must consider the fundamental task of government. Generally stated, the task of government is to uphold justice and to reinforce the freedoms of man; that is, of the body politic. It is important, however, to look at the historic perspective of other scholars and the contribution that they have made in dealing with the question: What is the purpose and the task of government? Since time will not allow me to make an exhaustive review of what other scholars have said, I am going to limit my comments to quotations from John Locke, Jefferson, Mill and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. John Locke, in his "Two Treaties of Government", has this to say:
And that all men may be restrained from invading others' rights, and from doing hurt to one another, and the law of Nature be observed,
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which willeth the peace and preservation of all mankind, the execution of the law of Nature is in that state put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree as may hinder its violation. For the law of Nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world, be in vain if there were nobody that in the state of Nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders-
Also, in the same essay John Locke has this to say:
In transgressing the law of Nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity . ..
By the same reason may a man in the state of Nature punish the lesser breaches of that law, it will, perhaps, be demanded, with death? I answer: Each transgression may be punished to that degree, and with so much severity, as will suffice to make it an ill bargain to the offender, give him cause to repent, and terrify others from doing the like.
According to Locke, wherever law ends, tyranny begins. My last quotation from John Locke in his "Two Treatises of Government" is this:
For laws not being made for themselves, but to be, by their execution, the bonds of the society to keep every part of the body politic in its due place and function; when that totally ceases, the government visibly ceases, and the people become a confused multitude without order or connection. Where there is no longer the administration of justice for the securing of men's rights, nor any remaining power within the community to direct the force, or provide for the necessities of the public, there certainly is no government left.
George Washington had this to say:
Towards the preservation of your Government, and the permanency of your present happy state, it is requisite, not only that you steadily discountenance irregular opposition to its acknowledged authority, but also that you resist with care the spirit of innovation upon its principles.
He also said:
And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.
I should also like to quote John Stuart Mill. I had occasion last Friday to quote John Stuart Mill, and unless some hon. members think that I am a disciple of John Stuart Mill, let me say it was coincidence of topic that led me to quote him rather than my discipleship to his theories. He has had this to say:
That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.
That quotation is taken from his 1859 essay on liberty. In speaking of representative government, John Stuart Mill pointed out that one of the most positive evils of the representative system is the danger that it may be influenced by an interest that is not identical with the general welfare of the community. Abraham Lincoln, in his second inaugural address, quoted the Bible as follows:
Woe unto the world because of offenses! For it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.
I now want to quote from a book that I will be referring to often in this debate. It has been a good source of information to me. It is a book called, "The Bible and the Life of the Christian". This is what that has to say in respect of the purpose of government:
In Psalm 119 we are instructed that all things abide today according to the ordinances of the Creator (Psalm 119:89-91). There is nothing that is not taken up into that stream of power which preserves the whole world from collapse. Sin cannot halt God's providence nor arrest His omnipotence. Generations of men come and go, fill their time with

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their works and their sin, and are called to account. God continually causes new creatures to appear. He prevents the total chaos and destruction that proceeds from the corruption of sin, because He is leading the world and humanity on to the consummation of His counsel. In this providential work of preserving and governing, the institution of the office of government is also included. Such an office is indispensable if there is to be a human society where justice and order still prevail and the Church is enabled to "lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and gravity".
So, from these quotations I believe there is a commonality among the writers, and certainly not inconsistent with the principle of the scriptures, that it is the purpose of government to uphold justice and to reinforce the freedoms of man, that is, the freedom generally found in the body politic.
Studies of psychology and sociology have produced increased knowledge of human behaviour, resulting in mitigation of the death penalty. Modern theories of penology have questioned the social utility of capital punishment. The result has been that the death penalty is almost always debated in a judicial and psychosociological sense. However, it is ultimately a moral and theological question. Because it is a moral and theological question, I would discuss the mandate of government from the biblical perspective; that is to say, from the Christian ethic.
Is the Christian perspective relevant today and for this debate? By the mere fact that this is a moral question, the Christian ethic is certainly relevant in light of the basis of our western society, and, in fact, this government and this parliamentary system here in Canada. If God is, and if Christ lived, died and rose again in a redemptive way-and I believe so-then I have to reject Hegel's cyclic history and that postulation that history moves as formation of a thesis and anti-thesis which evolves into a new synthesis which becomes the thesis or accepted ideas, and you have a recurring cycle. I have to reject that, sir, and I have to reject, as well, those naturalists who believe that world history is not directed, that human history simply unfolds as it should and without regard to any exterior force or directed force.
Rather than those two, sir, I accept the lineal history idea, the truth that God is directing the final destination of history. I do not wish to quarrel with either the Calvinists or the Armenians, that those who believe that God works only as the free will exists within mankind, or the other side, the Calvinists who believe that God has preordained and has, in essence, programmed both man and the world. But it is suffice to say that notwithstanding the correctness or the applicability of either of those two schools of thought in theology, it is nevertheless therefore true that theology and God have something to say today, because God in the final analysis is directing the destination of history.
So it is important to look, when we are speaking of Christian ethic, at both the Old Testament and the New Testament, because the teaching of the scriptures, and because capital punishment is a moral issue, is not only relevant but constitutes the centricity of the issue. In times past there have been Christian scholars who have looked and studied and written about the principles of the scriptures and how they apply to human activity. One of those, Thomas Aquinas, in his book "Summa Theologica", along with other early Christian writers such as Tertullian and

Athenagoras, clearly defends the right of the state in regard to capital punishment. Thomas Aquinas likens the malfactor to a limb of the body filled with gangrene. He suggests that amputation, or execution, is necessary for the good of the whole body, or the whole society. Aquinas says; If a man be dangerous and infectious to the community on account of some sins, it is praiseworthy and advantageous that he be killed in order to safeguard the common good.
I could go on quoting other earlier writers of the Christian church, but probably the test of time and the test of the scriptures is in looking directly at the teachings of the Old Testament and seeing what in fact they have to say in relation to either the functions of government and, more particularly, the duty of government in respect of capital punishment. I refer to the Old Testament judicial procedure. For the most part in this debate, when I have heard other members pontificate on the Old Testament admonitions toward the issues, the principles have been misapplied and misunderstood. There were five characteristics of the Hebrew, Mosaic law in relation to capital punishment. It is important to understand these five principles and how they apply to capital punishment if you are going to at all use the decalogue, and particularly the sixth commandment of the Ten Commandments in basing any of your arguments on capital punishment.
In many cases, Hebrew law was superior to our Canadian criminal law. There were five essential parts and considerations in the Old Testament judicial procedure. One was the standard of proof. In our Canadian system we have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt in the conviction of one accused charged with murder. Not so under the Hebrew law. In Hebrew law you had to establish certainty. In Deuteronomy 17:4 it says: "You shall enquire thoroughly". Secondly, as an integral part of Hebrew law it requires the testimony of more than one witness. In the Canadian system, circumstantial evidence, or one single witness in conjunction with circumstantial evidence, can convict. It was not so with Hebrew law. Deuteronomy 19:15 provided: "On evidence of two or three witnesses a matter shall be confirmed".
The test, however, does not indicate precisely what these witnesses must testify to. That is, must they be eyewitnesses to the crime or merely corroborators of the physical evidence? The internal logic of the passages implies to me that eyewitnesses were intended. First it is difficult to think that circumstantial evidence, even if fully corroborated, could often amount to certainty. Second, the administration of the death penalty by stoning was to be begun by having the witnesses cast the first stones (Deut. 17:7); this would be an excellent form of psychological testing to pressure a lying witness to reveal himself at the last moment, before the irreparable act had been accomplished, but would seem unlikely to influence greatly the behaviour of merely corroborative witnesses. Third, the definitions of some crimes require information that only an eyewitness could supply. For example, Numbers 34:16-24 makes a distinction between murder and manslaughter partially on the basis of whether the victim was killed by an object held in the suspect's hand or by an object thrown or dropped. Other than an eyewitness, who could tell?
Third, under Mosaic law the punishment for perjury was execution. In our Canadian penal system if one is found guilty of perjury there is a fine or a term of imprisonment. In Deuteronomy 19:10-19 we read:
If a malicious witness rises up against a man to accuse him of wrongdoing ... then you shall do to him just as he had intended to do to his brother.
June 8, 1976

Fourth, in Hebrew law we find that difficult cases were referred to judicial experts. We read, also, in Deuteronomy 17:18,19
If any case is too difficult for you to decide, between one kind of homicide or another, between one kind of lawsuit or another, and between one kind of assault or another, being cases of dispute in your courts, then you shall arise and go up to the place which the Lord your God chooses. So you shall come to the Levitical priest or the judge who is in office in those days, and you shall inquire of them, and they will declare to you the verdict in the case.
A weakness in our Canadian system is that jurors sometimes do not understand the law well enough to apply the law to the facts at hand, and we arrive from time to time with hung juries which necessitates either a new trial or dropping of the charges. But under Mosaic law the referral to a judicial priest who understood the entire legal distinction between kinds of homicide assault, lawsuits, and so on, necessitated a verdict of guilty or not guilty. Under Mosaic law, presentation to the judge was to take place in a new location to avoid local prejudices. Fifth, under Mosaic law, once a verdict was returned-that is, a verdict of guilty-then the death penalty was mandatory. In Leviticus 27:29 we read:
No prescribed person who may have been set apart among men shall be ransomed: he shall surely be put to death.
In the event that there was a murder of passion and the capital sentence was not to apply, in the testament under Hebrew law there were provided cities of refuge, and a person who was found to have certainly killed, but not on the basis of premeditated or paid murder, was then able to live in the cities of refuge and be free from the wrath of other people. But in our Canadian system, even though the jury and the due process of law have found a person to be guilty of murder, we have cabinet commutation and the whole area of reprieve. So it is very clear that the Hebrew law was much more thorough and, I believe, much more accurate and certainly contained a greater sense of justice and thoroughness than our Canadian law. Perhaps we ought to return to the principles and safeguards that were known and practiced under Mosaic law. Under Mosaic law there were 18 crimes which were punishable by death. I might very quickly go over them. They are as follows: 1, Murder; 2, Accidentally causing death of a pregnant woman or her baby; 3, Killing of a person by a dangerous animal that had killed before, yet was not caged. Both the animal and owner in that case were to be executed; 4, Kidnapping; 5, Rape; 6, Fornication; 7, Adultery; 8, Incest; 9, Homosexuality; 10, Sexual intercourse with animal; 11, Striking a parent; 12, Cursing a parent; 13, Rebelling against a parent; 14, Sorcery, witchcraft; 15, Cursing God; 16, Attempting to lead people to worship other gods; 17, Avenging a death despite acquittal by law. That is the killing of someone who was living in a city of refuge. Then 18, False testimony in murder trial.
Now the question would arise, having established some kind of explanation concerning the nature and characteristics of Hebrew law, are we under the Mosaic law? Notwithstanding the argument put forward by the dispensational-ists, and notwithstanding the freedom we now have in Christ, it nevertheless must be recognized that we are in fact, under the New Testament, freed from all aspects of the Hebrew law except murder, because although murder was part of Hebrew law, it predates Hebrew law. It
Capital Punishment
remains part of the Decalogue which is applicable to individuals and not to the functions and duties of the state.
The problem seems to emerge, in this matter, in discussing the New Testament doctrine: Did Christ replace, that is, fulfil, the law, hence freeing us from the law of Moses unto the law of love or grace? Yes, but Christ did not destroy nor contradict the Mosaic law. As a matter of fact, Christ had come to fulfil the law and not one dot of the law would be changed. The Ten Commandments apply to individual action and responsibility. The responsibility of the state regarding murder predates Hebrew law and, as I have said, is not part of that Hebrew law that was fulfilled by Christ. It remains within the jurisdiction of civil government and not the individual.
Christ replaced, not the role and duties of government but, rather, became the personal or individual mediator or Saviour between the individual man and his god. The functions and responsibilities of government remain. Romans 13 refers to the duties of the government as opposed to the responsibilities of the individual. There is not an inconsistency between the Old and New Testaments in relation to capital punishment. Of all early Christians, Paul surely had the deepest and truest insight into the essential nature of the Christian message. The inspiration of his writings is recognized, for example, by the Apostle Peter in I Peter, chapter 3, verse 16. In Romans 12, we find Paul writing:
Be kindly affectioned one to another in brotherly love ... bless them that persecute you ... recompense to no man evil for evil... overcome evil with good.
But then, again, in the very next chapter, Romans 13, we find Paul saying:
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers-
That is, the government.
-it is there by God's appointment. So those who refuse to obey the laws of the land are refusing to obey God, and punishment will follow. For civil authorities do not frighten those who are doing right, but those who are doing wrong. The government is the agent of God for your good. But, if you do evil, you should be afraid. For the civil authority does not bear and wear the sword for nothing. It is God's agent to execute His punishment and vengeance on the wrongdoer.
So, in Romans 12, the Bible speaks of love, blessing and forgiveness; and in Romans 13, of punishment, vengeance, and capital execution with the sword of government. How are the two sets of principles reconciled? Simply by recognizing that the first set applies to our personal, individual, relationships; that is, in the Decalogue the sixth commandment admonishes us not to kill, and this applies to the individual and not to the duties and responsibilities of the government. The second set applies to the relationships of the civil governments and its citizens. Individually, Christians are required to forgive those who trespass against them. Civically, the government is the agent of God to administer justice among its people. Its first essential duty, as such, is to administer the divine decree concerning the capital punishment of murderers. Originally this was written as early as in the ninth chapter of the Bible, the Gensis, and it is reaffirmed throughout the Bible in both the Old and the New Testaments.

June 8, 1976
Capital Punishment
I have attempted to establish a communality among writers from the Christian and non-Christian perspectives in relation to the duties and functions of government, and I have attempted to show that under the law of Moses it was the function and the duty of the state to carry out the capital sentence in violation of the sixth commandment of the Decalogue. Furthermore, I have attempted to show, by relating that to the New Testament doctrine, Romans 13, that it is not inconsistent with the New Testament in relation to the duties and functions of government to maintain civil order. Because if, in fact, the primary function of the government is to maintain law and order, to prosecute evil and to uphold righteousness and justice, and if capital punishment is a moral question, then we must look at the consistency of the scriptures in both the Old and New Testaments. We cannot deny what is written in Romans, chapter 13, in view of the fact that it is certainly not inconsistent with the Old Testament teachings and the fact that the sixth commandment predated the Hebrew law from which Christ freed us.
So I suppose that the quality of government or civilization has historically been judged by what we do with the poor, the dispossessed and the defenceless. The question is whether their life is worth as much as the lives of those who can find recourse in protection or retribution. I cannot but conclude that the principle of government applies to all and not just to policemen and prison guards. I suggest that justice dictates that the capital sentence must be applied to all those found guilty of premeditated murder or paid murder.
Furthermore, I believe it is sound statesmanship that in considering capital punishment we take into account the concrete reality of today. We must take into account the lifestyles of the people. There is no such thing as static legislation for all times. We must look at the reality of the mandate of the people. What is the real situation confronting the government and the real situation of Canadians today? From the theological point of view, sin abounds, there is lawlessness, murder, rape and wrongdoing of all kinds. That is the reality. Generally, it appears that the will of the people is that the government get tough, a term that is often used here. People want protection against those who would destroy, plunder and murder without regard for the rights, property or life of others.
People are fed-up with the overemphasis on the rights of the convicted. I would point to the remarks made by my colleague, the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock (Mr. Friesen), with reference to the fact that there is overemphasis today on the rights of the convicted as opposed to the responsibilities of the government to the victims. I believe it is irresponsible on the part of the government to disregard those who are victimized. Governments are only addressing themselves to the rights of the convicted. However, the fact must be recognized that those who feel as I do do not lack compassion or love. We have a yearning for justice, as do others; but we simply place our emphasis not only on those who have been victimized, but also on those who are the potential victims, which by and large is the rest of the body politic.
I reject the views of the environmentalists and behaviourists such as B.F. Skinner, who recognize no human

responsibility and who reduce all human action as the mere product of previous experience. They suggest that all that it takes to rehabilitate a person is to modify his behaviour and that, in a sense, it is society that is wrong, not the individual who transgresses the law. I reject that approach which disregards human responsibility. I believe in the biblical position that we are created in the image of God and with the knowledge of good and evil, and that we have the choice to do right or wrong. Because this is a moral question, to discuss capital punishment apart from morality is to miss the point entirely. How should the government react, in light of the reality and the will of the people and in light of the biblical mandate in Romans 13?
Mr. Speaker, the adjournment time is approaching, but I ask for the indulgence of the House to allow me to complete my remarks in a couple of minutes.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: In conclusion, I should like to quote briefly as follows:
The state is clothed with power for the sake of justice. Through God's preserving care the law for created life is still known to us even after the Fall (Romans I and II). In virtue of God's unchangeable Counsel that law has never been revoked. Everything is under the obligating force of the law, and nothing is indifferent. To wish to gain knowledge from the scriptures about the law is not arbitrarily to have the living, divine word at one's command; it is simply the obedience of faith. It is true that the will of God is infinitely wider and deeper than what has been revealed to us, but God's veracity guarantees to us that the revelation permitted us regarding it is trustworthy. When one places love higher than justice one contradicts the Cross of Golgotha where the Lord revealed his love and his justice. Zion is redeemed through justice. It is not even permissible to imagine a tension or opposition between love and justice in God. That would be in conflict with the simplicity of his being. In God love and justice are one. In our time-conditioned (temporal) existence, however, life branches out from the concentrated religious fulness of meaning of the love of Christ into distinct streams in its temporal orders or modes (ways) of being. Thus there is an order for the exercise of justice and also an order for the love of the neighbour. No true love toward our neighbour however is possible without justice (Ps.85:9-13). He who asserts that the maintaining of justice by the government is of a lower order than the love of the neighbour forgets that it is exactly through the existence of justice in society that the love of the neighbour can flourish. In a chaos of injustice and violence the love of the neighbour will be choked to death.
Mr. Speaker, as I live, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way of life, as stated in Ezek 33:11. I want to see a Canada where our people are free from the terror of those who would violate the very freedoms they espouse in their own defence. I want to be part of a government that recognizes and acts upon the will of the people and its Biblical mandate. The very stones cry out for justice. We must maintain and re-establish the death penalty. We must strive for consistency with New Testament Biblical concepts. We have not the liberty to do otherwise.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to the special order passed by the House on Monday June 7, it being one o'clock, I do now leave the Chair until the House resumes its proceedings at two o'clock.
At one o'clock, the House took recess.
June 8, 1976



COMMONS DEBATES AFTER RECESS

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to move a motion under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. The declaration by Canada of a 200-mile fishing limit prompts attention to the provision of surveillance, patrol and rescue capability along Canada's vast coastline. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander):
That this House orders that the government make a statement on motions outlining its plans to carry out management of our marine resources and that the matter be referred to a special committee comprising External Affairs, National Defence, Environment and Fisheries, and Transportation and Communications.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Standing Order 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House before the presentation of such a motion. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Leonel Beaudoin (Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 43, I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to present a motion of pressing and urgent necessity.
Since the President of the Privy Council indicated Friday last during the oral question period that a meeting would take place today between the executive of the Quebec APU and some cabinet members in connection with the important matter of the Quebec dairy industry; since this problem is worsening every day and could provoke very serious consequences; and since it is urgent to clarify the situation and take the necessary steps, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Gauthier):
That this House request the Minister of Agriculture to make public today, through a statement in this House, the results and the content of special discussions that have taken place, so that members may know where the matter stands.


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


Some hon. Members:: Yes.
Student Employment


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: There not being unanimous consent, the motion may not be put.


REQUEST FOR SIX MONTHS SUSPENSION OF APPLICATION OF NEW DAIRY POLICY-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43, I request the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion.
Considering the uncertain situation of industrial milk producers; considering that the decisions made last April by the Canadian Dairy Commission will force hundreds of producers to withdraw from the dairy industry and that in these circumstances many of them are already forced into bankruptcy, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Saint-Hyacinthe (Mr. Wagner):
The unanimous consent of the House to ask the minister responsible to suspend, for a period of six months, the application of the new dairy policy announced last April, so as to give these producers time to reorganize their farms according to the new government measures.


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


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Some hon. Members:: No.


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


MANPOWER
Mr. John Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask the unanimous consent of the House under Standing Order 43 to deal with a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the fact that the government has eliminated its Opportunities for Youth program and by so doing has eliminated almost 30,000 jobs, or two thirds of its student summer employment and activities program, and in view of the fact that this loss of jobs, coupled with cutbacks in private spending, will cause severe summer unemployment among young people and students-for example, in the Maritimes the loss of 7,000 OFY jobs, coupled with cutbacks in steel, transportation and merchandising industries, will mean student unemployment in excess of 25 per cent this summer-and in view of the fact that recent unemployment figures show not so much that more people are finding work but that more people, especially in the 18 to 24 age group, are being driven out of the labour market by the lack of employment, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):
That the government immediately bring in an emergency summer employment program to be functioning within two weeks and adminis-

June 8, 1976
CBC Producers
tered through municipalities, and that the government immediately prepare a program which will provide grants to students who are either unable to find work this summer or are only able to find very short term work.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The provisions of Standing Order 43 require the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Tom Cossitt (Leeds):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to propose a motion of urgent and pressing necessity concerning the Unemployment Insurance Commission of Canada. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie):
That the Minister of Manpower and Immigration advise the House in regard to the number of persons employed by the Unemployment Insurance Commission of Canada and classified as agents 1 and agents 2, particularly in metropolitan Toronto, who were found by the commission to be tampering with claims in the past eighteen months and who were either permitted to resign from their employment or who in most cases received letters of reprimand only, rather than being prosecuted for such illegal offences.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Pursuant to Standing Order 43 such a motion requires unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. On Friday, June 4, a large and responsible body of Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television producers from all parts of Canada called for the government to establish a royal commission to study the Toronto domination of the English network. Mr. Speaker, these people have been reluctant to express their concern outside of the family circle of the CBC, but because the problem is a long standing one and is not being attended to quickly enough, these producers from all parts of Canada have made the public call for action.
In view of the fact that the House has already given unanimous consent to have another matter similar to this referred to the Standing Committee on Broadcasting, Films and Assistance to the Arts, the matter being the elimination of regional farm broadcasts, and in view of the

fact that these producers believe, with good evidence to support this belief, that the CBC's neglect to involve regional producers when promoting a national viewpoint is in fact a violation of its charter, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday):
That this House instruct the government to honour the request of the CBC television producers from all parts of Canada for a royal commission to study the Toronto domination of the English network.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. A motion under Standing Order 43 requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


HOUSING
Mr. Andy Hogan (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
On this past weekend, as the national news has recorded, there has been a significant tragedy in the historic fishing village of Main a Dieu on Cape Breton Island. Seventeen homes, plus the Roman Catholic Church in the area, were wiped out by a devastating fire. In view of the seriousness of the situation, I move, seconded by the member for Nickel Belt (Mr. Rodriguez):
That officials of the rural and native housing section of the Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, be immediately sent into the area to get new housing started for the families involved and cut the red tape to a minimum; also, that the Minister of State for Fisheries immediately implement the project for a breakwater extension in Main a Dieu that was to be carried out in the 197V-78 small crafts and harbour program.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Under the provisions of Standing Order 43 the unanimous consent of the House is required before such a motion can be presented. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Oral Questions.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

['Order, please. The hon. member for Carleton-Charlotte.']
Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon).


Mr. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my lead question is for the President of the Treasury Board who is not in his seat at the moment although he was here a few moments ago. Perhaps you would be kind enough to see me again when he returns from his journey.
June 8, 1976



Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. On May 27, his colleague, then the Acting Prime Minister stated at page 13882 of Hansard that Canada would make a contribution to a common fund for the purpose of stabilizing commodity prices as sought by various nations of UNCTAD IV, but he added "providing that certain very logical and I think reasonable precautions are taken". Mr. Speaker, may I ask the minister what the reasonable and very logical precautions are that have to be taken before Canada is committed to this fund?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, it is clear that the conference at Nairobi established an ongoing mechanism for discussion and negotiations of the common fund. The position of Canada is that if these negotiations and discussions demonstrate that the fund will be effective in stabilizing the prices of individual commodities, Canada will make a contribution to it. Its usefulness and efficiency will be under our surveillance during those negotiations. If we are satisfied that it has those characteristics, we will contribute.


HABITAT CONFERENCE-SUGGESTED SUPPORT OF SWEDISH OR GROUP OF 77 RESOLUTION
Francis Andrew Brewin: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a supplementary question on a related matter to the Secretary of State for External Affairs? The Habitat conference has now before it draft resolutions from the group of 77 and from Sweden, the Swedish resolution calling for the implementation of the new economic order as a matter of urgency and the larger group of 77 resolution referring to the need for new priorities, new political initiatives and commitment to the new economic order. In light of the minister's own statement regarding the urgency of this matter, will he communicate with the official Canadian delegation at Habitat and urge them to support either the Swedish or the group of 77 resolution?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, there is no question about the Government of Canada's commitment to bringing about a new international economic order, because we have already made it clear that we would participate in efforts to bring about changes in the present international economic system. I would question at this point, without having received any report from our own delegation in Vancouver, the procedure of introducing into the Habitat conference the general subject of the new international economic order which was the subject dealt with by the UNCTAD conference and which is to be the subject of the conference on international economic co-operation. It seems to me that Habitat has a most comprehensive subject with which to deal and we ought to consider whether introducing a related, although important, subject already under consideration elsewhere is a good thing at this time.
Oral Questions


Francis Andrew Brewin: A final supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs to look into this matter again since I understand that draft resolutions on this important subject are at present being discussed before the resolutions committee, if that is its right name, and the absence of Canadian support might well be misinterpreted?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, I will, as the hon. member suggests, take a further look at the question. But my initial reaction still stands as valid in the present circumstances. I wonder how often we are to distort the purposes of particular United Nations conferences by bringing in other subjects, no matter how important they may be. I certainly will not insist at all on the Canadian delegation taking a position at Habitat against any particular subject matter which we would support in another forum.


GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION
Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the President of the Treasury Board. Yesterday I asked the minister if he was aware of the verbal agreement between the Department of National Defence and Lockheed and of the requirement of the Department of National Defence for $100 million to pay interest charges. The minister's answer was on an allied subject. I wonder if he could now tell the House, was he or was he not aware of the verbal agreement between Lockheed and the Department of National Defence for Lockheed to provide some $300 million of interim financing?


Hon. Jean Chretien (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I answered that, when cabinet reached its decision on November 27, I was aware that a financing problem existed and that the program was going to need an additional amount of about $100 million in interest. In the course of the afternoon, Treasury Board authorized the department to start negotiating the contract with Lockheed.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Are we to understand that the President of the Treasury Board and board members approved this project without knowing in any way where the $300 million was coming from?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that we knew there was a problem since we knew that the program would eventually cost $100 million more. Later, during the month of December, we approved it so as to allow that amount to be incorporated in the program which is mentioned in the blue book which was tabled in the House.

