1976-06-17

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tuesday, June 15, 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. Robert McCleave (Halifax-East Hants):: Mr. Speaker, I intend my remarks to be brief, probably only to reiterate the arguments that I have made in the past as a retentionist. However, whether my view prevails or that of certain other people in this chamber who are in favour of abolition does not concern me as much as the fact that we achieve a decision. I hope we will do that next Tuesday morning so that the country will know where this House of Commons stands with regard to the question of capital punishment. I would certainly resist any attempt to put off a decision for longer than that. In other words, our debate has perhaps lasted a little bit too long. It has been interspersed with so many other things that the country must wonder about the procedure of this House of Commons. I am not going to get into that.
I am not going to question the sincerity of those who believe in views directly opposite to my own on this important matter. I might question the attitude of certain members, including the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), with regard to the law for a number of years. I think people are entitled to do that. Even so, I resist that temptation and try to get myself to the main question: Are there circumstances under which one would be entitled to take away the life of another human being on this planet that we call earth? I think that such circumstances exist. I have not heard any argument that had made me really change my attitude, horrendous and barbarous as the act of taking another life may be.
A considerable amount of thought has been given to the question as to whether capital punishment in itself is a deterrent. Some years back I reached the conclusion that, in itself, it probably was not a deterrent. However, the former hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre, in one of the few speeches in all of these debates that I recall, pointed out his own wartime experience and how the fear of imminent death had a great motivation for those who were undergoing the experience of war. I suspect the same
fear would exist amongst the criminal element. When I read about the hostage incidents in prisons, I say to myself that if there were some method by which the people who would dare take other people's lives so lightly could be made accountable with their own, probably there would not be as many hostage incidents in prisons.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Jardine McCleave: I thank hon. members for their approval of that particular point. I realize that in many cases we are dealing with psychotic people. Many acts of murder are psychotic acts rather than deliberate and planned ones, calculated long in advance. In other words, they are impetuous acts. Apart from that, I think there is a question in the mind of the public, at least, as to the effectiveness of the punishment to be imposed. Prison terms, I suppose, could be considered a deterrent with respect to anyone who went shoplifting. Yet the amount of shoplifting in our society is extensive. Prison terms could be considered a deterrent against drunken driving, but the fact is the extent of this crime remains substantially unchanged.
[DOT] <mo)
So it seems to me one has to look to a more basic motive for the consideration of the type of punishment which is suitable. I did think that the Fulton formula of a number of years ago, the division between capital and non-capital murder, should have been given a fair run. However, it was simply repealed by the use of the recommendation for clemency. Successive governments have used this means to repeal, in effect, the will of parliament. This is what bothers me. Even if I were an abolitionist and there were a law in force, I would want the law to be carried out rather than a practice which, in effect, negates that law. This is something which has bothered me over the years-the fact that successive governments-and I do not wish to point a finger at any of them in particular-have used this technique to flout what is the undoubted will of two out of three of the people in Canada. Most of the polls bear out that figure.
I have just been talking to my hon. friend from Cape Breton-The Sydneys (Mr. Muir). His poll was taken more recently than mine, but his figures are substantially the same. There was a survey made by the reporters of the Chronicle-Herald and here again the results were substantially the same. It seems to me that in Nova Scotia two out of three people-the proportion is actually slightly higher-think there should be some form of capital punishment. We are not a province noted for way out abberations in our thinking and I would imagine we are in the mainstream with regard to this question whether human life should be taken or not.
Capital punishment is, of course, barbarous.


An hon. Member:: It is murder.

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Robert Jardine McCleave: Somebody says it is murder, but it is not murder in the sense that the victim of the person who is faced with capital punishment has been murdered. I hear an interjection from one of my seatmates; the point was being made that murder, too, is barbarous Of course it is. And capital punishment is barbarous. I suppose the slaughter of an animal in an abattoir is barbarous. When I am asked whether I would be prepared to push the lock to send somebody to death, my answer is that I am not. Nor am I prepared to cut a cow's throat in an abattoir. And I am not prepared to perform an appendectomy on anyone in this chamber, either. Those are tasks which can be set aside for others. But there are times when things have to be done whether they appear barbaric or not. So I reject that line of thinking as an argument against capital punishment.
At this point, may I put in a word for Hammurabi? I have made the argument before. It has never appeared in the press, as far as I can see, but it is not something I have invented. The Hammurabic code prescribing an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was not the idea of a barbaric society; it was the idea of a civilized society. What Hammurabi and others who preached that code were telling us was this: if society has to extract some kind of punishment it should be an eye for an eye but not more than that; it should be a tooth for a tooth, but not a whole mouthful of teeth; it should be one person for one person, but not a thousand. It still seems to me it is a pretty good code to follow and the ordinary person in the street would be a lot happier if, after reading about the Calgary incident or the Moncton incident, or the Dartmouth incident or the sad things that have happened in Saskatchewan, he could have an idea that the people responsible, those who were so callously indifferent to the right of others to live that in some cases they even laughed when they shot down their victims, would be brought immediately to justice. If there were some minimum extraction of justice in such cases as these, he might believe there was, indeed, a strong basis of law in Canada.
Nobody is trying to be excessive, I think, in applying punishment. The trouble is we are not applying enough punishment where punishment could matter. So people, after a while, shrug their shoulders and say: Really, we are a country which does not believe in the law, or even have a law.
For these reasons I intend to continue voting as a reten-tionist and will resist any attempt to change the law in the way proposed.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Peter Bawden (Calgary South):: Mr. Speaker, the debate on Bill C-84 goes far beyond the specific clauses and details before us. The emotions of millions of Canadians are stirred by the question of where Canada is headed- where the government is taking us. This bill to abolish capital punishment is just one further example, one of many in recent years, which places the stamp of permissiveness on Canadian society.
It is clear that no other issue in many years has moved so many Canadians to speak out, to write letters to their newspapers. Most members of this House can attest to the feelings of their constituents, for the issue of capital pun-

ishment has undoubtedly resulted in more mail to parliament than any other. The reason is that most Canadians believe this important ingredient in our system of law and order must be retained, and it is clear to them that the policy of the Trudeau government is to abolish it.
One of the most unfortunate aspects of the forthcoming division on Bill C-84 is that Canadians have been told by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) that members are free to vote as they wish. There are some members on the government side who have exhibited a good deal of courage by speaking against the bill, and against the wishes of the Prime Minister, such as the member for Vancouver-Kings-way (Mrs. Holt) who, it appears, has had a good deal of practical experience in dealing with criminals. I fear, however, that her outspoken views on this and other questions will not please her party masters.
Why, then, Mr. Speaker, is this not a truly free vote? I can only surmise that if the pressures were lifted from members on the government side and strict control on the cabinet were removed, a number of Liberals would vote against the bill and in favour of capital punishment. It is becoming clear that a very small shift, perhaps even three or four members voting against the bill rather than for it, would defeat it; it is that close. This is a government bill. It is clearly not a free vote and those who say so are deceiving the Canadian people.
Canada, Mr. Speaker, is undoubtedly unique in the world when our record of violence and crime is compared to most other countries. We have escaped the ravages of war which the countries in Europe, Japan, Russia and so many others experience during the Second World War; and since then there have been wars in Korea, VietNam, the Middle East and Africa. We in Canada have been very fortunate. We have often looked at the cities of Detroit and Chicago and said crime like that could not happen here. Our cities seemed safe, and violence seen in so many places happened here only occasionally.
Well, Mr. Speaker, all that is changing. Canada will in the remaining years of this century, more than ever before, be faced with problems of lawlessness, violence and murder. Statistics clearly show the rapid growth of crime in our country. We will, I fear, be faced too with growing numbers of threats by terrorists and hijackers, all of the things which have become fact in other parts of the world. Terrorist activities are now taking place in such civilized countries as England, Holland, France and Germany. If anyone wonders about the government's concern for this happening here, let him look at the number and cost of our police and military forces being assembled for the summer Olympics in Montreal.
Mr. Speaker, the point that I am making is that if there was ever a time when we should be taking steps to strengthen our law enforcement and strengthen the support for our police forces, the time is now. We will in but a few weeks be going through one of the most critical security periods in many years in Montreal, and this is obviously clear to the government. It has drained virtually every able man from our armed forces bases everywhere. They could not cope if any serious problem arose anywhere else in our country at the same time. Just this week, support
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was requested to assist in a serious forest fire in Ontario. No help was possible; our armed forces were stretched to the maximum. In spite of the tensions of the Olympic weeks and as well the visit of Her Majesty the Queen to Canada at that time, this government has chosen to attempt to abolish capital punishment in advance of that event, which can only be viewed as the height of stupidity.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) participated in this debate on Tuesday and made a melodramatic appeal to the House for the government's bill to abolish capital punishment. The Prime Minister said that he wanted to make it very clear that, if a majority of hon. members voted against abolition, some people were going to be hanged. He went on to say that 11 men are being held in Canadian prisons under sentence of death for the murder of policemen or prison officials.
I think it is fair to say that our Prime Minister has led a sheltered life. He seems to be a gentle man but a gentle man completely out of touch with the real world, and particularly with the ugly reality of today's criminal element. Our starry-eyed Prime Minister and Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) do not, I presume, recall the brutal and grisly murders of the Moncton policemen or the gunning down in cold blood of two members of the Calgary police force, Detective Boyd Davidson and Staff Sergeant Keith Harrison, so very recently. I will never forget, Mr. Speaker, the tragic picture that appeared in the Toronto Star of Pauline Maitland with her two very small and tearful children. Constable Leslie Maitland who was gunned down at point blank range and his killer is one of the 11.
The Solicitor General, the Prime Minister and his government are responsible for the present law. They argued for abolition of the death penalty but retention for the killers of policemen and prison guards. That bill was passed only 32 months ago. Since that time the federal cabinet has in every case failed to carry out that law. Canadians and members of this House were clearly deceived by the government as well; the example of lawbreaking set by the government was surely a horrible example for all Canadians.
I believe, regardless of the arguments made to the contrary, that members of parliament must have regard for the opinions of their constituents on all matters. Surely, this is the essence of our whole system. I find it impossible to ignore the fact that eight out of 10 of the citizens of Calgary South who responded to the question last year favoured capital punishment. The percentage of all Canadians who favour capital punishment is just about the same. Recent mail received in my office indicates some 98 per cent favour capital punishment for premeditated murder. Why, then, is this government attempting to impose something that an overwhelming majority of Canadians do not want? I can only believe that it is just one further example of the arrogance of this government. A truly free vote or a secret vote, and only that, would prove the sincerity of the Prime Minister's claim.
Canadians everywhere are demanding stronger law enforcement. They have seen too much of the soft attitude which places the rights and concerns of the criminal ahead of those of law-abiding citizens. They have had enough of the loose administration of justice whereby criminals, rapists, murderers and child molesters are introduced to
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country club living and then let out on holidays, weekends and parole, when the safety of society seems to have been completely forgotten in our headlong rush to demonstrate our humanity for criminals, but with little concern shown for the victims of crime.
Canada has been a good place to live. Under this government we are changing that. We are not backing up our excellent police forces with rules and laws that enable them to carry out their responsibilities. Under this government the man who obeys the law and the man who works for his living is taking a back seat to the law-breaker, to those who will not work and to those who are indeed encouraged to live off the system. Added to this unfortunate ethic in our country are the government's unfortunate immigration practices.
Many arguments have been made in this debate and elsewhere that the death penalty is not a deterrent. This was the very thrust of the Prime Minister's remarks on Tuesday. I believe that common sense, which I think motivates most Canadians, will tell us that the death penalty is a deterrent. Canadians who write and speak on this issue believe that it is a deterrent. They speak on the basis of their own feelings and how they would face the threat of the death penalty. That is how I judge the deterrent value as well. There have been many examples quoted from the mouths of would-be murderers which indicate that they too have clearly planned their actions having regard to the penalty.
The government has attempted, Mr. Speaker, to "snow" the members of this House and the Canadian people by offering Bill C-83, the so-called peace and security legislation, hopefully to sneak through the abolition of capital punishment by arguing that appropriate and sufficient safeguards and deterrents exist in the package presented. The bill falls back on 25 years imprisonment; that is to be the replacement for the death penalty, and the cornerstone of the deterrence.
There are two problems with this approach. The first is that, should such sentences be carried out, they may well remove any chance of reform and rehabilitation. But, equally important, I do not believe the government will or even intends to stick with such a commitment. We may well see further legislation brought forward in the next two years to reduce substantially these terms. If there is any doubt about this possibility, I would ask why the minister has seen fit to change the present law now, when the legislation which he brought before the House and which was passed in 1973 does not expire until the end of 1977. The government urged members to support that bill at that time, when all along it had no intention whatsoever of obeying the law which provided for the death penalty for the killers of prison guards and policemen.
In 1974 there were 545 murders in Canada and in that same year six policemen were murdered. In the year 1962 to 1975, 53 policemen were murdered and, according to the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand), the murder rate since 1962 has exactly doubled from 1.2 murders per 100,000 of population to 2.4 murders per 100,000 of population for 1974. The Solicitor General attempts to explain this away by saying that all violent crimes have increased by just

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about the same amount. This is just what Canadians are concerned about, and if anyone thinks that patsy treatment for hardened criminals is going to deter them or protect society, he is wrong. It take force to deal with force and it takes brutal consequences to deal with brutal people.
As things stand now, an armed robber or hijacker is prone to murder because he knows he can only be given a prison sentence. He also knows, under our present system, through either parole, holidays, temporary leave, or even escape, his sojourn in custody may well be just a few years or even a few months. The risk of killing someone is truly worth it, especially if a key witness can be wiped out. We must make it clear to the potential murderer that he risks the chance of being executed for the crime. I believe that criminals value their lives as much as anyone else. Many have families and they enjoy living just as anyone else. Many would think twice before plotting murder if faced with the possibility of being hanged. The absence of capital punishment in Canada since 1961 has directly contributed to the violent crime statistics and the murder statistics cited by the Solicitor General.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) said on Tuesday that restricting the availability of guns, as proposed in Bill C-83, gives every reason to believe that such measures will effectively inhibit criminal activity, whereas he suggests capital punishment offers no such assurance. Most practical people who have studied the proposed gun control law believe it is a farce, that it will force costly and unnecessary restrictions on law-abiding citizens; it will be a restriction on freedom in Canada and it will do absolutely nothing to keep weapons from those who are bent on pursuing criminal activity.
There is something I believe is known to police and prison guards as well as those who work with prison inmates but which is not known or understood by the average Canadian or member of parliament. It is that the person or persons who plot premeditated murder, terrorist killings and other t^pes of murder are not ordinary people; they cannot be treated in an ordinary way. Let us face facts. These human beings are brutal, savage and cruel people, and no ordinary rules are applicable when dealing with them.
In conclusion, I believe that capital punishment should be extended beyond the present limitations to include all those convicted of premeditated acts of murder. Persons who take the life of another while committing such crimes as child molestation, rape, air piracy, political assassination, treason and robbery, if convicted should also face the death penalty. After all levels of judicial appeal have been exhausted and no recommendation for mercy is forthcoming from the judicial process, the federal Cabinet should be prohibited from interfering with that sentence and subsequent punishment. Where a recommendation for mercy is forthcoming from the judicial process, the federal Cabinet should be permitted to commute the death sentence.
I believe, as do the large majority of Canadians, that the death penalty is a deterrent to murder, just as is any jail sentence or punishment of any kind. It is clearly a deterrent, but no amount of research will ever prove the degree. The people of this country want parliament to reaffirm that we are prepared to take a very strong stand on the

vital question of law and order in Canada. I intend to vote against this bill and thus support the retention of capital punishment.