June 8, 1976
Oral Questions


LOCKHEKD CONTRACT-INQUIRY WHETHER MINISTER OF NATIONAL DEFENCE ADVISED TREASURY BOARD OF FINANCING ARRANGEMENTS
Allan Bruce McKinnon: The minister still has not told me whether the Minister of National Defence ever advised him of this bridging arrangement with Lockheed. Three hundred million dollars is an amount of money that would, with few exceptions, be beyond the capability of almost any corporation to raise, or to establish a line of credit for. Are we to believe that the Minister of National Defence was able to get by the Treasury Board without the President of the Treasury Board asking for details as to the source of such funds? The decision made was important enough to cost the taxpayers $16 million.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the question about the $16 million is entirely beside the point. We knew, at Treasury Board, that Orion would probably cost us more than anticipated, that there would eventually be interest of over $100 million to be paid. At a subsequent meeting held sometime last December, Treasury Board gave its approval.


LOCKHEED CONTRACT-INQUIRY BY TREASURY BOARD OF NATIONAL DEFENCE AS TO SOURCE OF FINANCING
A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the President of the Treasury Board. If the Department of National Defence was going to borrow, this would involve Treasury Board. If Lockheed was going to borrow, that brings up the matter of the assessments that were made by various departments of Lockheed's financial situation. Either way, someone must have stopped and asked DND where, how and when they proposed to get the money. Was this question raised by Treasury Board?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the questions are well known. I have answered them. The Minister of National Defence also answered a dozen questions concerning the internal discussions of Treasury Board, which is a cabinet committee; I am not at liberty to answer all questions on all the problems of the Treasury Board.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Did the President of Treasury Board seek no more assurance than that? Does he have no documentation? Are we to understand that Treasury Board authorizes the start of multi-million dollar contracts on nothing more than verbal assurance? Apparently all he received from the Minister of National Defence was a verbal assurance. Is this what Treasury Board and the cabinet are working on?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that on November 27 the cabinet had decided to buy that aircraft; that afternoon, Treasury Board authorized the departments

concerned to start negotiating the contract. The rest of the story is common knowledge.


AGRICULTURE
Léonel Beaudoin: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a question to the Minister of Agriculture.
Last Friday, in his answer to a question put by my colleague the hon. member for Champlain, the Acting Prime Minister indicated that there would be today an important meeting between the executive of the Quebec APU and some ministers concerning the problems the Quebec dairy industry is faced with. Can the minister take stock of the meeting and indicate to the House whether new elements were added to this issue?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I understand the directors of UPA asked for and were granted a meeting this afternoon with some members of the cabinet. If they have any new proposals, we are willing to listen to them. I understand there are several topics they want to discuss with us. I do not know if they have a complete program. At least I have not been given one that is any different from what they presented to us last week.


Léonel Beaudoin: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask a
supplementary.
My question was quite simple but the minister did not answer it. I would like the minister to tell us whether he is prepared to make a statement to the House as soon as such a meeting will be held, and that both the results and the content of these discussions be made public.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I think it is public knowledge that they wanted to discuss dairy issues at greater length with members of the cabinet than was the case last week. I know of nothing new that they are going to present to us, nothing that is not already public information.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Mr. Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Transport. In light of the unfortunate resignation of Mr. Keenan and the consequent enhanced risk that a strike of air traffic controllers may occur, what steps has the minister taken since yesterday to open talks with those immediately concerned, namely our air traffic controllers and pilots, with a view to the appointment of a commissioner,
June 8, 1976

co-commissioners or a board of commissioners representing the interests of all those directly concerned in the matter with a view to relaunching without further delay the inquiry into the safety implications of the use of two languages in air traffic control procedures for visual and instrument flying in the province of Quebec?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I have had some preliminary discussions with some of the parties and it is my objective to continue doing that with a view to satisfactorily settling this matter.


Donald W. Munro: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether the minister would say what sort of timetable he has in mind for the completion of the inquiry.


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I would say that nothing has changed in that regard. The question of a commissioner's report always depended upon the successful completion of the simulation exercise, and we had set a time period after that. I do not know that anything has changed.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Bill Jarvis (Perth-Wilmot):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Postmaster General. It arises out of the statement that he gave in the House on May 21 in which he indicated that consideration of rate increases for third class mail was still being given by the department. May I ask the minister whether he would indicate to the House today the amount of those proposed increases.


Hon. Bryce Mackasey (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. gentleman for his courtesy in giving me advance notice. I have just checked with my officials. We will be announcing publicly and directly to all members of the House, as well as to the affected industries, such as the Christmas card industry, the proposed rate increases before Friday.


William Herbert Jarvis: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. The minister has expressed his concern for those who suffered during last year's postal disruption. In view of the fact that the post card industry certainly suffered as much as any, I wonder whether the minister will play Scrooge and have the rate increases brought in before the 1976 Christmas card season, or Santa Claus and introduce them after the 1976 post card season.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, both Scrooge and Santa Claus are appropriate to the Christmas season.
Oral Questions EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


CONFERENCE ON NUCLEAR SAFEGUARDS-NAME OF CANADIAN DELEGATE AND REASON MEETINGS ARE SECRET
Mr. Allan Lawrence (Northumberland-Durham):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. It relates to the secret conferences in London on nuclear safeguards. I understand that these meetings are now over and that there has been the third round. My question to the minister is simply this. Who were Canada's representatives at that conference last week in London on nuclear safeguards, and was it within the terms of reference of those representatives to assent to this silly, stupid charade of continuing meetings in secrecy when they affect the future of mankind?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, the representative of Canada was an officer of my department, Mr. Fulford. The answer to the second part of the question, with all the surrounding verbiage removed, is yes.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: Cutting down the verbiage then, may I ask the minister why?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Because the nuclear suppliers find this the most effective way to do their business.


MANPOWER
Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. He stated in his speech on the budget that it is intended to introduce a strategy for youth employment covering not only student summer employment but the more serious and pervasive problems of unemployed school dropouts and graduates. Given the fact that today's statistics reveal there is certainly a problem in respect of our young people who are not able to enter the labour force, and the fact that this matter will get worse in the next couple of months, can we expect full details on this strategy for youth employment very soon in order to effect the early implementation of the strategy, thereby relieving some of the pressure being placed on our young people, or are these details that will not be known until the fall?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, my statement in the budget debate was clear. The program will be developed and made known in the fall.


REASON FOR DELAY IN STARTING JOB CREATING PROGRAM IN VIEW OF AVAILABILITY OF MONEY
Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Mr. Speaker, that is not too much comfort for the thousands of young people who are seeking work now and will be seeking work this summer. The minister also indicated he has some $100 million earmarked for some type of job program to

June 8, 1976
Oral Questions
commence this fall. Once again we have this fall deadline. In light of the serious problem now being faced by our young people, why can the minister not have a much earlier starting date than the fall in order to relieve some of this pressure? He has the money, the jobs are required; why can he not move now in this regard?


Robert Knight Andras: Mr. Speaker, I have announced the details of other programs for student employment in this House. The $100 million to which the hon. member refers is clearly earmarked for a local initiative type program in the fall similar to the one conducted in 1975-76.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Mr. Speaker, am I to understand now that there are no programs and no initiatives on the part of the government to assist our young people who are crying for jobs now and will be to an even greater extent this summer? Is that the position of the minister at this particular time?


Robert Knight Andras: No, Mr. Speaker, and the hon. member has been present when programs which are available for student summer employment have been detailed in this House. There are no additional funds available, but he is fully aware of those programs.


ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAM GOVERNMENT ACTION IF PROGRAM DECLARED ULTRA VIRES BY SUPREME COURT
Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Today there is a great deal of speculation-


An hon. Member:: It is for you, Pierre.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: I know he is busy and I dislike disturbing him, but now that he is back from holidays I hope for an answer.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: Do I understand from press statements made yesterday that the Supreme Court of Canada will render a judgment by the end of the month? In the event the judgment is to the effect that the parliament of Canada acted ultra vires, is it the intention of the government to bring in legislation prefaced, as I suggested on October 14 last, with a preamble by parliament declaring there is a state of national emergency? Will the Prime Minister have such legislation brought in, in order to ensure that the anti-inflation legislation will be upheld?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, in the event that the hypothetically pessimistic view of the right hon. gentleman is substantiated in fact, I would consider the suggestion.


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, it was hypothetical in October last when I pointed out the need for the parlia-

ment of Canada to declare an emergency, which would have done away with most of the argument before the Supreme Court of Canada. I would ask whether the Prime Minister is still of the opinion that there was not a general emergency, and is that the reason he did not include that particular matter or declaration in the preamble?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the legislation speaks for itself, and the right hon. gentleman should know that is the way you interpret a statute.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John George Diefenbaker: Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister refers to us as being a bunch of hyenas. All I can say is that it is apparent we have got his goat. I would ask him this simple question, hypothetical as he stated it to be, although the press is already problematically determining what the majority judgment of the Supreme Court will be, will legislation be brought before this session which already has ambled on for 19 months?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, Mr. Speaker, the question, as I answered in the first place, is hypothetical in its form. I have no cause to know what the answer to that hypothetical question would be. I do not have the advantage perhaps the hon. gentleman has of having phoned a judge.


INQUIRY WHETHER MINISTER WILL INTERVENE IN CONFLICT IN EASTERN CANADA OVER ELECTRICITY
Mr. Bernard Loiselle (Chambly):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put a question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.
Can he tell the House whether one or several provinces asked him to intervene directly in settling the hydro issue which is now developing in the eastern part of the country, and whether he will intervene through the federal authority with respect to the inter-provincial trade, and if so, within which schedule?


Hon. Alastair Gillespie (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, I have received no formal request from either of the two parties, the province of Quebec or the province of Labrador-Newfoundland, to intervene in their dispute. However, I did have an opportunity to discuss with the ministers of those two provinces and the premiers of the three maritime provinces the concept of an Atlantic pool system. I think we made some important advances in looking at the power problems, particularly electrical power problems, of Atlantic Canada and in seeking an Atlantic solution for them.
June 8, 1976


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture. In view of the fact that the powdered milk surplus is building up by some 10 per cent in the month of April, and in view of the fact that there is a well known nutritional deficiency among many young people in this country, may I ask the minister whether or not he is planning to introduce in this country ways and means to finance in the schools of Canada a school milk program for all students?


Eugene Whelan: No, Mr. Speaker. The Minister of National Health and Welfare has said that he would consider that program and discuss it with the provinces. It is under provincial jurisdiction. The province of Nova Scotia has such a program which allows students to buy milk at five cents for eight ounces, and it is a very good program.


FINANCE
Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Minister of Finance. I should like to ask the minister whether or not he on behalf of the federal government can make a financial commitment to finance a school milk program for the students in this country?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, we have set out the fiscal framework for the current fiscal year and I do not see any prospect of changing that.


GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION
Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. In view of the fact that no small businessman would think of entering into a business deal involving financing unless the details of that financing were set out on paper and understood well by both sides, would the Prime Minister outline to the House how his government could possibly discuss for many months a deal involving $1 billion with $300 million of financing without one single word about that financing being set forth on paper?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of National Defence and other ministers have repeatedly said, it was our understanding, as a result of verbal agreement, that the bridge financing would be furnished and supplied by the Lockheed Company. The hon. gentleman talks about small business. In
Oral Questions
small and big business alike, there sometimes are such things as gentleman's and verbal agreements.


George Harris Hees: Well, Mr. Speaker, can the right hon. gentleman think of any business of any size about which he knows or about which he has heard which has entered into any kind of business deal of any size without getting the details of the financing on paper, because without the financing no business deal that requires financing can possibly go forward. Is this not the height of irresponsibility on the part of his government?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I point out to the hon. gentleman that we are not talking about the contract itself at this point. The contract was signed later and put under escrow in circumstances of which the House is aware. At this time we are talking about a preliminary agreement. Very often agreements are entered into on the force of a gentleman's word and he would know more about that if he were a gentleman.


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Mr. Heward Grafftey (Brome-Missisquoi):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. In so far as further class actions are being taken on behalf of Ford owners who have been affected by a very serious rust problem, and in so far as thousands of Ford owners have registered complaints both with the government and the Ford Motor Company, may I ask the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs on behalf of the consumers whether he has intervened with the Ford Motor Company in this regard relating to previous complaints and has he anything further, on their behalf, to report to the House this afternoon.


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Well, Mr. Speaker, there have been several class actions taken against Ford, under provincial legislation not under federal legislation, for alleged rusting of their automobiles. I have discussed the matter with the Ford Motor Company of Canada and with the Automobile Protection Association to the extent that I think there are grounds sufficient for mediating their dispute.


William Heward Grafftey: Mr. Speaker, in view of what has now become an extremely serious problem, especially in the Canadian climate, is the minister considering legislation which would oblige the automobile companies to rustproof parts before final assembly?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, we are investigating this whole area of whether the problems related to rust are due to climatic conditions or the type of chemical used on the roads in the winter time or whether they are peculiar to a particular automobile or certain design of automobile. When we have completed that study I will announce what the government's intention would be in this regard.

June 8, 1976
Oral Questions ENERGY


PROPOSED FEDERAL REGULATION OF INTERPROVINCIAL
Miss Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. It relates to his statement made last Sunday at Chatham, Massachusetts in which he said that it might be necessary for the Canadian government to regulate interprovincial transmission of electricity in much the same way as it now does oil and gas. Given the reaction this statement has occasioned will the minister furnish the House with the specifics of this new government proposal and will he say what consultation there was with the provinces prior to this statement?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, I was not making any particular proposal. I was making an observation which I think is a very important observation. My concern-and I am sure it is the concern of many of the hon. member's colleagues-is that power policy, particularly electrical generation and transmission within the maritimes and Atlantic Canada generally, has been held back by balkanization and there is a very good chance that if very narrow provincial views are the dominant views we will not find any solution for Atlantic Canada on a bigger, more efficient scale. I made the observation that I thought the federal government has the constitutional power to move in if necessary in the transmission of electric power in the same way-the principle is very much the same-as it has in respect of oil and natural gas transmission.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: My supplementary question is to ask the minister again what consultation he had with the provinces prior to his statement, and since his proposal has been interpreted by several provinces as an attempt to intrude on the natural resources field, what clarification did he subsequently give to the provinces to relieve their concerns as to the constitutionality of his proposal?


Alastair William Gillespie: Mr. Speaker, my predecessor tells me that the same point of view that I expressed at that time was raised with the provincial premiers, or some of them, as long as a year ago. I had some discussions prior to this meeting with some of the premiers-I was not able to reach them all. You may recall that one of the provincial premiers, as a matter of fact, was in Europe at that time. But I did have occasion to meet with each of the premiers or their ministers before we sat down at the public session, and we discussed these questions specifically.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: After you made the statement.


ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE
Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General. In addition to

co-operating with his provincial counterpart and as the minister responsible for the RCMP, will he indicate whether or not he is prepared to give this House a comprehensive report into the circumstances involved in the break and entry by the force and by other police into the premises of L'Agence de Presse Libre du Quebec, and fulfill the commitment he made in the House to give as much information as possible on this matter?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: As hon. members know, there is an allegation that a criminal offence was committed in the break in of the L'Agence de Presse Libre du Quebec. The Solicitor General of Quebec, in his capacity as chief law enforcement officer in Quebec, is investigating that matter and has asked for our full co-operation. I have spoken to the commissioner of the RCMP and he said he would make available to the Solicitor General of Quebec all information relevant to that particular incident, and the Solicitor General of Quebec will take action in due course. Whether he lays charges or not will be for him to decide as the person in charge of administering the Criminal Code in the province.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: I would hope that, regardless of what happened in Quebec, the minister, as the minister responsible, would indicate what the circumstances were. Whose specific responsibility was it to make certain that proper legal authority existed for the RCMP to enter the premises of L'Agence de Presse Libre du Quebec, the purpose of which such entry was obtained, and assure the House that, as one former RCMP officer described such operations, it was not "a wholesale ransacking and appropriation of papers", or a fishing expedition?


William Warren Allmand: At this time I only have the side of the story presented by the RCMP. I do not have the reports of the Quebec provincial police or the Montreal city police. After the Solicitor General of Quebec makes the decision to act or not to act in this case, of course, we may have more to say and may take action ourselves. It would appear from the information I have that this was a joint operation with the three forces involved, and it is unclear at this stage who had complete authority for the operation. There is some difference of opinion at present among the forces as to who had the final say on this, and that is part of the investigation that is going on.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Maurice Harquail (Restigouche):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. It has to do with the air passenger service in Atlantic Canada. In view of the desperate need for this service, and in view of the support by the Council of Maritime Premiers recently of the bid of Eastern Provincial Airways Limited to provide this service, could the minister indicate to the House what is the disposition of his department to ensure the quickest possible implementation of this service in Atlantic Canada?
June 8, 1976


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, I would not want in any way to prejudge the consideration which the CTC will be giving to the applications. The exact question regarding further facilities, when it arises is, of course, one which we have to take under consideration having regard to our total priorities and available funds. I can assure the hon. member, however, of a full and sympathetic examination of specific problems in his area.


POST OFFICE
John R. Rodriguez: My question is directed to the Postmaster General, and I have given him prior notice of it. In view of the fact that the minister has told the people of Canada in the past that the agreement between the Post Office and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers concerning a contract clause dealing with technological change would solve many of the problems in the Post Office, and in view of the fact that these problems have not been solved as in several centres the union has complained that the government has not lived up to its part of the contractual clause dealing with technological change, specifically article 29.03(b) requiring a detailed description of the technological change, and in view of the fact that the chief adjudicator of the Public Service Staff Relations Board, Mr. Ed Jolliffe, ruled in his presentation that the Post Office Department is in breach of article 29.03(b), can the minister assure the House that he will instruct his department to honour the technological change provisions of the agreement between the Post Office and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, the written report of the adjudicator has still not been made available to both parties. The hon. gentleman is basing his premise on a verbal declaration of the adjudicator last week. What he said in effect, and the hon. gentleman is quite right, is:
*.. it is my opinion that the onus was on the employer and not on the union,-
in refusing advance information. He also said:
... but it is also my opinion that it would have been reasonable on the part of the union to specify the kind of information needed,
In other words, it can hardly be deduced that the adjudicator is blaming the employer any more than the employee. However, the more important thing is that if they want this particular section to work, I would be quite pleased to meet with the leader of the union in order to clarify any ambiguities in the section.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I agree with the minister that a meeting between the two groups would certainly be most helpful, but the fact of the matter still remains that the minister is responsible for his department


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.
Oral Questions SUPPLY AND SERVICES


REASON MOUNTED POLICE NOT PATRONIZING CERTAIN GASOLINE STATIONS-REQUEST FOR REPORT
Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Supply and Services and ask him on what basis local service stations, which in the past have supplied gasoline and oil for vehicles used by the RCMP detachments, are not being patronized now by the RCMP, even though the price of these service stations might be as low or lower than the price at service stations which are supposedly on the department's priority list for purchases?


Hon. Jean-Pierre Goyer (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I will surely check the facts mentioned by the hon. member and answer him as soon as possible.


GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Peter C. Bawden (Calgary South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister stated in the House on June 3 that he would check the cabinet minutes to determine the date when he learned that the deal with Lockheed was proceeding on the basis of a verbal commitment by that company to provide interim financing. Now that the Prime Minister has had a chance to check his records, would he tell the House when and how he learned that the verbal arrangement with Lockheed was truly a verbal one?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I did have the sequence of events put on the record for me. Unfortunately, I do not have the record with me today in the House. I will make sure that I bring it with me tomorrow. But in so far as I can recollect, it is the same as I heard the President of the Treasury Board say it a few minutes ago.


An hon. Member:: Oh, oh; we are really in trouble now!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Late in November, I believe on the 27th, there was a meeting of the Treasury Board at which cognizance was taken of the fact that DND could not finance this particular deal, that we needed more financing. At what point the knowledge of a verbal contract came to my attention 1 am not certain. I will have to check the date.


LOCKHEED CONTRACT-POSSIBILITY OF COURT ACTION IN VIEW OF ALLEGATION COMPANY BREACHED AGREEMENT
Peter Colwell Bawden: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Prime Minister this question. If Lockheed misled the government and in fact reneged on the verbal agreement, as often stated by the Minister of National Defence, will the Prime Minister say why there is any legal commitment to pay $16 million or any other amount to Lockheed? Will the Prime Minister say why

June 8, 1976
Oral Questions
there is any legal commitment to pay $16 million or any other amount to Lockheed? Will he say whether the government has sought legal advice, and will he personally take the initiative to see that Lockheed is taken to court to recover the amounts which have been paid?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No, Mr. Speaker, that is not the case. If there is any legal commitment to pay $16 million or $14 million, whatever the figure is, it is because on December 2, the government in order to keep the option open, told Lockheed to begin the work and that we would be liable for any work Lockheed did if the contract were not finally signed.


Peter Colwell Bawden: They reneged on their verbal agreement.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If the hon. gentleman wants to hear my answer, perhaps he should stop shouting. If he wants to ask a supplementary, I will gladly sit down and then answer.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, I think I am finished.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Secretary of State. Over two weeks ago the president of the CBC went to Vancouver to meet with an unofficial group known as the Committee of 100 to discuss their concern about the lack of regional involvement in production. Two weeks later the CBC television producers felt compelled to make a public call for a royal commission on the subject. Can the Secretary of State inform the House of any of the substance of the president's discussion and why the producers across Canada had to resort to this public call for a royal commission?


Hon. James Hugh Faulkner (Secretary of State):: Mr. Speaker, I was not present when the president of the corporation met with that committee. I myself met with some members of the committee two weeks after his meeting. There is a problem which arises out of the success of our regionalization.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James Hugh Faulkner: That may appear paradoxical, but I would like to explain it. The fact is that we now have in Vancouver a facility for production which we never had before. We will be developing one in Regina which really did not exist before. Now there is a degree of tension, obviously, between the producers in a place like Vancouver, who would like to have much greater autonomy over program production than they had before, and I think this is a problem the president of the corporation is looking at

seriously. It is one I am concerned about, but I am sure that problem would not be resolved by a royal commission.


Benno Friesen: Would the minister push his luck a little and try to be even more successful by looking on decentralization as more than just putting buildings across the country and allowing some individual decision making across the country? Would he push his luck and take care of that matter before he is shuffled to the oblivion of the government backbenches this summer?


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Carleton-Charlotte.



FISHERIES


Mr. Fred McCain (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, recently the Minister of State (Fisheries) has been involved in negotiations of an international nature in respect of fishing quotas and marketing. Would the minister advise the House whether any contracts have been entered into for the marketing of fish which might be caught in Canada and be surplus to the processing capacity in the area in which the fish are caught?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know if a contract proposal has been signed. I have been out of touch because I have been travelling in the fisheries areas in Newfoundland and lies de la Madeleine over the past few days. I know it was one of the options which was being considered. The price offered for herring in one part of the east coast, the Bay of Fundy, which was mainly used for fish meal, was so low that we looked at alternative markets, and I know the possibility of some sales over the side for a part of that quota was one of the options considered. I have no firm knowledge at the moment whether a possible contract has been finalized, but certainly it necessitates a permit to be issued by the minister responsible, and I have not yet issued such a permit.


Fred Alward McCain: In view of the negotiations and considerations which have taken place in all respects with regard to the fishing industry, would the minister call or arrange to have called a meeting of the Fisheries Committee which he would attend and advise the members of that committee as to just what has been accomplished as well as what can be expected from future negotiations, which we understand are to take place?


Roméo LeBlanc: I certainly have no objection to informing hon. members either in the forum of the committee or in other ways. I understand there was a full session on this very issue, mainly with regard to the Bay of Fundy herring, but what information I have is obviously available, and I will make it available to the hon. member.
June 8, 1976



PUBLIC WORKS


Mr. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Public Works. Can the minister advise if Mr. E. J. Gallacher, an employee of the Department of Public Works, was acting under authority granted by the Governor in Council and the minister when he served eviction notices which were worded "immediate surrender" to those owners whose land the department wishes to expropriate in the Pickering area?


Hon. C. M. Drury (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to ascertain whether he was or was not.



REASON FOR FAILURE TO ADVISE ONTARIO OF CONDITION OF FISH STORED AT GRASSY NARROWS RESERVE

Mr. Cyril Symes (Sault Ste. Marie):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of National Health and Welfare concerning the fish problem on the Grassy Narrows Reserve. In view of the fact that Mr. David Eckhart, an environmental health officer with the minister's department, visited Grassy Narrows Indian Reserve on May 18, found the fish stored in the freezer not in good condition and advised the Indians not to eat them, why did the department not advise the Ontario ministry of natural resources of the problem, since that department is responsible for the maintenance of the freezer?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is misinformed. First, the visit in question did not take place on May 18, but on May 17. During his visit the inspector realized that the fish were not kept under proper conditions and he gave instructions that different methods be used to keep the fish in that freezer. At that time there seemed to be no indication that the fish was unfit for human consumption, even though the refrigerating conditions under which it was kept were not adequate. I have no indication that the official advised the Indians at that time that the fish was unfit for consumption. A further inspection of the fish was carried out later, around May 25, at which time the conclusion reached was that the fish was unfit for consumption, but not on May 17 or 18 as the hon. member's question indicated. It would appear that certain developments occurred in the meantime.



POST OFFICE


Mr. Arnold Malone (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Postmaster General, and it is
Oral Questions
with regard to last fall's postal strike. In view of the fact that the Postmaster General gave a number of post office locals written assurance that they would not be subject to pressure tactics or harassment, does the minister now approve of the fact that those members of locals which were suspended from the union are still having union dues subtracted from their pay cheques, plus an additional $10 per person this past month?


Bryce Stuart Mackasey: Mr. Speaker, I do not approve of it. The question of union dues, however, comes under the Rand formula, and that means that a non-union member who, however, wants the protection of the union must pay the regular dues. In so far as the $10 fine per month levied by that union is concerned, I think this practice, frankly, is despicable.



FRESHWATER FISH MARKETING CORPORATION


Dean Waldon Whiteway: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State (Fisheries). It has to do with the matter I brought to his attention on several occasions in this House. It has to do with the Freshwater Fish Marketing Act Part III, section 23(2). Could the minister now tell the House whether he has consulted the Solicitor General and whether the Solicitor General will proceed with charges because of the obvious violation of the law with reference to that section of the act?


Roméo LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, I will have to look into the file to see what point this matter has reached.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Bob Wenman (Fraser Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture. There was a tragic waste of hundreds of tons of cauliflower and other vegetables produced in the Fraser Valley last year. Is it the intention of the government to protect the fruit and vegetable industry of British Columbia through the imposition of adequate tariff structures during the current production season?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the tariffs that are in effect in Canada during the crop production year are agreed upon by the producers organizations through consultation with the Canadian Horticultural Society and then in consultation with the federal government. I have had no representation that I can think of so far this year concerning the crops that the hon. member mentioned.