Mr. Hal Herbert (Vaudreuil):: Mr. Speaker, I have already made known my intention to vote against Bill C-84 on second reading. Statements made in this debate, and particularly the remarks of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) in the House this week, make it necessary for me to clarify for my constituents who are interested, and possibly also for my colleagues, why I will be voting contrary to the expressed wishes of the Prime Minister.
Let me say first that there is no weakening of my party allegiance. If there had not been a decision to call a free vote I would have voted with the government. I do not today agree with the Prime Minister, but I would have been prepared to accept the majority opinion of my party, since my position is not a matter of conscience but of calm and very profoundly calculated reasoning.
Many speakers in this debate have made reference to the basis on which a member should cast his vote. Before I was elected to this House in 1972 I made a commitment to cast my vote on the issue of capital punishment according to the majority opinion of my constituents, if there were to be a free vote. I can tell my constituents that I would be reluctant to make such a commitment today, and since that might take a lengthy explanation I will leave that for discussion with my constituents.
A recent poll asked the question: If a member's opinion is not the same as the majority opinion of his constituents, should he vote according to his own opinion or according to that of his constituents? Of the more than 90 per cent who expressed an opinion, of the English-speaking residents, 28 per cent only said that he should vote according to his own opinion, and 72 per cent said according to that of his constituents. However, among French-language responses to the questionnaire 60 per cent said that he should vote according to his own opinion and 40 per cent according to that of his constituents. It was of great interest to me that this poll underlined another of the differences in attitude between the English and French-speaking constituents in my riding. My intention to vote against the bill is thus both a personal decision and a reflection also of the large majority opinion of my constituents.
In response to a questionnaire in my constituency, only 22 per cent voted for abolition, some 13 per cent voted for restricted use of capital punishment and an overwhelming 65 per cent voted for capital punishment for all first-degree murderers. However, my reasons may not be the same as the reasons of my constituents and it is, therefore, important that I outline the thinking that brought me to this decision.
Let me first get to the real issue and the reason I shall vote against abolition. It is certainly not because I want every murderer to hang, but it is a decision that some murderers must not be allowed to live.
The Prime Minister made four references to the consequences of our actions, and I quote:
-we will actually be deciding, when we vote on this bill... whether some human beings will live or die.
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He also stated:
-if a majority of Honourable Members vote against abolition, some people are going to be hanged.
He said:
-the defeat of this bill would eventually place the hangman's noose around some person's neck.
And he said:
-those who vote against the bill.. . cannot escape their personal share of responsibility for the hangings which will take place if the bill is defeated.
The Prime Minister can be assured that we fully appreciate the seriousness of the decision we are taking. May I add on a personal note that this will not be the first time I have made a decision to participate in the killing of other persons. This applies just as equally to those who vote for abolition, for the passage of the bill. They must accept their responsibility for the consequence of their action.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Harold Thomas Herbert: The Prime Minister stated:
Any discussion of capital punishment must begin with the identification of its intended purpose, which is clearly the security of society, the protection of innocent people against the ultimate criminal violence . ..
It is clear that the protection of innocent people against assaults on their lives and liberty is one of the highest duties of the state.
However, it is at this point that my disagreement with the Prime Minister starts to become apparent. He says:
The question is whether state execution is an effective deterrent to murder .. . one's moral view of the justification of capital punishement is entirely-
I want to repeat here the word "entirely".
-determined by one's judgment of its deterrent effect.. . The crux of the question before us is whether execution is an effective and therefore justifiable weapon for the state to use in order to deter potential murderers.
Again, the second word I want to underline is "deter"- deter potential murderers.
Mr. Speaker, I received from the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) a detailed response to the recently expressed views of Professor Ernest van den Haag of New York University. This was an extensive response for which I thank the Solicitor General. As a result of his argument and the arguments I have listened to in the House I am not convinced that capital punishment is a deterrent. Accordingly, deterrence is not the basis for my decision. If there is a deterrent effect, so much the better. However, the arguments of the Solicitor General have certainly convinced me that there is more than a reasonable doubt of deterrent effect.
The Prime Minister goes on to say:
Our law, from its earliest beginnings, has always recognized the rights of an individual to kill another when there exist reasonable grounds for believing that killing an aggressor is necessary to the protection of one's own life or that of another.
That obviously applies in his view in the context to which the Prime Minister referred, but it applies also in police actions where a group of policemen are having a shoot-out with a bandit. It cannot be argued that every one of those police officers is using his weapon to protect his
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own life. In fact, it is a calm decision which is being made that this is a means to save the life of another innocent victim be it one of the police officers themselves or some other person who may be killed as a result of this particular shoot-out.
Again quoting from the Prime Minister's statement:
. .. there are those who say execution is justified because it prevents a murderer from ever again committing the same crime. It certainly does ... But if you rely on that reasoning,...
And, Mr. Speaker, I am relying on that reasoning.
... you are killing a man, not because his death may deter others from following in his footsteps but because of what he might possibly do at some future time. To justify such a preventive execution there would have to be some reasonable grounds for believing that a convicted murderer, if released into society ... would murder again.
Again I take issue with the Prime Minister for including in his remarks "if released into society". Whether or not he is released into society is irrelevant because after all surely a prison guard or a police officer can be considered an innocent victim.
I placed on the order paper a question which clearly indicates the direction of my thinking. I should like to read this question:
For each of the last ten years, how many persons who have previously been found guilty of murder or of manslaughter after having been charged with murder, are known to have participated in the killing of another person?
If I were rewording that question today I would change the last part to read: "are known to have participated in the killing or attempted killing of another person". My thinking obviously is along the lines that innocent persons are being killed because we have made the decision to allow murderers to live. The Prime Minister goes on to say:
We know of only four people who have been found guilty of murder by a Canadian court, and convicted of murder a second time.
I suggest this is playing with statistics. It may be true in the circumstances but ifedoes not get to the basic point. How many innocent persons suffer today because of the decision to allow a person who has committed murder to live? Mr. Speaker, again I am quoting from the Prime Minister's remarks which I found to be excellent throughout except for the insertion of the few words to which I have referred previously in my remarks. He said:
My concern is for the society which adopts vengeance as an acceptable motive for its collective behaviour . . .
We will have chosen violence as a weapon against the violence we profess to abhor.
Who is so confident that he knows for sure that such an official endorsement of violence will not harden the society we were elected to improve, will not pervade gradually many different relationships in our society? Who is so confident that he knows for sure that acceptance of state violence will not lead to the greater social acceptance of lesser forms of violence among our people? Vengeance and violence damage and destroy those who adopt them, and lessen respect for the dignity and rights of others among those who condone them.
I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiments expressed in those remarks. If we are to logically follow through, then the first thing we should do would be to disarm our police forces. I can imagine the reaction of the police in this country if such a move were introduced. What I am suggesting simply, in my possibly somewhat ruthless fashion, is that personally I do not consider the lives of ten convicted murderers to be worth the life of one innocent person.
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Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Harold Thomas Herbert: Mr. Speaker, I said ten. In fact it does not matter to me how many. So far as I am concerned the lives of innocent persons that are taken by persons who have been convicted of murder should be just as much on the conscience of those who vote for abolition as, in their argument, are the lives of the murderers if we go ahead with capital punishment.
Mr. Speaker, I say sincerely-and I have given an awful lot of thought to the decision I have made-that it is with sadness I realize that the society in which we live is not perfect and that sometimes brutal decisions have to be taken. I think I have made it clear that I do not believe that the deterrent effect is sufficient reason for voting against this bill. In that respect I appreciated the remarks of the Prime Minister. Nevertheless, I hope I made it very clear where I stand and the reasons that I, personally, with considerable sadness, will be voting on second reading against the passage of Bill C-84.


Mr. Cecil Smith (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I should like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in opposition to the latest government attempt to abolish the death sentence. I find this topic a very difficult one with which to deal, as I know many members have. On the one hand, those who would have capital punishment abolished once and for all have come up with some fairly convincing data and arguments for that cause, while, on the other side of the coin, those who are in favour of retaining the ultimate punishment have also arrived at a convincing set of arguments based on a good deal of empirical evidence. In many cases, the two opposing viewpoints effectively cancel each other out. That is why we are in the midst of debate now. This is a subject that lends itself very well to polarity, and that is why the outcome never has and probably never will be totally conclusive.
After a great deal of introspection, I have taken a reten-tionist stand on this delicate issue. I asked myself questions such as: What if my son were accused of murder. Or, what would I, as a close friend or family member of a murder victim, want as justifiable punishment for the one who had committed the most degrading and unjustifiable crime of all? I am sure that these are the questions that we have all asked ourselves in preparation for this debate. Once having reached a conclusion in my own mind, based upon moral, ethical, religious and philosophical grounds, I asked my constituents for their views and opinions on this controversial issue.
It has been argued that members of parliament should disregard the views of their constituents on capital punishment and be governed entirely by their conscience. This is what the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) would have us do. That comment was made on the TV news on March 6, 1976, by the Solicitor General. I can only partially agree that members of parliament are simply representatives who are chosen to make decisions on the basis of their own common sense, knowledge and morals without consideration for the people they represent. In most cases, public sentiment demands that elected officials truly represent the feelings of the majority of citizens. Although hon. members must exercise caution and discretion when public

sentiment runs high-as with this particular legislation- they must always keep the views of the citizens in mind. A member's constituents are, after all, the ones who elected him to office. Admittedly, it is a rather difficult position when one is called upon to provide both personal leadership and public representation, but it is ludicrous to suggest that the views of the electorate should be disregarded entirely.
A random survey of my riding of Churchill in northern Manitoba has fallen in line with my expectations as to how constituents feel about this subject. Give surveys of this nature whatever credence you like, but 87 per cent indicated they did not favour the total abolition of the death penalty. This is from local survey results found in the March 28, 1976 edition of "From Parliament Hill to Churchill". This is in keeping with the rough national average. The national average varies from 80 per cent to 90 per cent, depending on the source of information. How could any member of this House who espouses the belief in responsible government and true representation of the electorate of Canada not take into consideration figures which show that people are overwhelmingly in favour of retention. Highly charged emotional reaction, you say? Or, perhaps it is a case of "herd psychology". I say, hogwash! The people of this country are fed up with a government that is insensitive to their views and needs.
The government has not had the courage to enforce the laws of the land over the last eight years. The result has been that no one, including the prospective killer, has any reason to be deterred by fear of the ultimate penalty being carried out as prescribed by previous parliaments for taking the life of another person. The House of Commons passed legislation in 1967 with provisions that any person guilty of murdering police officers or prison guards shall be subject to the death penalty. Sentences have been imposed by the courts in good faith that the law would be upheld. But each decision has, without exception, been summarily commuted. I have to say that a mockery has been made of the law. I say this because in every case the prerogative of mercy-and I hold nothing against it by itself-has been invoked automatically. No potential killer is deterred when he knows only too well that there is little or no chance that the ultimate sanction will be levied upon him.
Not only do the majority of private citizens of Canada want the law in this area restored, but many policemen and prison guards have spoken out strongly in favour of retention of the death sentence for the cold-blooded, premeditated murder of those in their profession. Even the Canadian Law Reform Commission came out strongly against sentences of life imprisonment. These individuals and associations are speaking out, and for good reason. It concerns me when those in favour of abolition of the death penalty which is to be replaced by longer prison sentences use the words "inhumane", "vicious", "barbaric" and other epithets when describing the act of capital punishment. Do those who promote total abolition ever consider what it means to lock a human being in a cage for 25 years like some animal-a term spent in agony without a glimmer of hope? They would no doubt re-examine their rationale if they seriously thought of the cruelty involved in the lengthy incarceration of a prisoner. This, to me, is a far more cruel and torturous punishment for the ruthless mur-
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derer than that of quick death. Perhaps a quote from a great social critic of his time, George Bernard Shaw, is appropriate. I do not want to embarrass those to the left of me, but I could not let this relevant expert pass without some mention.
In his preface to "Major Barbara", Shaw, while speaking of the social injustice of his time, compared criminals to dogs. His often practised sardonic analogies may offend some of you. But he gets his point across through the use of this and other literary devices. In that passage, he says, in part, and I quote:
We even take the chance of their dogs' first bite. But if a dog delights to bark and bite, it goes to the lethal chamber. That seems to me sensible. To allow the dog to expiate his bite by a period of torment, and then let him loose in a much more savage condition (for the chain makes a dog savage) to bite again and expiate again, having meanwhile spent a great deal of human life and happiness in the task of chaining, feeding, and tormenting him, seems to me idiotic and superstitious.
What he is stating, in effect, is that to incarcerate a prisoner is to torment him, and to send a tormented person back into the society is to invite further trouble brought about by that torment.
We are dealing here with human lives. I think it is a far more humane punishment for a murderer of the kind of which I am speaking to receive the death sentence than it is for him to be incarcerated for 25 years. The point I am trying to get across is that we have a situation where we have a choice between the lesser of two evils: long prison sentences or capital punishment.
No utopian method of deterrence has come into practice in the Canadian penal system. Similarly, there is no sure method of rehabilitation. Leading criminologists have proven, through studies based on empirical evidence, that there is little hope for the rehabilitation of those who have been imprisoned for lengthy periods of time. Until our society advances to the stage where these problems can be dealt with in an adequate manner, the only alternative, in my mind, is the death penalty for those who have committed cold-blooded, premeditated murder or for persons whose clinically proven volatile nature makes them dangerous second-time killers.
With our modern court system and the safeguards inherent in that system, we can be assured that no one would receive the ultimate sanction unless it was proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that the accused was, indeed, guilty. This is one of the major concerns of the abolitionist, and rightfully so. But as I have just explained, this would never happen. If I thought for one minute that there was any chance guilt could be disproved after the fact, I would not have taken the stand I have.
I am of the strong conviction that it is society's responsibility to see that the murderer of the worst kind-and I described that a bit earlier-is treated in a manner according to his crime. By the same token, it is the responsibility of society to see that the family and dependants of the victim be properly compensated financially in whatever way possible. There are those who argue that to do away with a murderer does not compensate the relatives and dependants of the victim. I do not see any logical argument there. A victim's loved ones are not compensated if the murderer is incarcerated, either.
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I also feel strongly that the crime rate in Canada-and that includes cold-blooded and well planned murders-is such that it calls for action by this government. I was not surprised to hear the Solicitor General (Mr. Allmand) say that all offences, including violent crimes, have increased substantially over the past ten years. However, on May 5 I was shocked to hear two pro-abolitionist members of this House say that Canadians perceive more violence in society than actually exists. They invited controversy-and I feel that they have received a fair amount of it-when they said that news reports and violent television shows reflecting conditions around the world tend to make Canadians feel less safe than they really are. I think this is balderdash, and it is an easy way out. That is a very shabby argument. Why do they not tell that to the families of the Moncton policemen who were brutally murdered only a short time ago? Why do they not tell that story to the family of the policeman who was killed in a hostage incident in Calgary in March of this year, the second such murder in only a matter of months, or why not to the families of the children so brutally murdered only recently in Saskatchewan? Then I would like those two hon. members to come back to this House and tell all of us how violence in our society is just a figment of our imagination.


Mr. Robert C. Coates (Cumberland-Colchester North):: Mr. Speaker, I had not intended to participate in this debate, until this week. I have been involved in a number of capital punishment debates during the time I have been a member of this House. I have reached the conclusion that at this stage in time the country desires, and has the right to expect, hon. members of this House to support the retention of capital punishment. I do not come to that conclusion with any great feeling of exhilaration. If anything, I come to that conclusion with a feeling of great disappointment because, as a long term member of this House, I could have supported abolition. Indeed, I started down that road a few years ago because I felt that we were developing a form of penology in this nation which would allow us both to protect society and produce a more humanitarian approach to crime and punishment as a result of some of the things which were happening in our society.
Unfortunately, because of things which have happened in the last decade, Canadians, by a substantial majority, have indicated a very strong belief that we can only have law and order if the death penalty is retained. Surely, if this parliament is to reflect the mood of the nation-and if members of parliament are anything, they are the reflectors of the mood of this nation-it should be indicating to the people that parliament does reflect their point of view. It is germane to the national point of view, and it should believe, as the people believe, that we can only have law and order in this nation if we retain the death penalty.
I do not think that Canadians, any more than members of parliament who believe in retention, are barbaric individuals because they feel that the punishment should fit the crime. Indeed, I believe that Canadians, by and large, would have accepted a limited form of capital punishment if the government had lived up to its commitment to the public when the temporary reform of the criminal law was presented to parliament and murder was broken down into two classes-capital murder and non-capital murder-and when it related to extra protection for law
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enforcement officers and penitentiary employees. But the government duped parliament and got it to support a bill which the government implemented, in effect, as total abolition when neither parliament nor the people wanted that.
As a result of that, we have done great damage to the belief that abolition could some day be achieved. You do not fool people, and you do not make people respect the law if governments do not respect it themselves. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) stood in the House this week and suggested to members of parliament who will vote for retention that, by voting for retention, they will have blood on their hands because men on death row at this moment will be hanged if parliament approves the death penalty. That was nothing short of ludicrous, because if the law as it now stands had been put into effect, there would not be anyone on death row at this time. They would have met the penalty that the courts of this land, in interpreting the law, said should be the penalty. Therefore, if those individuals on death row are awaiting the carrying out of the penalty imposed by the courts, it is not the fault of this parliament; it is the fault of this government-and it is nothing short of that.
It is nothing short of ludicrous for the Prime Minister to come here and try to blackmail members of parliament who are retentionists into voting for abolition because the government has placed certain individuals in the untenable position of not knowing whether they are going to live or die. The law says they should die and the government has said they can live-at least until parliament makes up its mind whether the death penalty should be continued.
As the previous speaker, the hon. member for Churchill (Mr. Smith) stated, nothing worse can be done to an individual than to remove hope. It is better to remove a person's life than to remove all hope of returning to society after a crime has been committed. There are people in this nation who would suggest that a criminal should be incarcerated for the rest of his natural life rather than be punished by having his life taken from him. If there is one thing that would make it completely impossible for penal systems to operate, it is to put people in institutions, without hope. Without hope, there is no way that people can operate logically in the world of today.
Lack of hope destroys everything that is human about an individual. The only way we are going to make our prisons work successfully again is by giving to those who are in them the hope of being rehabilitated and returned to society. We cannot do that with the system that exists now. That is why so many Canadians are urging members of parliament to retain the death penalty. The system as it is has not worked for at least ten years. It has not worked because there has been no driving force that eliminates the problem that puts people in the institutions in the first place.
One of the things that inspired me as a new member of parliament when I came to this House 19 years ago, and the Diefenbaker government was formed, was the approach that the Hon. E. Davie Fulton took to criminology and criminal law in general. As minister of justice, he put in place a completely new concept of penology. He broke