June 8, 1976
Point of Order-Mr. Blais SUPPLY AND SERVICES



LOCKHEED CONTRACT-INQUIRY WHETHER MINISTER ASSURED BY NATIONAL DEFENCE BY DECEMBER 2 OF FINANCIAL CAPACITY TO HANDLE

Mr. Joe Clark (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Supply and Services and I am sorry I was not able to ask it while he was in his seat. I appreciate the minister returning to his seat. My question is designed to try to elucidate events that occurred on December 1 or 2. At page 14106 of Hansard the Minister of Supply and Services said that the Department of National Defence "assured me that problem could be solved and the financing was assured". Later, in answer to the hon. member for Victoria at page 14153, the minister indicated that the Department of National Defence "gave no indication whatsoever that it could not meet its financial obligations". What is unclear is whether there was a concrete undertaking given by the Department of National Defence as to the financial capacity of that department on this matter. I wonder if the Minister of Supply and Services could tell the House specifically whether information was given to him on that date by his colleague, the Minister of National Defence or by officials of that department. If so, could he tell the House specifically what that information was or was all that happened that the Department of National Defence did not draw attention to the fact of some financing problems? Was there a specific undertaking and if so, what was it and who gave it?


Jean-Pierre Goyer: Mr. Speaker, as I often said to the House, the questions of financing are obviously the responsibility of the Department of National Defence. As for me, I carried out my mandate according to my obligations, that is to say DND had given the assurance they would look after the financing.


Mr. Speaker:: Presenting Reports from Standing or Special Committees.


George Harris Hees: Mr. Speaker, a question of privilege. In reply to my supplementary question the Prime Minister today indicated that he thought I was being ungentlemanly in asking such a question. As I know the Prime Minister only gives such rude answers when he is frustrated and does not want to answer the question, I want him to know that I completely forgive his rudeness in making such an ungentlemanly remark.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, it never would have crossed my mind to suggest that the hon. gentleman was not a gentleman. That would be a non-tautology; on the contrary I know he is a gentleman. The fact that struck me is that perhaps he is more of a country gentleman than a business gentleman. Any gentleman engaged in business of any size knows that there are hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions that go on every day on verbal assurances without any contractual writing. This is something that the hon. gentleman does not seem to know about.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order relating to Standing Order 43. I am sure Your Honour has noted as

other hon. members have, that the practice has developed whereby members of the opposition have been using motions under Standing Order 43 in order to attempt to make political points.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Jacques Blais: I did say "attempt", Mr. Speaker. My intention would have been to rise at the time motions are presented in order to object except that I am mindful of Your Honour's previous statements regarding points of order during question period. The point I wish to make is that I do not believe that your rulings do affect motions under Standing Order 43. However, being a fair man-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Jacques Blais: I would offer to hon. members opposite the full opportunity of debating the point because I am confident it is one on which Your Honour will rule in my favour. I would therefore invite Your Honour to perhaps set aside some time in the near future so that this matter can be seriously debated and discussed and a proper ruling made on it.


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: On the same point of order, Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to hear my hon. friend characterize himself as a fair man.


An hon. Member:: Just fair; that is all.


An hon. Member:: He is the member who always says no to motions under Standing Order 43.


Walter David Baker: He is not being unduly modest, Mr. Speaker. In any event, I think Standing Order 43 has never been used by us for any political purpose.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Sharp:: Not successfully.


Walter David Baker: Except, Mr. Speaker, when the dictates and circumstances of our country have required us to bring to the attention of the House the shortcomings of the government-which are legion-and important matters of public interest, the nature of which we would expect members of the House to consent to unanimously.
What is of concern to us, however, is that throughout this session there seems to be a presumption on the part of the government that all matters under Standing Order 43 ought not to be considered. In fact, when the history of this time is written the hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. Blais) will go down as having made his greatest parliamentary contribution by uttering the word "no" before the motion has been fully put to the House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter David Baker: As I recollect the way that motions made under Standing Order 43 have gone it seems to me that Your Honour has seen fit to indicate whether motions made under Standing Order 43 are in fact on a matter of "urgent and pressing necessity" to use the
June 8, 1976

words of the rule. You, sir, ought to make that decision and ought to continue to make that decision.
What I should like the government to do is not to make the decision that unanimous consent ought to be rejected to all these motions before the motion ever has a chance to be considered by you on the one hand or even put before the House on the other hand. It is to that point that there could be some objection before this House or before the committee. The Standing Order is certainly not one to be abused. It ought not to be abused by any member of the House in advancing a motion under it and it ought not to be abused by any member of the House by rejecting the substance of the motion out of hand. If we are to direct our comments to anything with respect to this matter they ought to be directed to what I think is the impropriety that has occurred during this session particularly and other sessions that has brought Standing Order 43 into disrepute.
Standing Order 43 is one of the few instances where private members of the House-not opposition parties as such, not cabinet, not parliamentary secretaries but private members of the House-can bring to the attention of the House and the country matters of urgent and pressing necessity falling within the jurisdiction of the parliament of Canada. Because it is assumed that all such motions should not be put, the rule has fallen into disrepute. That should not have happened. I hope those considering this rule will bear in mind that it is necessary for private members of this House to have the opportunity to bring to the attention of the House in this manner matters of great concern to the member's constituency, region or the country as a whole.


Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the point raised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais), I submit that it is not a valid point of order and that Your Honour should take no notice of it. The fact is that before Easter, 1975, the House and the Chair had a great deal of trouble with motions moved under Standing Order 43. There seemed to be no time limit for moving them; there was, admittedly, abuse and the occupant of the chair, both yourself and Mr. Speaker Lamoureux, encountered a good deal of difficulty.
The procedure and organization committee which recommended rule changes which came into effect after Easter, 1975, attempted to resolve the problem by putting in the orders of the day a time limit. Motions under Standing Order 43 can be moved only in the time between the end of prayers and 2.15 p.m. I submit that since that change was made, there has been little abuse. Your Honour on a number of occasions refused to put certain motions, because you felt they went beyond the rights of that particular opportunity. But when a member on the government side, who thinks that politics is all right on his side but not on this side, argues that we should have some discussion on the motions moved, he is intervening where he has no reason to intervene.
I submit members may stray a bit on occasion, but Your Honour stops them. On the other hand, you run into situations like those of today. My hon. friend from Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Hogan) knew he would not be recog-
Point of Order-Mr. Blais
nized in the question period and used Standing Order 43 to bring to the attention of the House the plight of persons in his constituency who have been burned out of their homes. If that is playing politics, if that is an abuse, I suggest my hon. friend opposite does not know what he is talking about.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: The hon. member opposite said no. I think that is politics at its worst. The hon. member of my party raised the issue. That was politics as it ought to be. I submit that the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization did a good job when it resolved the problem before Easter, 1975. If I may say so-I hope I will not be misunderstood-Your Honour is policing the matter quite well. The hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. Blais) should find other fields to farm.


Mr. Paproski:: He needs a holiday.


Mr. Fortin:: Mr. Speaker, on the same point of order raised by the Parliament Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais) concerning Standing Order 43. This is a most important point. As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) just stated, there has been a time when members could introduce an indefinite number of motions under Standing Order 43. This could be a very long process and made for unending debates. Therefore, Standing Order 43, was changed on a unanimous vote.
But as far as this party is concerned, Standing Order 43 was very often the only way to raise an urgent point, and explain our request or proposition. The government felt this was too lengthy, because in their view we always waste too much time. They would rather have no opposition, but it does not matter much anyway because they act as if they were alone.
Before Easter 1975, there was work to be done and it was decided 15 minutes would be allocated each day to motions under S.O. 43. The main result was fewer and fewer Social Credit members could raise urgent matters, because the 15 minutes were distributed among all opposition parties.
Something else happened at the same time, and I would appreciate it if the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council would listen, as we listened to him. There was a time when Liberal members put questions during the question period. Today, with the goodwill of almost everyone in this House, they are allowed to put questions. So, there has been a reduction of opposition opportunities under Standing Order 43, and at the same time the government overtook another portion of the question period, which should normally belong to opposition members.
I shared the views of those who favoured greater participation by the so-called government backbenchers. It has come to the point where we are now the target of the parliamentary secretary's irony for using Standing Order 43 on occasion, although I respectfully submit that oftentimes the Chair recognizes only one question by one member only in our group.

June 8, 1976
Point of Order-Mr. Blais
Mr. Speaker, this is the point of no return. Either we shall make full use of the Standing Orders to have our party recognized in this House, or the business of the House will be systematically obstructed. It is abnormal that in wanting to cooperate with the Chair, we should get only one question and one supplementary, and furthermore that we should have to take the abuse of the parliamentary secretary. There will have to be a lot more latitude in this House, that is more honesty for each parliamentary group, or I am advising the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Sharp) that he will no longer get those unanimous consents in any way.
Mr. Speaker, there is a limit to wanting to muzzle the opposition, particularly smaller parties. That is why I find entirely out of order the point raised by the parliamentary secretary because it does not consider the members of this House, and I ask him respectfully as well as you, Mr. Speaker, to respect our rights and requests as much as we accept that backbenchers of his own party ask questions.
Mr. Speaker, when they come to us to ask for our cooperation to allow a Liberal member or two to ask questions, we say: Okay, we want you to do your work just as we are doing ours. So we are asking you today to give us the same right and to respect that right without taking away the little participation in democracy to which we are entitled in this House, that is Standing Order 43. It will be remembered that one day, about Standing Order 43, when the Chair at that time allowed only one motion per day all members presented in turn two or three motions under Standing Order 43. I say this simply to bring to the attention of the House the fact that we were muzzled. And it was immediately after that that Standing Order 43 was changed so motions could be introduced from two o'clock to 2.15 and we agreed, provided we would be recognized during the oral question period. In concluding, I say to the parliamentary secretary that no respect was shown for us by both his party and the Chair-not you, Your Honour- in the oral question period as a whole. Furthermore, we will not tolerate being muzzled with respect to Standing Order 43.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Representatives of each of the parties have contributed to the point of order with respect to Standing Order 43 raised by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais). I do not think further contributions on the point are required at this time.
It is important to make one or two brief observations. I suggest, initially, that the assessment of Standing Order 43 made by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) was correct. The Standing Order has given the Chair difficulty for some time, a difficulty which arose by virtue of the fact that the order paper called for motions under Standing Order 43 to be raised each day after the question period, which meant that there was an open-ended period of time during which members could attempt to introduce such motions.
At the beginning of the present parliament I began to examine very carefully such motions moved pursuant to Standing Order 43. Since the period of time in which they could be introduced was open-ended, it was incumbent on the Chair to exercise diligence in ascertaining whether

they conformed to the rule. A difficulty arose early during the present parliament, in that since such motions are almost exclusively introduced by opposition members, it appeared as if the Chair was constantly interposing itself between opposition members who introduced such motions and the actual bringing of the motions to the floor of the House with unanimous consent. That was an unfortunate appearance which did not make the life of the Speaker of the House easier.
I think in very large measure that was corrected by the rearrangement of our proceedings from which a very strong self-policing feature has evolved in that motions under Standing Order 43 have a limited life each day. If they are spurious on a repetitive basis by either a member or a caucus, surely that will become a self-policing factor because, on a constant basis, they cut into the time for posing questions which is generally regarded as the most important daily device in this House.
Therefore, the self-policing feature has enabled me to take a much more relaxed attitude toward the content of Standing Order 43 motions. However, I do on occasion refuse to put motions which are frivolous or do not seem to have anything to do with the jurisdiction of this House. Beyond that, as long as they relate to a matter of some importance and urgency, whether it even be in the narrow parochial lines of an individual constituency, that is a matter which might be considered.
That is not the end of the difficulty. There is a difficulty on the other side as well. When there is refusal to give unanimous consent to such a motion, there is often the impression that there appears to be some sentiment expressed contrary to the merits of the motion. That is an unfair interpretation, indeed.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: As all hon. members know, motions put forward pursuant to Standing Order 43 seek unanimous consent only for the introduction of the motion. If unanimous consent is given, once the motion is introduced it is a debatable motion which becomes the priority order of the day. Therefore, the question is not so much the merits of the motion involved, but whether the House wishes to give its unanimous consent to set aside the business of the day to debate something else. Often, the putting forward of such a motion seems to carry with it the spirit that if only hon. members would give their unanimous consent the motion would pass without debate. That is a great spirit, but all of us know there is no guarantee of procedural equanimity on all sides. Therefore, there is difficulty with interpretation of the rule, regardless of whether it is an opposition member who wishes to put the motion or government members who refuse to set aside orders of the day in order to debate it, or the Chair with regard to interpreting it.
Bearing in mind all those difficulties, I have only two remarks to make. The self-policing features do not eliminate all of the problems, but certainly most of them. The manner in which we have been dealing with Standing Order 43 seems to be about the best we have been able to find so far. Second, if there are improvements for further
June 8, 1976

refinements, rather than their being raised here for further discussion, perhaps they ought to be suggested to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization which might give them further consideration.
There are other members seeking the floor on a point of order. I will first recognize the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie), then the hon. member for Regina Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin) and the hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert).


Mr. Benjamin:: Mr. Speaker, I know that you are trying to discourage any further intervention on the point of order with regard to Standing Order 43. However, there is another aspect of this subject that has been mentioned very rarely, if at all, since that order has become part of our rules. There are two aspects, one of which was briefly mentioned.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I cannot prevent the hon. member from raising the point of order. However, I sought intervention from all parties and made a ruling on the point of order. I cannot prevent any hon. member from raising it as a separate point of order. I would prefer to think that the subject is closed at the moment, but I cannot prevent the hon. member from raising it.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Most of the time I am not disagreeable. However, as a private member in this chamber I feel there is an aspect of Standing Order 43 that has not been taken into account by private members on both sides of the House. My understanding is that if any member of this House wants to move a motion that requires unanimous consent, he should at least have the courtesy to state in advance what the motion is and when he intends to move it. This is the procedure in the standing committees when members wish to move amendments. They have the courtesy of passing out copies of their amendments. This also applies to the various House leaders when they are arriving at agreements as to procedures to be followed or what the business of the House will be.
When a private member rises to move a motion under Standing Order 43, which I rarely do, he is not playing around. He is genuinely interested in obtaining unanimous consent, not the Pavlovian reflex of the hon. member for Nipissing (Mr. Blais). Similarly, an hon. member should be able to obtain unanimous consent without there being debate or, if in the course of obtaining advance notice in discussion with the other parties to obtain agreement for unanimous consent, that may or may not be put with debate. Surely that should be the responsibility of each member who wishes to move a motion under Standing Order 43.
It is nonsensical for a member to move a motion under Standing Order 43 when he is just playing around. Similarly, it is nonsensical that when a member moves a very good motion under Standing Order 43, which he does not want debated, not to obtain the unanimous consent of the House to put the motion and have it passed. The knee-jerk reaction of members opposite is surely a perversion of the rule. The efforts of Your Honour to rule out those motions which just "play around" have been excellent. However, there is a great deal more responsibility on each individual
Point of Order-Mr. Blais
member with regard to how he words his motion under Standing Order 43 and how he proceeds with it.


Mr. Speaker:: Is the hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert) seeking the floor pursuant to the point of order with regard to Standing Order 43?


Mr. Lambert (Edmonton West):: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I have found, strangely enough, that this is one of the corners of the House that is under the blinkers. Having been a member of the procedure committee, and having considered this matter, I share some of the concerns expressed by the hon. member for Regina-Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin). I recognize some of the problems faced by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais) who, frankly is under instruction to make an automatic block. His predecessor was known for that. It is a sort of knee-jerk reaction. I believe that in many instances the House has been guilty of abusing Standing Order 43. Standing Order 26 used to be the vehicle for giving expression to private members' concerns.
I am not going to criticize the hon. member for Nipissing, nor others, nor the Chair; I am here to suggest very strongly that the Chair should request the committee on procedure to take another look at this matter to see whether or not there is some other formula which will give greater liberty to individual members to advance certain points of view. We have done this with the ten o'clock show, and perhaps this should come at six o'clock; but we have done some other things, too. However, I earnestly suggest-and this is something that has to come from the Chair to the government House leader-that this be made a matter of priority with the committee on procedure, since I would say that we are, unfortunately, in a situation where the chairmanship of the committee of procedure is under the government House leader. That should not be, Mr. Speaker, since procedure is a matter for members of the House.


Mr. Speaker:: If I may now finalize the representations made on Standing Order 43, the last two members who have spoken have raised different points. Dealing firstly with the point raised by the hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert), I was at the point of suggesting that this matter might be taken before the procedure committee. I have nothing to say, of course, respecting the chairmanship of that committee.
With respect to the point made by the hon. member for Regina-Lake Centre (Mr. Benjamin), the hon. member raises a separate difficulty that is inherent in the remarks he has put forward; that is to say, that an hon. member who puts forward, as he described, a motion pursuant to Standing Order 43 is persuaded that the motion is so worth while that it ought to be put without debate. That, in itself, is a proposition which most hon. members find questionable. Often, these motions are rather complex and touch very important subjects. Often members find it is incongruous to debate motions in this chamber for many days, yet the House is expected on a daily basis to accept a proliferation of motions without any debate or possibility of amendment. Usually, insistence on debate is the only motivation for refusing unanimous consent. I only add that comment to indicate that the problem of either getting or
14274

June 8, 1976
Order Paper Questions
withholding unanimous consent is much more complex than meets the naked eye.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I should like to table, under the provisions of Standing Order 41(2), a technical and cost profile of television coverage of parliamentary proceedings prepared by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.


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: 4,615, 5,258, 5,276, 5,306, 5,307, 5,373, 5,497 and 5,522.


Mr. Whiteway: 1.	For the years (a) 1973-74 (b) 1974-75 (c) 1975-76 were grants provided to the Province of Manitoba by the (i) Medical Research Council for medical research (ii) National Research Council for physical sciences research (iii) Canada Council for research in humanities and social sciences and, if so, in each case, in what amounts?
2.	For the year 1974-75 how many persons were employed in medical research in the Province of Manitoba and, of these, how many will have their jobs terminated due to the recent freeze in funds provided by the Medical Research Council?
3.	For the year 1974-75, were projects funded by the Medical Research Council in Manitoba and, if so (a) what were they (b) how many, if any, such projects will be affected due to the recent freeze in grants provided by the Medical Research Council?


Mitchell William Sharp: I am informed by the Medical Research Council, the National Research Council and the Canada Council as follows: 1. (i)* $2,395,442; $2,253,839; $2,282,664. (ii) 1973-74, $2,261,130; 1974-75, $2,323,537; 1975-76 (Forecast), $2,628,863. (iii) No grants were provided.
*Note: Figures refer to grants provided to researchers in the Province of Manitoba.
2.	Information not available.
3.	Yes; (a) In 1974-75 the Medical Research Council supported 90 projects, 1 MRC Group and 2 special projects, and provided general research grants to the deans of the

schools of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, and 7 grants for the maintenance of research equipment. Details of the projects supported in 1974-75 are recorded in the Report of the President of the Medical Research Council for 1974-75, tabled in the House on June 17, 1975; (b) Thirty-nine of those projects have been completed or terminated during the intervening period. Of those which are still continuing in 1976-77, 32 projects and the MRC Group have been subject to a 3 per cent reduction in approved operating funds for 1976-77, and the general research grants have been reduced by one-third for the year 1976-77. Seven projects which would normally have been assured of support for the full year 1976-77 will receive only 8 months support and 2 additional ones will receive 3 months rather than 12 months support. These figures, of course, do not take account of additional funds of $2 million recently made available to the Medical Research Council. It is expected that the decision as to the disposition of these extra funds will be made by Council at its meeting of June 8-11, 1976.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): 1.	Since the implementation of the Farm Improvement Loans Programme, what was the total amount of loans granted to the farmers in the Constituency of Temiscamingue?
2.	(a) How many farmers in the Constituency made applications for such loans (b) how many received such a loan (c) what are their addresses?
3.	For each loan, what was (a) the name of the lending institution (b) the rate of interest charged (c) the period for repayment?


Mr.   Jacques-L. Trudel@Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance: Under the Farm Improvement Loans Programme the government provides guarantees for loans made at the discretion of private lenders. Statistics concerning such loan guarantees are not maintained on a constituency basis.


Mr. Coates: 1.	Since the present Deputy Minister of Health was appointed, what major appliances have been installed in his office and at what cost?
2.	Are there any government regulations issued by Treasury Board or the Department of Public Works covering the outfitting of senior officials' offices with appliances such as stoves, refrigerators, dishwashers, and the like and, if so, what is the general purport of such regulations?


Mitchell William Sharp: am informed by the Departments of National Health and Welfare, Public Works and Treasury Board as follows: 1. No major appliances have been installed in the Deputy Minister of Health's office. However, an amount of $1,006 was spent to buy a dishwasher, refrigerator and stove when the Health side of the Department moved to new quarters. These appliances are adjacent to the Executive Conference Room and are at the disposal of Departmental Officers utilizing the Conference Room.
June 8, 1976

2.	Although there are no Treasury Board regulations governing the outfitting of the offices of senior officials with electrical appliances, deputy heads are responsible for exercising and maintaining a high standard of probity and prudence in all aspects of the management of their departments and for ensuring that any acquisitions are appropriate to their needs.


Mr. Cossitt: To the knowledge of the government, were appointees as Census Commissioners, for the Constituency of Leeds, for the 1976 Census members or supporters of the Liberal Party and, if so (a) is the government officially aware that Mr. Edward Lanigan was the provincial candidate for the Liberal Party in Leeds in the last provincial election (b) is the government officially aware that Mrs. Elsie Wilson of Smiths Falls is the Secretary of the Leeds Liberal Association (c) are all such appointments made on the basis of politics rather than on the basis of public competition and merit and, if so, for what reason?


Mr. Marcel Roy (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Statistics Canada reports the following: With respect to (a) and (b) Statistics Canada has no knowledge of the background or political affiliation of those individuals who are referred as Census Commissioner Candidates. Statistics Canada recommends for appointment only qualified candidates irrespective of their political affiliation. With respect to (c) the recruitment procedures for Census Commissioners are outlined in the answer to 2(a) of Question No. 5,307. It must be reiterated that candidates must pass both a personnel selection test and personal interview administered by employees of Statistics Canada. Statistics Canada does not recommend unqualified candidates to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce for appointment.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	What constituencies are included under the jurisdiction of Mr. Robert L. Potvin, a regional director of Statistics Canada?
2.	(a) What is a detailed description of methods used by Mr. Potvin or his representatives in selecting census commissioners for the 1976 Census (b) what is the name and address of every person contacted in regard to such appointments in each constituency (c) were Members of Parliament contacted and, if so, which ones and what is their political affiliation (d) in constituencies not represented by a Member of Parliament who is a member of the Liberal Party, were any members of Liberal Party executives contacted and, if so, what are their names and addresses?


Marcel-Claude Roy: Statistics Canada reports the following: 1. The constituencies included in the jurisdiction of the Ottawa Regional Office of Statistics Canada (Mr. R. L. Potvin, Regional Director) follow: (See table)
2. (a) The appointment of commissioners for the 1976 Census of Canada falls under the authority of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce as contained under Section 5 of the Statistics Act. The same procedure for recruiting and appointing Commissioners has long been established several censuses ago. A local contact is appointed through the Minister's Office for each constituency for the purpose of identifying potential Commissioner candidates
Order Paper Questions
to Statistics Canada regional officers. All Commissioner nominees are subjected to a qualifying test administered by Statistics Canada; they are also interviewed by Statistics Canada employees. Those candidates judged by Statistics Canada to be qualified are recommended for appointment to the Minister; (b) The attachment lists the names and addresses of all local contacts provided to the Ottawa Regional Office of Statistics Canada. In addition, several Canada Manpower Centres were also contacted; (c) Question 2(b) above, indicates those constituencies where the Member of Parliament acted as a local contact for his/her own constituency; (d) In all constituencies the name of the local contact was provided to Statistics Canada by the office of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Statistics Canada has no information as to whether or not the local contacts are members of Liberal Party executives.
Ottawa Regional Office area of responsibility
Federal Electoral District	Name and Address of Contact
1. Abitibi	M. Francois Godbout 6 rue Principale N. Amos, Quebec.
2. Gatineau	M. Gaston Clermont (M.P.) Thurso, Quebec
3. Hull	Mme. Claudia Deslauriers 61 rue Corbeil, Hull, Quebec.
4. Pontiac	Mr. Fred Metcalfe P.O. Box 401, Bristol, Quebec.
5. Temiscamingue	M. Jacquelin Bergeron Nedelec, Quebec.
6. Villeneuve	M. Lionel Brochu 663-3e avenue, Val d'Or, Quebec.
7. Algoma	Mrs. Mary Gillis 211 Hunter Street, Espanola, Ontario.
8. Cochrane	Conrad Stewart 38 Kimberly Drive, Kapuskasing, Ontario.
9. Frontenac, Lennox and	Mrs. Grace Stalker
Addington	R.R. * 1, Bath, Ontario.
10. Glengarry-Prescott-	Alvarez Laliberte
Russell	503 rue Laurier, Hawkesbury, Ontario.
11. Grenville-Carleton	Mrs. Pat Beaudry 1339 Meadowlands Dr., Apt. 911 Ottawa, Ontario.
12. Kingston and The	Mr. Bob Little
Islands	346 Clarence Street, Kingston, Ontario.
13. Lanark-Renfrew-	Jim McGregor
Carleton	Douglas, Ontario.
95570-3)4

June 8, 1976
Order Paper Questions
Ottawa Regional Office area of responsibility
Federal Electoral District	Name and Address of Contact
14. Leeds	Hugh Hart, 61 King St., East, Brockville, Ontario.
15. Nickel Belt	Mrs. Susan Kitchener, 10 Balsam, Copper Cliff, Ontario.
16. Nipissing	Mr. Fernand Remillard, P.O. Box 70, Lavigne, Ontario.
17. Ottawa Carleton	Tom Lamothe, 2 Seguin Street, Ottawa, Ontario. K1J6P6
18. Ottawa Centre	Mr. Louis Tarte, 42 Primrose Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.
19. Ottawa Vanier	Mrs. Earla Charlebois, 196 Marlborough Street, Ottawa, Ontario.
20. Ottawa West	Mrs. Joyce Erskine, 1230 Major Street, Ottawa, Ontario. K2C 2S2
21. Renfrew North-Nipissing East	Mr. Wilfred LeBarr, 262 Catherine Street, Pembroke, Ontario. K8A 1V7
22. Sault Ste-Marie	Mrs. Cathy Gernon, 152 Arden, Sault Ste-Marie, Ontario
23. Stormont-Dundas	Mr. Ed Lumley (M.P.) 302 Baldwin Avenue, Cornwall, Ontario.
24. Sudbury	Sirio Bacciaglia, 902 Charlotte Street, Sudbury, Ontario. P3E 4C4
25. Timiskaming	Mr. Dan Kilbride, 6 Wood Street, Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
26. Timmins	Conrad Carriere, 224 Spruce N., Timmins, Ontario.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS-MR. VICTOR FISHER, MEXICO
Mr. Reynolds: 1.	On what date was the Department of External Affairs first contacted regarding the Victor Fisher case?
2.	What was the first time that anyone from the Canadian Embassy in Mexico talked or visited directly with Mr. Fisher?
3.	What are all the dates and times that anyone from the Canadian Embassy had direct contact with Mr. Fisher?
[Mr. Roy (Laval).1
4.	(a) Who in the Canadian Embassy gave permission to talk directly with the Judge involved in the case (b) on what date did Embassy officials talk to the Judge?
5. Was anyone at the political level contacted by the Canadian government and, if so, what was the name(s) of the official(s) contacted?
6.	Has the Canadian government ever acted as an intermediary when bribes or pay-offs were made to Mexican officials?
7.	(a) How many complaints were received at the Canadian Embassy in Mexico during the years 1974 and 1975 (b) how many of these involved persons in jail (i) what are their names (ii) how long were they incarcerated?
8.	Does the government advertise to warn Canadians of the special circumstances they can get involved in while in Mexico if they are accused of violating Mexican law?
9.	Are there any negotiations going on with Mexico at the present time to set up special courts for Canadian tourists?
10.	Are any negotiations going on between the Canadian and Mexican governments that would allow Canadians to post bail if they are arrested in Mexico?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: 1. January 29, 1976.
2.	February 16, 1976.
3.	Records show that Mr. Fisher was directly contacted by the Embassy on February 16, March 25 (twice), April 9, 12, 21 and 22. In addition, there were several contacts with Mr. Fisher's lawyer and with his cousin, Mr. Arnold Fisher.
4.	(a) Head of Consular Section of the Embassy; (b) February 26, 1976.
5.	Yes. The Governor of Colima, the Office of the Deputy Attorney-General of Mexico and H E. The Ambassador of Mexico to Canada.
6.	No.
7.	(a) Assuming that complaints mean requests for information or assistance, the Embassy received between 200300 per month; (b) 61; (i) Information of this nature is considered to be confidential and is therefore not released without the consent of the persons concerned, (ii) The length of detention varied with the nature of the charge and; as applicable, with the length of sentence if found guilty.
8.	No. There is no specific warning regarding Mexico. However, the pamphlets "Information for Canadians Travelling Abroad" and "Bon Voyage, but..." which are included with all new passports, contain general information on local laws and regulations abroad and on the type of difficulties which travelling Canadians may encounter.
9.	No.
10.	No.


ANNUAL SALARIES OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES
Mr. Herbert: How many government employees are presently receiving an annual salary (a) between $20,000 and $30,000 (b) more than $30,000?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: the government employees for which the Treasury Board is the employer (PSSRA, Schedule 1, Part 1, plus PSSRB): 18,918 receive an annual salary of between $20,000 and $30,000 and 4,652 receive an annual salary of more than $30,000.
June 8, 1976


ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY AUTHORITY-CARGO
Mr. Forrestall: In the best estimate of the government, would any cargo be diverted from the St. Lawrence Seaway if rates were increased to $1.65 per ton of bulk cargo and to $3.70 per ton of general cargo and, if so (a) what commodities would be diverted (b) in what quantity (c) to what modes and to what routings?


Mr. Ralph E. Goodale (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority advises as follows: Some cargo would be diverted from the St. Lawrence Seaway if the present tolls on the Mont-real-Lake Ontario section were increased to $1.65 per ton bulk and $3.70 per ton general. Given the many variables that affect this traffic, it is not feasible to predict the commodities or the alternative routings that would be involved. There are, however, indications that such a toll increase would have adverse effects upon the low value bulk products which comprise some 90 per cent of Seaway traffic. A considerable amount of Quebec-Labrador iron ore could be diverted to U.S. East Coast ports and thence by unit train to the interior or, alternatively, to overseas markets. This ore presently provides a backhaul for grain moving eastward. If much of the ore traffic is diverted, the lack of a backhaul would affect substantially the cost advantage currently enjoyed by Seaway grain movements.


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


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Thomas Charles Cossitt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, may I draw the attention of the parliamentary secretary to question No. 5,141 which was placed on the order paper on March 31. That question asks for details concerning the fact that operators of Bell Canada, under instructions from the Department of Communications, listen in at intervals of approximately 40 to 45 seconds to telephone calls made by members of parliament in incoming government Watts lines. My question also asks for the reason this is done, why these instructions were issued, who issued them, and for a guarantee that this was not being done for the purposes that one might hope are not the reason, namely, to gather information for political purposes.
It seems to me that this is a simple and straightforward question, and it is one to which members of parliament are entitled to have an answer. The information is no secret. It is contained in the question. It is obtainable from any Bell operator operating for the government under communications. It is obtainable from supervisors on duty. I have obtained it from four supervisors and at least five operators.
I think it is about time that the members of this House had an answer to a question almost 2lA months old asking why operators of Bell Canada, paid by the government, are listening in on calls of members of parliament. This is a
The Budget-Mr. Dick
pretty serious business. They say that the equipment is outdated, that they have to listen in to see if we are still talking in order to disconnect the line. If the equipment is outdated, I suggest that it is time something is done about the equipment.
Certainly, we ought to be told these things, Mr. Speaker, since it is always a possibility that some listening-in would be done for political purposes, and this would go beyond all bounds of decency and what should be permitted in the House. I recall that at one point Your Honour said that this matter would be looked into, along with other points of order raised by my colleague sitting to my left and, I believe, by the hon. member for Yukon, and that subsequently a meeting would be held to reveal the results and the findings. As yet, I do not believe that meeting has taken place. If we cannot have some indication from the parliamentary secretary as to when the question will be answered, perhaps I can ask the Chair for some indication when the promised meeting will be held, so as to clarify the situation which seems to me to be quite out of order.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have had a question on the order paper since July 25, 1975, question No. 3,072, which is almost one year old. It asks several questions respecting the Post Office Department and their annual report concerning employees in the various categories. As I said, the question has been on the order paper since July 25 last, and I think it is absolutely ridiculous that this government has been unable to answer the question in almost a year. I think they had better get about their business and give answers to these questions.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Thursday, June 3, consideration of the motion of Mr. Macdonald (Rosedale) that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government, and the amendment thereto of Mr. Stevens (page 13901).
Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, may I continue the remarks I started the other day, on June 3, as reported at page 14147 of Hansard, when I had to call it ten o'clock. At that time I was expressing concern that the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development had indicated that of 12 countries that appeared on a chart showing percentage expenditure of gross national product spent on research and development, Canada was tenth. I was trying to express some concern about the small amount of money that Canadians spend on research and development.
In order to show the concern that many people in this country have about this fact, may I just read an extract from a letter written to me by a constituent, a company that started a year and a half ago with four people, four

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Dick
founders, and which has now grown to the extent of employing 19 people. In its second full year it looks like its billings will amount to half a million dollars. Let me quote as follows:
We have had one government assistance program in that time, a defence industrial research program, with the government's share being $35,000. We have invested approximately $95,000 of our own funds into R&D to date and have received IRDIA assistance of approximately $19,000. We do not know what our chances of success to date, or even survival, would have been without IRDIA.
IRDIA is the only government assistance program that gives support to a new business and is one of the very few that gives capital equipment assistance at any time.
Apparently the firm is not in a DREE area. The letter continues:
The 25-cent on the $1.00 that IRDIA grants, in many cases, enables a small business to take that small step in expansion that they might otherwise not: i.e., new venture incentive.
Small business does not have the large corporate back-up to perform their own R&D. We must exist and expand on our smaller level of profit.
We feel that the underlying reason for the government action in repealing IRDIA was to reduce the enormous amount of assistance to large corporations, many of them multi-national, in which most research and development is of a small r and d nature and generally not even that, but is really product improvement.
Small businesses in Canada, which we would think are almost 100 per cent Canadian owned, initially do not have established products to offer, but do have very good ideas with which we believe we can do something. We must perform research and development in a manner so as to reach our goals as economically as possible. We are, therefore, not spending our limited funds recklessly and therefore do not indulge heavily in IRDIA assistance.
Rather than "throw out" IRDIA in its entirety, we suggest the act should be revised and limited to small business. For this purpose small business should be defined as a total corporation, not a division of a corporation, with less than 100 employees and billings, or sales, of less than $2,500,000. Once this plateau in size is reached, a company should be able to operate without outside assistance, or at least be in a position to contribute a large share of a cost shared program, i.e., PAIT. Such an approach to IRDIA would provide the incentive that new Canadian ventures require to continue in existence.
I would recommend that suggestion in the last paragraph I read, or an alternative to that, to the ministry. The ministry has said it intends to come out with something, but as yet it has not done so. Perhaps it should be pointed out at this stage that we have a growing balance of payments problem in this country, yet we have a growing domestic market of unused labour, high unemployment and a skilled labour force. We also have the raw materials. The reason we are going in the wrong direction and that we are lacking in proper research and development in industry is that we seem to have no direction, no national goals and no strategy of any kind. There certainly is no direction or any goal pertaining to an industrial strategy evident in this budget or in any other government proposal.
With the repeal of IRDIA there is, in my view, little or no government encouragement to small or medium-sized industries in the field of research and development. Unless we take some decisions in co-operation with the provinces in the immediate future, our industrial base will continue to erode, imports will continue to increase and our balance of payments will continue to be in a deficit position, with unemployment continuing at a very high level.

Most industrial research is carried out by the multinational corporations in the countries in which the head office is established, and not in Canada. It is time this government took a hard look at industrial research in our own country with a mind to encouraging Canadian research and development. Unless the government changes its attitude we will lose, in the end, the talents of many of our valuable industrial researchers who no doubt will continue their research and inventions outside Canada in countries that appreciate the value of their work. Once these people have left, it will be very difficult to persuade them that the government has changed its mind and they are really welcome back at home.
It is important that the government consider the last paragraph I quoted from that letter, as I think it is a fair indication of the concerns many people have in technological and industrial companies in this country. This is the reason for great concern on the part of us all. Indeed, if we do not come up with an innovative, technological industrial base, which can only be arrived at through continuing research, development and innovation, employment in the future is doomed indeed.
I have already indicated that many people in this country who have PHDs and BAs or other college degrees, as well as engineers and other professionals, cannot find employment. Unemployment among youth in this country is alarmingly high. This is probably due to the fact we do not have the right mixture or industrial base. That is partly to blame.
As a parting comment, perhaps not directly related to the other matters about which I have spoken, I would urge this government to consider and actively put into place a "Buy Canada first" policy. The United States federal government and various state and municipal governments all have a preference in respect of government contracts there. The government awards contracts to American companies which employ American citizens in various parts of that country. Unfortunately, in Canada it has appeared over a period of time that a Canadian firm cannot get a contract with the government of this country unless it has proven itself by selling to some foreign industry or government. Only then will the Canadian government consider it to be of a certain quality.
The Canadian government should bend over backwards, to a greater degree than it has in the past, to make sure Canadian established companies employing Canadians are awarded just about every contract for which the Canadian government calls tenders. This, indeed, would encourage Canadians to carry out research and development and would encourage Canadians to be innovative. It would supply Canadians with jobs and would, in the end, encourage the employment of young people in this country as our industrial base gathers steam.
With that parting comment, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity of speaking during this budget debate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: I recognize the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. (Mr. Jamieson).


An hon. Member:: This should be good.


Hon. Donald C. Jamieson (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: I must say, Mr. Speaker, that I begin on a
June 8, 1976

note of bitter disappointment. I looked across the chamber and saw the Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Clark) present, and thought for sure he had come in especially to listen to me. I only discovered a few minutes ago that he is following me, and that is probably the only reason he is here. However, even though it may be accidental, I may be able to teach him something.


Charles Joseph Clark: T will stay, if you will stay.


Donald Campbell Jamieson: Mr. Speaker, the Leader of the Official Opposition has said that he will stay if I will stay. May I apologize to him in advance.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Donald Campbell Jamieson: I would be delighted to stay, but it so happens, as the hon. member knows, that I frequently listen to his learned discourse but unfortunately, I have another meeting immediately afterwards. I thought it might be useful this afternoon to take advantage of the budget debate to touch on a few of the more important aspects of trade position as it exists at the present time, and on various other matters which come under my responsibility in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Of necessity, because of the time constraint it will not be possible to go through these in detail. Nevertheless, I think I can, in the 30 minutes available, indicate to the House that there are encouraging signs in terms of the performance of the Canadian economy and the outlook for both international trade and trade generally in this country.
For example, in the first instance it is interesting to note that the GNP in constant dollar terms, actually increased in the last three quarters of 1975, and that the seasonally adjusted index of real domestic product was up by .07 per cent in the first quarter of 1976 over the four quarters of 1975. Therefore, I think the prediction of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald), which he acknowledges is not lavish but which nevertheless is to some degree satisfactory, of a 5 per cent growth in the GNP, is one which we will see borne out during the current year. I am also happy to tell hon. members today, on the basis of the performance records we have for the first part of this year, that I believe it is now reasonably safe to say that we will have a slight surplus in our trade account this current year.
This, of course, is quite a turn-around from what it was a year ago. For instance, we expect now that the $800 million deficit we had last year in commodity trade will be turned to a surplus. Exports are up by more than $1 billion in the three-month period, February to April, of this year, compared to 1975. Averaged out over the year, they will amount to more than $4 billion. Imports are also up, which is to some degree a worrisome statistic although it reflects the health of the Canadian economy. Fortunately, our exports are up more than our imports, and this gives all of us reason for confidence in predicting that the commodity trade to which I have referred is already back into what might be described as equilibrium and that there will be a surplus which at this time is impossible to forecast with precision, but which will certainly be of the order of several million dollars in the current year. This, I empha-
The Budget-Mr. Jamieson
size, is a significant turn-around from what occurred in 1975.
There is another encouraging statistic in which I think members will be interested. Export sales have increased in all commodity areas except energy materials. Right across the full spectrum of our exports there has actually been significant improvement in the first three months of the current year. It also should be borne in mind that in terms of the reduction in energy-related exports-and this is by a conscious decision, I believe, supported on all sides of the House-that in the current year those exports will probably decline by something close to $1 billion from what they were a year ago. I think this deliberate action also should be taken into account when looking at our total balance of payments in the situation.
Except for energy-related commodities, there has been an encouraging improvement throughout the whole spectrum, including-incidentally I might add-value added or finished products which, of course, is one of the things we are still most interested in because in basic terms, if one looks at our exports, it has to be acknowledged that they depend, in volume terms at least, to a very great extent on raw materials, on the auto pact and related things of this nature, and that we would be very foolish if we did not recognize that in terms of manufactured and processed goods we still have a very unhealthy total situation. I think it will take a lot of combined effort by labour, management and government-and all of us-at this time to correct and improve this situation. In a few moments, Mr. Speaker, I hope I will have an opportunity to refer to the question of productivity which has such a direct bearing on that particular objective which, I emphasize, is one of the main objectives at the present time.
May I also, in this connection, say a word about the generally subscribed to objective of getting greater value added for our raw materials in this country. If one looks at it realistically, it seems to me that we cannot anticipate or expect that for every ton of raw material or for every pound of special metal we have in this country we can achieve value added right across the board. Inevitably, for the foreseeable future at least, there will be the necessity for, and probably there will be some wisdom in, the continuation of the export of raw materials. In other words, there are commodities with which we are not wholly or solely endowed in Canada in terms of competing countries, so therefore, in that sense at least, we will have to match the competition. By the same token of course if we wish to increase our trade with, for example, the European Economic Community or some of the other major trading blocs in the world with highly industrialized economies, then it is obvious that if they are to take finished products from us, we must also at the same time give them some assured access to the raw materials they will need.
In that connection, again, if there is time I will refer to this subject when talking about the multinational trade negotiations. Perhaps the biggest single item, in terms of commodities-if it is appropriate even to use that word- affecting our Canadian trade and the international trade is, of course, the auto industry and the so-called auto pact and many matters related to it. I have already indicated to the House on previous occasions that at the present time we are in the process of negotiating with the United States

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Jamieson
and discussing with them potential changes in matters relating to the auto pact.
There are two separate studies going on, one in Canada and one in the United States, with regard to the future of the auto industry in general which, of course, is being significantly affected by the energy shortage and by a whole variety of new factors which have emerged in the last three or four years. Once these studies are completed and the United States authorities and ourselves have agreed that we ought to seek to do it during the current year, then we will put these studies together to see what kinds of additional changes may be necessary in terms of achieving more equitably the original goals and aims of the auto pact.
In the meantime, some statistics which have just recently come to hand will, I am sure, interest hon. members, and in a totally non-partisan sense I expect they will be encouraging to hon. members. The auto industry will probably sell one million cars this year. This will be the first one-million car year in Canadian history. That is perhaps in some respects-as I suspect some would say-a regrettable trend if one is talking about conservation and the like. Nevertheless, if one is talking in trade terms exclusively, of course it makes a very substantial difference. To the end of May, for example, sales were 338,122 units, which is up substantially over last year. The totality of our manufacturing sector within Canada is now working at full capacity with the exception of the Chrysler truck plant, which I was pleased to open officially two or three weeks ago. It, too, will be going on a second shift at the start of the 1977 market year, which I believe is almost a full year earlier than had been previously anticipated.
These indicators show that in the current year the auto industry will be very much on the upswing and that the deficit which we had last year on the so-called auto account, of $1.9 million, will be halved at least in the 1976 year. I should emphasize, again, as I know hon. members on both sides of the House are already aware, that a good deal of the problem continues to exist in the auto parts sector. I have had many discussions with the various parties concerned, both the auto parts manufacturers and the auto companies, as to how that particular segment of the auto industry can be brought into better balance. I believe progress will be made.
The mere fact that business is improving is bound to have its beneficial effect for the auto parts manufacturers, but there are other incidental, although very important, contributors as well. To use the auto industry as an example, one of these is the development, in the so-called less developed countries, of a growing capacity and a capability for the manufacture of a great line of parts and accessories of one sort or another. So it is not only in some of the more sensitive areas, such as textiles and footwear, that we are encountering this resurgence or emergence of the less developed countries, but it is now starting to spill over into what perhaps we considered to be almost exclusively the domain of the developed countries and, in terms of Cana-da-U.S., something which we kept within the North American continent. So that is a factor we will have to keep a very close eye on.

I made these references in relation to the auto pact, but the same is true, of course, of a very wide and increasing range of commodities where less developed countries are acquiring greater confidence and competitiveness every day. In any event, I think it is important to note that in this current year-assuming that everything goes as is now projected-we will see, for the first time in our history, the sale of one million passenger cars. This will result in halving the deficit and virtually all of it will be on the side of the auto pact.
I said I would say a few words about productivity. Of course, this is at one and the same time one of the most obvious problems facing the Canadian economy, and particularly manufacturing and processing today. It is also one of the most complex ones, because one has to begin by seeking a definition, to which everyone can agree, of what constitutes productivity. In the manufacturing and processing sector, in the work we have done-incidentally, I would be more than pleased, as we have done on other issues, to make it available to members of the standing committee or to any others who may be interested-it is shown clearly that you can determine with a fair degree of precision what your productivity gains are, because they are based on the simple measure of output per man-hour. You can figure that out, as I said, relatively easily.
The same is basically true of the extractive industries- forestry, mining, etc.-where, once again, you have a firm and fixed product line to which you can attribute the cost of turning it out. Where the big difficulty comes, and where, as I said a moment ago, we need some clarity and agreement on definitions is, first of all, in the service sector. To the best of my knowledge, in the service sector there is no unanimity on whether or not there is a measurable productivity factor, and indeed the tendency has been for the most part to regard it as being neutral or flat, in productivity terms. In other words, you do not regard it as having had any input or output in so far as growth in the economy is concerned.
Obviously, this is an oversimplification, and yet at the same time it is something about which, it seems to me, we do not have enough knowledge at present to judge what measurements we should be using in this country to determine precisely how productive we are. I might say, also, that another area for which a more detailed study and one on which there is bound to be a good many points of view expressed, is whether or not, in terms of measuring productivity, for instance, we really ought to give it the overriding emphasis that has tended to be the case for most of us, including myself, until fairly recent times.
For instance, when you look at the statistics and the calculations, it is clear that there are countries in the world with a much higher rate of productivity, given the yardsticks I have mentioned, than Canada has. Among them, as I recall, are Japan, for example, and Italy. But whether or not we in this country would want to have the same kind of economies that have generated these levels of productivity is another matter and one which I think is a very real basis for debate.
The other point in relation to productivity-and I am simply touching here on a whole range of issues which certainly deserve much more thorough examination by all
June 8, 1976

of us-is to question the accepted wisdom that greater productivity automatically means greater economic benefit and, therefore, greater employment. It is open to question, because when one looks at how you achieve major breakthroughs in productivity, in the first instance at least it generally tends to be through a transition from a very large, labour-intensive element in a particular industry or sector to mechanization and modernization where you have a substantial amount of job displacement by machines. So in straight productivity terms, you could conceivably have a situation in which, through a very strong thrust toward rationalization, modernization and various things of this sort, you could be turning out more goods per man-hour but you might not necessarily, in the short run, be improving employment in relation to productivity.
Therefore, it seems to me that a productivity policy has to go hand-in-hand with a whole series of other measures which would relate to job displacement, to alternative types of employment and to a whole range of other social issues or related economic issues. I have no doubt that the theorists are probably right in the long run when they take the view that eventually high productivity, which means excellent economic performance, will lead to jobs in other sectors and generally to a higher level of employment. I believe that is true all the time. But I think we have to accept the fact that there is, as we have seen, probably, in most of our constituencies, evidence that there is an interim period and that when you have productivity perhaps you have problems of dislocation in terms of the jobless or the unemployed.
The other related question for those of us who are interested in this immensely important subject of productivity is that a country like Canada has to pay a price for being what it is, and I do not think any of us should in any sense of the word regret that. For example, if one were being totally theoretical and were looking at it completely devoid of human terms or even of nationalistic terms, you would have to say that in economies of scale the problems of reducing transportation costs and the like would probably dictate, as I said, in this coldly impersonal way, that everything be located within a relatively short distance somewhere in the centre of the country. That is where you will get the greatest productivity at the lowest cost.
So there is a price for having a Canada that goes from sea to sea. Regional development, various developments in the northern part of the country, investments of this kind, either public or private-all of these things are a necessary part of nationhood, of national development. But at the same time we have to understand that invariably they cause a reaction in the productivity figure which we ought to take into account when measuring our performance, for example, against that of some other countries.
These are just a few of what I would describe as random thoughts on productivity, but I hope they demonstrate to hon. members that my ministry and the government are working very hard on this issue. I repeat that I would be more than pleased to make a presentation to the House on what we have learned to date, so that we can get the benefit of other people's judgment on this issue as well.
Since my time is moving very quickly, let me touch on another matter relating to trade and to the general econo-
The Budget-Mr. Jamieson
my, that is, the whole issue of capital formation. I had the Business Advisory Council-of whom I believe hon. members are aware, which represents some of the leading figures in the business, economic and financial picture in Canada-come to a special meeting on capital formation a little over two weeks ago. The conclusion of these business leaders, was, first of all, that in terms of the capital formation issue, inflation is clearly the number one problem, which surely suggest that we must continue our effort to get inflation under control, because as long as you have this uncertainty created by inflation, capital formation will be exceedingly difficult. Of course, given our needs over the next decade or so, that clearly looms as an immense problem for us in this country.
There are estimates-and I have not been able to challenge them effectively-that in terms of capital formation we will probably need something in the order of $800 billion in the next decade, given a year or two on either side. As near as we have been able to calculate from our assessments, some $500 billion of that will have to be provided in the private sector or for the private sector. Therefore, a real challenge to us in Canada is to figure out the most effective means of generating that capital. Incidentally, there was unanimity in the business community that there was no serious problem with regard to finding that amount of financing, but there were questions raised as to how we might be able to give special priority to particular projects so that there would not be an assault, as it were, by everyone on the market at precisely the same time, which the banking representatives present agree would be difficult to deal with.
So once again we have this communication going with the business community as to how this kind of thing may be managed, and I know that my colleague, the Minister of Finance, is aware, as I am, of the fact that when one looks at that huge amount of capital which is going to be required, it is equally clear that a substantial portion of it is going to be for either public enterprises of one form or another or for quasi-public enterprises such as public utilities and the like, particularly those in the energy field, either for the generation of electricity, pipelines, or various things of that kind.


An hon. Member:: Petro-Can.


Donald Campbell Jamieson: The hon. member says "Petro-Can." I do not know whether we calculated Petro-Can into the picture, but certainly the figures I am putting forward now are really not related in terms of the amount needed. The issue is not whether it is going to be public or private. It is purely a question of whoever does it. Those are the levels of investment which will be necessary.


Mr. Woolliams:: And it doesn't matter how expensive it
is!