down the penal system into three phases. He realized that there were inmates in the institutions who were impossible to rehabilitate, and he believed there should be maximum security institutions for them. He believed that other inmates were there probably because of their environment, more than anything else, who could be rehabilitated.
Among the latter, he believed there were two classes, the young offender, the boy or girl who gets into trouble over and over again, who still needs guidance and direction in order to develop the discipline that is required to operate in society. So he suggested there should be two kinds of institutions for inmates who were capable of being rehabilitated: one, the young offenders' type of institution, and the other, a minimum security institution. The latter would be capable of handling older inmates who still had some hope of rehabilitation, but they would not be mixed with the younger inmates and perhaps teach them the kind of tricks that rehabilitation experts did not want them to learn. They knew that if they learned these tricks they would return to the institution.
Then there was a third institution, a minimum security institution that took the inmate almost back to society, but not quite. All the bars, guns and things that were associated with penal institutions in our mind were removed and inmates were allowed to operate in a daily routine that would get them back close to society. A parole system was established to assist them when they returned to society. Things were moving along in a very satisfactory manner when suddenly a group of individuals gained control of the penal operations of this nation. They came up with more kooky ideas about rehabilitation of inmates than could be imagined by anyone with any common sense. Unfortunately, many of those individuals are still in positions of influence within the Department of the Solicitor General and the Canadian Pententiary Service. The thing that disturbs me about these individuals who have all kinds of schemes about how to rehabilitate inmates is that they neglect the reason the individual is in the institution in the first place. Individuals go to penitentiaries because they cannot accept the disciplines of society. In one form or another they reject the disciplines that society demands and they break the law; in the worst form, they kill people, but they do a lot of other things as well.
When you get planners in the Canadian Penitentiary Service who want inmates in institutions to have no more discipline there than they had outside, you get a complete breakdown within the institution. We have seen it over and over again, Mr. Speaker. Ther has been riot after riot after riot, kidnapping of personnel, wanton destruction of institutions and complete failure of the rehabilitation system as it is in effect at this time. Those who are in, come out, go back in and it is a repeat performance.
When Mr. Fulton was minister of justice, the Canadian Penitentiary Service carried out an operation where discipline was the number one criterion. An inmate who went into an institution knew he was there because he had committed a crime against society. He was not there listening to apologists telling him it was not really his fault he had done something wrong, that it was society's fault and society was going to try to mend its ways so that he would be in a better position to blend into society in the future. The inmate was told that first of all he had to learn to
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discipline himself, and if he showed that he could, then the Canadian Penitentiary Service would try to assist him to secure the training that would enable him to find his place in society.
That system worked, and worked well. Then suddenly we got these kooks in the Canadian Penitentiary Services who talked about the therapeutic programs they would introduce that will delve into the minds of the inmates. They were going to develop a philosophy and a psychology which would eradicate forever the criminal mind of the individual. It eradicated it very well: as I said, we have had a complete breakdown of control! Inmates are allowed to roam around the institutions, wearing anything they want to wear and as little as they want to wear. They are allowed to let their hair and their beards grow and look as dirty and despicable as possible. Nobody says a word, because they do not want to hurt their feelings.
You cannot expect to create, in the minds of inmates of institutions, the fact that they are being punished for the crime thay have committed against society if you let them operate in that way. In addition, all too often drugs are as prevalent within the institutions as they are outside. There appears to be a complete breakdown of constructive programs because there is no discipline within the institutions.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Carman Coates: Unfortunately, those who are really getting the dirty end of the stick are the employees in our institutions. The Springhill institution, in my constituency, was originally constructed as a young offenders' penal institution during the period this party held office. There is now a mix of every age. They tell the guards-possibly I should not use the title "guard" because it is distasteful and might upset the prisoners-


Mr. Alkenbrack:: They do not say "warden" any more.


Robert Carman Coates: No, they do not say "warden" any more. Those titles are very distasteful to those who believe in the therapeutic approach to penology. You must have the right title and the right sound to the words so that you do not offend the inmates. You must not hurt their feelings, because that would be wrong, even though they are in the institution because they did something quite serious, and probably did it a number of times. The guards at the Springhill institution were told that they should not wear uniforms, that they should look like every one else in the institution. Imagine what would happen to guards without uniforms if a riot were to take place within that institution. How would you distinguish between the inmates and the guards? There would be no way. That is the degree of lunacy of some of the programs put forward by the so-called experts in penology.
The reason I talk about this is that I do not think you can separate a rehabilitation program from the death penalty. It is all part of the same package. If we can get back to sanity and produce realistic rehabilitation programs in our penal institutions, we will get farther down the road with the public as far as capital punishment is concerned.
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There is little value in a government endeavouring to impose upon the public a point of view that the public does not accept. Surely, this government should know, from every semblance of evidence that is available in our nation at this time, that the public does not want the abolition of capital punishment. If the government could put in place a rehabilitation program that was workable, the public would accept abolition of the death penalty. However, until we reach that point we cannot expect the public to accept the government's view on abolition which is completely out of step with the point of view of the public. By pushing us farther down the road of abolition before the public is ready to accept it, all the government is doing is making parliament that much more of a non-essential item in the eyes of the public. If parliament does not reflect what the public thinks, then parliament is redundant.
If this House supports the abolition of capital punishment, it will be just one more nail in the coffin of this institution as far as public acceptance is concerned. If members of parliament feel that the public gets upset when we are asking for an increase in indemnity, there would be no better reason for the public taking that point of view than parliament completely ignoring the wishes of those who pay our salaries.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Robert Carman Coates: Surely those who pay the bill should have some say about what is done for them with the money that they pay. If this parliament ignores the opinion of more than 70 per cent of the public, it is just asking for more difficulty in the future in so far as the people of this nation are concerned.
I hope that in future the people of this nation will come to the conclusion that our system of justice can allow us to abolish capital punishment. However, we have not yet arrived at that point. We will not arrive at that point for a long time, because it will take at least a decade to undo the damage that has been done by the permissiveness and liberalism that exists within the penitentiary service at this time.
We have to reach a conclusion that is both logical and sensible within the environment that is Canada today, that is, that the death penalty should be retained, certainly for the type of heinous crimes committed in Moncton, Dartmouth, Calgary, and in the British Columbia institution. Those crimes demand that the death penalty be imposed. I can have no sympathy for two individuals who slaughtered in the way Hutchinson and Ambrose murdered in Moncton. Why should anyone in this nation have compassion for the individuals who took those two police officers out to a country spot, forced them to dig their own graves, and then killed them. They were able to resort to every protection which the law and the courts offer. But they were found guilty.
No one has asked that mercy be accorded to them, and I suggest they should now be assigned to the same fate as their victims. It would be brought about in a much more humane way than the deaths of the two officers, even though it might not be the ideal way. They should be dealt with in accordance with the sentence which was passed,

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and the same principle should apply to others who have been judged by their peers to be guilty of the crime of murder, when no recommendation for mercy has been made. It is as simple as that. That is what the law demands. That is what society demands. That is what I hope parliament will say to these individuals and to others who might be considered performing the same acts as the persons who are presently on death row.
That is what the law should say. That is what the courts will say, according to the law which is on the statute books at this time. And that is what parliament should say. The people have spoken. They have said they want the death penalty retained. Parliament should confirm that the death penalty will continue to exist in this nation so long as the people desire it as the ultimate punishment for the crime of murder.


Mr. Gordon Ritchie (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to place on record my own thoughts, in a limited time, as to why I shall vote for the retention of capital punishment in the very limited statute we now have on the books. On previous occasions I have voted for legislation which would retain capital punishment for the murder of policemen or prison guards. The alternative was the wider application of capital punishment which was prevalent in years gone by. I have been in favour of a very limited form of the application of capital punishment, mainly on the basis that sometimes mistakes were made which resulted in innocent people being put to death. However, under the present legislation the chances of this happening are extremely limited-I would say almost non-existent. With this factor in mind, I feel the limited form of capital punishment presently provided for should be retained.
I have other reasons for wishing to see the retention of capital punishment in the case of the murder of police officers or prison guards. I feel that if there is no provision for the retention of capital punishment, then police officers will often, by themselves, carry out a form of capital punishment. When the minister spoke a few days ago I took the opportunity to ask him a question, and he was kind enough to reply. He stated that he did not think police officers in this country would carry out this type of retribution. But I do not think that view is a reasonable one. In cases where a police officer is killed in what his colleagues feel is an unfair way, particularly during the commission of a violent crime, it is very easy for them to respond when the occasion arises by carrying out a form of capital punishment on their own. I think it is significant, when reading reports of violent crimes taking place, that they often contain details of the criminal having been shot to death when apprehended and that many more shots were fired than would appear to have been necessary in the apprehension of that individual.
So I think we have our choice. Do we support a very limited form of capital punishment, with a jury, with judges and, in the final analysis, the cabinet making the decision on commutation, or are we going to risk the very real possibility that capital punishment will be carried out to a certain extent by our own law officers perhaps much more often than would happen under our present laws? I feel this point has more importance than it has been credited with. We impose duties on our law officer and also dangers, but they are human beings. It would be nice to

think they always look at the law dispassionately and would not use their guns unless it were absolutely necessary. But we have to recognize the personalities of our law officers and the personalities of murderers.
There are some people in our society, no matter what one does, who will never change their ways. They only understand being hit as hard as they would like to hit. In the final analysis, criminals do have, under this legislation, the benefit of trial by a jury which decides whether or not to make a recommendation for mercy. As I understand it, juries may make a recommendation for mercy of they may decide not to make such a recommendation. Imperfect as it might be, in the final analysis the decisions of juries probably are as good a basis as any to decide these very difficult questions. With those few words, Mr. Speaker, I would like to reiterate my point of view as to the reason I shall vote for the retention of capital punishment in its limited form.


Mr. John Reynolds (Burnaby-Richmond-Delta):: Mr. Speaker, I can remember back in 1973 when we first debated this bill after I had been elected. It seems to me a shame this time that the government, on a free vote, one in which members are supposed to have total freedom rushing this bill through the House of Commons and trying to get it passed quickly to take away some of their embarrassment because of the fact that they are abolitionists and the majority of the country is not.
On January 26, 1973, the Solicitor General (Mr. All-mand) spoke to the measure to abolish capital punishment except in cases of the murder of police officers and prison guards. Debate on that bill did not end until October 8, 1973. Yet this time around we debated this bill on May 3 for the first time. A budget has been introduced since then, and we have a number of opposition days. The government has done a tremendous job of diffusing this debate in the country so that the people do not really know there is a very short time until the vote. Thus, I do not think we are getting the response from the public in this debate that we should. Certainly, six weeks is not, to me, long enough to have the debate before the House of Commons. I just want to put that on the record at the very beginning.
A number of the speeches that have been made on capital punishment seem to indicate that most people who are retentionists are in favour of hanging people or of disposing of them in some form or other for just about every kind of murder. As one who has done a lot of talking in the area of capital punishment, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make it very plain that the majority of the retentionists I know are only in favour of capital punishment for the most serious types of murder, that is to say, for the hardened criminals and Mafia-types who go out and kill.
So far as some of the people who are on death row right now are concerned, some of whom are from my area, I think the death penalty should be applied. First of all, there is Elery Steven Long, who killed staff sergeant Ronald McKay of the Delta police force. This was a vicious type of crime, the type for which I think the law should be carried out. There was no recommendation of mercy from the jury, and under the present law I think this man should suffer the consequences. Then there are James
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Lawrence Hutchison and Richard Joseph Ambrose who killed constable Michael O'Leary and corporal Aurele Bourgeois of the Moncton police force, another grisly murder case with no recommendation of mercy. John Harvey Miller and Vincent John Cockriell killed constable Roger Pierlet of Surrey, which is adjacent to my riding, another case where I think the law that this parliament passed on the last occasion should be upheld.
I shall be talking about the speech made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) later, but I suggest that the last debate in the House on this issue in 1973 was a fraud. There was no intention by the Prime Minister to let his cabinet carry out the law that this parliament willed, and I think this is part of the problem we are facing today.
I should also like to say something about what people who are serving life sentences in jail for murder have to say about capital punishment. There was an article in the Vancouver Province of last Saturday, June 12, concerning an interview with six different murderers. I should like to quote some of the statements that they made. The first was Larry Corbett. I cannot say I have had the pleasure, but I have had the opportunity to meet this man inside jail and also to talk to one of the persons he tried to kill. He was unsuccessful in killing the woman I talked to, but he did kill her husband. I should like to quote what he said:
Given the choice between capital punishment and spending 25 years in prison as the federal government proposes, convicted murderer Larry Corbett replies unemotionally: "Drop me".
The words come out matter-of-factly. These is no doubt in his mind that after spending a quarter century behind bars, he might as well be dead.
I should also like to quote, from the same article, some of Mr. Corbett's thoughts on capital punishment as well as on spending some time in jail. He begins as follows:
It doesn't matter at this point whether you're guilty or not because they assume you are and treat you just the same. If I thought about it I'd drive myself across the road-
I think that is funny, that he would drive himself across the road.
-(to the psychiatric centre). Who wants to listen to a bleeding heart all the time?"
What bothers him most about his life sentence?
"Basically the thing that tears me up anyway, and eventually tears up most lifers especially if you're a family man, is that the longer you do, your family slides further and further away from you."
Corbett's wife and children live in the Prince George area and he sees them only a few times a year.
"Your family has certain needs and there's nothing you can do to help because you're put away. Theoretically, you're dead and you can't expect them to die just because you're in this position. Their needs and functions are the same as they've always been.
"And this is hard to accept. It's the jealousies and hurts that end up getting to you. My wife must continue functioning in a normal manner and although we've been married for 17 years, after five years in prison we're getting further and further apart. It can't help but work any other way."
Anyone who has any sense of compassion would feel sorry for an individual like this who is spending his time in jail, seeing his family only three times a year. But the one thing that the reporter did not report in this article was what the family of the murder victim has to go through. I can remember a few years ago getting a call from a lady who said that she had to see me about something very important. She would not meet me in my office,
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which is where most people come to meet me, but wanted me to meet her inside her apartment building. I thought this was rather strange, so I called the RCMP and asked them to accompany me on the visit. When I got there, Mr. Speaker, I was quite surprised, as was the RCMP officer who was with me, to find another RCMP officer sitting in her apartment having tea with this lady.
She was the one whose husband was killed by Larry Corbett. He was killed in a trailer park. Apparently, this man knocked on the door of the trailer in the middle of the night; this lady answered the door, the man put a gun to her face, pushed her into the back bedroom and started to rob her. Her husband woke up, and Corbett just shot him in cold blood. Then he shot the woman and left her for dead, too. Fortunately, she managed to live, and after some months moved back into the Vancouver area. She was threatened all during this man's trial by various people, had to change her name a number of times and move from city to city to avoid some of the people who did not want to see this man convicted. That is not mentioned in the article.
I mention this, Mr. Speaker, because we all have compassion for a person who has to spend some time in jail. However, we forget too often about the victims of crime and the relatives of the victims of crime. In cases such as this, of proven, premeditated murder, people should have to pay the supreme penalty. I should like to quote further what Mr. Corbett had to say. I could go on and on because this article runs for several columns, but I just want to quote what he said about spending 25 years in jail:
"You know, normally speaking he'd never do that but now he's only going to get one chance."
He was talking about escape.
"Like, when you drop this 25 on a guy and he gets into a position where he can escape, he's not going to get another chance for years. They're going to swallow him up in one of these 'penthouses'"
Should a prisoner be successful in escaping, he becomes desperate to stay on the loose and this puts the public generally in greater danger than before, Corbett says. If he has a heavy murder term to return to, there isn't much more that can be done to him.
Inside the prisons, Corbett says, there will be a considerable buildup of tensions resulting in more jail killings and suicides.
"It takes a hell of a lot of self-discipline to walk away from a simple little thing now. But what about when you turn around and there's absolutely no hope of me getting out for 25 years. What good am I even to myself?
"Any initiative I might have is totally lost. So now rather than restraining myself I'll be more aggressive. This guy over here isn't going to restrain himself and he's going to stick it to me. So now the paranoia sets in and you figure well, okay, I've got to get him first".
One provision that is not in the bill, and which I think should be, is this. What about the man who is sentenced under this legislation and who kills a second time while inside the penitentiary? Do we just slap him on the wrist and put him in a "penthouse"? What if he kills a third time? The Solicitor General knows full well that this can happen, and probably will, under our present penitentiary system. I now want to refer to the speech of the Prime Minister the other day. As reported at page 14499 of Hansard, he said:
I want to make it very clear that, if a majority of hon. members vote against abolition, some people are going to be hanged. Their death would be a direct consequence of the negative decision made by this House on this bill.