Donald Campbell Jamieson: I believe I heard the hon. member for Calgary North (Mr. Woolliams) say "Cut down on expenses." That is part of the exercise, and I hope we will have the support of hon. members opposite in doing just that.
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June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Jamieson
I might also say that the biggest single demand is likely to be from the provinces in terms of capital formation and in terms of foreign markets. Actually, if one looks at the record over the past several years, the federal government, by and large, has managed to deal with its financial requirements within the country. The provinces, by and large, with some exceptions, have gone offshore; so therefore there is a necessity for federal-provincial consultation as well.
Just moving quickly to one or two other points in the few minutes I have left, because I do not wish to intrude on the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) who, as I understand it, follows me, the last thing I want to say is with regard to the somewhat cavalier way in which some hon. members of the opposition have dismissed the whole idea or the whole effort with regard to energy conservation measures introduced in the budget and in various other ways. It is most interesting to note that over the past year or so we have established a government industry committee covering all, I think, the main sectors of industry, and some of the objectives and commitments which have been made known by industry will interest hon. members in the sense of what really can be achieved in energy conservation. For instance, the chemical industry in this country is aiming for a 17 per cent reduction in BTU's per pound of product by 1980, compared with 1972. If they achieve this, and they believe they can, this will provide savings equivalent to 11 million barrels of oil annually. I am told that that is enough to heat metropolitan Toronto for one year.
Though it may at some stage seem like a relatively minor point when we talk about energy conservation measures as contained in the budget and elsewhere, the savings are potentially very significant. For instance, the pulp and paper sector is the largest energy-consuming sector, which may surprise some hon. members. I did not realize that until I saw the figures for myself. It accounts for one-quarter of the manufacturing industry's energy consumption, and the goal of this industry, as stated by the Pulp and Paper Association and its membership, is a 12 per cent reduction in BTU's per ton of product by 1980. The saving is about the same: 11 million barrels of oil annually.
I will just mention two other sectors: cement and steel. Both sectors are intensive users of energy and have already made, and are continuing to make, substantial savings in energy use. Both industries are already acknowledged to be more energy efficient than most of their world competitors. Additional projected annual savings per ton of product in the next four or five years will amount to the equivalent of one million barrels of oil for cement, and two million barrels for steel. If we put these all together and we assume that world prices will reach $15 per barrel by 1980-and nobody really knows that with any precision-the projected saving of $30 million for the steel industry alone by way of conservation will aid immeasurably in keeping Canadian manufactured goods competitive on world markets.
As I said at the outset, these are just a few comments with regard to the trade picture. I am pleased to be able to report to hon. members that there is a buoyancy present now. Quite honestly, I do not understand why some hon. members opposite would discredit our enthusiasm for the improvement in the economy of the United States. Clearly,

if you are in the selling business, and that is what we are, the health of your best customer has to be a source of joy and satisfaction, and I am glad that that is happening.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Campbell Jamieson: I, along with the Minister of Finance, have every confidence that the projects of the various sectors which I have outlined today will come through with a satisfying performance in 1976. It will not be as good as all of us would like, but nevertheless it will be significantly better than it was in 1975. The trend generally will also be upward for the years beyond that.
I thank hon. members very much for listening with such attention.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker,
I was interested in hearing the remarks of the minister, and I regret that he has to be away at an engagement later on. I should say that the only buoyancy any of us here has noticed is the unfailing optimism of the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Jamieson) in the face of the worst possible circumstances. He would have been an ideal choirmaster on the Titanic. We at least congratulate him on his unfailing good cheer.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: I found it significant that as he was concluding the minister found it necessary to comment on the comfort we can take from the health of the economy of the United States, as if that were some substitute for very serious problems we face in Canada. If credit is due for the health of the United States economy, that credit is certainly due to the government of that country. What is lamentable is that most of the gains predicted by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) and the immediate prospect for this country will also be attributable to the government of the United States and not to the government across the aisle.
In a parliament which has been dominated by games of pass-the-buck and pass-the-blame on the "Orion," conflicts between ministers on the question of the Unemployment Insurance Commission, desperate attempts in committee to repair legislation respecting gun controls, and a government which has for the last couple of weeks indicated that it has no higher goal than to get out of here as quickly as it can, it is easy to forget that we have a budget-and I think it is particularly easy to forget this particular budget.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: I share one distinction with the Minister of Finance, who is temporarily out of the House. This is the first budget he has introduced as minister, and it is the first to which I have had the privilege of responding as Leader of the Opposition. The minister and I, of course, differ in our attitude toward our predecessors. He is at pains to ignore his predecessor, John Turner, even while he presents a budget strictly in the Turner tradition, while I am deeply aware of my privilege in following, as Leader of the Opposition, the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Stanfield).
June 8, 1976


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: I should say that is particularly so on economic matters, because any honest, objective review of events in this House during the period of his leadership of this party indicates that he has been the singlemost creative source of economic policy in this chamber. Whether the matter has been indexing which was derided and then adopted by the government opposite, or whether it was an incomes policy which was reviled and then adopted by hon. members opposite, the hon. member for Halifax has set the pace, has indicated the foresight and courage that would have made him an outstanding leader of the country and made him an outstanding leader of this party and leader of the opposition.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Have to say, not to overstate the case, that this is a deeply disappointing budget, not just because it fails to give the leadership that Canada now requires on economic matters, but also it is a budget that is so much less than many of us have expected from the new Minister of Finance. I particularly regret that the minister is absent at the moment because I want to say one or two good things about him that he might not have expected.


An hon. Member:: He may come in.


An hon. Member:: That will bring him in.


Charles Joseph Clark: I think most of us who have had dealings with the Minister of Finance in his previous incarnations have disagreed with him often, but we have always recognized and respected him as a combative partisan in a place that requires combative partisans. We recognize him as a competent and fairly tough minister who is generally willing to rise to challenges. We often disagree with the challenges he saw or how he responded, but he was generally willing to rise to them. That is what has been doubly disappointing about his performance here. He faced a great opportunity to bring economic leadership to the country, to respond to the challenge of drift which is, unfortunately, characteristic of this government for most of its mandate. He did not respond to that challenge.
I have noted his self-assessment outside this chamber; that he would prefer to be called unimaginative rather than foolhardy. I can assure him and his colleagues that daring is not an adjective that leaped to our minds on budget night when we heard him read the words that had been prepared for him. If this minister said anything encouraging about this budget, it is that he will seriously consider bringing in another budget before too long.
Of course, there were some good proposals in the budget-good, but minor. Measures to encourage energy conservation-although they will not have the impact that was suggested by the minister who spoke before me-higher income deductions for day care costs, some revision of the unemployment insurance program, and a reintegration of UIC operations with federal Manpower services. These are all measures which our party has advocated for some time and which we support in principle.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
The Budget-Mr. Clark


Charles Joseph Clark: I should like to emphasize that a budget in Canada at any time, but particularly at this time, should do much more than just tinker with taxes. It should be a document which gives direction to the country. There is an obligation, particularly now, to give Canadians economic leadership.

At that stage, the country was entitled to expect a budget which would have spelled out policies. The last budget dated back to eleven months ago. At that time, the former Minister of Finance had resigned and turned his back on his party, presumably following a major disagreement on economic policies. Furthermore, the government which had won the last election by fighting controls turned around and put forth a control program which was imposed without consultation with its economic partners and whose basic rules were altered at least three times. Later, the Prime Minister caused great concern by referring to "a new economic society" and kept it alive by denying Canadians the opportunity to participate in the making of the post control policies which were secretly entrusted to a technocratic elite controlled by the Prime Minister.
Those three events: the minister's resignation, the policy reversal on controls and the apparent discard by the Prime Minister of the essential elements of the Canadian economic system, all of these created a climate of anxiety in this country. Therefore, the government had the obligation to dispel this anxiety by indicating in the budget the direction it plans to give the Canadian economy but that obligation was ignored like so many others.

Mr. Speaker, there are ominous aspects to that budget because it is a budget that is more dangerous than simply not doing what it should in setting directions that it should set. It has raised some very real questions about government policy, as indicated in the budget, plans for the other partners in the Canadian economy.
Changes have been introduced, again, to the Anti-Inflation Board. This is not the first time that major changes have been introduced to the terms of reference and the powers of that board in a way which has created uncertainty and added to administrative difficulty. The changes themselves would be serious enough, but the point I want to make is that this frequent tinkering with this very powerful mechanism indicates that this government has no understanding that the business community of Canada can accept tough rules. There is no problem with tough rules; the problems of the business community in Canada occur when the rules keep changing, when there is no certainty.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: It would be one thing if it were rare that the government would consciously create uncertainty in the economic climate of Canada, but unfortunately this has become a pattern. It was a pattern with the northern land regulations which were brought down not long ago after six years of delay, and it has clearly been the pattern with the competition policy. It is a pattern that goes back through the life of this government and indicates a fundamental failure to understand the necessity for a climate of
95570-4%

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Clark
certainty if there is going to be progress by the free enterprise regimes in this Canadian economy.
The government has raised some very serious questions in its proposals, of which we have only half the bundle so far, regarding unemployment. It has indicated that it intends to make some changes regarding eligibility for unemployment insurance and has held out the prospect of some other changes yet to be specified. Frequently in this House, however, the minister responsible for providing jobs and for ensuring that Canadians will have some place to go other than to unemployment insurance has admitted that he will not have, at least until this fall, any concrete programs to present which will help people who, particularly as unemployment insurance claimants, might need to have recourse to the Unemployment Insurance Commission. I would call the attention of the government to a recommendation of an excellent agency which it all too frequently ignores, the Economic Council of Canada. This agency has made some excellent reports, but unfortunately under this government has had them dismissed and not heeded. The Economic Council of Canada, in its most recent report entitled "People and Jobs" said, in connection with the whole subject of unemployment insurance and job creation in Canada, that regulatory changes alone do not, and will not, send people back to work if there are no jobs available.
The greatest deficiency in the budget presented by this government on the question of jobs is that there is no attempt by public policy to encourage the private sector to create jobs, and there is no frankness, no indication that the government itself has any public programs in place which will create some kind of public employment. That is a serious failure and indicates that there is little regard, little compassion, on the part of those on the government benches for Canadians who need work and are willing to work if jobs can be found or created.
Once again, this budget introduces very real uncertainty, sir, with regard to the role and problems which provinces of this country are to face. May I refer again to the unemployment insurance program. We know that, for better or for worse, that program has been used for purposes other than its original intention, which was that of providing income support. If that program is tightened, particular if that tightening occurs without any kind of substitution of new job-creating programs, there will be imposed new policies on the provinces of Canada and that imposition will be particularly harsh on the poorer provinces which are particularly incapable of dealing with it. We have seen previously this kind of playing around with the capacities of the provinces. It is worth noting that this particular measure which will impose new financial strains on the provinces of Canada, particularly on the poorer provinces, is being introduced at a time when the government itself is introducing a certain proposal, not in the way it should, with a bill, but by sneaking it in the back door with regard to Loto Canada. That lottery, after the expiration of any obligation we might assume toward the retirement of Olympic debt, will become a federal source of revenue drawn from a field which should properly belong to the provinces.
[Mr. Clark.)


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: On the one hand, we have this government imposing new costs on the provinces. On the other hand, we have the government undertaking initiatives which will deprive the provinces of potential sources of revenue which ought to be theirs.
Finally, and generally, the budget contributes to uncertainty in that it is silent on the most important question facing Canadians now in terms of economic policy. There is no indication at all in the budget of the Minister of Finance as to what is to be the nature of the so-called post-control society. The government has told us that it will think about what it is going to do this summer; perhaps in the fall they will tell us what they think we should know. That, Mr. Speaker, is an unacceptable approach to public business in this country.

The Prime Minister seems determined to get rid of the controls the same way he established them, that is without consulting anyone-through the secret planning of an elite of technocrats in Ottawa and with the passive approval of a Liberal majority in Parliament so as to impose a new program to Canadians. That would be disastrous. The controls are not a solution by themselves. They can only give us the opportunity to look for more basic solutions which will not succeed if they are forced upon us. In such a complex country as Canada, in order that a national policy may succeed, it must have the support of the other government partners in the society. And the unions, the businessmen, the farmers and the provinces will not support any policy which they consider as irrevelant.

This budget, Mr. Speaker, simply ignores the basic economic problems of Canada. Worse than that, it undervalues the potential of this country. There are many places where we part company with this government and this budget, but there is none more fundamental than on the question of basic economic priorities. The minister's position is that as long as we continue to have inflationary pressures in our economy, we cannot seek to maximize our potential for sound economic growth. Whatever his words may be, the minister's actions make it abundantly clear that his first-line anti-inflationary policy is slow growth. Mr. Speaker, we on my side of the House completely and totally reject that proposition.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Sir, we see sound economic growth not as a contradiction to the control of inflation but as a prime requisite for the control of inflation in the long term. Indeed, sir, I have no hesitation in suggesting to you that until and unless we have a government which accepts that elementary fact, we will continue to suffer from serious economic problems in Canada.
One is tempted to ask whether the minister and his colleagues, in their understandably extraordinary effort to forget everything they said in the spring and early summer of 1974, have blinded themselves completely to what has occurred in Canada in the intervening two years. They have been years of economic stagnation on the one hand, and very high levels of inflation on the other. Do the
June 8, 1976

minister and his colleagues not recognize the connection between these two factors? Do they not realize that much of the economic confrontation which has contributed to our inflationary problems is linked directly to our lack of sound economic growth in the Canadian economy? Can the minister and his colleagues not see that when our national wealth is not expanding, gains made by any group in society are seen as coming at the direct expense of other groups and that this breeds social and economic tension which leads to confrontation? Rather than being afraid of growth, we desperately need a new commitment to sound economic growth in Canada. That, of course, cannot be an end in itself, but must be seen as a key to the more meaningful goals and aspirations we all hold for this country.
Sir, we have a highly skilled and highly educated young population in this country. Are we educating them to collect unemployment insurance or welfare, or do we owe them the opportunity to pursue meaningful careers? We have hardly begun to make worth-while progress in the area of regional disparity. The Economic Council of Canada suggests that with current programs it will be at least 75 years before the Atlantic region of Canada is able to approach the national standard of living. Is the best we can do simply to transfer resources within the country, to make progress by lowering standards everywhere? Or can we not emphasize regional growth within a growing Canada? That, sir is the preference and policy of my party.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The Minister of Finance had an opportunity in his budget to face some basic, economic problems. Instead, he ducked those problems. At best they have been postponed; at worst they have been compounded. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce spoke about productivity. His productivity policy consists of defining the problem. Sir, that just is not enough. He put, in his buoyant way, the best possible face on our productivity problems. The Minister of Finance himself set out the dimensions of our balance of payments problems. By his own figures he has admitted that, while every other western country has absorbed the full impact of world energy prices and still reduced its balance of payments deficit, this country's position has seriously deteriorated. That is the scale of the problem by the minister's own admission. What did he do about it? He has a very exciting program in this regard! He said he would welcome cards and letters in relation to improving our productivity from all across the country.


Walter David Baker: With the mail situation he cannot even be sure they will get there.


Charles Joseph Clark: My colleague points out that one of the deficiencies in this approach is that the minister cannot be sure they will get there, with the mail situation. That was only half of his program. The other half is that he hoped the United States recovery would pull us out of our problems. In short, he confessed that this government is bankrupt of both ideas and leadership.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
The Budget-Mr. Clark


Charles Joseph Clark: Let us be very clear, Mr. Speaker, of the dimension of this problem on which the minister virtually turned his back. In 1970-a year, I stress, of serious world recession-Canada showed a surplus of some $6.6 billion in trade in processed and manufactured goods. In 1975-a year when the world began to recover from recession- Canada recorded a deficit of $5.8 billion in shipments of processed and manufactured goods. Not only did we fail to achieve any significant progress in export markets; we continued to lose ground to foreign manufacturers in our own Canadian market.
The hard reality is that we are keeping our head above international water only by continuing to sell off the raw resources of this country. Last year our trade performance would have been another $3 billion worse had it not been for shipments of natural resources. Yet this government offers not a single concrete initiative to reverse this trend, not a single positive policy to strengthen the competitive position of our processors and manufacturers. If it has a policy, it is to look to Washington-and perhaps to pray! [Translation]
Mr. Speaker, the first to be hit by this budget will be Canadians looking for a job. There is no provision in that budget for the creation of new jobs. Instead, the minister counts on economic recovery in other countries to get 250,000 new jobs in Canada. It is already bad enough that the government says to workers that they will have to rely on other countries to have new job, but even worse, figures advanced by the minister do not match the number of people who will enter the labour market for the first time.
Last year, 353,000 Canadians joined the labour force and were looking for a job. This year, it is anticipated that about 315,000 individuals will invade the labour market. The situation is such that with his estimate of 250,000 new jobs, the minister has merely devised a new way to increase unemployment. At the same time, his colleague the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) recognized that the government has no plan to generate new jobs here.
In short, it is the budget of a government which could not care less for unemployed Canadians.

Nowhere is the need for constructive leadership more pressing, or more lacking from this administration, than in the area of spending restraint. The fact is that this government has been on a continuous spending binge since the day the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) took office.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: In 1968, federal expenditures were in the area of $9 billion; this year they will exceed $40 billion. That is an increase of more than 400 per cent. Having put that kind of squeeze on everyone else in the economy, on the private sector and on the revenue sources of other levels of government, this administration now turns around and asks these same groups to bear almost the entire brunt of the current restraint program. Hypocrisy is probably the kindest description I can apply to this government.
In our view, the time has come for governments as a whole to halt their rising claims upon our national income-not simply by juggling their books for a year or

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Clark
two, but by adjusting in a very fundamental way the pace of growth in their demands upon available resources. In 1950, governments at all levels claimed about 20 per cent of our gross national product. This year the figure will approach 42 per cent. By any standard, that represents a massive shift in the allocation or our national resources.
I and my colleagues believe the time has now come to halt that trend, not as a cosmetic exercise but as a firm commitment to stimulating renewed strength and growth within our economy. Let me emphasize that I am talking about a gradual reduction in governments' share of our total national income and a reduction in their percentage share of GNP. The reality is that if we can attain our realistic growth potential in this country the amount of resources available to governments will continue to increase even while their over-all share of GNP stabilizes and declines.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Only our national government can exercise the kind of leadership necessary to achieve this basic adjustment in spending priorities. The provinces, to give them credit, have moved in that direction during the current year. On the whole, they have managed to hold their spending increases well below the anticipated rise in the GNP. That has not been easy for them. Nor has it been easy for local governments who have had to deal directly with the impact of these cutbacks at the senior levels, But these levels of government are trying. They have had the courage to face up to economic reality. It is time they and the people of Canada saw some courage in Ottawa.
If this government will make a serious commitment to self-restraint, perhaps it can exercise national leadership in what will certainly be a difficult and demanding process. But Ottawa simply cannot preach restraint to others and practice none itself. Above all, it must face up to its own lack of fiscal control and begin to come clean with the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: I see the Minister of Finance is back in his place. I have noted the pronouncements of the Minister of Finance in this budget. If words were all we needed, we would welcome his conversion to the need for fiscal restraint. However, unfortunately for him, governments still are judged on their actions. When it comes to restraint, this government frankly has shown a lot of sleight of hand and very little real commitment. How can we take this government's promises seriously when its record in this area is one deceit after another? It started last December when the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) and the Prime Minister, on television, told us in anguished tones how they had scraped and scrimped to reduce government spending. But then we looked at the record, and what did we find? More than half of the supposed reductions were not reductions at all; they were merely decisions to drop proposed programs or departmental spending requests that were not even in effect at that time. One of the largest items of so-called savings involved nothing more than the transfer of borrowing responsibility from the government itself to agencies like the CNR and

the Export Development Corporation which, of course, represented no reduction in public sector demands.
Now this minister comes along with his first budget, and again we are given all kinds of verbal commitments to restraint and the same kind of deceit we had six months earlier. This minister wants to hold the year-to-year increase to 14 per cent, so what does he do? Does he reduce this year's spending? No. He simply tells us that last year s spending was higher than originally reported. Does the government make any serious effort to reduce its demands on the economy? No. Instead, it plays games, like the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) reneging on more than $100 million in committed payments to the provinces. This government, Mr. Speaker, is so caught up in double-talk and half-truths that it has forfeited any credibility whatsoever in the area of fiscal restraint.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The minister, in one of the remarkable conversions of this parliament, has been talking about the need for more openness in the budget process. I concur in that need-and I want to come back to it in a moment. But if he is serious about openness, surely the place to start is with some truth about government spending. If we cannot have information or, worse still, if we cannot believe the so-called information we are given, how does the minister expect to be taken seriously in any discussion he may want to enjoin?
As I have said, sir, I concur fully in the need for more openness in the budget-making process. Indeed, several weeks before this budget I proposed that, as one step in that direction, the government place its options in regard to a post-controls program before a parliamentary committee and invite discussion of them with the major groups in our society. Without the co-operation of these groups, any such post-controls program simply will not work; and without genuine consultation and participation in decision-making there simply will not be co-operation.
But this government simply cannot bring itself to have that kind of consultation or to introduce that kind of openness to the process. There is no partnership in this administration's approach to government. For the Prime Minister and his colleauges, it is an "us and them" proposition; "us", the government, with all the answers, and "them", the poor people, with a choice to like it or lump it. In that attitude, sir, lies a great deal of the problems which face this country, not simply in economic matters but in a range of other matters as well.
It is an approach which creates uncertainty when Canadians need reassurance. It is an approach which encourages confrontation when we need honest compromise. And it is an approach which emphasizes unilateral power when we need genuine partnership. It is, sir and I use this word very deliberately a very unCanadian approach which is dangerous in a country where there are divisions enough without the government of Canada, by its conduct, exacerbating those divisions. I say to you, sir, and to the House that we intend to reverse that process and to rebuild a partnership in Canada which is the Canadian approach.
June 8, 1976


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Let me say a word about my concept of openness as it applies to budget-making. It is based on a number of premises. The first is that much of the current secrecy surrounding the budget flows as much from bureaucratic convenience as from any genuine need or concern for security. There is, of course, a certain comfort to planning in private; one's decisions and arguments are spared any real outside test. The problem, of course, is that they are more likely to be wrong than if they are checked against the experience of people whom those decisions affect.
A second premise is that much of the government's present attitude is based on a highly defensive position in regard to forecasts and estimates. There seems to be a feeling that because economic forecasting is something less than a finite art, the minister and his advisers cannot risk exposing their assumptions and their estimates for fear of being proven wrong by subsequent events. To that I say simply, first, that other governments seem able to share much more economic information with their parliaments and their people without undue embarrassment; and secondly, in so far as being wrong is concerned, secrecy of information does not eliminate that problem, it merely compounds it. That is one fact of life I would have thought this government might have learned by now.
My view, sir, is that there is much we can do to make the budget process a more meaningful one without any risk to anyone's security. I would like to see, for example, an established procedure whereby a parliamentary committee holds prebudget hearings on the economic setting of the day. The prebudget papers could be referred to such a committee; most certainly we need to find a procedural mechanism to ensure that important reports of the Economic Council, to name one agency, stop being simply one-day wonders that are presented to the government and then go into limbo. I would like to see the government make public, as part of the budget process, its longer term forecasts both in terms of economic performance and in terms of its own fiscal position. Other governments and other countries do this. Among the benefits is that the publication of such a longer term framework requires the government itself to justify its own budgets within that wider context.
If this minister's economics are faulty, Mr. Speaker, his sense of social justice is abysmal. Are the only adjectives which concerned him when he spoke outside the House a choice between "unimaginative" and "foolhardy"? I ask the House, what about the word "committed"-committed to the potential of this country, a country of unparallelled potential. This is a government which continually sells Canada short, a government that unfortunately has no higher aspiration than to fall somewhere in the middle of an OECD average, a government too ready to leave the economic fate of Canada in the hands of other governments and other countries.
We in this party continue to believe in the potential of Canada. Not even this government and this Prime Minister can dim the promise of that star. This remains a country of vast resources, both natural and human. It is a country which not only has a right, but a very real responsibility to expect more than average performance. It is not Canada
The Budget-Mr. Sharp
that is lacking, sir; it is this government that is lacking and that is failing the promise of Canada.
If the Minister of Finance is unable to work up any enthusiasm for Canada, one might have hoped he could at least have shown some interest in its people and some compassion for those in economic difficulty. Instead he sits as Minister of Finance who dismissed 760,000 unemployed Canadians virtually as a throw-away line, and whose own optimistic forecast was to create enough new jobs to hold that figure to 800,000. That is some "Thumper".


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: We have a Prime Minister preaching the need for passionate love on a world scale. I say to him, Sir, why not start at home? Where is the passion or the love in this government and this budget? Where is there any evidence that this government cares about its own people? Where is the concern for hundreds of thousands of Canadians who want an opportunity to work? Where is the love for the people of Atlantic Canada who, thanks to this budget, face the prospect of even higher energy and electricity costs on top of the heavy burden they are already carrying? Where is the passion for Canada?
This is not a government of love; it is a government of smug complacency. This is not a government that challenges Canadians; it is a government which day after day by its action, inaction, and incompetence alarms and depresses Canadians. This is not a government that encourages faith; it is a government which breeds fear and confusion. This, Sir, is not a government which can offer anything to the world; it is a government which on its record and in this budget offers nothing to Canada. The sooner this government is gone, the better for all of us.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, I am tempted to deal with the contradictions of the Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Clark). However, I thought I could spend my time a little more usefully in dealing with some issues that have been referred to by the Leader of the Opposition dealing with secrecy in the budget and some of the procedures that are being followed, and the question of media coverage of the budget speech of the Minister of Finance. I should like to begin by congratulating my colleague, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald), who raised these questions.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: He understands the importance of procedures that are now followed, and the necessity of some changes in traditional budget secrecy. He raised those questions, and also the question of media coverage. I think this is typical of a minister who is characterized by a forthrightness I can only commend.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: I think we are very fortunate in this country to have a man of his integrity and his ability undertake this great responsibility.

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Sharp


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: Some ten years ago I was Minister of Finance, and like my predecessors and my successors I was very much aware of the tradition of budget secrecy and of the limitations that this imposes upon the freedom of action to discuss proposed tax changes with anyone outside the close circle of closest departmental advisers, the Prime Minister, and ministers who are, of course, sworn to secrecy by their Privy Council oath.
Before discussing whether or not there should be budget secrecy, I think it is important to understand what is the principle of budget secrecy to which reference is made so often. What it means, I submit, and this is borne out-


An hon. Member:: Don't go away, Joe.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Stick around, Joe.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: The reason for budget secrecy, I submit, and this is borne out by the precedents both here and in Westminster, is that knowledge of fiscal and monetary proposals before they are announced in the budget by the minister could enable those who have access to the knowledge to profit therefrom. The Leader of the Opposition referred to budget secrecy in a rather different context, and I find myself wholly in agreement with him, that there ought to be the most open possible discussion of economic policy, but budget secrecy relates only to questions relating to the fisc, as my friend the Minister of Finance said after his budget speech.
For example, advance knowledge of a change in the sales or excise tax or customs duties could enable someone to purchase or import goods before the change came into effect, thus cheating the revenue as well as profiting himself or herself. Similarly, advance knowledge of a change in the corporate tax could enable the insider to speculate profitably on the stock market. It is possible too that advance knowledge of the general fiscal and monetary policy of the government as enunciated in the budget could be turned to advantage on the stock or bond markets, or even in the foreign exchange market.
The tradition of budget secrecy, therefore, as my colleague the Minister of Finance said in the House when a question arose about the announcement of changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act, relates to the fisc, and does not necessarily relate to other matters of government policy which the government may see fit to authorize the Minister of Finance to announce or refer to in his budget address.
Hon. members will recall that in this particular case of the proposed changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act there is no way by which advance knowledge could profit anyone who knew in advance what was to happen. As the minister himself pointed out, there has been a great deal of public discussion, pro and con, in recent years about the desirability of amending the Unemployment Insurance Act, and the government made no secret whatever of the fact that it had been consulting its own supporters in this House on the subject.

The Minister of Finance, the Prime Minister, other members of the cabinet, and certain officials do have knowledge of the contents of the budget before it is delivered in the House. This is unavoidable. The tradition of budget secrecy applies to them in a peculiar way. Not only are they bound not to reveal the contents of the budget before it is delivered, they are bound to act in their private affairs as if they were not aware of its contents.
This is probably the principal reason why Ministers of Finance, past and present, do not burden their colleagues with knowledge of their intentions with respect to tax changes very far in advance of budget day.
When I was Minister of Finance I consulted with the Prime Minister a couple of weeks in advance on proposed major tax changes, gave a broad indication of the alternatives to my colleagues a week in advance, and then in as short a time as I could just before budget day I told them what my final proposals would be. My successors in office have followed very much the same pattern.
Needless to say it is not an ideal sort of consultation, but it seems unavoidable if the Minister of Finance is to save his colleagues from the burden of knowing for some time before the budget what tax changes will come into effect on that day. Most of them, I am confident, would prefer not to know much in advance, so that they do not have to fear that their behaviour would be subject to misinterpretation or misrepresentation. When the Minister of Finance raised questions in his speech about the applicability of the tradition of secrecy to modern budgets, I had a fellow feeling arising from my own experience.
For example, what about changes in the rates of personal income tax, one of the most important sources of revenue and one of the most important instruments for effecting individual spending and saving, and the distribution of revenues between the provinces and the federal government? Does it matter whether the government's intentions with respect to changes in the personal income tax are known in advance of the budget presentation? I doubt it very much. There is no way I can think of whereby advance information on the subject could enable a taxpayer to profit or to cheat the revenue. One comes to the conclusion that the tradition of budget secrecy, which originated when governments raised their revenues primarily from customs and excise taxes, has been extended in a rather meaningless way to the personal income tax, to which it has little if any relevance.
There is a strong case for limiting the tradition of budget secrecy to the areas in which it has relevance, and to permit the Minister of Finance a great deal more latitude in discussing personal income tax changes and matters of a similar kind which do not have market or speculative significance.
The minister should be free, moreover, I suggest, to discuss changes in the structure of taxation without being found guilty of breach of budget secrecy. What should be secret is the government's final decision on tax changes where advance information could be profitable to the insider. This does not mean necessarily that the Minister of Finance would have an obligation to anticipate his budget proposals in any field. He should not be in the
June 8, 1976

position, however, where he cannot discuss changes of the kinds I have mentioned outside the closed circle of his departmental advisers and cabinet in preparation of his budget proposals for fear of offending the principle of budgetary secrecy.
I have only one suggestion to offer, which is that the best defence the Minister of Finance could make would be to make it abundantly clear that he was having such consultations, and to have them as open as possible so that everyone knows the consultations are taking place.
I should now like to turn to the question of implementation of the fiscal proposals of the budget. This procedure, the business of ways and means, is a most complicated matter for it is not only part of the foundation of parliament but also it is of immense importance to everyone in the country. In a parliamentary system the government must take full responsibility for fiscal matters; if parliament cannot be induced to accept the government's proposals on taxation, the life of the government must come to an end. Since taxation policy is so fundamental to the retention of office, we have developed the rule concerning the financial initiative of the Crown, that is, a rule preventing any member of parliament, except a minister, from initiating a measure to impose a tax, to increase the rate of an existing tax, or to extend the incidence of an existing tax.
The second principle governing taxation matters in parliament is that fiscal measures must be introduced in the first instance in the House of Commons. We have never even conceded to the Senate the right to amend such proposals.
If we look at the United States we see quite a different procedure. While the President of the United States may communicate his proposals on tax policy to the Congress, they are put into a tangible form not by the administration but by a committee of the House of Representatives. Tax bills usually undergo many metamorphoses on their way through Congress-the United States Senate can and often does amend such measures-and when ready for the President's signature, very likely are quite different from his original proposals.
Taxation measures in the Unites States, however, are not normally retroactive; they come into effect on a given date which occurs sometime after a tax bill becomes law. This is also true of some of our provinces, such as Ontario. In our parliament, however, we have adopted the British practice of making most tax proposals effective virtually immediately they are announced. This requires, of course, some sort of formal notice to persons or corporations whose taxes are changed so quickly. For this reason we have arrived at our procedure concerning Notices of Ways and Means.
A Notice of Ways and Means has two effects. First, as I said, it provides notice of tax changes to those affected. In this function it should be in as much detail as possible. Its second effect, however, is to protect the financial initiative of the Crown.
Only a minister may table a Notice of Ways and Means, and a motion to concur in it cannot be debated or amended. Tax bills, however, must be based on one or more Notices of Ways and Means, and since their pith and substance
The Budget-Mr. Sharp
must be the same as that of the Notices of Ways and Means they become most difficult to amend. Before 1969 the Notices of Ways and Means were considered in a committee of the whole, as many members now in the House will recall, and could, within the limits of the financial initiative of the Crown, be amended. In other words, if the government could be persuaded to make changes, our procedures lent themselves to amendments. The tax bills that followed the ways and means resolutions became, except in the case of the most controversial proposals, exercises in detail for the House.
Under our present procedures, however, the government itself cannot even propose amendments to a tax bill that would increase the rates or extend the incidence of the proposed tax. Since the Notices of Ways and Means, in order to provide as much information as possible, tend to be so explicit that they appear almost as bills, the scope for amendments to bills based on them is even more restricted.
Our difficulty is that if we provide maximum information to the taxpayers at the earliest possible time by making the Notices of Ways and Means explicit, we also thereby limit most severely the scope for amendments to the bill. If, on the other hand, we make the Notices of Ways and Means more general in order to expand the scope for amendments, since the bills based thereon cannot be introduced until the budget debate is completed, for several weeks the taxpayers may be denied the detailed information they require in order to make their plans.
I do not suggest, however, that we revert to the old committee of ways and means procedure. That merely imposed a redundant stage to the fiscal procedure. Debate tended to repeat the formal budget debate and to anticipate debate on the bill. My suggestion is that we endeavour to find a procedure whereby from time to time a sort of Supplementary Notice of Ways and Means could be brought down in order to permit specified amendments. We have, in fact, done this on occasion, but only with unanimous consent. Perhaps now we should provide for such a practice in our rules.
One other part of our ways and means procedure that we ought to consider is the rule that requires all tax measures to be referred, after second reading, to a committee of the whole. This one is perhaps a more doubtful proposal, but one which I think should be examined again. The theory behind this rule is that taxation is of such general interest and importance that every member should be on the committee considering the bill. Experience, however, does not square with this theory. While committees of the whole on tax bills are reasonably well attended because of possible votes, most of the speeches seem to be made for reading by constituents and should really be made in the budget debate or at third reading.


Walter David Baker: That is not really criminal.


Mitchell William Sharp: No. I am just being factual. Only a handful of members on either side of the House really participate in the process of explaining and refining the bill. One cannot help but wonder whether tax bills, or at least most of them, ought not to be referred to a standing committee.

The Budget-Mr. Sharp
This brings me to the procedures which have evolved in recent years relating to the handling of the budget speech in the House and outside. These procedures evolved essentially to ensure the necessary secrecy while at the same time enabling the various media to give adequate and speedy coverage to the contents of the budget.
I have not been able to consult the records but I have been told that the special procedures for media coverage of the budget began either during the Second World War or shortly thereafter. As I recall it, at the beginning, at the time when as a civil servant I was concerned with these matters, the special procedure consisted of giving the media the first part of the speech which did not contain any tax changes when the minister rose to speak, and the remainder when the minister reached that point in his speech. This gave the press an opportunity of putting the story on the wires of the print media somewhat more quickly than if it had had to report the minister as he spoke. Radio stations were able to broadcast the tax changes more or less simultaneously with the minister's speech.
The next development was the locked room, which was aimed at giving the media an opportunity of doing a more thorough job of analyzing the budget proposals while preserving the necessary secrecy. It meant, of course, that those privileged to be locked up were in a position to wire and broadcast the contents of the budget just as soon as the doors were opened and even before the minister had uttered a word of his speech in the House of Commons.
To me, the resulting situation is deplorable and has made a mockery of this House and its membership. What made it even more disturbing, I regret to say, is that the minister himself appeared this year on television screens on a pretaped interview, recorded during the lock-up, talking about a budget he had not even finished delivering, and his critics who had also been in the lock-up appeared on the same screen replying to a speech they had not yet heard.
I understand how this deplorable situation evolved and I am not being critical of either the minister or the other MPs. One thing led to another, each logical and defensible in itself to meet a particular problem. But I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that the time has come to put an end to a procedure which I believe is an affront to this House.
What is the problem? It is that the people of Canada do not have an opportunity of seeing and listening to the Minister of Finance delivering his speech. If they could do so, a substantial change in the procedure now being followed to meet the requirements of the media, print or electronic, would be possible and would eliminate most of the odious results.
Fortunately it is now possible for everyone in Canada who is interested to be able to watch and listen to the budget speech and the replies of the opposition. All we have to do is to broadcast our proceedings by radio and television, just as my colleague and his critics broadcast their commentary outside the House while the minister was speaking here in the House, making us all very uncomfortable.
It will be astounding, Mr. Speaker, if we members of parliament will ever again be content to sit listening to the

Minister of Finance read his speech, waiting for him to reach the point where he announces the proposed tax changes while the reporters on radio and TV, with the document in their hands, talk confidently about what the minister will say before he concludes. It is an affront, and I trust that come next budget there will be a demand from all sides of the House that this farce will not be permitted to recur.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mitchell William Sharp: When our proceedings are broadcast-and I say when rather than if, because I see no alternative to the present procedures for lock-up and advance knowledge, except broadcast-I am sure that the minister will also want to deliver his message in a form more suitable to the electronic media-a shorter speech which he can supplement by a written document to be appended to Hansard- and that the opposition critics will want to make their comments the same evening so that they can be broadcast directly from the House. Not only will this be good for the broadcast, it will also make the House a more lively place on budget night.
The timing of the budget speech should also be reviewed when our proceedings are broadcast. It is accepted that the contents of the budget should not be revealed until the markets are closed. That is why the budget speech is delivered in the evening rather than in the afternoon. An eight o'clock starting time is rather late, however, for the print media if the morning papers of the following day are to carry a full account of the budget. While it would be unusual for the House to sit say between five and seven o'clock, or between six and eight on budget day, some such special arrangement should be considered. This kind of arrangement would also afford the electronic media plenty of opportunity to fill the rest of the evening with commentary from observers across the country who would already have watched and listened to the budget speech being delivered.
In the interests of adequate coverage there could continue to be a lock-up, the doors being opened for the reporters when the Minister of Finance had concluded his speech which, if my suggestions were adopted, would be either at seven or eight o'clock. It would also be suitable, I suggest, to include in the lock-up the spokesmen for the opposition who would be expected to follow the minister in the House debate. They are included now, they could be included in the kind of changed circumstances that I have outlined. These MPs could be released from the locked rooms when the minister rose to deliver his speech so that they could hear it, on the understanding that they would not bring a copy of the speech into the House or reveal its contents to anyone in advance of the delivery of the minister's speech.
There is on the order paper a resolution seeking approval of the broadcasting of our proceedings. Because of the press of other business it is not the intention of the government to call that resolution for debate before the adjournment. I have today, however, tabled a document giving an estimate of the costs of installing broadcast equipment and of annual operating costs so that there can be some further public discussion of the proposal.
The arguments I have put forward for broadcasting the budget apply with equal force to the whole of our proceed-
June 8, 1976

ings. The people of Canada should see parliament in action, and not have to be content to read about it or watch others talking about it. If we believe in parliament, as all of us do, then we should be proud to have it broadcast. A limited number of Canadians-very limited today-are privileged to watch from the galleries. It is now open to us to have the whole of the population observe our proceedings. When that happens then the various media can fulfil more effectively their respective functions. They will still be privileged to interview MP's in room 130-S or elsewhere. They can still comment. But the interviews and the commentary will no longer be a substitute for parliamentary democracy in action on the floor of this House.
It is my hope that early in the new session we will take the decision to broadcast our proceedings and bring parliament to the people. We should cease the farce of the kind of proceedings we had this year on the budget, which are completely unnecessary and an affront to the House. I hope everyone in the House will see that it never happens again.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to preface my remarks in the budget debate by coming down from the huge statistics that we heard this afternoon from other speakers, statistics which relate to the country as a whole, and begin my brief address by simply referring to the city where I live. I think this somehow sets the tone for the entire budget, at least from the point of view of those of us who sit on this side of the House.
I have here a clipping from the June 5 edition of the Brantford Expositor which states that the number of jobless continues to rise in Brant county. In Brant county the present unemployment figure was 4,954 persons in May, chasing approximately 200 job vacancies. Yet there are people in my constituency who say that those on unemployment insurance are lazy, that they will not get out and hustle for a job. We are talking in terms of 9 per cent unemployment, or almost 5,000 unemployed registered at Manpower chasing 200 jobs in an industrial city which has many small industries and three or four large industries. I think this is indicative of many parts of the country because if it is that bad in Brantford, which is in southern Ontario, I wonder just how bad it is elsewhere. Of course we know how bad it is in places like Cape Breton Island, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, northern Ontario, parts of Quebec and parts of the west and northwest.
Much of the press reported that the finance minister faced a dilemma in trying to bring down a budget which would tackle the dual problems of high inflation and high unemployment. A few days after the budget speech it was generally conceded by many that the minister had done little or nothing to solve either of these critical problems. In fact his budget will make them worse.
There were no provisions in the budget which will do anything about our disastrous unemployment rate, nor were there any measures introduced which will increase productivity and, generally speaking, put our economy back on the road to recovery. For these omissions criticism is demanded from all members on this side of the House, or
The Budget-Mr. Blackburn
from as many as possible who can speak during these few short days in the debate.
Criticism is also warranted for the fact that even if the goal of less than 9 per cent inflation is attained next year, inflation will remain unacceptably high in this country. The finance minister patted himself and the government on the back with a statement on page 11 of the budget speech which reads, and I quote, "the actual rate of inflation has slowed noticeably since the introduction" of the prices and incomes program. He went on, "This sharp reduction in the rate of price increase is very welcome." What this overlooks is that the drop in the rate of increase in the consumer price index is occurring in areas not controlled by the Anti-Inflation Board. For instance, food costs declined at an annual rate of 5 per cent to 6 per cent, but are expected to rise considerably in the next few months, particularly this autumn.
The recent increase in the price of oil and petroleum products will also seriously affect the rate of inflation, and prices will continue to increase.
In the areas of inflation and unemployment I would certainly agree that this was a do nothing budget. What is deplorable, however, is the fact that action was sorely needed on both these fronts and, as one newspaper columnist pointed out, the minister, and I quote, "administered a placebo budget, hoping to keep the patient"-that is, the economy-"quiet until things get better by themselves." Things will not get better by themselves.
I have mentioned the fact that the Anti-Inflation Board, by and large, is useless in trying to control rising prices. In this connection I was interested in the public relations campaign the board has launched which outlines the kinds of increases it cannot control. Among some of the items the Anti-Inflation Board claims it is not responsible for are tobacco, alcohol, hydro, gas, water rates, public transit rates, rents, medical insurance premiums, and heating oil. In other words the inflationary pressures will not be halted on goods and services which are a daily necessity, not a luxury, to all Canadians.
On the unemployment side we find that in April of this year Canada showed the highest unemployment rate since June of 1961, and there are strong indications that it is unlikely to decline during the rest of this year. The minister's own Economic Review in April had this to say:
During the recession firms engaged in substantial labour hoarding. The number of persons employed did not decline in line with cutbacks in output. Average hours were reduced . . . Much greater use was made of part time employment. Thus during the initial period of recovery firms can obtain increases in output without any increases in the number of workers by simply using them more intensively, while underutilized plant and equipment are pushed towards better operating rates.
In view of this it was absolutely crucial for the minister to have addressed himself more closely to the unemployment problem. At one point, on page 19 of his speech, the minister offered hope that some employment programs would be offered. Instead, all we got was a statement to the effect that direct employment programs can have broad social value and are not simply make work, but no proposals were made. The government even did away with OFY this year despite many thousands of unemployed young people coming on to the labour market.

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Blackburn
I gather that the government is resigned to going through the rest of this year with unemployment at about 7 per cent of the labour force, hoping that the 7.4 per cent rate recorded in April was a fluke and not a real upturn. The finance minister's economic plan, if we can call it that, is based on the fact that the Canadian economy will generate more than 250,000 new jobs this year. This sounds impressive until we take into account that the labour force has been growing at well over 300,000 per year for the last three years. If the 250,000 jobs the minister talks about are added to the present employment level, we shall still be left with 747,000 people out of work by the end of this year. That is not what I call real performance.
The minister vainly tried to soften the impact of the current unemployment level by citing the study on the unemployed of the Economic Council of Canada, which said that much of today's jobless figure is accounted for by the young, by housewives, and by people dissatisfied with their former jobs seeking contentment in other kinds of work. I ask, why should this make any difference? Should a housewife feel any less discontented at being unable to secure work because her husband is currently drawing a salary? Should a young person feel any less distressed after having completed training for a particular job and being unable to find one, just because the finance minister says hers or his is not a kind of unemployment? I suggest that no government should be so complacent that it can afford not to provide jobs for those who wish to work, and by far the greater majority in this country want to work.
Therefore on two major fronts, inflation and unemployment, nothing has been done. As I mentioned, as a result of the omissions, both may be exacerbated.
Turning now to the specific measures which were introduced, it seems to me that it was totally inappropriate to cut $300 million in insurance benefits from the unemployed. On the one hand the minister says that today's unemployment does not carry with it the hardships it once did because of programs such as unemployment insurance, while on the other hand he announced that eligibility for benefits would be substantially cut back. It is a good thing we have some of these social transfer payments because I suggest that if we did not we would be in the grip of a revolution in this country today, for Canadians will not accept breadlines or soup kitchens any more. As a result of the cutback, some 330,000 individuals will not be eligible for unemployment insurance.
The manpower minister in his speech to the House on June 2 tried to dispel this figure with convoluted logic. He said that the figure of 330,000 did not mean that at any moment of time in the year 330,000 people would be affected. He said, and I quote, "Because the average duration of benefits extends only for a portion of the year, at any moment in time, only about 100,000 individuals would be affected." Before pursuing this argument further I must say that I find it absolutely appalling that the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) would use the phrase "only about 100,000". That is 100,000 Canadians- 100,000 individuals who live in this country. Nevertheless he continued this line of thought, and said that of this 100,000, 50 per cent will be able to find instant work for an additional four weeks. This means, and again I quote from the minister's speech, "only about 50,000 individuals would

not be able to receive benefits and of these 80 per cent have no dependants". He has got it down to almost zero if you follow his line of thinking.
[DOT] <1740)
The minister, like the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald), has introduced the idea of degrees of seriouness for the unemployed. If you are single and unemployed, the government is of the opinion that your problem is not all that serious. Only this government, Mr. Speaker, could show such callousness. The Minister of Manpower and Immigration's manipulation of figures prompted one journalist to quip, "Mr. Andras leaves us wondering why we need an unemployment insurance scheme at all, until we realize that his entire rationale is a piece of statistical hocus pocus."
The proposed changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act are simply others in a line of changes introduced by this government which show how incompetent and impotent the administration is in dealing with unemployment. The last changes in Bill C-69 were a clear admission by the Liberals that they could not bring the jobless rate down, and consequently they were not about to pay for their inadequacies either.
The new proposals which were introduced will have disastrous effects on marginal workers, particularly those in Atlantic Canada, the northern part of Ontario, parts of Quebec, and parts of the northwest. There are thousands of people in this country who are employed in occupations where they cannot have a job that lasts for more than eight weeks. By raising the eligibility requirements from 8 to 12 weeks the government is essentially saying to these marginal workers that it is their fault that they cannot find lasting jobs. I suggest it is the government's fault for not providing jobs for them.
Why was such a move contemplated, Mr. Speaker? The leader of my party suggested last Wednesday that part of the justification for the changes rests with some of the myths that are held about unemployment insurance and the unemployed. The member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent) cited the notion held by many in this country that there are plenty of jobs available for all those who want them. Yet, as has been stated, there are more than 12 men and women available for every one job across the country. I relate this to my own constituency, Brant county. If all the jobs were taken that are available, there would still be 700,000 people in this country out of work. Those are the facts; surely the government knows that also, but instead it reacted to the myth with a totally irrational proposal.
There are other myths about unemployment insurance and the unemployed. Some believe that benefits under the Unemployment Insurance Commission Act are too generous and that this leads to a disincentive to work. Yet we know that last year the average weekly benefit paid was $84.64. How many family bills, how many mortgage payments can be made on that amount of money? The very study that some have used to show that the UIC Act provides a disincentive to work, done by the Economic Council of Canada, also said that most surveys show that the vast majority of Canadians prefer work, not unemployment insurance.
June 8, 1976

Probably the most outstanding comment made in the Economic Council of Canada report on the unemployment insurance system was the following: "Notwithstanding how the effects of the 1971 changes-have been interpreted, one point is unquestionably clear: regulatory changes alone do not, will not, send people back to work, if there are no jobs available." This is what the New Democratic Party has been saying for quite some time.
The costs o! unemployment insurance in Canada could be brought down if the government could manage the economy of this country in such a fashion that jobs would be provided to all those who wanted them. I said at the outset that the Minister of Finance had absolutely no intention of dealing with unemployment. Instead of dealing with the problem itself, the minister decided to take a crack at those who are unemployed.
In this regard I would like to make passing mention of the comments made by the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander) last Wednesday. In his concluding remarks he said, as reported at page 14097 of Hansard, "The NDP want people to rely on unemployment just as the government does, and this-we object to most strenuously." The member for Hamilton West made this statement, or used it as the main reason why our party's amendment was unacceptable to the members to my right. I should clarify for the hon. member that the NDP has never wanted people to rely on unemployment. As a matter of fact our party, the socialist party, is a work oriented party, not a party oriented to living off the avails of someone else just because of laziness.
We want to put people to work. If you look at other countries in the world that have social democratic parties in power you will find in most cases that unemployment is very low. However, we are adamantly opposed to any measures which would restrict the eligibility of any person who is out of work for some reason totally beyond his or her control. Let me reiterate that the only acceptable way of reducing the cost of unemployment insurance in this country is to provide the required jobs. In other words, put people to work.
We in this party feel that certain steps could have been taken to alleviate some of the unemployment facing Canada. The Canadian economy is presently functioning at approximately 80 per cent capacity. What this means is that there is room for expansion in our economy. Tax cuts could have been provided without fuelling inflation. An increased demand for goods would have stimulated the economy, and consequently manufacturing industries would call back men and women who needed the jobs. As I said, Mr. Speaker, this stimulation for the economy would not have caused further inflation; it would if we were operating at full capacity, but this is not the present case.
Let me address myself briefly to some of the other budgetary measures introduced on May 25. I wish to deal specifically with two matters-the increase in deductions for child care expenses from the old maximum of $2,000 per family to a total annual limit of $4,000, and increasing to $3,500 the maximum annual amount deductible by employees and employers in respect of a registered pension plan. Also, if an individual is not a member of a pension plan, the maximum contribution limit will be increased from the present $4,000 to $5,500.
The Budget-Mr. Blackburn
I should like to emphasize that I am not personally opposed to people being able to increase their tax deductions if they are able to save. If they have money that they can save without paying further tax, through registered retirement savings or the registered home owners' savings plan which is being made more flexible, I am not critical of them. If they earn around $18,000 or $20,000 a year and wish to set aside tax deferred savings until they are older, that is fine. But what I most strenuously object to is the fact that this is considered to be a very liberal attitude in a budgetary form for the people of Canada. We are talking about a very, very small number of Canadians. They are the only people who get a break at all in this budget because the vast majority of people in this country have no chance of saving $3,500 or $4,000 every year, or even $5,500 for a retirement savings plan.
Why did the Minister of Finance not bring in tax cuts for low income people to balance things and make it a much more equitable budget? These tax changes have been referred to as a hidden welfare system by Reuben Baetz of the Canadian Council on Social Development. Actually the government's tax deferral schemes are exactly that. Mr. Baetz was referring to such measures as well as to measures introduced in the last several budgets, one example being the $1,000 interest income deductible from income for income tax purposes. Such measures help people in higher income brackets. One must seriously question whether spending $60 million-which is what the deductions actually cost us-to aid those with incomes of $20,000 a year and more, really met one of Canada's socially pressing needs. I am convinced that the measure did not fill a pressing need felt by most Canadians.
With respect to deductions made in connection with registered retirement savings plans, I suggest that in order to reach the former ceiling of $4,000 a taxpayer had to earn $20,000 a year. The new ceiling of $5,500 per year means a further tax saving of almost $700 for a single person earning $27,500, but not a penny of saving for the average Canadian. We had become used to seeing the former minister of finance redistribute income in this fashion. I hoped the present minister would change the pattern. Unfortunately he did not.
The measure to increase deductions for child care expenses has been lauded by many; again, would it not have been more equitable if the $15 million, the estimated cost of this measure, had been given as a flat rate credit? Since deductions provide higher benefits to those in top income brackets, the child care deductions will obviously benefit those who need them least.
The government's record of income distribution is abysmal. For instance the share of total income going to the bottom 20 per cent of income earners was less in 1974 than in 1951. Not only has income distribution not changed substantially in the last quarter century, but successive ministers of finance, the present minister included, have introduced measures like those I referred to which have made the income tax system much less progressive.
I do not know how much longer we must wait for an equitable tax system. I suggest to the Minister of Finance, the cabinet and colleagues on my right, that unless we put

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Balfour
people back to work in meaningful jobs with security of tenure, correct the inequities in our tax system, improve the lot of the 20 per cent to 25 per cent of our population living in abject poverty, give young people more incentive to study and qualify for meaningful jobs, correct the deplorable situation in which thousands of our qualified nurses who could not find work in this country went to the United States for work, and give incentives for young, middle aged, and older Canadians to look for meaningful work, this country will be in great trouble in two or three years.
We saw what happened the other day on Parliament Hill. The violent behaviour of the few troublemakers in the large crowd disgusted us. I suggest that if the Anti-Inflation Board continues to be unfair we shall see more violent demonstrations. There will be more violence in this country. There will be an even greater division between those who possess some wealth and those who possess none. The members of this House are obliged to make sure this does not happen. What other assembly in the country, what other elected council has power to make the vital decisions which will bring about more economic and social equity in this country?