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Then on the same thought he said:
While members are free to vote as they wish, those who vote against the bill, for whatever reason, cannot escape their personal share of responsibility for the hangings which will take place if the bill is defeated.
The people of this country gave the Prime Minister a mandate in 1972 and again in 1974. In 1973 this House passed a bill that provided that people who kill policemen or prison guards were to be hanged. Yet the Prime Minister has not taken it upon his conscience to live up to that law. He is now trying to say that those who want to retain capital punishment will have these hangings around their necks. I cannot go along with that kind of logic.
The government is now proposing to institute bilingualism in air traffic control and among pilots. The Prime Minister says he is concerned about the safety factor, yet bilingualism is being forced upon these people. Will he take that personal responsibility if an airplane crashes? I do not think he will, Mr. Speaker. He also says, and I will quote him on this because I do not want to get him wrong:
Longer mandatory sentences, and the tightening of parole regulations in relation to convicted murderers will give society the assurance it needs that those who have unlawfully taken the life of another will be removed from our midst for a very long time.
I have been looking at the present situation in our penitentiaries in respect of temporary absences for murders, and I wonder if we can really take the Prime Minister seriously when he talks about removing them for a very long time. I was told on May 27, when I phoned the Solicitor General's office and spoke with Mr. Dave Tobin, that unescorted lifers are eligible for temporary absences three years before their parole date is due. That is, if the judge sets the lifer's pardon date at 20 years, he is eligible for temporary absence or day parole at the 17-year mark of his sentence, and not before. I wanted to check this out this morning to make sure I was correct, and I phoned and was told that seven years would be the earliest for unescorted temporary absence. This would mean a ten-year minimum sentence a man must serve who was sentenced to life, and he could not get one before seven years. Just before I came in here at 11 o'clock-in fact, I was here and was called out to the phone-they had phoned my office and said, "Well, we wanted to make sure Mr. Reynolds has got it right. Now we find out that they can get a temporary absence, unescorted, after only three years in jail after being sentenced to life for murder".
I wonder how secure we are going to be, with what the Prime Minister has said, when you look at some of the people who are getting out on temporary absence passes. I have the record here in response to a question I placed on the order paper. It gives the number of murderers who received unescorted temporary absences from January 1, 1974, to June 30, 1975. In that group, Mr. Speaker, there is a man, right off the bat, the first man on the list, who was convicted of murder in 1972 and has had one unescorted temporary absence. A man convicted in 1969 has had 23 unescorted absences. A man convicted in 1970, last year had 30 unescorted absences. Another man convicted in 1970 has had two unescorted absences. Another one in 1970, convicted of murder, has had eight unescorted absences. Another, in 1971, has had two. These are all individuals who were sentenced to life for murder.

There was another man convicted in 1972 who has had 17 unescorted temporary absences. Another, in 1971, has had four temporary unescorted absences. Another one, in 1970, has had one unescorted absence. Another one, in 1971, has had one unescorted temporary absence. A woman convicted of murder in 1970 has received 17 unescorted absences. Another man, convicted of murder in 1970, received 17 unescorted absences last year. There are a couple in my own area. A man convicted in 1970 received 13 temporary unescorted absences last year. Another murderer in the B.C. penitentiary received 18 unescorted absences. Another one, convicted in 1969, in Dorchester, has had 27 unescorted absences. I could go on and on, as I have pages and pages. These are murderers who have served less than seven years and are out on temporary absences, as free as can be.
That is what we are looking at when the Prime Minister tells us that people are going to be safe under this new law. It is just a bunch of boloney, and we all know it. That is why I will vote against this bill. I will vote against it for a lot of other reasons as well, but that is one of the main reasons. I cannot trust this government to make sure that the people in my constituency, which is right next to a penitentiary, will be safe. The Solicitor General knows about this, because we have had a number of escapes from that penitentiary in the last couple of years.
The Prime Minister talked about not being able to take a life without proven necessity and without proven need. I think the Prime Minister should have more faith in our courts system and in the law we have had since he has been Prime Minister. He has had a law on the books that says people shall receive the death penalty for killing policemen and prison guards. He has not lived up to that law. He has not trusted the courts and he has not trusted the jury system in this country. He should be ashamed of himself for not having lived up to the present law, and ashamed that he is forcing this bill through the House so quickly so that he does not have to look at his responsibility for the people sitting on death row in this country. The last thing the Prime Minister talked about was deterrence, and I should also like to quote him in this respect:
I don't want to hear your guesses about the deterrent value of capital punishment. I don't want to hear about gut feelings. I want proof. Not absolute proof. Not even proof beyond a reasonable doubt. A preponderance of evidence will do. A preponderance of available evidence showing that executions are likely to deter other murders would serve as an adequate justification for the act, an adequate guarantee that a human life was not being taken capriciously.
Show me the evidence that capital punishment anywhere, at anytime, has deterred other people from committing murder. My own reading of the speeches made here on this issue since the first week of May, together with the Solicitor General's daily monitoring of the debate, have indicated that no such evidence has been placed before the House.
The evidence does not exist, neither in the Canadian experience nor in the experience of any other jurisdiction. At best, the statistics are inconclusive. They prove nothing. There is no evidence proving that the use or non-use of capital punishment has had any effect whatsoever on murder rates anywhere in the world.
I would say, in response, that the Prime Minister has not really spent enough money with people who might be on the other side of the issue. I know he has got his friend, Professor Fattah, of Simon Fraser University, with whom he has spent an awful lot of money, writing on capital punishment. In fact, Mr. Fattah phoned me a couple of times to have discussions. He is a confirmed abolitionist.
June 17, 1976

Pretty well everybody the government has given money to has been a pretty strongly confirmed abolitionist.
I would suggest that the Prime Minister and the Solicitor General's department have not spent a lot of time or money with people who might be on the other side of the issue, in order to get their viewpoints and their statistics before the Canadian people. I noticed one booklet that came out, called "Deterrence and the Death Penalty", described as a critical review of the research of Isaac Ehrlich, which was funded by the Solicitor General's department, and one of the few that may have been on the other side, published in March, 1976, and done by Robert G. Hann. The author states, and he is talking about whether or not there is a deterrent effect:
However, this wisdom is replaced not with "punishment does deter crime'', but rather with "we don't know".
That is the crux of this matter. None of us really knows whether capital punishment is a deterrent. We can argue about it. I know of a case where it was a deterrent, and I am sure it would be an isolated incident and somebody might tell me of a case on the other side. We do not really know. I am wondering why this government, after having a number of years with, really, a ban on capital punishment, can say that. The government can say that it is on the books, but every murderer and every criminal knows that there is no capital punishment. Why can we not have a five-year trial with capital punishment and see how the statistics are during that time? I think this government is a little afraid to try something that the majority of the people might want. I would like to quote something the Prime Minister said a long time ago when speaking about what the majority of the people want in this country. He said:
I have never been able to accept any discipline except that which I imposed upon myself-and there was a time when I used to impose it often. For, in the art of living, or in that of loving, or of governing-it is all the same-I found it unacceptable that others should claim to know better than I what was good for me.
I find that very strange, because the Prime Minister now is saying he cannot accept things, yet he is expecting the people of this country, 80 per cent of them in favour of capital punishment, to accept his wish to abolish it. I think that is unacceptable. I have not quite finished, Mr. Speaker, so I will continue later and call it one o'clock now.
At one o'clock the House took recess.
Education



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Ken Hurlburt (Lethbridge):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the terms of Standing Order 43. In light of the fact that the air controllers could go on strike at any time, and in light of the fact that the vote on capital punishment will be on Tuesday, June 22, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Whiteway):
That the Prime Minister assure the House that DND flights will be available for all M.P.'s on Monday June 21 to assure full attendance in the House for this important vote.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


EDUCATION
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, because this is a matter of urgent and pressing necessity I ask leave to move a motion under the provisions of Standing Order 43. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Greenwood (Mr. Brewin):
That this House urges the government to agree to the request of the Canadian Association of University Teachers for the appointment of a royal commission to consider the funding of higher education in Canada, and to study in particular the relationship between federal and provincial governments with respect to university policy, it being clear that such an informed study should precede any far reaching changes affecting higher education in this country.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Some hon. Members:: No.
14602

June 17, 1976
Oral Questions



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Labour I should like to direct my question to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. On Monday, June 14 I asked the Minister of Labour about the agenda and specific items to be discussed between the government and Mr. Morris of CLC at their meeting this morning. I also asked whether the government was prepared to offer concessions to the CLC in order to lessen the threat of a general strike. The minister responded at that time that it would be presumptuous for him to state what was on the minds of the CLC representatives. After a full morning of discussion with CLC representatives, does the Prime Minister still feel it would be presumptuous for the government to inform the House and the people of Canada what plans the government has for labour-government relations during the control and post-control period, and if any concessions were offered to the CLC this morning in order to avert a general strike?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, the short answer is no, and the answer would not be presumptuous but it would be premature. I apologize for not being able to answer the hon. member directly but the meeting has not yet taken place; it will take place this afternoon. Perhaps the hon. member could ask his question tomorrow.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


METHOD OF FULFILLING COMMITMENT ON REFORM OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS WITHOUT PARTICIPATION OF CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS
John Allen Fraser: I thank the Prime Minister for his answer, and I apologize, through you, Mr. Speaker, for not realizing that the meeting did not start until this afternoon. However, my supplementary question to the Prime Minister is the following. The government has stated that it is committed to the reform of industrial relations. Similarly the October anti-inflation white paper invested the Canadian Labour Relations Council with the mandate of considering the appropriate avenues for this reform. Has the government had any indication prior to the meeting this afternoon that the CLC is willing to re-enter the Canadian Labour Relations Council and if the CLC is not, can the Prime Minister inform the House how his government is going to fulfil its commitment toward industrial relations reform without that very body which has been invested with fulfilling this commitment?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I believe it is correct to say that there has been no firm indication by the CLC that it would want to re-enter that body, certainly not insofar as I know and I do not believe the Minister of Labour has heard that either. The reason we are meeting
(Mr. Speaker.]
with the CLC is to pursue their own desire expressed at the Quebec convention to have consultations with the government with a view to being able to play a larger role and have a larger input into the processes of government administration and policy setting. This is precisely the subject we want to discuss with them. One way of doing it would be to have them re-enter the council, as the hon. member, I believe, suggests. There might be other bodies or other ways in which this might be pursued. This will certainly be in the forefront of our minds this afternoon as we meet the CLC.


GOVERNMENT POSITION ON CANADIAN LABOUR CONGRESS MANIFESTO
John Allen Fraser: I want to thank the Prime Minister for his answer and ask him if he is prepared this afternoon to discuss with the CLC the ultimate ramifications of the CLC manifesto, which calls for a type of labour-government dialogue based on social corporatism, which, of course, is the antithesis of the past democratic practices within the CLC and the labour movement in Canada, which would be the antithesis of democracy in this country and which would make this House completely irrelevant.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I share the hon. member's concern on that score, and I imagine the New Democratic Party shares that concern, too. Certainly, our position with any group in discussions with the government, whether it be labour, management or any other sector of society, would be that the government is answerable to parliament and through parliament to the country, and not to any particular group, so to the extent that labour, or any other body, would want to have a firm hand on the decision making process, the answer would have to be no, we answer to parliament. We do not answer to any one movement.
However, of course, this does not preclude us, as we hope, from establishing ways in which the labour movement particularly could have a greater say in the input of the government in determining policies. We think it would be useful if, for example, the labour movement did not tend to be identified with any one party, but rather came as a movement representing the workers, and in so far as it did, would want to make sure the government understood the point of view of the workers.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


EFFECT OF ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAM ON COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
William Gordon Ritchie: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is to the Minister of Labour. After eight months in operation it is apparent that AIB regulations are having a marked influence on the traditional methods of collective bargaining. For example, with regard to the Thompson strike, Mr. Tansley is there or will be there shortly. I would like to ask the minister if he is now prepared to outline in full to employers, employees, unions and their representatives exactly what they can expect in
June 17, 1976

their collective bargaining relations during this period of restraint and while the AIB is functioning.


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I think the history of events since the government brought in the regulations and the anti-inflation program indicates to labour and the business community-but the hon. member is speaking particularly about labour-that indeed they are limitations, in a sense, of the collective bargaining process, but it is not a denial of it. I can only point to the tremendous number of collective agreements which have been entered into and signed which are within the guidelines and to those which have gone to the AIB for rulings which have resulted in the resolution of disputes. I might also indicate that in terms of man-days lost through strikes, they have been decreasing over the last few months.


GOVERNMENT EFFORTS TO ACHIEVE INDUSTRIAL HARMONY-NUMBER OF STRIKES THIS YEAR
William Gordon Ritchie: In view of the fact that 1974 was a disastrous year for labour strikes and that 1975 was somewhat worse, can the minister tell us what his department and the cabinet are doing to rationalize the aims of the AIB and the goal of industrial harmony so that our 1976 record will not be worse? What statistics does the minister have to show that we are actually better off than we were last year?


John Carr Munro: I can
endeavour to supply the hon. member with some statistics over the course of the last few months to indicate, as I already have, that man-days lost to strikes are decreasing. I also point out to the hon. member some significant good news which I related to the House the other day with regard to the railway industry, which involves 95,000 men. It would appear that there is every hope for a settlement based on the recommendations of the Hall report. That means no strike in that particular industry for two years. I think there are other examples of this across the country.


THE CANADIAN CONSTITUTION
Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Prime Minister. I understand that the question of the patriation of the Canadian constitution was discussed, at least informally, with the first ministers of the provinces earlier this week. Will the Prime Minister tell the House what progress, if any, was made and whether he is still determined as I think he was before that if consensus cannot be obtained he will seek a resolution of parliament to ensure that the full power of control of the constitution of Canada can be exercised in Canada and not by any outside power?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the discussions we had earlier in the week were not conclusive in the sense that no premier took the absolute
Oral Questions
position of saying we should not patriate or conversely we should patriate and the federal government and parliament should do it alone. The positions they want to establish are still uncertain, I believe. They have indicated to me that they would have further meetings amongst themselves at ministerial level as they did a few weeks ago and they, as first ministers of the provinces, would want to discuss the matter in the final sense at the annual meeting of the premiers to be held this year in Edmonton in August. They undertook, as a result of that meeting, to report to me. Therefore, any answer I could give to the hon. member's second question would be conditional and hypothetical.
We still believe that the government, and I think the view is shared by all parties here, should, during the course of the life of this parliament, ensure the results that the hon. member just described, that every part of the Canadian constitution should reside in Canada rather than in some other country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I do not think it is necessary at this time to appeal to other parties to share that resolve very vocally with this party because it is still possible, and I would think hopeful, that the provinces will agree on the position I have just described.


Francis Andrew Brewin: A supplementary question. May I ask the right hon. gentleman whether he indicated to the first ministers of the provinces that some such formula as was proposed at the Victoria conference, whereby changes that affected the distribution of power between the federal and provincial authorities, could not be carried through without the concurrence of either the province of Quebec or the legislature of Quebec or the province of Ontario or its legislature or a combination of other provinces? Did he indicate it was the intention of the government to put into any change that was made, such protection of provincial rights as would be involved in some such formula as that?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I am not sure if I am dealing with the question. If I understood it properly perhaps the simplest thing would be to indicate that in my letters to the premiers a month of two ago I indicated three possible means of proceeding with the patriation of the constitution. Perhaps I would answer the hon. member more clearly by indicating whichever of the three means is chosen or if any four or five means is found, it would be with the clear intention of the federal government not to affect the distribution of powers between the federal and the provincial governments. Even in the act of patriation, or indeed in the situation which would exist after patriation, it would not be our intention to have any greater potential federally for acting against the provinces than we have now. I think that was made quite clear in my letters. I repeat, if I misunderstood the purport of the question I should certainly welcome a supplementary.
14604

June 17, 1976
Oral Questions


CRIMINAL CODE
Mr. Armand Caouette (Villeneuve):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the right hon. Prime Minister.
Following his speech on Bill C-84, which tends to blame hon. members who will vote against this bill, does the right hon. Prime Minister intend to ask the cabinet, first, to commute the death penalty of those who are on death row and, second, to comply with the legislation which will be voted on in the next few days?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member is mistaken. My speech did not tend to blame hon. members who would vote against Bill C-84. I simply reminded hon. members that if this bill was not passed by the House, those who would vote against it should certainly take on their shoulders the burden of reinstating capital punishment in Canada, and I am sure this is a responsibility they would not want to evade and they could not evade. In other words, hon. members must not expect automatic resort to commutation of the death sentence, as the hon. member seems to fear.


Armand Caouette: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker.
My question relates a little to the second part of my previous question, when I asked the Prime Minister whether he intended to ask the cabinet to comply with the legislation which will be voted by this Parliament in the next few weeks.


FISHERIES
Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Prime Minister, a question which is not only important to Atlantic Canada, but indeed all of Canada since it deals with international treaties. In light of the enabling legislation covering a 200-mile limit for its territories and possessions as announced by the Republic of France, were any arrangements made by the present government to cover this contingency when phasing-out fishing agreements were signed with France? If not, what steps will now be taken to protect Canadian rights on our continental shelf which include a large part of the prolific fishing grounds on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and which will, if not resolved, make the phasing-out agreements signed with other countries fishing within our 200 mile limit impossible to implement?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of State (Fisheries)):: Mr. Speaker, I should first put on the record that according to our information it is the intention of the government of France to bring in enabling legislation. Contrary to press

reports, France has not proclaimed a 200-mile limit. It is obvious that the particular situation of St. Pierre and Miquelon will cause difficulties in the boundary question which remains to be settled. This question has already been the subject of some discussion. When the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and I were in New York, we talked to the head of the French delegation. Other contacts have taken place at ICNAF. The 1972 treaty covers the fisheries reciprocal arrangement quite well. It will be a question of negotiations and discussion, as it will be with other countries where geography will not allow us to move away from each other. We share the oceans and, therefore, we will have to come to some arrangement.


REQUEST FOR REPORT ON NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE CONCERNING ST. PIERRE AND MIQUELON
Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the reply just given to the House by the minister, I wish to ask him a supplementary question. Assurance was given to the House or the fisheries committee of the House in 1973 by Ambassador Beesley with regard to negotiations with France that "the position has developed to the point where we could be on the verge of an agreement vis-a-vis St. Pierre and Miquelon." What happened to these negotiations? What is the position at the moment? If France does pursue legislation to unilaterally take action on her own with respect to her boundaries, what does that do to Canada's timetable of January 1 next year?


Roméo LeBlanc: Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the hon. member, who has had much more experience than I, would not expect me to answer a question starting with "if". I will simply tell him that one of the complicating factors in the negotiations with France is that of the position of France, as a member of the community and its impact on upcoming negotiations with Canada, is not yet clarified for the French themselves. I am not an international lawyer, but the possibility of having to negotiate with not one but a whole series of other countries in the community obviously complicates matters. We have underlined this problem to the French authorities.


Mr. Jack Marshall (Humber-St. George's-St. Barbe):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of State (Fisheries). St. Pierre and Miquelon are now claiming 20,000 square miles of continental shelf. If the French extend the 200-mile limit, this will cause serious implications with regard to the location of St. Pierre and Miquelon. There have been no negotiations since 1972. What position is Canada going to take? Also, what negotiations have taken place or are now taking place with regard to resolving this very delicate problem which not only affects Canada, but the whole Atlantic region?


Roméo LeBlanc: Apparently the hon. member did not hear what I said. There have already been discussions, there has been agreement to accelerate those discussions and enter into formal negotiations. This will be done after the ICNAF conference in the coming weeks. There have already been talks to identify the problem areas and try to find an accommodation. I believe both
June 17, 1976

sides recognize that reciprocal arrangements and ad hoc arrangements could be made until the long term boundary problems are settled.


Jack Marshall: In view of the fact that Canada has taken the rightful position that the size of the claim of St. Pierre and Miquelon is out of proportion to the size of the blob of land existing there, may I ask whether this has been the subject of negotiation?


Roméo LeBlanc: The hon. member talks about Canada's rightful position. I agree with his description of it and that is the position we take.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. J. R. Holmes (Lambton-Kent):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development but in his absence I will direct it to the acting minister. On Friday, June 11, the hon. member for Greenwood referred to a report prepared by officials of the Department of Indian Affairs and the Department of National Health recommending that subsidies be paid to Indians on the English-Wabigoon River systems to enable the provision of protein substitutes for mercury-polluted fish. The minister said the contents of the report were being discussed with the Indian people and the provincial government concerned. In view of the seriousness of the situation, can the minister now report on the progress of these discussions and can he also tell us whether he is prepared to offer aid to such a subsidy program?


Hon. Jack Cullen (Minister of National Revenue):: understand that the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development will be here later on in the question period, but if he is not, I will undertake to bring the matter to his attention.


ACTION TO INFORM NATIVE GUIDES NOT TO EAT MERCURY-CONTAMINATED FISH
John Robert Holmes: Perhaps at the same time the acting minister would bring another matter to the attention of his colleague. It concerns a problem of which he is aware-the difficulty of implementing an effective educational program to convince native people, in particular, native fishing guides, who have been identified as a high-risk group, of the danger of eating mercury-polluted fish. Can the hon. gentleman inform us whether this aspect of the matter was discussed with the native people and the provincial government? Would he tell us, also, whether he has made recommendations with a view to correcting this serious situation?
Oral Questions CONFLICT OF INTEREST


REQUEST FOR REPORT ON COMMERCIAL ACTIVITIES OF CHAIRMAN OF THE ANTI-DUMPING TRIBUNAL
Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance; I assume he has now had an opportunity to review the past and present activities, at least in part, of the chairman of the AntiDumping Tribunal. I want to ask the minister whether he is satisfied that the chairman is in full compliance with the provisions of section 21(7) of the Anti-Dumping Act. Also, I want to ask the minister whether he has perused a memorandum to file dated October 17, 1975 which contains, among other things, the following in which the chairman of the Anti-Dumping Tribunal appears to indicate to Swedish lawyer Sture Hoveden: "I would not think of risking my reputation for $200,000; I would prefer to risk it for $5 or $10 million, as the opportunity exists in the case of Auto-Chemist". He went on to talk about that subject. Can the minister clarify this matter?


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Finance):: I did
have an opportunity of seeing Mr. Gauthier this morning and I shall be making further inquiries in relation to this matter. It would, of course, be of great assistance to receive from the hon. member and, indeed, from any other persons who might have information on this particular transaction. I shall, of course, be glad to pursue it. In any event, I hope to bring this affair to a conclusion and report to the House at an early date.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: I shall be pleased to give the minister whatever data I have. Is he now in a position to assure the House that the research capabilities, facilities and personnel of the Anti-Dumping Tribunal organization have not been used for any purposes ctfher than those for which they should be used, or for the benefit of persons other than that of the government of Canada?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: I would prefer not to give piecemeal answers to these questions until I have had an opportunity to canvass it fully.



FRESHWATER FISH MARKETING CORPORATION


Mr. Dean Whiteway (Selkirk):: A supplementary directed to the Minister of State for Fisheries. Would the minister tell us whether or not he has been apprized either by the Minister of Finance or by any other source that the chairman of the Anti-Dumping Tribunal appears to have contact with business interests wishing to obtain exclusive rights to fish roe sold by the Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation and, if so, does this meet with the minister's approval?


Roméo LeBlanc: am informed there have been press inquiries about the existence of a letter and I have asked the president of the Corporation whether a letter which was described to me

June 17, 1976
Oral Questions
over the telephone had been received. He has not seen it. I will, of course, inquire into this. On the other hand, if the hon. member has information I hope that he will make it available to us so that I can share this information with the Minister of Finance.


Dean Waldon Whiteway: In that case perhaps the minister will be interested in a letter indicating that these interests appear also to be willing to work against the efforts of the corporation. I want to quote from this letter, if I may, Mr. Speaker, so that the minister will understand. It is a letter from a company by the name of-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I am sure that the hon. member will have an opportunity to provide the minister with that letter.



POSSIBILITY OF REGULATIONS CONTROLLING ASBESTOS OPERATIONS-STEPS TO MONITOR WORKERS LEAVING CLINTON CREEK MINE

Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare and concerns the federal asbestos standards which were announced in December of 1975. I want to refer the minister to the Clinton Creek situation. At the time that it was announced that asbestos standards in the ambient air would be two per cubic centimeter, there was an indication that we would soon receive regulations to deal with mine tailings. In the Clinton Creek area, as the minister knows, mine tailings are continuing to be simply dumped in that area, at some hazard to both the residents and the workers.
My question is, first of all, would the minister advise when we are going to get regulations from the federal government controlling other areas besides ambient air standards, including tailings, drillings and other matters which were referred to earlier?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to look into this matter, but unless I am mistaken this is rather a matter for the Department of the Environment. I will check into the matter and will be pleased to report to the hon. member, but I think this type of regulation would not come from my department but rather from the Environment or even from a provincial government.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. I would point out to the minister that his department received a report from the asbestos working group in February. In view of the fact that the incubation period for cancer resulting from exposure to asbestos is some 20 years and in view of the fact that the Clinton Creek mine has announced that it will close in 1978 and that these workers have been there for less than 20 years, what steps is the minister proposing to take to follow up and monitor the workers leaving the area, so we can have some kind of monitoring system for people who have been exposed to

asbestos after the mine has closed and they have dispersed all over the country?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, the fact that a group has submitted a report to my department does not necessarily mean that my department is responsible for enforcing some regulations.
As for the second question put by the hon. member, concerning more particularly the case of Clinton Creek, I will check with my officials to see whether there is a special follow-up program for the miners concerned when the mine will be closed. I am not in a position to give an immediate answer to the hon. member about that.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr.  R. Gordon L. Fairweather@Fundy-Royal: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Secretary of State for External Affairs, of which I gave notice this morning. Can we be assured that no present circumstances exist which would persuade Canada to recognize the Transkei, a so-called Bantu homeland, as a separate and independent state, recognition which would involve a de jure acceptance of a fundamental deprivation of human rights, including loss of citizenship?


Miss Monique Begin (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to thank the hon. member for the notice but I have just arrived back in Ottawa. I can assure him that the Transkei, which would be the first so-called independent state under the "Bantustan" policy, will not be recognized by Canada, surely not at this time. Canada shares the international community's skepticism, and deep concern that this is a continuation of the racial policy of apartheid, which Canada opposes without any reservation. We would need a good deal of convincing evidence that the black population of this supposed independent territory is going to receive its due rights before we make any move at all on this question.



MANPOWER


Mr. Lincoln M. Alexander (Hamilton West):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the minister of manpower and it has to do with the speech that he delivered on June 4 to the Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in which he indicated there were some 200 nursing vacancies in Ontario and some 3,500 nurses graduating this year, an obvious mismatch of labour supply and demand. The minister went on in his speech to say this:
In the past few years, my department has developed programs to make forward-looking labour market information available. If this
June 17, 1976

information is faulty, then we at the federal level must bear some of the blame.
It seems to me, Mr. Speaker, there is a problem here. Can the minister advise whether he is looking into the information that he has been supplying and has he in fact found any fault with respect to it?


Hon. Robert K. Andras (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member might have chosen to go on and quote the next sentence, I think it is, which said that if people do not use the information that is available then they are to blame. It was in that contrast and context that I made the comment, which I think is self-explanatory.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: With respect, Mr. Speaker, the minister did not answer my question. He put it as a question in his speech. He said "if this information is faulty", which means that it calls for further study. In light of the seriousness of this matter, both for locations and professions, would he meet with the provincial ministers of education to determine how up-to-date information about jobs, locations and projections for the future can be compiled and distributed to the schools, and thus deal with this very serious and obvious mismatch of labour supply and demand? Does the minister not believe that this calls for some consultation and co-operation with his provincial counterparts responsible for education?


Robert Knight Andras: Yes, Mr. Speaker, indeed I do. I have made announcements to the effect that this has already been arranged, prior to the suggestion of the hon. member. To wit, we met in Toronto three or four weeks ago with my counterparts responsible for manpower in the provinces and we agreed on six or seven very good principles of consultation, including consultation mechanisms which will result in a federal-provincial conference this fall. In addition to that, it is my plan to meet with the council of education ministers to deal with these very questions, and incidentally to find out from them why this information is not being used fully at the provincial level within their jurisdiction for education.



DATE OF CLEAN-UP OF NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL SITE AT EAST BRAINTREE, MANITOBA

Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources I should like to direct a question to his parliamentary secretary. A number of months ago the minister indicated that steps would be taken to clean up the nuclear waste disposal site at East Braintree, Manitoba. The minister indicated that the site would be checked for radioactivity and either fenced and warning signs posted or the material transferred to another containment area. In view of the time that has now elapsed and since nothing has been done by the department, when does the minister intend to follow up the commitment that he has given?


Mr. Maurice Foster (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, that
Oral Questions
particular site is under review by the task force looking into radiation problems in Canada. I will be pleased to look into the matter and report back to the hon. member; I cannot give him a definitive answer today.



THE CANADIAN CONSTITUTION


Hon. Robert L. Stanfield (Halifax):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister on the subject of the constitution and the repatriation formula. Is it still the position of the Prime Minister vis-a-vis the first ministers of the provinces that in the absence of agreement on an amending formula the constitution will be repatriated, or a resolution will be presented to repatriate the constitution, on the basis that no amendments will take place following that in any area, excepting that area which the federal parliament can now amend, without the universal approval of all the provinces? Has the Prime Minister had an opportunity to consider the views and concerns expressed as to rigidity by Senator Forsey of the other place?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Mr. Speaker, I have considered those views and, as a matter of fact, as the hon. member will remember, I alluded to them or actually stated them rather specifically in my letter to the premiers. Of course, my suggestion there was that the rigidity we would end up with would not be very different in practice from the rigidity we have now in areas which are of joint concern to the federal and provincial governments. I am thinking particularly of the areas which are excepted in Section 91(1) of the BNA Act. In practice, the federal government does not act alone, but after agreement with all of the provinces. I realize that this is not a constitutional obligation, but it is the practice in fact. For that reason, and though I would regret that kind of rigidity, I suggest it would not be all that different in kind from the rigidity which exists now.


Robert Lorne Stanfield: Mr. Speaker, even failing some agreement on an amending formula, is there not some way in which the Prime Minister could, in a sense, repatriate the constitution without locking the country into such a completely rigid situation as that, which would mean not even the slightest amendment could be adopted without the unanimous approval of the provinces? Is there not some way by which the Prime Minister could avoid locking the country into such a rigid situation as that?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, of course the hon. member realizes that the rigidity would apply to a very limited number of areas, those, I repeat, which are singled out in Section 91(1) by way of exceptions, because the constitution now and the constitution hereafter, assuming it is patriated, would still permit the provincial governments to amend their constitutions unilaterally in every respect except as regards the office of the Lieutenant Governor, and would still permit the federal government unilaterally to amend the constitution in every aspect which concerned

June 17, 1976
Oral Questions
the federal constitution as opposed to the constitution of Canada except, and I repeat, in that small number of areas outlined in Section 91(1).
However, if the concern is about the rigidity in these areas, my answer is, yes, we could patriate the constitution with agreement, unanimity, partial agreement or no agreement at all-all these are possible-and impose the method agreed to at Victoria. I see the hon. member indicating he would not want that. It is not what we want either, but that would be one way of having less rigidity. It would be patriated on the formula which was agreed to at Victoria, with the suggestion we are assuming everyone wants it. I think that would probably be a less desirable method than having some form of agreement, with the suggestion that following the agreement we will give the provinces the occasion, after patriation, to indicate their adhesion to the new proposal.
I want to thank hon. members opposite and, indeed, on this side, for the concern they are showing in respect of this matter. Indeed, I was pleased with the reaction of the provincial premiers the other night because I think there is a growing realization among all Canadians that all that is really needed is the political will to become independent in every sense.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I think there is a realization that, while the technical details we are discussing are certainly important, they can only be addressed if there is a clear political will to achieve this thing about which we are talking.



ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE


Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Solicitor General of which I gave him notice a few days ago. In answer to a previous question I put to him a week or so ago regarding improprieties and irregularities in the sale and distribution of Olympic lottery tickets the minister acknowledged in the House, without expounding, the fact that there was an investigation into this matter, but only in the province of Ontario. Is the minister now in a position to report to the House on the RCMP investigation into these fraudulent practices, and can he at the same time advise the House whether the RCM Police investigation is taking place in other provinces besides Ontario?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, the RCMP has been investigating certain aspects of the Olympic lottery. This investigation began in March and has been limited to the province of Ontario. So far two individuals have been charged within the jurisdiction of the Attorney General for Ontario. The investigation has not taken place in any other province.


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, is the minister then not aware that certain improprieties in the sale and distribution of these tickets are taking place in other provinces than

Ontario, more specifically in the Alexis Nihon Plaza in Montreal and elsewhere? Perhaps the minister could either deny or confirm the fact that certain RCMP officers and other local police authorities are indeed looking into this specific matter or, if not, Mr. Speaker, would the minister assure this House that he will look into the matter and make all findings public prior to the implementation of Loto-Canada in order to avoid the continuation of any fraudulent practices within this new lottery program?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, during my recent consultations with the RCMP they told me that the investigation was limited to Ontario and they did not know of any investigation or complaints originating in Quebec. However, I will check into this from time to time.



EDUCATION


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Prime Minister. In view of the urgency and reasonableness of the request of the Canadian Association of University Teachers for the appointment of a royal commission to consider the funding of higher education in Canada, and in particular to study the relationship between federal and provincial governments in respect of university policy, will the government give consideration to this request?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry, but this damned thing was not working too well.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am sure if I could stick-


An hon. Member:: You should stick it in your ear; It works much better that way.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I heard some obscenities from the other side.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Paproski:: It works much better if you stick it in your ear instead of in your pocket.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: In any event, I caught the end of the question which was, would I consider something. I can assure the hon. member that I will.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I had better leave it at that.
June 17, 1976



PROPOSAL FOR LOCATION OF URANIUM PROCESSING PLANT IN SASKATCHEWAN-PUBLIC PARTICIPATION IN SITE DECISION

Mr. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources I should like to direct a question to his parliamentary secretary, of which I have given notice. In view of the fact that Eldorado Nuclear Limited is now in the process of reviewing different possible sites for a uranium processing plant, I wonder whether the parliamentary secretary is in a position to indicate whether a final decision has been made, particularly in respect of the location of that plant in Saskatchewan, and if he will give the assurance that before any plant is located in any part of Canada the fullest possible investigation and an inquiry among the citizenry and general public in the proposed site area will be held by Eldorado before making a final decision?


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for giving me notice of this question. I cannot give a definitive answer as to the location of the proposed refinery in Saskatchewan, although I can confirm that Eldorado is evaluating several sites in the province in co-operation with Sedco, the provincial economic development commission, that they are planning to refine the uranium that is mined in Saskatchewan in that province, and that Eldorado when it does make a final decision as to the location of the refinery will have a full public information program.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Steve Eugene Paproski: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister.


An hon. Member:: Watch your language.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Will he be tabling today the agreement between Canada and Cuba regarding the lease or purchase of the DC-8's?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: What was that?