Mr. Balfour:: Mr. Speaker, may I call it six o'clock?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is it agreed that we call it six o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
James Balfour: Mr. Speaker, I address my remarks tonight to the failure of the May 25 budget to deal significantly with the problems facing industry in this country. A columnist for the Montreal Gazette in commenting on the government's new budget, or non-budget as it should be called, described the government's effort most accurately when he said, and I quote:
Economy, heal thyself: having studied the symptoms for nine months, Canada's new fiscal physician has decided he does not know what to do, anymore than John Turner did when the chills of high unemployment came at the same time as the fever of inflation.
So he has administered a placebo budget, hoping to keep the patient quiet until things get better by themselves. Perhaps the Yankee medicine of export demand from the United States will help.
Perhaps the private sector-written off by the Prime Minister only a few months ago-will deliver the right goods and services to the right place at the right time and the right price. We had better hope so.
The Minister of Finance can expect criticism for bringing down, in the midst of multiplied economic problems, the kind of drifting, dreamy budget which might have been produced by a Finance Minister afraid to change anything because things were going so well.
But things are not going all that well, Mr. Speaker. The minister will live with a deficit of about $4.5 billion for

another year, an amount which points to the government's failure to control its own spending.
Furthermore, the budget does little or nothing to fight unemployment, increase productivity, restrain growth of government spending, reduce Canada's high interest and exchange rates, or promote business investment. In short, the budget exemplifies the government's obvious ineptitude in coming to grips with our real problems and needs.
The budget makes no significant effort to tackle the four major problem areas facing the Canadian economy inflation, unemployment, productivity, and the current account deficit.
The Canadian Chamber of Commerce has termed this do-nothing budget "a very anti-business budget", and so it is. The industrial and business sector of this country does not need government apathy. Rather, business and industry in Canada need the incentives that government can provide to improve plant efficiency, re-equip, improve the supply of goods and services, and compete effectively on the international market.
One area where the government could have helped improve the well-being of Canadian industry is the field of research and development. On March 12 of this year the Council of the Academy of Science of the Royal Society of Canada made it clear to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) that a serious situation exists, and promises to become more serious in the future, as a result of the government's non-policy for the support of scientific research and development. The society, in its brief to the Prime Minister, said:
At no time in our history have we been confronted with so many problems needing science-based solutions. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the importance of the decisions that confront Canada in such areas as resource management, energy options, health care, food supply, pollution, transportation, and so on.
Furthermore, the choices that we, as a nation, make in these areas will be dependent on the maturity, knowledge, versatility and statute of contemporary Canadian science and engineering. Canada cannot afford to depend on the scientific and engineering skills of other countries to solve its problems.
Even choices as to the best kinds of technology to be imported and adapted to Canadian conditions . . . must be made on the basis of sound scientific and engineering knowledge, which can only be obtained from a community of highly competent and active Canadian scientists and engineers.
Having said that, the Council of the Academy expressed a great concern with the unfortunate deterioration that the government has allowed to take place, a dangerous deterioration in the public support of research and development in Canadian industry, in government laboratories and in universities.
The government has a bad habit of ignoring the sound advice of those sectors of society which specialize in a given field of endeavour, and it therefore comes as no surprise that the government has made a failure of its limited efforts in this area. Although the need for a well funded Canadian industrial research effort is recognized by most, the government has, as usual, headed in the opposite and wrong direction.
A statement on science policy put out by the offices of Bell Canada illustrates this point. I quote:
We refer to the government decision to freeze research expenditures, to repeal the Industrial Research and Development Incentives Act
June 8, 1976

(IRDIA) and to reduce the money available for the Program for the Advancement of Industrial Technology (PAIT).
While the sums involved are not great (we are led to believe that the annual grants through IRDIA do not exceed $30 million) they were often essential for the initiation and continuation of the research programs of some companies.
Money allotted to research and development at the best of times could only be described as minuscule. The fact of the matter is that Canada's expenditures on research and development peaked in 1966, and Canada has never spent more than 1.2 per cent of its Gross National Product on research. Other industrialized nations such as Japan, West Germany, France, the United States, and Britain, have all committed much larger amounts of GNP to research and continue to do so. It must be said that if this nation expects to expand industrially, to become a major international trading nation and to continue the improvements in its internal social well-being, then this country cannot afford not to have research. The fact of the matter is that Canada will be outpaced by other industrial countries and will end up purchasing technology and scientific expertise from elsewhere.
As one who takes more than a passing interest in the economic climate of this country 1 recognize, unlike the government, that there is a real economic value attached to increased efficiency, better products, and increased trade. If that sounds like a cold view of the matter, then just remember that better medical care, improved housing, superior consumer goods, less work, and increased prosperity are also attributable to scientific and technological advancement. It would seem that the government views research and development expenditures as a luxury which can be done without. This is one area, however, where continued and increased government support is required. Research and development is not an expense; it is an investment in the future of this country.
Canada has problems quite peculiar to its own development. There is little to contest the precept that Canada's economic future largely depends upon its ability to enlarge its position as an international trader. Industrial research can undoubtedly be one key to securing and advancing a position in international trade for this country. Certain facts of Canadian economic life must not be forgotten when we discuss this subject.
Over the past few years wage levels in this country have risen at a rate much faster than those of competing nations and nations to which Canada hopes to sell. Unfortunately at the same time the level of productivity in Canada has dropped in relation to that of such countries as West Germany and the United States. And so it is that we are handicapped from the word go in trying to compete in many foreign markets.
To compensate for the higher wage levels and decreased productivity in Canada, research and development can bring innovations to products and manufacturing practices. To ignore research and development at this time can only lead to further deficits in the Canadian balance of trade in the future, as Canada fails to make inroads into foreign markets. It must be stressed again and again to the government that Canada's trade position is unhealthy. Canada in reality had a current trade deficit of $8 billion
The Budget-Mr. Balfour
in 1975. We covered it by selling a net of $2.9 billion in raw resources, borrowing $4.7 billion from foreign sources, and letting our exchange reserves fall by $400 million. With a current account deficit of $5.1 billion in 1975, even after the trade surplus of $2.9 billion in raw materials, it is difficult to conceive of our trade deficit being any more ominous.
Quite apart from the likelihood of our 1976 trade performance being little better than in 1975, however, the composition of the 1975 current account balance is a source of even greater alarm than the deficit figures would indicate. The sale of raw materials is, of course, a basic element in the economic picture of this country. Increased sales of raw materials may be one way out of our current trade problems. However, most of us, except the government, realize that this attitude is pure folly. Exporting crude materials provides considerably less benefit to the Canadian economy than exporting fully or partly manufactured goods. There is far more value added to a manufactured product, in terms of labour, capital investment, and research, than to a raw resource. But in addition to this standard criticism of increased exports of raw materials, there is also the fact that our exports of non-renewable raw materials can only be, by definition, finite.
Recent developments in the petroleum and natural gas situation make very clear the full force of this basic truth. Non-renewable resources are Canada's capital assets, and to continue to export them in a totally unrefined state is to sell off fixed assets to relieve a current expenses deficit. What this means is that the government should, above all else, be encouraging new industry and established industries in this country to grow and compete effectively at home and abroad. Unfortunately this budget before us illustrates the government's total lack of foresight and initiative in this area.
It is an economic fact of life that industrial and commercial expansion requires capital, Mr. Speaker. The Economic Council of Canada, in its 12th annual review, estimated that the nation's capital needs between now and 1985 will total between $800 and $860 billion dollars. By comparison, total investment expenditures over the past decade were around $200 billion. Thus a four-fold increase in capital outlays will be needed to increase productive facilities in line with the growth of Canadian markets, to develop and upgrade our energy and other natural resources, and to achieve the improvement in our productivity performance so urgently needed as a prerequisite for long-term price stability.
The pre-budget submission of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce states some of the needs of Canadian business quite succinctly:
Historically, 60-70 per cent of our investment has been financed by corporations through retained earnings and depreciation allowances.
Neither source is expected to advance in the future at the rates required. Depreciation allowances, based on original costs, are seriously inadequate to cover the replacement value of facilities. Profits, and hence retained earnings, are limited under the wage and price control program.
The submission continues:
It is therefore, in our opinion, imperative that the federal government continuously monitor the impact of the profit controls and provide, wherever possible, assistance to industry in the financing of productive capital investment.

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Portelance
Measures such as the deduction of inventory valuation adjustments from taxable income, or the provision of depreciation at the replacement value of assets, have been recommended before by the chamber . . . and are still needed.
In summary, the situation for industrial expansion in this country can be termed discouraging. At a time when the economic health of the country could be improved through such measures as research and development funding, tax reform for industry, lower personal income tax rates, and efforts to encourage public savings in order to increase available capital for investment in Canadian industry, the government has responded with a do nothing budget whose only significant message is that the government itself still refuses to curb its own expenditures.
The budget deficit will not recede. It will grow by about an estimated $5 billion in 1976-77. The increase in spending is 16.2 per cent, approximately what was projected in the estimates; the increase in revenues, 15.3 per cent.
As for the fiscal year just ended, the government has revealed that total government spending was $725 million higher than had been earlier forecast. That amounts to an increase of 18 per cent in government spending rather than the 16 per cent announced by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) when he unveiled some of the plans to restrain government spending last December.
I will conclude my comments, Mr. Speaker, by reiterating what this budget really means. It means that the government is content to go through the rest of this year with unemployment at about 7 per cent of the labour force, hoping that the 7.4 per cent unemployment rate recorded in April was just a fluke and not a real upturn. It calls for real growth of the economy of 5 per cent this year, and not much better next year. This very modest recovery depends, of course, on the economic stimulus offered by other countries, such as the United States, and not by any initiative of our own.
This budget calls for an inflation rate, as figured on the Gross National Product rather than consumer prices, of a hefty 9.5 per cent this year and about 6 per cent next year.
All in all, this non-budget presents us with a real example of what could only be expected from a government whose record of economic mismanagement is so considerable. Other countries have done and are doing better, and without the built-in advantages which make even bad management in Canada appear to be not so bad. Indeed what the Minister of Finance has provided us with is no budget at all. There can be no doubt that the government will have to show us a real budget in the near future.
Canadians have come to expect very little, except ineptitude, from the government, and so it is that we can only ask that a future budget demonstrate an understanding of the nation's problems, hope for the unemployed, and initiatives which will promote Canadian industry; but to ask this government for even a mediocre effort is to ask more than this government is capable of providing.


Mr. Arthur Portelance (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to congratulate the Minister of Finance

(Mr. Macdonald) for his budget. As many of my colleagues know, I have worked for a long time in the clothing industry, and I can therefore say that the minister provided us with a "made to order" suit but with very few alterations, which shows that we already had a good pattern. I also want to emphasize the enlightened determination shown in the proposed changes in our unemployment insurance legislation by the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) who is also responsible for the Unemployment Insurance Commission and whom I have the pleasure to second as a parliamentary secretary. Incidentally, as you may guess, this will be the subject matter of my remarks today.
Everybody admits that the unemployment insurance formula had to be amended, but as in the fable of the miller, his son and the donkey, it was impossible to satisfy everybody at the same time. This debate has already shown that proposals range from the funnel to the Danaides' barrel. For instance, some members have blamed the minister for not going far enough in the area of restraints, especially among those who feel there are too many people who live poorly but pleasantly at the expense of what some people call the "permanently chronic workers" whereas on the other hand, it was said that this government was engaging in tax surgery at the expense of those who find it difficult to make both ends meet.
As a matter of fact, the changes before us had to be made, logically and in fairness, both for the large majority of Canadians who are working and paying for maintaining the present unemployment insurance system and for those who occasionally are the recipients of this system and who will finally benefit from it, for one has to keep in mind that the changes made to the Unemployment Insurance Act will bring about a substantial expansion of job creating programs. Our first goal, as the Minister of Manpower and Immigration said in his speech of June 2, is to provide jobs for as many Canadians as possible.
Unemployment insurance is not a goal but a step towards a new job. Those decisions are not made unexpectedly but are rather the result of analyses, surveys on conditions prevailing in Canada as well as other countries. Indeed I want to stress that even with the new clause extending from eight to twelve weeks the number of weeks of work necessary to become eligible for unemployment insurance, the Canadian formula is even more generous than in all industrialized nations of the world, except the Netherlands. In Sweden, you need 12 months of contribution, including five in the preceding year; in the United Kingdom, you need 26 weeks in the previous year to get the minimum benefits and 50 weeks for the maximum. In Germany, you need 26 weeks in the three preceding years. And when the NDP leader points out that in those countries unemployment rates are lower, I say to him that that is an argument which goes against his theory, since in all logic a lower rate of unemployment means that people find more jobs and also more quickly.
It would be useless to imagine, Mr. Speaker, that unemployment insurance alone can be used to right all our economic or social problems, even if it constitutes one of the most important and effective instruments available to the government to create jobs, as it is going to do more and
June 8, 1976

more with formulas of the local initiative type, and training programs are extremely important in that respect.
The minister has been criticized for not unwrapping immediately before the House all the programs in their finest details. Yet, those statements already contain the assurance that the amounts which will not be used for unemployment insurance will be spent to create jobs, with due consideration for regional needs. In the same line, the reform launched by the minister will allow us to calculate benefits according to the regional rather than the national rate of unemployment but all those amendments requiring the passage of legislation will only affect the true status of unemployment insurance recipients at the beginning of next year.
The Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Andras) already indicated that all plans for those enlarged manpower programs will be completed in two or three months and made public no later than this fall.
Canada is already regarded as leading the way in the creation of employment when, for instance, our Local Initiatives Program has been adopted in Great Britain while experts from the United States, France, Australia, etc, are considering it in their turn. The advantage of these programs is that they stimulate workers and respect the dignity of man, which, in many cases, helps bring back workers on the labour market. In my constituency of Gamelin, in Montreal, seven local initiatives projects made wonderful things this year not only for the hundred persons who took part in them, but for thousands of others who profited by them indirectly.
It is also certain that a pilot program launched in Newfoundland and which has known considerable success, will take great extension. Through that plan, hundreds of people have been able for about a year to continue to receive unemployment insurance benefits while attending training courses which enabled them to acquire qualifications they will be able to use on the labour market in sectors where they will be needed.
To continue on training, the minister reminded us in this House last week that with the addition of $40 million for industrial and institutional training, the federal government will have put $522 million in that sector alone during the present financial year. In the same way, the workers' mobility program has been made more generous.
Reverting to the subject of unemployment insurance, I must say that the next law will no longer include severance pay in the salary of an employee for purposes of establishing his unemployment insurance allowances. Similarly, the famous "four-week" rule will be eliminated thus enabling people without a job to take temporary employment and still be eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. This could become an extremely efficient incentive.
The amendments suggested by the Minister of Manpower and Immigration do not only meet the wishes of politicians, journalists or social agencies. In the interesting declaration he made on June 2, the official critic of the Progressive Conservative Party for manpower, the hon. member for Hamilton-West (Mr. Alexander) said, I quote:
The Budget-Mr. Portelance
The Economic Council is of the opinion that our existing legislation induces people to join the unemployment rolls and is a disincentive to work. It estimates that present legislation induced between 70,000 and 80,000 people to go on unemployment.
I am sure that what the government wants, and what the whole House wants, is a formula which will help those who are in need, a formula which induces those who are unemployed to look for a job and to keep it. By the way, merging the Department of Manpower and Immigration and the Unemployment Insurance Commission will help to improve the situation in that particular area. Finally, Mr. Speaker, this formula is more practical, more efficient, more just and more realistically adapted to the needs of the Canadian economy.
Mr. Speaker, the journalists who are presently studying the situation are far from being unanimous. For example, last Thursday, the editorialist of the Globe and Mail estimated that the federal statistics on unemployment are no longer realistic because they consider as unemployed many people who do not really want to work or who do not want to get "bored" looking for a job. On the contrary, Charles Lynch, a journalist from the Southam News Agency, estimated that the progressive reduction, given the day before by the minister, in the number of those who claim unemployment insurance allowances among the so-called 8-to-ll week category and who would really have to face difficulties, was a calculation in which the statistics were sifted in a way very hard to control.
Surely, Mr. Speaker, no one of us can try the reins and the heart, as the saying goes. On the other hand, the demonstration of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration is based on the figures obtained from serious studies, and they prove, for instance, that the claimants of the "8 to 11 week" group cost 20 times, on the average, all the other recipients of unemployment insurance, that they use up their rights to the limit oftener, that they find work rather easily and quickly when they run out of unemployment benefits, that they often reenter the ranks of the recipients, that they are not usually the first breadwinner of the family but that their salary is added to the income of an average if not higher-income family, that they seldom if ever live on welfare, that their rate of claims is four times that of the average claim, in short that they are part of the category which is least exposed to having problems if an attempt is made to reduce the cost of unemployment insurance in a given sector.
Let us also remember that "disbursements" does not mean money taken from the worker, for it is understood that the amounts saved will be channelled towards programs for creating employment and training the workers, especially in those areas where the need is greatest. Finally, as the minister said again, the government does not seek the glory of reducing unemployment by one point or a fraction thereof, so much as, above all else, creating the largest possible number of jobs in the Canadian economy, as well as enabling the greatest possible number of Canadians to be advised of the existence of those jobs, to get them and keep them. That last point, namely that of keeping a job, illustrates well the importance of training programs which result in a more competent, better motivated and better remunerated labour force.
So we are not faced, as suggested by the New Democratic Party leader, with a sinister conspiracy to deprive those

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. C.-A. Gauthier
unemployed who are most in need, and to let them treacherously on the street, but with the rational adjustment of the unemployment insurance system, so as to allow for instance more simple activities, the number of phases passing then from five to three, more generous operations because they will concurrently give way to some working forms or the registration for training courses, fairer activities because they will be more properly fashioned after regional requirements, finally more rational activities because they are based on the results of enquiries relating to the behaviour of certain categories of unemployment insurance recipients.
In the end, Mr. Speaker, it is clear that to get the maximum of success with the new regulations on unemployment insurance and employment creation programs, we surely need the cooperation of workers, but also that of employers, as well as of provinces with which the Minister of Manpower and Immigration indicated Wednesday his intention to attempt every collective effort. One should also note that several provinces as well have interesting programs to reduce the number of people on welfare from various categories, including-and I say this for our friends from the Social Credit Party-those in British Columbia. Mr. Speaker, as the Minister of Manpower and Immigration said, these few legal and institutional changes will be introduced to promote a more efficient employment policy in this country, and I urge my colleagues to support the government position.


Mr.   C.-A. Gauthier@Roberval: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to congratulate the Minister of Finance for his courage in introducing this budget, because in the last number of years it has taken men of courage to prepare budgets.
In the way of summing up my thoughts on the subject, I endorse the following statement made by Claude Ryan in Le Devoir of May 27, and I quote:
Caught in the narrowest margin left a Canadian Minister of Finance for a long time, Mr. Macdonald introduced his first budget, in the House of Commons Tuesday evening, under very difficult circumstances which prompted many critics to suggest this may be his last budget.
Never in history did a federal budget come so close to being the "non-budget" it was immediately termed. Never in a long time did a Liberal Minister of Finance show so much reluctance and even shyness.
If I were to wish the minister something, it would be to hurry through that budget and avoid the path followed by his predecessors, who broke their necks at the head of that department we are tempted to call the death-trap ministry. As always, the budget tabled by the Minister of Finance for 1976-77 draws absolutely opposite reactions from businessmen and the millions of wage earners.
So it is not surprising that big corporations, banking monopolies and all the multinationals congratulate the Minister of Finance, while unionized and non-unionized workers alike and the 769,000 unemployed regret such an antisocial, not to say nationally shameful budget. But paradoxically, both sides may be right, since the government always favoured those who financed their elections, ignoring most of the time between elections those who were prevailed upon during the 60-day period to vote them back into power.

That is why I am wondering today which one is to blame-the governors or the governed who keep accepting to be easily taken in come every election time. It has been known by everybody, and this for 100 years, that successive governments have always protected the financial sector to the detriment of Canadians, and what is more astounding is that they have done so by making people believe that the elected government was acting in the best interests of Canadian workers.
The very proof of my allegations is found in the budget. After a somewhat in-depth review of the May 25, 1976 budget papers tabled by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald), one has only to look at page 11 of this paper and examine the list of anticipated expenses for 1976 to realize easily that 35 sectors will be favoured with an increase, whereas only four will suffer cutbacks, or sizeable reductions.
Even more astonishing is the fact that the very sectors which should have been increased, at least at the rate accepted by the Anti-Inflation Board, are those the government has decided to take a crack at-agriculture, unemployment insurance, Secretary of State and transport.
In my opinion the minister should have limited the CBC and CIDA budgets, the charges on the national debt as well as outlays for national defence, bank interests, government corporations and all the items under "other expenditures", which we had seven times without any explanation. We see that the budget of agriculture is reduced by $17 million whereas it should have been increased at least by $40 million to meet the demands of the industrial milk producers of Quebec which are more than reasonable; these producers are facing the worst problem ever experienced in this sector, due only to the decisions taken unilaterally by the federal Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan).
Where is the logic of the government which after having eliminated 60 per cent of the small farms endangers 50 per cent of those which resisted the assault of the government? Having been invited and even encouraged to enlarge their farms, improve their buildings, modernize their techniques to obtain maximum efficiency, these producers are accused of overproduction only a few months later. Because the farm producers complied with the numerous requests of the Minister of Agriculture, because the industrial milk producers trusted the government's technocrats and technicians, the same producers are penalized for having listened to the government's specialists.
Has the Minister of Agriculture only thought about the financial effects on the milk producers? Is the government aware that instead of a 20 per cent decrease, those producers needed at least 15 per cent more than in 1975 to meet their financial obligations?
We must keep in mind that it is not of their own free will that the producers agreed to run into maximum debts to meet the department's requirements. The department should at least have the decency to recognize that it alone is responsible for the difficult financial situation of the industrial milk producers. Consequently, it is its responsibility, not anyone else's, not to request the producers to pay for its specialists' mistakes.
June 8, 1976

I can readily understand the march on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday, June 3 to ask the Minister of Agriculture to reconsider his decision. Why Quebec more so than the other provinces? Because it is Quebec, more specifically the industrial milk producers in Quebec who are the most seriously affected. Indeed in the western provinces the production of industrial milk is insignificant. In Ontario, which produced its highest out of quota surpluses last year, the measure only normalizes the situation whereas the Quebec industrial milk producers who are responsible for only 2 per cent of all milk surpluses are those who must bear the burden of the cuts in quotas.
If the Minister of Agriculture really had to take drastic action to avoid more surpluses, why did he not emphasize restrictions for those who had a surplus last year? Why reduce regular quotas and why must those who did not fill their regular quotas last year be penalized,as well? That is where I see a lack of logic on the part of the department's experts, unless their deliberate purpose was to favour Ontario over Quebec. I believe the cause of all these problems is the total lack of long term dairy policy. Obviously it is much easier for the agriculture technicians to outline a 12 month policy than to make projections for five years ahead. Such a policy seems to be beyond the high officials of production and marketing of agricultural products. However, the possibilities are not lacking.
I am convinced it would cost less to the government to create a warehousing system for a five year period to restore balance between good and bad years. This would take us away from the vicious circle of surplus and shortage. Sometimes the federal government calls on producers, either in beef, pork, chicken, eggs or milk because a shortage is forecasted for a few months hence; the government makes promises to stimulate the production concerned. Producers go full steam ahead following the government incentives, only to learn 10 or 12 months later that they have caused a surplus. When shall we have enough competent people to stop playing this way with farm producers by making them support the burden of government mistakes or incompetence? Again, if producers were asked by the government to prepare farming policies we would have some reason to accuse and even punish these producers, but everyone knows full well that it is the officials who prepare and run all policies, whether they have to do with marketing or producing agricultural commodities. These officials are asked to think and to act for and on behalf of producers, but if officials make a mistake, the producers are quickly punished.
Further than that, today the Minister of Finance through his Anti-Inflation Board allows an increase of 12 or 15 per cent to all other groups of workers, indexed on the cost of living which is quite normal, but this same minister forces farmers and especially industrial milk producers to take a cut of 20 per cent in their income. Where is the consistency of the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture? I might add that it is discrimination against the Quebec dairy producers because, as I said earlier, once more Quebec bears the brunt. Indeed, when Canada had wheat surpluses, this same government compensated the western producers and even paid them not to sow wheat. Do I blame the western producers? On the contrary, I say to them: Good for you! I congratulate all hon. members from the west as I did then for imposing their will on the government and obtaining
The Budget-Mr. C.-A. Gauthier greater protection for farmers. Yet, the Liberals elected only a few members in the west, as is the case today; therefore it is not a partisan policy that prevailed but the pressure, the common sense policy.
If a handful of western members of the opposition have delivered that master stroke for their province, I wonder what the 59 elected Liberals in Quebec are doing. I fear that the Quebec Liberals are the victims of their strength in Parliament. Some surely have no backbone to uphold sincerely the interests of Quebec. Let us forget for a moment the condition of the party to think about Quebecers. The Quebec agriculture is ill and the cause is the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan). Can my dear Liberal colleagues do something? It is up to them to show it in the days to come.
My second criticism is related to the $45 million which the minister wants to take away from unemployment insurance. I think that after agriculture, which will remain our basic industry for a few years, provided members remain conscious of their responsibilities in the House, a very important sector for the Quebec economy more particularly is the maintenance of the manpower and unemployment insurance services. Among the 750,000 unemployed in Canada, my region has a very high percentage and they are not wealthy unemployed, but people who are looking for a job and cannot find any. The minister knows quite well that when no more benefits will be paid to the unemployed, they will be compelled to register on the rolls on social welfare in Quebec.
That is a way as good as any other to shift his responsibilities on to the back of the provinces. That is a good example of the famous balance-sheet federalism of the present government. We forgot to tell one thing to the population: that federalism was profitable only to the central government. In 1942, after having made the provinces yield all their taxation rights, the central government went as far as promising to the naive provinces that it would reinstate them in their rights once the war would be over. Thirty-four years have passed since then and the federal government still retains most taxation rights. I would even say that it takes advantage of its taxation power to intrude every day into areas reserved exclusively to the provinces.
Just to give you an idea of it, during the study in a special committee before the presentation of the budget, I drew the attention of officials to the enormous difference between the increase in personal income tax and corporate income tax. In the document entitled "Budget Speech" of June 25, 1976, page 40, we can see that Canadian workers will pay $20 billion in direct taxes against $16 billion in 1975 which is an increase of more than $4 billion while big corporations will pay an additional $700 million only. This is another levy which demonstrates the absurdity of our taxation system. While we live in a period of great banking and financial monopolies, multinational companies which own 80 per cent of our economy pay only 24 per cent of the national budget, whereas salaried people pay 76 per cent of it.
We have been asking the government for years to restore the economic balance by getting the money from those who pocket revenues and file astronomical profits. Far from

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. C.-A. Gauthier seeking to take the money where it really is so as to administer and guarantee each citizen an adequate minimum income to live on, the government turns back to the unemployed, to take more money from those who cannot even work to earn a decent living for themselves and their family.
As if he wanted to soften the blow, the minister first increased the premiums, and now he decides to reduce benefits. This is what I call administrative dishonesty. If the minister sincerely wants to save $75 or $100 million, he just has to turn to the Department of National Defence, and simply keep the $1 billion they intend to spend on the purchase of new toys for our soldiers overseas.
Let us talk a little bit, Mr. Speaker, of this famous Orion or Lockheed program, whichever one you wish to call it. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, that after we were told that the government could not afford to spend $40 million to help industrial milk producers, the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson) is prepared to run us into debt to the tune of $1 billion to buy new military planes. While everyone is clamoring for improved rail services, the Department of Transport budget is being reduced to fill in the coffers of national defence-I was about to say "international" since most of our forces are overseas.
The government proposes to close down railway lines which are unprofitable. But is the Air Force profit-making? The country cannot afford it, so what, there is no problem, Lockheed will finance the Orion deal. Do you not think there is something mysterious about the transactions of this corporation which inspired so much comments with the terrific bribes it has resorted to in several countries to boost its sales? After the Sky Shops scandal, shall we get another involving Lockheed?
When you listen to the sometimes quite harsh interventions in this House, you wonder if some ministers or civil servants have not succumbed to the temptation of bribes. I am sure, Mr. Speaker, that it would have been better for the government itself to negotiate a little loan for the benefit of farmers. Bribes would have been less significant and it would have been compensated by a political gain.
I could not conclude without speaking of our great Crown corporation, Air Canada, and its unilingualism. I have no idea what the Prime Minister thinks of the disastrous events concerning his bilingualism program and what is going on at Air Canada. In light of those events we are more and more convinced that for some English-speaking Canadians bilingualism is a good and nice thing as long as it is not implemented. We are just seeing the beginning of a fight where many senior civil servants and some ministers will have to show their true face to the Canadian people. Even if you are part of Canada, when you dare prevent a province from using its own language it becomes dangerous, Mr. Speaker. As always, the minister promptly created a commission to hide behind but the problem is still there. And what a commission, Mr. Speaker! For a commission on bilingualism, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang) could not do any better than chosing a lawyer who was a former adviser to the pilot association, a group absolutely hostile to bilingualism in Quebec's sky.
The Association des gens de l'air du Quebec denounced the appointment of Mr. Keenan and even declared that it would not cooperate in that inquiry because of the past

action of Mr. Keenan. The association went even further: it demanded the appointment of a French-speaking co-commissioner or Mr. Keenan's dismissal. The Minister of Transport said no to everything. It was the slap in the face given by our Minister of Transport to the airline employees in Quebec. However, witnessing the increasing rebellion in Quebec, Mr. Keenan realized that his appointment as commissioner had become litigious and, far from contributing to solve the problem, it was only increasing it, so he made a decision. We have seen that Mr. Keenan, in spite of his formal opposition to bilingualism, has more sense than the Minister of Transport. Now we are waiting for the creation of the new commission.
To my mind, the minister is too compromised at this point to designate alone the members of that commission. The cabinet must be very careful to avoid more confrontations. In the meantime, we Quebecers are paying our share of the deficits of the big beautiful unilingual company, Air Canada. If the minister wants to stay with the status quo at Air Canada, let him at least give money to the unemployed and the farmers in Quebec, the money we must pay for the deficits of Air Canada. Then only will we start to consider him as an impartial anglophone who tries to work for the unity of the two Canadian ethnic groups.


Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the debate on this budget of 1976, my mind went back over budget debates of the last 19 years. I think there is a well known expression, "The more things change, the more they remain the same".
We are suffering at this particular time from obvious evidence that the government did not know what to do and the civil servants did not know what to do, so they did nothing. I make that remark with some regret because I have seen one minister after the other in the last 25 years, going back to Walter Harris, suffer the same fate regardless of their politics because the elected representative was not contributing the knowledge that was available to the budget. We relied on the expertise of people who were sincere and able, but who had been consistently wrong for 30 years. I have made that remark on many a budget debate, and I regret to have to make it tonight. In a moment I shall refer to the source of this judgment. I always believe in being an optimist, however.
I was interested to read a statement by the former deputy minister of finance reported in the Globe and Mail of June 2. I shall not read the whole article but I would ask the members of the House who take seriously the part parliament should play in laying down the fiscal and monetary policy of this nation so as to maximize the good that will come from a proper policy, to pay particular attention to it. Here is a man who had been around for all of my time here and is now in private business. His concluding remark was: "Above all we economists should learn to be humble; so should our political leaders. Together we have much to be humble about." Now that Simon Reisman is free of government service he tells us to be humble because we have much to be humble about!
In my remarks tonight I am going to try to shift away from the details of this budget because there is general
June 8, 1976

agreement that it is a nothing budget. The minister himself made that very clear when he bragged that he would rather be cautious than foolhardy. I want to remind the House that along with a good many other people in Canada I have been seriously concerned this last year or so, as I saw the nation slowly begin to come out of the recession, that somebody would do something stupid to send us back into another recession.
In this history of mistakes over the last 30 years the situation we are in at this particular time in our economic cycle is exactly the same as on two other separate occasions in the years I have been in the House. On each of the previous occasions the circumstances were the same-a country slowly coming out of a recession and then the government did a stupid thing which sent the country into a worse recession.
Just before last Christmas I put the following question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) quietly at the end of the question period, as reported at page 10196 of Hansard:
. . . would the Prime Minister give serious consideration over the next three or four weeks to re-examining the whole course that the government is taking because I believe it is heading us toward a recession and would he turn the whole program of the government around into one of expansion so as to give the government time to get at the basic cause of inflation, which this program is not doing?
I was referring to the anti-inflation program. The Prime Minister promised he would give it serious consideration but as the House will understand, when he gave that answer he thought the expansion I asked about was the same type of expansion program we have had for 30 years from the advisers of the government. He thought it meant pumping more money into circulation so that there would be more to spend. He mentioned that in his answer. He said in effect, "Look how big our budgetary deficit is-we are expansionary." He accepted the word of the Department of Finance experts who believe that if we have a big budget deficit, that is expansionary. I say it is time the politicians took over from these experts and began to do some real thinking on the deficits that are before us.
Tonight I am not going to deal with the details of the budget. I am going to suggest that there are alternatives and these alternatives have been made public. They are not new but they are not being utilized by the advisers of our governments. I will give an example, Mr. Speaker.
First, I want to congratulate the hon. member for Water-loo-Cambridge (Mr. Saltsman) for being the one speaker in the opening stages of this debate who looked at the situation in a philosophical sense and saw what the government was doing. All the government was doing was trying to take a political posture to get the Prime Minister out of the hole vis-a-vis those silly speeches he made around Christmas time.
The hon. member for Waterloo-Cambridge put forward not a new philosophy but one that was laid clear as an alternative by the Economic Council of Canada six or seven years ago, namely, that when you have a large number of unemployed and 15 per cent or 20 per cent of the plant capacity unused, if you put that group of people to work and put that plant capacity to use, then there is no inflation. Inflation only occurs when you try to put the people to work when there is not enough plant capacity. The name for this alternative is very well known; it is
The Budget-Hon. A. Hamilton called "potential budgeting". I hope it is the official policy of the New Democratic Party because when we form the government we can rely upon them as allies if they believe it. It is what we believe.
Everyone knows that if you use the labour force and use the plant capacity, the gross national revenue goes up, tax revenues go up, and the deficit comes down. This was used in the United States in 1964 when their budgeters reduced taxes by about $10 billion or $11 billion. Everyone said, "Disaster is upon us-here we have a big deficit and this crazy government comes along and reduces taxes by another $11 billion." But they put so many people to work and utilized so much plant capacity that when the year was over the government had $18 billion in new taxes and, instead of the familiar deficit, had a large surplus. This has only been used once in the United States to my knowledge, and it has never been used here. It is one alternative.
The second alternative is one I put forward some ten years ago in a series of three or four speeches. I suggested some refinements to the doctrine of Lord Keynes, and to keep it simple I called it "selective budgeting"-selective by region, selective by industry, and selective by social purpose. In those proposals I outlined how in a country as big as the United States or Canada the doctrines of Keynes would not work because they were designed for a small country like the United Kingdom. In Canada there are many regions and a great variety of sophistication in industries and great differences in social need. Any Canadian budget of the future should contain this selective feature.
I know these ideas were heeded because there is occasional evidence in a budget that they are known. In the last budget there was a reasonable concession to the mari-times on unemployment insurance. I would suggest that the principle of selective budgeting should be applied systematically in all phases of economic activity if we are to make this large country, with 16 or 18 different regions, work.
Those are two alternatives, Mr. Speaker. I shall now put forward a third alternative that to my knowledge has not been publicly formulated anywhere in Canada. The person who enunciated this doctrine is a Canadian, for which I give him full credit. His name is Mundell. For years he lectured at Waterloo. His quantitative analysis of those ideas followed over the years by our economic masters proved that those so-called truths are not truths at all; exactly the opposite is the case. Although this evidence has been accumulating for almost 15 years, it has not come to the attention of ministers of the Crown or ministerial advisers. Actually, there is a complete black-out of knowledge. There is no talk of the Mundell hypothesis.
Professor Laffer of the University of Chicago has also done quantitative analysis work confirming the correctness of the Mundell hypothesis. The hypothesis can now be described as the Mundell-Laffer hypothesis. In a nutshell, it says that assumptions which economists of all western nations have held to be truths are not truths at all. For instance, economists have assumed that when a country experiences a negative balance of trade in intangibles and tangibles, you should reduce the value of your currency.

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Hon. A. Hamilton Theoretically that move should automatically eliminate your international trade deficit. Actually it will not eliminate the deficit but increase inflation in direct proportion to the amount of devaluation.
Professor Laffer demonstrated with figures based on quantitative studies that our government advisers and the advisers to governments in most countries of western Europe have been following false doctrine. Conventional economists hold that if you have a deficit balance of trade you should automatically devaluate your currency. Yet West Germany, Taiwan, and Brazil have been doing very well by not following that doctrine.
I will not deal at length with the international ramifications of the Mundell-Laffer hypothesis. The hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies) will speak in this debate tomorrow. He is much more capable than I am of explaining the mysteries of economic workings. I want to relate that particular hypothesis to the domestic stance our government ought to take at this time, to show that nearly everything we have done in the fiscal field for 30 years has been wrong.
By the way, for those hon. members interested in serious reading I recommend a royal commission report which came out in 1964. It traces the economic history of Department of Finance policies for 30 years. One truth emerges from the report, and it is this. All our advisers to the government have been constant in one thing: they have been constantly wrong, both in advising as to the direction the government should take and in timing. Read chapter 20. Hon. members will see that not only the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain talks this way. The royal commission report has been available for 12 years, but there is no evidence to show that elected representatives of the people have even read it. It would give them ammunition with which to challenge their advisers whose advice has resulted in the type of crap we have had in the last several budgets.
What would Mundell do in present day circumstances? Since our economic charts are slowly levelling off instead of rising, and since there is unused plant capacity and slack in the labour force, Mundell would advise a policy of fiscal ease. Some would call that a policy of budgetary expansion. But the expansion should not be brought about by increasing the deficit, not brought about simply by cutting taxes across the board to encourage people to spend more and spend their way out of recession. That is not what he means. Neither is he thinking of handouts or transfer payments. He suggests that in times like these we should make full use of our labour force and plant capacity. We should achieve our purposes by instituting tax cuts which will affect regions and industries. In that way we could fulfil our social purposes. For example, our steel industry for the next 30 years will have tremendous opportunity. Let us back the industry and encourage it to take advantage of its opportunity.
Our steel production figures should be rising steadily; instead, in 1976 we have witnessed a decline in steel production. Canada among the western nations can boldly compete with anyone in steel. We pay higher wages per hour, produce better steel, and do it more cheaply than our competitors. Why should we not back our steel industry

and encourage it to expand in the west and in the mari times?
I would not oppose something several speakers have mentioned in this debate, imaginative tax incentives to encourage export efforts. You will notice that I did not use the word "goods." In the next 25 or 30 years a great proportion of Canadian exports will not consist of goods.


John R. Rodriguez: No, they will be raw materials.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Our
exports will consist of the know-how of our people, of our engineers, miners, and scientists. Their expertise is needed in the Middle East, Africa, the Far East, and even in countries more sophisticated in certain respects than we are, for we are expert in certain fields. Mr. Speaker, in certain fields of knowledge we have developed expertise which is beyond price. Price is not the criterion. I should like to see tax reductions to encourage such export efforts. That is one alternative under the fiscal ease policy of the Mundell hypothesis.
The second point concerns capital accumulation. Members on both sides of the House have spoken of this many times in the last three or four years. When I talk of capital accumulation I talk of many facets of saving. First, we must consider straight savings. The high interest rates of today are not only killing industry and governments; they are killing people trying to build a home, start a business, or buy a farm. If you take a $50,000 mortgage for 30 years at 12 per cent, you will pay $150,000 in interest charges on top of the principal sum of $50,000. Seventy-five per cent of the cost of buying a home, starting a mine or opening a business, consists of interest charges. High interest rates are the common enemy of the government, the business world, and the consumer. I say that capital accumulation in any form is good.
I notice that there was faint praise for the minister because he increased the exemption under registered retirement savings plans to $5,500. I will not give him faint praise. I say it was a good thing to do. I hope my NDP friends remember that we have a labour force of between eight million and nine million people; half the homes of that labour force are paid for. Their kids are educated. They want to take advantage of a registered retirement savings plan, to add to their pension on top of their company's pension. When you look at the figures it becomes apparent that more than a few people are using these plans. I suggest that around four million Canadians are taking advantage of them. Pretty soon I hope six million or eight million will take advantage of them. I say to the minister, good for him. It is good to invest the money that way. Unfortunately some pension plans put money to nonproductive uses.
Then we must consider the question of equity. Equity is the key whereby Canadians as individuals will own their own country. They will not own their own country if the state takes everything over; they can only own it as individuals. This means that we must put money into equity in such a way that Canadians not only own the majority of our resource and manufacturing industries, but control them. I have spoken on this before, and I must put it very bluntly, Mr. Speaker. Unless Canadians as individuals take over the ownership of these companies,
June 8, 1976

then what is happening so rapidly today will soon be over. Every time there is a problem, all the provincial government and federal government advisers can say is socialize them. If we continue taking over industry at the rate we are moving today in the so-called enterprise parties, by the year 1990 all the money earned by Canadians will come from government owned institutions.
There are some who would advocate that, but certainly not the NDP because they could not get any members elected if they did. It is coming from our civil servants who believe that the individual businessman, farmer, or labour union is not competent to make his or their own decisions. Therefore this question of accumulating capital through equity is the key.
The second type of savings is the more rapid circulation of money. I congratulate the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Buchanan), who was here a moment ago, for accepting the proposal I made to him some time ago, in that in so far as northern oil and gas is concerned we are taking off front end loading charges and not taxing them until they get their debt paid off. Then we will take a much larger percentage than we would have got before. I say congratulations are due to that minister for accepting that principle and listening to ideas from this side.
I ask the government and the people of Canada to realize that if you are going to get these huge interest payments down, you have to speed up the flow of capital. If you can pay off a debt in four years instead of 12 years, that is the same as having three times as much money. If there is three times as much money in Canada, interest rates have to come down. The Keynesians say that if we print more money, interest rates will have to come down. This has been proved wrong for 30 years.
We have to increase the amount of capital, with hopefully more and more going into equity. However, before you can ask someone to go into equity you have to get governments off his back in order to allow him to earn some dividends on his equity. Then he has something at the end of his life instead of it all being taken away by inflation and taxation.
More rapid circulation could be applied, not just to northern gas, but to all capital intensive enterprises. In that I include homes for our people. I gave the example of taking 30 years to pay off a $50,000 mortgage. Cut that time to ten years and you cut the interest rate from $150,000 to $27,000. There is a $123,000 saving by the fast payout. Give the money to somebody else and get the interest rates down.
I sit here and writhe as I see young people taking on horrendous mortages, knowing they will be in debt until they are old men and women, when there is a way to get away from it. The answer, as Mundell points out, is to get back to some old fashioned economics; when interest rates are high pay the debts off quickly. That is simple.
The third point I want to bring up under the Mundell-Laffer hypothesis is labour management. I am glad to see the former Minister of Labour, now Postmaster General (Mr. Mackasey), in the House. He knows the truth of what I am going to say. One of the people to get all the blame for
The Budget-Hon. A. Hamilton high costs is labour. In trying to protect themselves from high interest costs, land costs, and government costs, they grab for more and more in order to stay in the race. This becomes part of the cost-push and they get all the blame for it.
The minister knows there is a better way of doing these things. We have an example, not of the controls the government is using, but of a story that was leaked about a month ago, May 4. A union which had been constantly fighting management, and management constantly fighting the union, came to light in a report in the Globe and Mail of May 4. It actually appeared in the Vancouver Sun the day before. I quote:
Canada's West Coast grain handling industry and the grain handlers union have taken a far-reaching and unprecedented step by agreeing to submit their differences over wages in a new agreement to arbitration.
One of the union men said:
-the move to arbitration was taken because the union in no circumstances could be a party to halting the flow of grain through West Coast ports.
It would have been disastrous for all concerned.
It would have been disastrous for management, union men, the consumer, and the farmer. Editorials came out stating how wonderful it was that some guys had agreed to something. The minister knows what I am getting at. I say that when the full story is told, it will be found that that story started here in the House of Commons and the minister is present who asked me the question. A group of members of parliament went out and took a little part in that. God bless them, they kept quiet this past year and a half and let the deal jell. Now we have the union and management agreeing.
Strikes are not necessary. We all lose with strikes. Mutual advantage says we should get rid of them. Indeed when the full story is told we can take this precedent and move it into many other sections of industry where we can measure quantitatively the amount of production, find out what the men want, and what management wants. We can get them both on the road and stop these absurd strikes without any law at all. All that is necessary is mutual observation and advantage. My time is running out, but I wish to ask this question. What was there in this budget to encourage labour and management to put an end to the obsolete confrontations that have developed over the past 30 years?
I will not say anything more about the cost of government or urban land costs. I have spoken on those subjects before. I want to conclude by simply saying that in this budget-tackling a few things, not causing any waves- there was no attempt whatever to use the time that the price and wage controls give to government to get at the six structural causes of inflation.
The government is betraying the people of Canada by forcing these controls. It is taking away the right of men and management to meet and deal as equals. It is not using the time on things which are well known. This is nothing more than a straight John Turner budget. It is nothing but civil service gobbledygook, trying to prove theories that were proven wrong 30 years ago. This budget cannot be supported by people who believe in growth, and the Conservative party went on record today, in the words of its

June 8, 1976
The Budget-Mr. Caccia
leader, as the party of growth in Canada, and there we stand.


Mr.   Chas. L. Caccia@Davenport: Mr. Speaker, about 12 days ago, on the first day of this debate, the hon. member for Vaudreuil (Mr. Herbert) made a very accurate observation. He stated that the greatest contradiction of the Conservative position on this budget was the suggestion that the government could at one and the same time cut spending, cut taxes, and cut its deficit, while stimulating faster growth and employment. When asked to explain how to accomplish this feat, the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) replied that it was because the private sector was going to be given a chance. Not even the Canadian Chamber of Commerce would subscribe to such nonsense.
In its pre-budget brief to the government the Canadian Chamber of Commerce stated that if it was considered necessary to inject some stimulus into the economy in order to alleviate high unemployment, there should be a tax reduction to provide an investment incentive. However, the chamber clearly recognized that such a cut would reduce government revenues and add to the prospective cash deficit for the current year. The chamber maintained that the proposal should not exceed that which they forecast for last year of $5.5 billion. The actual cash requirement was almost $1 billion below that of last year, and the government expects it will be about the same level this year, which is well below the maximum prescribed by the Chamber of Commerce.
In his speech the hon. member for York-Simcoe alleged that the accumulated deficits of the government would come to about $11.5 billion-presumably, from the context of his remarks, he came to that conclusion on a national accounts basis-by the end of this year. In fact, Mr. Speaker, the net deficit from 1968-69 to that projected for the current fiscal year amounts to $7.7 billion, which means a difference, a discrepancy, an error, of nearly $4 billion on the part of the financial critic of the Conservative party.
I ask you, Mr. Speaker, what kind of a leader, and what kind of a position in the country can that party expect to have in the eyes of Canadians when their financial critic makes a mistake of $4 billion in a major speech in this debate? If I can express a hope, Mr. Speaker, give us back any time the hon. member for Don Valley (Mr. Gillies); we would welcome him back. The greatest sin that he committed was that of contradicting himself once every six months, but he certainly never made mistakes of this magnitude.
The hon. member for York-Simcoe complained that since 1968 direct personal taxes, as a share of total federal revenue, had increased from 34 per cent to around 53 per cent, whereas the share of corporate tax revenue had remained constant at 15 per cent. It should be pointed out here that the hon. member's figures are once again in error. He has compared the revenues from personal tax in 1968 on a budgetary basis with those projected for the current year on a national accounts basis, which of course, Mr. Speaker, is like comparing apples and oranges, something that the hon. member for York-Simcoe frequently does.

On a national accounts basis, personal direct taxes accounted for about 40 per cent of total federal revenues in 1968, not 34 per cent. They are forecast to represent around 53 per cent of total revenues in the current fiscal year.
While the hon. member for York-Simcoe condemns the increase in federal spending in recent years and the size of federal deficits, he conveniently ignores the fact that rarely a day goes by in this House of Commons when a member of the Conservative party does not press either for increased expenditure for this or that purpose-sometimes expenditures involving tens of millions of dollars-or opposes increased charges for public services or reduced subsidies aimed at reducing the deficit of the treasury.
This great financial critic of the Conservative party ignores an even more fundamental fact, that the admittedly large increase in government spending of the last few years has primarly been due to these two factors: first, the impact of inflation on the government's own cost of providing goods and services; secondly, increases in government expenditures undertaken to ease the adverse impact on the Canadian people of inflation and recession.
The hon. member for York-Simcoe accused the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) and the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Chretien) of "fiddling" and "diddling" and cooking the books-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Steve Eugene Paproski: That is the best line you have had all evening.


Mr. Caccia:: -misrepresenting charges, and so on. He complained that the main estimates tabled earlier this year projected expenditures by the Post Office of $981 million in 1975-76, whereas the budget papers tabled by the finance minister showed expenditures for last year of only $901 million. Since the increase in Post Office expenditures projected in the estimates for the current year would be significantly more when compared to actual expenditures last year, as opposed to the projection contained in the main estimates, the member proposed to lop $95 million off the total for the current year. However, the member failed to take account of a very simple fact, namely, the prolonged strike of postal workers last year which resulted in expenditures being significantly less than provided for in the estimates. Surely not even the hon. member for York-Simcoe would advocate a repeat of this kind of enforced cost control.
The hon. member for York-Simcoe contends that because of other similar differences between spending projections in the main estimates prepared last December and preliminary actual spending projections contained in the budget papers, there was room for a saving totalling $225 million. Well, Mr. Speaker, that is, of course, the most specious kind of argument.
The hon. member maintains that some $410 million can be saved from the non-budgetary side of the accounts, but does not tell us where he proposes to make cutbacks. He proposes to slash spending under the heading of "professional and special services" by $250 million. Coming from a Conservative, this is the greatest proposal for spending reductions! He apparently chooses to remain oblivious to the fact that expenditures under this category are for
June 8, 1976

services and facilities which are acquired from outside the federal government, because they can be obtained at considerably less cost than if we tried to provide them through government agencies.
Nearly 40 per cent of the total, for example, goes to purchase educational and manpower training services from the provinces. Large outlays are also incurred to purchase outside computer services, private security services, medical services, and to obtain legal and architectural services which in many instances can be provided far more efficiently by the private sector than by the government itself. Yet we have the hon. member for York-Simcoe, that great financial critic, expounding a theory which is diametrically opposed to that of his party.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the member proposes to save $140 million through administrative savings and amalgamating existing departments, or phasing out federal operations which overlap provincial operations. The hon. member proposed to make about $140 million disappear, but he was reluctant to tell us how he would do it. There is, however, a particular obligation upon this great financial critic-and as I say, give us back the hon. member for Don Valley any time.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles L. Caccia: There is an obligation on him in view of the fact that at their last policy convention the Tories approved several measures which would have the effect of significantly increasing the number of federal departments and agencies. When examined in detail in quickly becomes apparent that the "savings" of more than $1 billion conjured up by the hon. member for York-Simcoe are nothing more than the stuff that dreams are made of.
The amendment before us speaks of the failure on the part of the government to realize job creation. I should like to put on the record for the benefit of hon. members, in case their memories are short, the record of job creation on the part of the Liberal government. If we look at the job creation statistics that have been provided by OECD-and no one can claim that OECD statistics are partisan so far as Canadian politics are concerned-we find 472,000 jobs approximately were created between 1970 and 1972, 394,000 in 1972-73, 393,000 in 1973-74, and between 1974 and the last quarter of 1975, 552,000 new jobs, for a total of 1,811,000 new jobs created, and this is in a country with a population of only 22 million people. I would ask, Mr. Speaker, is that not a fantastic performance in job creation in this country?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles L. Caccia: Let us consider for a moment this lack of confidence on the part of the Tories in this great nation of ours. Does this mean there is a lack of confidence in Canada when we have foreign investment pouring in every year?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles L. Caccia: Surely the rest of the world is looking at Canada as the safest place to invest its money.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
The Budget-Mr. Caccia


Charles L. Caccia: How about the lack of confidence on the part of Canadians when they purchase Canada Savings Bonds in record time when they are put on sale in the market? How about that?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles L. Caccia: How about the hundreds of thousands of people each year who apply for immigrant status to come to Canada because they think Canada is the place they would like to settle? How about that for lack of confidence?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles L. Caccia: If anyone has a lack of confidence in Canada it is the Conservative party. That is what their amendment is all about. The amendment speaks about the lack of long-term growth and job potential and economic growth. It speaks of the lack of ability to create jobs.
This afternoon we heard from the new leader of the Conservative party. I could not help but think of the good old times when the leader of the Conservative party was the hon. member for Halifax (Mr. Stanfield), and I think of that party's lack of confidence in that leader. That was really shocking to the whole country when they dumped their leader.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles L. Caccia: It was your decision, and it is up to you to draw your own conclusions. Mr. Speaker, I should like to commend the government for its ability in steering a fine course at a very difficult financial moment.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: Order, please. It being 9.45 o'clock p.m., it is my duty, pursuant to Section 7 of Standing Order 60, to interrupt these proceedings and put forthwith the question to dispose of the amendment now before the House.

The question is on the amendment of the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens).
All those in favour of the amendment will please say yea.
All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: In my opinion, the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen-.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bechard):: Call in the
members.


Mr. Speaker:: I therefore declare the amendment lost.
It being after ten o'clock this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m.
At 10.13 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, June 9, 1976