Mr. Sharp:: A report on the DC-8.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No, Mr. Speaker.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Mr. Speaker, I asked a serious question and the Prime Minister refuses to answer.
Oral Questions ABORTION



POSSIBILITY OF TIGHTENING REGULATIONS-GOVERNMENT POSITION

Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Prime Minister in the absence of the Minister of Justice. Since the Prime Minister attacked the question of capital punishment with such zeal indicating his deep concern for life, I wonder if in view of the fact that about a year ago a petition was presented which contained over one million signatures expressing concern over what appears to be a government policy of abortion on demand, whether the Prime Minister and his government intend to demonstrate a further concern for life by tightening up the regulations pertaining to abortion.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member should realize that the government is opposed to abortion on demand. This is the substance of the legislation we passed some years ago which is now in application in the country. I fail to see the logic of the hon. member's suggestion.


Stanley James Korchinski: Mr. Speaker, since the government further demonstrated its concern over murders involving guns by ramming through legislation which was supposed to curb deaths involving guns, and in view of the fact that in the last five years the ratio of murder by guns to abortion is one to 200 or approximately 1,000 deaths to 200,000 abortions, I wonder why deaths through abortion, in view of the numbers involved, are not given the same attention as death by guns or is the whole exercise on gun control intended as window dressing and aimed at appeasing rather than solving anything or saving lives.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the hon. member would agree there is some element of argumentation in his question.



SOCIAL SECURITY


Mr. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Water-loo):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. In light of the fact that the annual reductions which take place in some old age pensioners' supplementary cheques every spring cause a great deal of confusion and concern among the many thousands of pensioners because they are unaware of the cause of the reductions which take place is the minister prepared to consider revising the procedures for making those reductions whereby any pensioner whose old age pension supplement cheque is to be reduced would also be given an explanation of that reduction by the government.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I will be pleased to consider the hon. member's suggestion. Evidently it has considerable administrative and financial implications, so that I will very carefully examine it.

June 17, 1976

Oral Questions



INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY

Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether the Prime Minister might be able to confirm whether or not Bill Teron has been moved from the Chairmanship of CMHC to deputy minister in the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs and that Raymond Hession has become President of CMHC, both effective June 15?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I will inquire, Mr. Speaker.
* *
*
sion at this time of the negotiations and the contract has not been signed. In answer to the second part of the question concerning whether or not Canadian firms were given an opportunity to participate, the answer is no because there are no Canadian firms in the tank manufacturing business. However, we are negotiating offsets from the German manufacturer and there will be a substantial amount of work done in Canada as a result of the contract.


Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary for the minister. Could he advise the House if the negotiations for the contract are proceeding as usual on a purely verbal basis or is he taking the trouble to get some of it at least on paper?
* *
*



LABOUR CONDITIONS


Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg South Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour. It is with regard to the Air Canada lockout of its employees in the finance branch in Winnipeg. In light of the fact that more than 250 serious work disruptions have taken place during the last six months at the finance branch and as the talks between the federally appointed mediator, management and labour were adjourned on May 21 after only two weeks of discussions, could the minister inform the House this afternoon if he intends to ask the mediator to have the talks resumed or will he be appointing a new mediator.


John Carr Munro: Mr. Speaker, I cannot at this stage, in terms of the interests of everyone concerned, be specific as to what we will be doing in the way of mediation other than answering in the general terms I did to the hon. member yesterday that certainly we will inject ourselves in terms of mediation at the precise time we think it will be helpful in resolving this unfortunate dispute.



NATIONAL DEFENCE


Kenneth Earl Hurlburt: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence. In light of the fact that the minister is negotiating a deal to purchase Leopard tanks from West Germany, would the minister inform the House whether or not the deal has been completed and whether it is a verbal or written transaction? Would the minister also inform the House of how many Canadian firms were given the opportunity to bid on this large contract?


Hon. James Richardson (Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, as I informed the House shortly before leaving for Europe and also as I informed our NATO partners, the negotiations for the purchase of 28 Leopard tanks are proceeding satisfactorily, but there is no conclu-



INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY

Mr. Eymard Corbin (Madawaska-Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. I wonder whether the Prime Minister could inform the House today what reception the President of the United States gave in respect of Canada's official gift to the United States on the occasion of the Bicentennial-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Eymard G. Corbin: -and if in the course of his visit to Washington he crossed paths with or knows the whereabouts of the Leader of the Opposition, his shadow.


Some hon. Members:: Order.



CUSTOMS


Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue. According to news reports the July issue of Penthouse has been taken from the news stands not because the Revenue Department has done so but because the distributors themselves have felt it so bad that they will not distribute it. I know the government operates on an "anything for a buck" policy, but I wonder how this periodical got into the country when the people who are accustomed to peddling pulp will not even sell it.


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I have been waiting all this time for an opportunity to visit the porno room in the customs office. I had some difficulty explaining to my wife that this is part of my responsibility. I guess all I can say now in answer to the hon. member's legitimate question is that we are probably a little more liberal with a small "1" than are those who distribute this from foreign markets where more strict censorship is imposed on the distribution aspect.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I know the minister would like to carry on the research on this himself, but I wonder if he could establish guidelines for his departmental offi-

June 17, 1976

cials that will be at least as rigid as those of the porno peddlars themselves?



FINANCE


Mr. William Knowles (Norfolk-Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. It relates to the capital gains tax on family farm property. A family farm operator, during his lifetime, directs all his profit to the improvement of his farm and equipment. When the farm is sold upon his retirement, the proceeds become his sole private pension fund. It is therefore grossly unfair to use capital gains tax to seriously reduce this pension. Will the minister consider amending the Income Tax Act to permit a once-in-a-lifetime sale of a family farm without attracting capital gains tax?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Well, Mr. Speaker, there are certain provisions now with regard to family farms but I do not see at this time the opportunity to be able to expand those.


William David Knowles: Mr. Speaker, since the capital gains taxes collected on family farm property amount to only 10 per cent of the total collected on property generally, would the minister weigh the appraisal and accounting costs, plus the major irritant effect of this tax, against the net revenue derived and hopefully remove this unfair and unjust tax all together?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, it of course has to be relevant also to the question of equity to other taxpayers.



HARBOURS


Cecil Morris Smith: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport but in his absence I will direct it to his parliamentary secretary. Now that the minister has appointed a port manager for the port of Churchill-an appointee from eastern Canada-will the minister advise the departed port manager why his resignation was requested by the minister?


Mr. Ralph E. Goodale (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member refers to the appointee who was named yesterday or today, Mr. Lauzon, as a person from eastern Canada. I suppose that is intended to carry some negative connotation in the context of Churchill-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ralph Goodale: -but in any event the reference in that regard is inaccurate because that individual has had exten-
Presence in Gallery
sive experience in harbour management, particularly in the port of Churchill. So the hon. member's description of that person is incorrect.
In the case of the previous appointee in that position, Mr. Scharf, he submitted his resignation earlier this year. He was given a full and fair hearing before the National Harbours Board and the decision to accept Mr. Scharf's resignation was made by the National Harbours Board after that full hearing.


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


Mr. Fairweather:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I do not want to appear overly self-righteous, but I have a problem with regard to giving notice of questions and perhaps the House leader will want to consider it. This is not in any way criticism of the work of the hon. member for Saint-Michel.
It took considerable pain this morning, and three telephone calls, to alert the Department of External Affairs on this question. Probably I was considered by the officials of the department to be somewhat of a nuisance, but if one of them would stumble over my remarks in Hansard he would see that surely it is legitimate, when notice is given of a question, that ministers and parliamentary secretaries be given answers. I do not even criticize the answer of the deputy minister, but I resent being told that someone has just arrived back in Ottawa and therefore has not been briefed by the department. The department is in an excellent position to brief ministers and parliamentary secretaries, despite the nuisance that we make of ourselves.


Monique Bégin: Mr. Speaker, on the same question of privilege.
Mr. Speaker, if I said that, if I began my remarks with that expression, it is precisely because I read very quickly, due to my other responsibilities, the detailed answer prepared for the hon. member. I wanted to apologize in advance, if I may say so, for not giving him all the details contained in the prepared answer, in case I made a mistake. Therefore, it is because I wanted to answer more correctly that I made that preliminary remark, and not in the sense understood by the opposition.
I may add that if a supplementary question had been put to me, which I hoped, I would have had a great deal of information to give to the House, which I believe is fundamental. I thought the answer would have become a speech and would have been too long. I shall therefore send it in written form to the hon. member.



PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF PARLIAMENTARIANS FROM UNITED KINGDOM

James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, I wonder if at this time I might be permitted to draw the attention of the House to the presence in the gallery of a distinguished group of parliamen-

June 17, 1976
Order Paper Questions
tarians from the United Kingdom. They are members of the defence and external affairs subcommittee of the expenditure committee of the British House of Commons. The chairman of the subcommittee is Colonel Sir Harwood Harrison MP.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
Thirteenth Report of Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates, in both Official Languages-Mr. Langlois
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Mr. Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the Clerk of the House has laid upon the table the thirty-first report of the Clerk of Petitions, stating that he has examined the petition presented by the hon. member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Fairweather) and finds that it meets the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are marked by an asterisk.)
Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: 4,585, 5,162, 5,167, 5,293, 5,385, 5,413 and 5,476.


Mr. MacDonald (Egmont): 1.	Were representatives of the Canadian motion picture industry consulted respecting the decision to proceed with the voluntary quota agreement with the two major film distributors and, if so, with whom were the consultations held and to what extent did the government decision reflect their views?
2.	What specific mechanisms have been established to monitor and report on the agreement?
3.	Are low budget feature films made in Canada included within the quota?
4.	What specific advantages accrued to the Canadian film industry as a result of the previous voluntary quota agreement negotiated in 1973?


Miss Coline Campbell (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State):: I am informed by the Canadian Film Development Corporation as follows: 1. Representatives of the industry are consulted on a regular basis by the CFDC and have expressed their support for quotas and levies. The specific arrangement with the two major film distributors was not discussed with the industry.
2.	Reports are received from Famous Players and Odeon and analyzed by the CFDC staff. There are regular meetings held between the companies and the staff of the CFDC. Results of the quota are made public and the provincial governments in particular are informed of progress in this area. The first quarterly report from Famous Players was tabled in the House of Commons on March 3, 1976.
3.	Yes.
4.	During the period August 1973 to April 1975, 815 weeks of Canadian films were shown by the two major chains covering 20 titles.
TAXATION DATA CENTRE-VOICE COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND/OR FIRE ALARM SYSTEM


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Was a voice communication system and/or fire alarm system installed in the Taxation Data Centre in Ottawa and, if so (a) on what dates (b) are both systems functioning and, if not, in either case, for what reason?
2.	Are trained personnel available to operate the voice communication system and, if not (a) for what reason (b) is the Dominion Fire Commissioner aware of this (c) has such a situation existed for over three years?


Hon. C. M. Drury (Minister of Public Works):: 1. (a) A
fire alarm system was installed in the Taxation Data Centre in Ottawa at the time of construction. Acceptance tests of this system were conducted on June 22, 1970. An integrated voice communication and fire alarm system was completed and a final acceptance test was conducted on August 25, 1975; (b) Both systems are functioning as designed.
2. Three volunteer Emergency Telephone Operators and three volunteer Emergency Voice Communication Operators from the Data Centre have been partially trained. Four additional volunteers are required to complete the organization, (a) The reasons for not having trained personnel available to operate the Voice Communication System are as follows: Fire Emergency Organization personnel in high-rise buildings over 12 stories in height receive training priority. D.F.C. Training staff limitations. A staffing program to recruit training officers for each of the Regional Offices of the Department has been initiated. The personnel hired in this competition will be responsible for training voice communication system operators in all Federal Government buildings equipped with voice communication equipment, throughout Canada. A top priority has been assigned to this requirement and Training programs will be undertaken immediately; (b) Yes; (c) No. The situation has existed since the acceptance of the integrated system in August 1975.
June 17, 1976


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Have the smoke control measures in the Grain Exchange Building in Winnipeg ever been operable and, if not, from what date?
2.	Is the situation being rectified and (a) if so, what is the date of such rectification (b) if not, for what reason?
3.	Was a voice control system installed in the building in 1972?
4.	Are there properly trained personnel to operate the system and (a) if not, for what reason (b) if so, as of what date?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: 1. The
smoke control measures were installed during construction of the building and were tested by the Dominion Fire Commissioner January 22, 1973 before the building was occupied. They have been operable from this date. After the test a modification was recommended to shut down air handling fans on the operation of the fire alarm system. This modification was carried out early in 1973 shortly after smoke tests were carried out.
2.	(a) Improvements have been carried out; (b) Not applicable.
3.	Yes.
4.	No. (a) The whole question of control and evacuation of occupants in high-rise buildings, which includes the operation of voice communication systems, is a relatively new one and prototype techniques and programs have had to be developed, tested and evaluated. So as to take advantage of proximity to the major and senior elements of the Dominion Fire Commissioner organization, Ottawa was selected for this developmental work which is now largely completed. Having recently obtained the requisite additions to the Dominion Fire Commissioner's establishment, the department is now in the process of hiring regional training officers to carry forward this and other types of fire safety training in federal government offices across Canada, including such as the Grain Exchange Building in Winnipeg. To date it has only been possible to provide introductory and orientation training on a limited basis. A top priority has been assigned to this requirement and an intensive training program will be undertaken as soon as the training personnel can be recruited; (b) Not applicable.


Mr. Masniuk: 1.	Is the government presently building the Guy Favreau Complex in Montreal and, if so, what is its purpose?
2.	What is the projected cost of the project?
3.	At what stage of construction is the project at the present time?
4.	How much has the project cost to date?
5.	For which government department is the project intended?
6.	How was the name of the project chosen?


Charles Mills (Bud) Drury: 1. The Department of Public Works is planning to construct the Guy Favreau office complex under the accommodation program for Montreal.
2.	Estimated at $172,000,000.
3.	Land assembly and a conceptual design have been completed.
4.	As of April 27, 1976-$8,617,537.59.
Order Paper Questions
5.	The project will provide space as a general purpose building for many departments.
6.	By Cabinet decision.


Mr. Reynolds: 1.	What was the total amount of Canada Council grants for the year 1975?
2.	How much of this money was received by (a) British Columbia (b) Alberta (c) Saskatchewan (d) Manitoba (e) Ontario (f) Quebec (g) New Brunswick (h) Nova Scotia (i) Newfoundland (j) Prince Edward Island (k) Yukon (1) Northwest Territories?


Coline M. Campbell: I am informed by the Canada Council as follows. The following figures are for the 1974-75 fiscal year. Figures for 1975-76 will be published in the Council's 19th Annual Report, now in preparation. 1. $44,236,000.
2. (a) $4,538,000; (b) $2,174,000; (c) $793,000; (d) $1,932,000; (e) $15,576,000; (f) $11,683,000; (g) $636,000; (h) $1,104,000; (i) $454,000; (j) $234,000; (k) and (1) $35,000.
Note: These figures do not include an amount of $5,077,000 awarded to organizations described as national in scope for purposes of statistical reporting, or used by the Council for programs that cannot be divided by province, e.g. Art Bank purchases and touring grants to performing arts organizations.


Mr. Cossitt: What is a full description of the type of translation services to be provided by the Secretary of State in the new premises to be rented in La Cite project in Montreal including specifically (a) the general nature of documents involved in translation (b) for what government departments will the work be done (c) what is the estimated percentage of the total translation work that will be (i) English to French (ii) French to English (d) how many employees is it estimated will be (i) Francophone (ii) Anglophone (e) how many public servants will be employed on the five floors to be occupied and what are their estimated annual salaries (f) what will be the estimated total cost per year of this operation including salaries, rent and all other factors?


Coline M. Campbell: Secretary of State-The translation services to be provided by the Secretary of State Department in Montreal will consist of two divisions under the Regional Operations Branch and a terminology service and central library under the Terminology and Documentation Directorate. Division I will be made up of four translation sections and the administrative support services for both divisions. Section IA of Division I will be located in Ville Saint-Laurent in the same building as the Atmospheric Environment Service and will include a subsection providing twenty-four-hour-a-day translation of weather forecasts and bulletins for all of Canada. Division II will be composed of seven translation sections, including the Saint-Jean section, which, together with its Saint-Hubert and College militaire royal field subsections, will provide translation services for CFB Saint-Jean, the College and CFB Saint-Hubert, where the Canadian Forces Mobile Command is located. In Montreal there will also be a

June 17, 1976
Order Paper Questions
French-to-English translation subsection under Section I of the English Translation Division, General Operations Branch, located in Ottawa. This subsection will consist of three translators and one reviser. The composition of the Montreal staff of the Terminology and Documentation Directorate is contained in the reply to question no. 5,412. The translation services of the Secretary of State Department in Montreal will be used to meet the needs of the federal services in the Montreal area. In addition, some of these sections will specialize in various fields to meet the translation needs of the whole federal government. Other subsections or sections will function as extensions of departmental or headquarters sections in Ottawa, (a) and (b) The foregoing and the list below give a good idea of the general nature of the documents to be translated and the departments or agencies which will be served. Weather forecasts, Meteorology (extension), Environmental protection, Plans and specification, Agriculture (extension), Medical and paramedical (extension), Unemployment insurance, Environment, Customs and Excise and Taxation (extension), Solicitor General, Data processing, Post Office, English translation, Legal and quasi-legal, Economics and finance, Psychology and mental health, Management, Metric Commission, Socio-economic: Immigration, Indian Affairs, etc., Statistics (extension), Natural sciences, Military, Electronics; (c) and (d) The bulk of translation from French into English for the federal government is done in Ottawa. In Montreal the percentage of translation into English and into French corresponds roughly to the percentage of Anglophone and Francophone translation personnel. Excluding Terminology and Documentation Directorate staff, there will be four employees translating into English out of some 152 employees in the TR group at the time of the move; (e) The space to be rented will accommodate approximately 380 employees, including about 260 translators, terminologists, librarians and administrative officers, and 120 clerks, stenographers and typists. The average salary of the first group will be roughly $17,000 and of the second group roughly $8,000 per annum, (f) On the basis of 1976-77 constant dollars, the estimated total cost per year of this operation with 380 employees will be as follows: Salaries, $6,205,043.00; Other operations, $390,556.00; Total annual cost chargeable to program, $6,595,599.00. Plus: Rent paid by Department of Public Works $857,126.67; Cost of other services provided by other departments, $147,557.00; Estimated total cost per year $7,600,282.67.
USER/BENEFICI ARY PAY PRINCIPLE TO SHIPPING INDUSTRY


Mr. Forrestall: 1.	Will the government consider isolating from all monies spent for icebreaking and dredging services in the St. Lawrence basin, those of benefit only to shipping and apply the user/beneficiary pay principle to that industry and, if not, for what reason?
2.	Is the government aware that CN and the National Harbours Board apply the user/beneficiary principle in respect of shipping using the Port of Halifax?
3.	Is the government aware of competition between Halifax and the River Ports in respect of the movement of bulk, general and containerized cargoes?


Ralph Goodale: 1. Transport Canada is committed to the principles of cost recovery from users and benefici-

aries of transportation services as consistent with other national objectives and the anti-inflation program. As indicated in the transportation policy framework announced in June 1975, when national policy requires departure from this user/beneficiary pay principle, the costs imposed should be clearly and specifically identified and assumed by government. Consistent with these principles, in the study of Coast Guard revenues referred to in the response to Question no. 5,105 of March 5, 1976, consideration is being given to the shipping industry, in the St. Lawrence basin and nationally.
2.	The pricing principles that are applied by CN and the National Harbours Board at Halifax are consistent with the objective of commercial viability for these corporations and with the more general user/beneficiary pay principle as applied on a national basis.
3.	The Government is aware that competition exists between various port regions, and modes of transport as well as between operators within a single mode. A healthy competitive environment is a safeguard against deterioration of services and escalation of costs. As indicated in the policy framework, intermodal and intramodal competition should be encouraged where economic and technical characteristics permit.


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


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, if questions Nos. 5,169 and 5,170 could be made orders for returns, these returns would be tabled immediately.


Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue): 1.	From 1970 to date, have any departments or government bodies negotiated contracts with Centre de langues Feuille d'erables Ltee for the teaching of a second language to public servants and, if so, in each case (a) what was the contract (b) how many (c) for what amount?
2.	For each year, what percentage of the money granted to the school was directed to salaries of (a) teachers (b) administrators?
3.	Are the requirements for (a) formation (b) experience of the teachers only under the school and, if not, is there a link between such requirements and those that prevail when hiring teachers of a second language for the Public Service?
4.	For each year, how many (a) French speaking (b) English speaking public servants have followed courses offered by the school?
Return tabled.

Question No. 5,170-Mr. Caouette (Temiscamingue):
1.	From 1970 to date, have any departments or government bodies negotiated contracts with Centre Linguistique Cartier for the teaching of a second language to public servants and, if so, in each case (a) what was the contract (b) how many (c) for what amount?
2.	For each year, what percentage of the money granted to the school was directed to salaries of (a) teachers (b) administrators?
3.	Are the requirements for (a) formation (b) experience of the teachers only under the school and, if not, is there a link between such
June 17, 1976

requirements and those that prevail when hiring teachers of a second language for the Public Service?
4.	For each year, how many (a) French speaking (b) English speaking public servants have followed courses offered by the school?
Return tabled.


Mr.   J.-J. Blais@Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council: Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to call starred question No. 5,455?


Mr. Woolliams: 1. In the years 1962 to 1975, what was the total Canadian production, in barrels, of crude petroleum?
Capital Punishment
2.	For the same years, what was the total crude petroleum (a) exported (b) imported?
3.	For the same years, what was the price differential between off-shore crude petroleum and Alberta crude petroleum used in Montreal or the Maritimes?
4.	For the same years, was it cheaper to import barrels of crude petroleum east of the Ottawa Valley than to transport it from Alberta and what approximately was the ratio?


Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, in responding to this starred question I would like to say that it is about two pages long and it is statistical material. I would like to ask that it appear in Hansard as read.


Mr. Speaker:: Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[Editor's Note: The answer to the above question follows.]
1. Production	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973	1974	1975Mb/d 2. (a) Exports	715.0	766.1	819.3	876.1	956.1	1,044.8	1,125.3	1,228.9	1,382.1	1,476.0	1,698.4	1,962.9	1,843.3<P>	1.575.6(E)Mb/d (b) Imports	236.0	248.3	277.9	295.6	347.6	414.8	462.4	555.3	669.8	750.8	951.3	1,138.6	910.9	707.3Mb/d	368.5	404.8	392.3	395.0	434.4	446.8	485.6	529.1	568.9	671.1	769.6	897.4	797.6	817.1
<p>
Preliminary <E>
Estimate
3.	During the years 1962 to 1975, western Canadian crude was used in Montreal or the Maritimes only in the fall of 1973 and the early part of 1974. According to figures supplied by the Manufacturing and Primary Industries Division of Statistics Canada, the relative average costs of crude oil receipts of domestic and foreign origin at refineries in eastern Canada were as follows during those two years:
Province of Quebec Atlantic Provinces
Province of Quebec Atlantic Provinces
$ per barrel
Domestic Imported
4.81	3.84
3.36
6.96	6.74*
7.47	6.29*
4.	See No. 3. A statement prepared by the National Energy Board for the Committee of Public Works and Natural Resources dated 21 February, 1973 compared the cost of crude oil at Ontario and Quebec refineries over the years 1962 to 1972. An accompanying estimate suggested that imported crude oil would on average have been between 25 and 35 cents a barrel cheaper than domestic crude at Ontario refineries during those years. On the basis of that estimate, it may be computed that at Quebec refineries imported crude was in national terms, 20 per cent
cheaper than domestic crude oil would have been during that period; this assessment takes no account of differences in the quality of the crude oils or in the mix of product demand.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed 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.
John Douglas Reynolds: Mr. Speaker, I think I took up about 20 minutes of my time this morning, and I hope to conclude my remarks in five or ten minutes. There are a few other points which I would like to make in this debate before concluding. One of them came to my attention this morning. I would like to mention the fact that the government has been holding back information which could have been used by all members of the House in this debate and which might have been of assistance to members in quoting statistics.

June 17, 1976
Capital Punishment
There is a booklet that came out from Statistics Canada called "Homicide Canada", of which the Solicitor General is aware. It was listed in the pink sheets which come to our offices regularly. In a debate of this type, when we are deciding such a serious question, the Solicitor General's department must have known that this booklet was being prepared for information. It was available a week ago, so it could have been made available to hon. members a month ago so that they could use the correct figures. There is good material here for both abolitionists and retentionists, and we can hope the figures are correct.
If one goes through the debate on capital punishment since the start, one finds that every member seems to have stated different figures for different types of murder, and none of the figures seem to correspond. If this material had been put in the hands of members of parliament at the start of the debate, instead of being mentioned on a pink sheet in the hope that each member would notice it, it would have been helpful to us. I think it should have been sent to every member's office with a letter from the Solicitor General's department saying that this booklet was available and should be read before the debate. It would have helped the debate come along a little further, and I think it would have made a little more sense than some of the speeches I have read. I condemn the Solicitor General's Department for making sure that that booklet was not available to the people taking part in this debate.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. The hon. member has made some serious allegations against me with respect to the publication of this report by Statistics Canada. I want to point out that my department, and I as the minister, had absolutely no control over that report. It was prepared and put out by Statistics Canada, and as hon. members know, it would be completely wrong for a minister to interfere with the publication date or with the content of any report put out by Statistics Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Warren Allmand: I was advised by Statistics Canada that the report would be ready last week. Statistics Canada asked me if I wanted to be briefed on the report. Unfortunately, I had no time. I was in committee with Bill C-83, and in the House with this debate. So Statistics Canada said that it would publish the report in the ordinary course of its business, and that was done. But my department had nothing to do with the publication or preparation of the report.
I might say that most of the statistics in the report have been available in other reviews and publications which I did put out, in particular, the ones which were tabled by the Minister of Justice and myself at the beginning of the debate.


John Douglas Reynolds: I do not think that is a question of privilege. It is a bunch of garbage.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Douglas Reynolds: It is a pity this government cannot keep things together when we are debating such a serious issue as capital punishment, and that the minister can stand in this House and tell us that he does not know what is going on with regard to a document which is very important to the debate. I think his department should have some contact with Statistics Canada and should have known when this document was to be made available to the House.
I put a question on the order paper on May 14; I asked the following:
1.	How many persons in Canada have been charged and/or convicted of murder or manslaughter more than once?
2.	In each case (a) what are their names, (b) how was the sentence disposed of, (c) when was each eligible for parole where prison terms were involved, (d) what was the length of the sentence served?
I think those are important questions to this debate.


William Warren Allmand: Available for years-months.


John Douglas Reynolds: I do not know why the minister could not answer it on the order paper in the last couple of weeks. The Prime Minister quoted the information. There are one or two other things I would like to quote before I finish. I mentioned in my speech this morning a gentleman named Dr. Ezzat Fattah, chairman of the Simon Fraser University criminology department. I would like to quote a couple of things he said about this bill, as follows:
On February 24, 1976 the Liberal government tabled one of the most retrogressive pieces of legislation ever presented in the House of Commons-the so-called "Peace and Security Program" ...
Among the studies and programs to which the government is committing itself in the explanatory notes to C-84, one tries in vain to find anything that might allow a better understanding of the phenomenon which the bill seeks to control-the phenomenon of criminal homicide, or, put more simply, why people kill and how killing can be prevented.
And among the so-called peace and security measures one finds no mention whatsoever of any steps aimed at correcting or improving the social injustices and the social conditions that are inducive to murder.
I am happy to agree, for once at least, with Dr. Fattah and his points. I hope the Solicitor General did not use Dr. Fattah just for his abolitionist views, but also for some of his other ideas, in presenting this bill and Bill C-83. I would like to finish by talking about the committee to which this bill will go. I had intended to move some amendments at second reading to refer this bill to committee for discussion, which I thought should take place before we voted on second reading, based on some points raise by the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) and by other hon. members of this House. This being a free vote, I felt that some hon. members should have a chance to discuss some of these issues before we vote on the bill in principle. But it seems that the majority of hon. members want to vote on second reading next Tuesday, and I think that is probably a good idea. Therefore, I am not going to move my motions at second reading, but I am certainly prepared to move them at committee stage and at third reading, as are other hon. members.
I just cannot see how the government can hope to get this bill through committee stage and third reading by the end of this month, and I suggest to the government House leader that the committee sessions should not be as they were on Bill C-58, and that his party should allow some government members who are retentionists to sit on that
June 17, 1976

committee. Certainly, there are some government members who are retentionists and they should be allowed to sit on the committee in relation to the number of votes. It is a free vote, and hon. members opposite who are retentionists should have the right to sit on that committee. I say that because I remember, when we were discussing Bill C-58, the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mrs. Holt) made a great speech at second reading and said she would only vote with the government on second reading to get the bill into committee where all the work would be done. Some of us who had been here a bit longer knew that that was a naive statement and that she would have a hard time achieving changes in the committee. That certainly proved true, because the government did not even allow her to sit as a voting member on that committee. She had to sit on the outside.
I suggest that the same thing will happen when the matter of capital punishment gets into the committee. The government will use its power to make sure that hon. members opposite who sit on that committee will all be abolitionists, and the bill will be hammered through committee. No witnesses will be called, a certain schedule will be set, and members will not be able to call the witnesses they want to call. On a bill as important as this one, we should have the RCMP talk to us so that we can find out their reasons for wanting capital punishment. We should hear people from the prison system. Perhaps we should hear people who have been condemned in the past, so that they can give us their views as to whether it would be a deterrent. I really do not believe the government will allow it to go that way.
Everyone wants to get out of here at the end of June. I have five children at home who would like to see me home from July 1 on, as well. When we debated this matter last time, we went right into July. I think we should have the vote on second reading on Tuesday, and I am willing to forgo putting my amendments and not to try to stall or delay this bill so that we can have the vote to find out what hon. members think about it. The government should be prepared to leave the committee hearings and third reading until the fall. I do not know what the rush is. The government has commuted present sentences-or stayed them-so it will not matter for a few extra months.


William Warren Allmand: Wrong again.


John Douglas Reynolds: I wish the minister would stand up and say that. He has stayed sentences for a long time.


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, on a question of privilege-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The minister has intervened once during the speech of the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond-Delta (Mr. Reynolds) on a question of privilege which was to correct something the hon. member said. This is a debate. There are opportunities for discussion and disagreement. I would be most reluctant to allow the minister to intervene a second time simply to register a disagreement with the remarks which are being made by the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond-Delta.


John Douglas Reynolds: The minister will have ample time to speak. I am sure he called me a liar across the floor of the
Capital Punishment
House, and I hope he will say that in his speech. He has stayed sentences-


William Warren Allmand: That is different from commuting.


John Douglas Reynolds: I said "stayed". I admitted I made a mistake.


William Warren Allmand: I apologize.


John Douglas Reynolds: I do not think there is any reason for the minister to call a person a liar. He is a little bit touchy about this, and I think he should apologize.


Some hon. Members:: He apologized.


John Douglas Reynolds: I thank the minister for his apology. I see no reason why this matter cannot go over to the fall so that we can have full committee hearings and a full debate on third reading. But the government is rushing to push this bill through by the end of June. I can guarantee hon. members that it will not get through by the end of June. There are enough speakers on this side of the House, and enough amendments which we want to discuss, so that any hon. member opposite thinking of going home on July 1 should change his vacation plans. There is no reason to believe that the government is any more honest now than it has been during the past eight years, or that the Prime Minister will allow people to be hanged. If this bill is defeated, I think the Prime Minister will continue to commute sentences, as he has for the past eight years.
I suggest to hon. members opposite that if they want to go home on July 1, their best bet is to vote against this government bill, which would leave us with the law which is in force right now: that is abolition anyway, because this government does not believe in hanging anyone. I would like to close by quoting an English philosopher, Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. He observed:
-that if murder could be prevented by the fine of one shilling it would still break the moral bonds of society to impose only one-shilling fine on murderers.
Mr. Speaker, of course, a life sentence is not a shilling- nor is it a life sentence-but to many Canadians it still seems a cut-rate price-tag on their own lives. When people feel undervalued, the moral bonds of society begin to show the strain.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Speaker:: The question is on the motion in the name of Mr. Allmand. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. Members:: Carried.


Mr. Speaker:: All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.


Some hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Speaker:: All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.

June 17, 1976
Medical Care Act


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Speaker:: It is more than difficult for the Chair to determine the preponderance of those people with strong voices. In any case, to be more serious, there has already been an indication by the House that a recorded division is desired. I do not think it is too necessary to go on with the formality of attempting to give either the yeas or nays at this point. It is well understood that a recorded division will take place. I understand it is the will of the House that the division will be deferred, and therefore we have arrived, by the taking of the yeas and nays, at the conclusion of the debate.
It is hereby ordered that the recorded division will be deferred to a time to be announced by the government House leader when the House leaders have had an opportunity to confer.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Speaker:: Agreed, and so ordered.


Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, you have indicated the desire of the House as included in the House order. May I issue an invitation for the House leaders to meet in my office at five o'clock this afternoon?


Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, we accept.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Agreed.


Armand Caouette: D'accord.



MEDICAL CARE ACT


Marc Lalonde: that Bill C-68, to amend the Medical Care Act, be read the third time and do pass.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I shall be brief. This bill has been under consideration for a number of days on second reading and in the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs as well. The latter has considered every clause of the bill during several meetings. Further, the content of the bill has been discussed at length not only inside the House but outside as well. Essentially, the bill does not intend to reduce the total federal contribution to the cost of insured services that it pays now but rather to limit for the coming years the rate or level of growth of the medical insurance costs.
Everyone is aware that the various governments are greatly concerned about the costs increases in expenditures earmarked for health services.
Provincial governments are really aware of that and so is the federal government. On second reading and before the committee, I already had the opportunity to explain all debates preceding the introduction of this bill under study by the House, and the reasons which prompted this government to set a specific growth rate in the bill.

As a result of representations made by members of Parliament and many citizens outside the House, the government made some changes in the bill which, although they may not meet all the objectives of the opposition, will at least have shortened the gap separating us from those against the adoption of this bill. Particularly, we agreed on a formula under which the growth rate ceiling would not be established from the third year after enactment of the legislation, but determined only after consultation with the provinces through an order in council.
We also agreed that the rate would be subject to debate in the House if enough members were to ask that the order in council adopted by the government be discussed in the House. So, once again, this bill is intended to meet the general concern of the public about the rate of growth of health expenditures and, in addition, still provides for the continuation of a substantial contribution to medical insurance expenditures.
I remind hon. members that we anticipate a rate of growth of expenditures for the current year that will be 14.5 or 14.6 per cent higher than the expenditures for the previous year. Next year, that rate of growth will be 12 per cent. So I suggest that hon. members remember that since October 1975 we have asked Canadian workers to limit their demands to 8 per cent, with a possibility of adjustment up to 10 and possibly 12 per cent in certain cases in their collective agreements.
The total amount that will be available for medical insurance this year in terms of federal government contributions will increase by 14.5 per cent on a national average basis. So I think it would be wrong to suggest that the rate of increase was set too low. In fact, the discussions I had with my provincial colleagues in recent months seemed to indicate that they will be able to meet without difficulty that maximum rate of increase set in this bill, and therefore I think we will have shown the effectiveness of the legislation now before the House. I am convinced that the mere fact that it was announced in the budget of June 1975 and introduced in the House a little later in this session already had a beneficial effect as far as the reduction in the rate of growth of medical insurance expenditures is concerned.
I would also like to remind hon. members that just two days ago the government submitted to provincial governments a new financing formula that would consist in a transfer of a certain number of tax points as well as an equal per capita payment across the country. That formula met with the approval of most provinces in principle. The premiers agreed that the ministers of finance would discuss this in greater detail at their meeting early in July, and they indicated that the provincial ministers of health as well as ministers responsible for education and the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) would participate in various stages of those discussions to reach a specific and detailed proposal that would attract the general consent of the provinces and the federal government.
I am confident we shall succeed through these discussions to reach an agreement rather quickly, and I indicated that my officials and myself are willing to pursue them with the utmost speed possible. We might conclude an agreement coming into force as early as next year, if the provinces are really interested in the implementation of
June 17, 1976

such a program. But the agreement might also have to be postponed for a period of a few years in the health area, for the simple reason that as far as hospital insurance is concerned, the federal government is still committed for another four years at least. Because we must serve five years' notice, as we did last July, to terminate the agreement on hospital care.
If the provinces wish to maintain these agreements in force until 1980 in the hospital insurance area, there is nothing the federal government can do to prevent them. But in the name of the federal government, I indicated quite clearly to all provinces that if they were willing to reach an agreement on a new financing formula well before 1980, so terminating ahead of time the agreement reached under the Hospital Insurance Act, the federal government would be quite willing in turn to implement without delay a financing formula that would certainly be more flexible than the current one. It would not require the provinces to contribute an amount equal to the federal contribution. The only condition would be that the funds involved, which will be transferred in the form of fiscal points and per capita payments, be allocated entirely to the health and education areas, and meet certain general criteria such as we have in the medical insurance area. However, it is very clear we would have much more flexibility than we now have under the Hospital Insurance Act.
Therefore Bill C-68, now at the third reading stage in this House, may not be implemented for a good number of years to come. In my view it is realistic to expect that it will certainly apply this year, and probably next year also. But if we are successful, with the provinces, to show as much speed and cooperation as was experienced last Monday, I am hopeful we might have a new financing formula for health services for 1978, if not April 1977. I feel the current state of federal-provincial relations is encouraging in this area. I also feel this special bill on the limitation of medical insurance expenses will be of a transitory nature, because I am convinced that before 1980 at least we will have reached with the provinces a new agreement covering medical insurance, hospital insurance and post-secondary education expenses, to which the federal government has already been contributing for a number of years.
Mr. Speaker, this is what I wanted to say at this stage of the debate on third reading of the bill. I hope hon. members will want to consider the bill in the light of what I indicated, so that it can go through all stages without delay.


Mr. Douglas (Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, may I be permitted to ask the minister a question in order to clarify one point?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Will the hon. minister accept a question from the hon. member?


Marc Lalonde: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Do I
understand from the minister's remarks that the proposals which were put before the first ministers with respect to
Medical Care Act
the new tax-sharing formula will not apply in any province which wishes to continue for the remaining four years in the present Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act program, if that province wishes to remain under the 50-50 sharing program?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I did not mean to imply that in my statement. If I did, I would like to thank the hon. member for providing me with the opportunity to clarify this matter.
I do not think it is realistic or possible to have a system whereby some provinces continue cost-sharing on a 50-50 basis while others start having tax points and per capita grants between now and 1980. If a province were to favour the early implementation of the tax-sharing formula, this would require the unanimous approval of the provinces, for the simple reason that we need to have a firm formula for per capita grants on a national basis. It would be difficult to do this if you had some provinces operating on a 50-50 basis and others operating on tax points and per capita grants. I am advised that what would be required, in those circumstances, would be unanimous agreement to cut off the five-year agreement under hospital insurance and switch to the new financing formula that has been proposed by the government.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Do I
understand the minister is saying that unless there is unanimous consent by the provinces to terminate the agreement under the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, that formula, on a 50-50 basis, will continue until 1980?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, that would be my understanding as far as hospital insurance is concerned. Obviously, the situation with medicare is different. It would be a matter of decision as to whether it would be worth while having a tax point and per capita system operating only for medicare while we still have hospital insurance operating on a 50-50 basis.
My own inclination would be to insist that we decide the whole issue at the same time, rather than having an ad hoc type of operation where we would be covering only part of the health field in terms of tax points. If I were to make any case, I think it would have to be on the basis of both programs being changed under a new health financing formula.


Mr. Paul Yewchuk (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, I begin by saying that we recognize and accept the fact that there is a need for restraint in spending. I think all the provinces recognize the fact that spending in the area of health care has been going on more rapidly than perhaps they had hoped. With that in mind, we have to question very seriously the approach this government has been taking in its desire to cut costs in the health field, as indeed in any other field.
One of the important factors that has to exist in this country if confederation is to survive, and if there is to be a decent kind of relationship between the federal and provincial governments, is a feeling of mutual respect and trust between those governments. We have a situation in Canada at the present time where that feeling of mutual

June 17, 1976
Medical Care Act
respect and trust has been severely eroded by the action taken by the federal government under this bill.
Generally speaking, Canadians, and indeed people anywhere in the world, believe that if a contract is made between two parties, that agreement must be abided by both parties until one of two things happens: either the agreement expires and becomes no longer relevant for that reason, or it is renegotiated by meaningful, careful negotiation, by both parties.
A number of years ago, when the medicare law was introduced into the federal parliament, only one province-I believe it was the province of Saskatchewan- thought it could participate and, indeed, was anxious to participate in that legislation almost immediately. The remaining provinces had some very grave reservations. It meant a very substantial realignment of their own priorities. I recall reading some of the debates at that time. One question which stands out very vividly in my mind was put by one of the provincial ministers, who asked, "But how do we know that when the federal government realizes how costly this operation is going to be, it will not back out of its commitment to the provinces". We have exactly that situation now.
This reflects the fact that the Liberal government at that time was perhaps working under a good deal of ignorance. It did not think through the consequences of the legislation it was putting forward. I refer, of course, to the economic consequences. We now have a situation where the prophecy of that provincial minister is indeed coming true.
It is naive for the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) to say that the provinces now are not sufficiently motivated to try to cut costs, at least to the same extent that he is, because under the existing agreement they have maintained 50 per cent of the cost. We have a situation where one party to the contract, namely, the federal government, is trying to weasel out of its obligation to the provinces. My concern is that this kind of behaviour can do nothing but damage the relationship between the provincial governments and the federal government.
We know that costs have been rising rapidly, but we also know that taking unilateral action to change the agreement has put the federal government under a great deal of suspicion in the eyes of the provinces. If the federal government is concerned at all about its future relations with the provinces, it should reconsider this bill. Once suspicion develops in the minds of the provincial administrations with regard to proposals put forward by the federal government, it becomes virtually impossible to conduct meaningful negotiations between the two levels of government. This is the type of situation which is building up now.
I do not think I can say that we in this party are against the principle of ceilings on expenditures. What we are against is the idea that the minister can somehow make unilateral decisions and announce them to the provinces, and that the provinces can go to hell if they do not like what is offered. We are opposed to such an approach.
We recall that when the medicare legislation was first put forward by the federal government, a great deal of concern was expressed about its cost. But the federal gov-

ernment insisted that the plan should go ahead no matter what the cost might be, and to a great extent forestalled objections on financial grounds by undertaking to contribute toward the cost on a 50-50 basis. In these circumstances, the provinces went ahead with the plan, and now they are stuck with it. The Liberal government of the day devised the whole scheme. It should have known what it was getting into. Now that the picture is somewhat clearer, members across the way seem to be taking the position that a change can be made in the agreement without the concurrence of the other party.
When we first heard of this legislation, we thought it was merely a club of some sort which the federal government wanted to use to force the provinces to move more speedily insofar as the rearrangement of the cost-sharing formula was concerned. Today, however, we realize that the bill is more in the nature of a preview of what the minister would like to do in connection with all the costsharing arrangements with the provinces. I see the hon. gentleman is smiling. If he thinks I am not stating the situation accurately as far as the provincial governments are concerned, all he has to do is to think back to the beginning of this week when certain proposals were made to the provincial premiers in connection with cost-sharing.
The results of that conference were reflected in newspaper headlines of which I have one or two examples before me. Here is one from the Gazette of June 16: "Premiers talks end in uproar!" Another from the same paper, of the same date, reads: "Federal-provincial jungle is a jungle like no other." Headlines of this sort express clearly the results of the attitude the minister has taken toward the cost-sharing agreements which have been made. There is a general feeling in the provinces that the word of the government, the word of the minister, is simply no good. I hope the hon. gentleman will take the appropriate action to correct that situation. If I were in his boots, I would feel extremely uncomfortable. I suggest there will be hard times ahead for the government if it does not change its attitude. Its present course has resulted in severe damage to the contractual credibility of the Federal administration when dealing with the provinces, as well as severe damage to a variety of useful arrangements of mutual benefit. In the long run, of course, it is bound to be detrimental to confederation itself and to the people of Canada.
I urge the minister to change his mind with regard to this measure. As I say, we support the idea of restraint, but there is a factor which is more important to Canada than simply forcing this legislation through the House. If the hon. gentleman is interested in making meaningful future arrangements with the provinces, he needs to rebuild the feeling of trust and confidence which is required. The best way to begin to do this would be by withdrawing Bill C-68 and going back to the provinces with an open mind and a sincere desire to negotiate.


Mr. Darling:: And a contrite heart.


Paul Yewchuk: Yes, that too. Unless he does so, then for the next two years, at least, I believe there will be little possibility of making the arrangements which the hon. gentleman described in his opening comments. He indicated that the progress of the talks with the provinces was encouraging. But I do not believe him. I do not see any
June 17, 1976

evidence of encouragement from either the premiers' conference or the conference of health ministers held earlier this month. When he says that talks are progressing well, he is simply whistling in the wind. Mr. Speaker, perhaps I have said enough today. The minister seems appropriately ashamed of himself, so I hope that the matter is given serious consideration by him.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-68, designed to place a ceiling on the federal government's contribution to the medical care program, has been before the House for many months. Now we come to third reading. It may seem to be a waste of time to debate it further, but I think it essential that we take some time to make one last, desperate effort to persuade the government and members on the other side of the House to recognize what a dangerous course the government is pursuing with respect to the health services of this country.
This legislation is being introduced on the ground that the cost of medical care has been growing too rapidly and that therefore the government must put a cap on its expenditures in the years ahead. It is true that some minimal amendments to the bill were made when it went through the committee of the House, but the basic restrictions are still there. The mere fact that the provinces have to be consulted means very little. Consultations with the provinces in the past have merely consisted of ministers of health or the premiers being called to Ottawa to be told what the federal government is going to do, and they can either accept it or lump it.
If enough members of the House ask for a debate on whatever formula the government sets for the third year, it will simply be an exercise in futility. Members are able to express their opposition, as members on this side of the House have been doing for some months, but this will not alter the government's decision. Therefore, the fact that the government has welshed on its commitments to the provinces when they came into medicare has now become the established principle that the government proposes to follow.
The minister has been complaining recently, according to the press, about the fact that the provinces have not wholeheartedly embraced his income security program. I have attended a lot of federal provincial conferences, and I imagine that some of the premiers feel the same way that I feel about them; that is, when the federal government invites you to join in a shared program, you had better go in very carefully. Otherwise you may find that, having made commitments and set up a program, the federal government is liable to pull the rug from under you and leave you holding the baby. That is why the provinces have been hesitant about entering the income security program. They have, right here, a concrete illustration of what happens when they do go into a shared program and the government pulls the rug from under them.
This is not unusual with Liberal administrations. I remember the late 1940s, when the Hon. Paul Martin was minister of health and he induced the provinces to go into a physical fitness program. I was one of the premiers who was most enthusiastic about a physical fitness program and we set up a very excellent administration. Then three
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years later the federal government walked out and left our administration with the choice either of dropping the program or financing it ourselves. The province of Saskatchewan proceeded to finance it on their own, but it taught them the lesson that when you go into a shared-cost program with the federal government, you had better have long-term commitments or you are liable to be left to pay the bill yourself.
The fact is that Bill C-68 is really the first major step in dismantling health insurance in Canada as it was originally envisaged in 1957 when the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act was passed, and in 1968 when the medicare program became nationwide. The reason is given that costs have been rising too rapidly. There is no doubt that costs have risen rapidly. However, I think the House ought to take cognizance of the fact that the cost of everything else has risen. In particular, health costs have risen in other countries which do not have health insurance, to a far greater extent than they have risen in Canada.
Those who oppose health insurance-usually those who are comfortably well off and who do not worry about meeting their health care costs-point to the United States where health care costs are met on an individual basis. In that country, as the minister has already pointed out, our American neighbours spend a higher percentage of their gross national product on health care-they have no health insurance program-than we do in Canada, where we do have a health insurance program. We have the best health insurance program in the western hemisphere; not the best in the world, but certainly the best in the western hemisphere. This does not mean, of course, that we should be satisfied to let the cost of health care continue to escalate without our doing anything to limit that escalation. All of us want to eradicate any abuse of or wastage in health insurance programs. But we ought not to fall into the trap, as some members have in the course of this debate, of laying the blame at the feet of the public for over-utilization.
First of all, only a doctor can decide whether a patient requires surgery or diagnostic procedures such as X-rays and lab tests. Any patient who walks into a doctor's office and says, "I would like an appendectomy" is not going to get an appendectomy. It is not like ordering a pair of shoes in a store. Only if a doctor decides that some care or treatment is required will a patient get it. The same is true of hospital care. A hospital is not an hotel where you check in and decide that you want a few days rest. No person can enter a hospital unless a doctor signs an admission form, and no patient can remain in a hospital once a doctor has authorized his dismissal. I have been surprised to hear some of the members of the House who belong to the medical profession-I see several of them here-advocating, in the course of this debate, the imposition of deterrent fees both for persons entering hospital and for persons who go to see a doctor.


Mr. Philbrook:: Not from this doctor you haven't.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: A
doctor, more than anybody else, has control over what treatment a patient will receive, whether or not he will be admitted to hospital and how long he will be allowed to stay there. If there are doctors who are abusing the plan-

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and there may be-then surely this is a matter for the medical association to take up and exercise what discipline it can upon its members.
When both hospital insurance and then medicare were established in the province of Saskatchewan, one of the things that the medical profession said to us was, "We don't want you policing us; we will police our own members". I, personally, agreed with them. I think they are in a better position to police their own members than is a government board. But let not anyone, particularly members of the medical profession, talk about overutilization unless they themselves are prepared to exercise some discipline with reference to their own members.
The imposition of deterrent fees, whether for hospital care or medical care, is not an answer to the problem. As a matter of fact, those who take the trouble to read the report of the royal commission on health care headed by Mr. Justice Emmett Hall will find in the report that Mr. Justice Hall and his colleagues examined the situation of those provinces that had hospital insurance. They examined the case of Saskatchewan, which had rejected the idea of deterrent fees, and compared it with the provinces that had adopted deterrent fees. They found that in the province of Saskatchewan the morbidity rate and the average length of stay in hospital was less than in the provinces which had adopted deterrent fees. Therefore, in my opinion deterrent fees are not necessary.
I heard in the course of the debate some comment about hypochondriacs, people who have imaginary illnesses, taking up the doctor's time and occupying scarce beds in our hospitals. Naturally there are hypochondriacs. We have always had hypochondriacs. But there are rich hypochondriacs as well as poor hypochondriacs, and the difference is that the rich hypochondriacs are able to pay for having somebody rub their backs and keep them in hospital. The fact is that people who think they are sick, are sick. They may not be ill with the things about which they complain, but they certainly are in need of treatment, either psychiatric or counselling.


An hon. Member:: They are incurable.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: They need treatment.


Mr. Railton:: They are incurable.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The
doctor says they are incurable. It may be they are.


Samuel Victor Railton: Everyone recognizes that.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: The
doctor is not quite right when he says everybody recognizes that, because his own profession is becoming increasingly aware of the psychosomatic aspects of medicare. A great many people can be helped by the provision of psychiatric care.


Samuel Victor Railton: Not those.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: Certainly, the fact that we have people who imagine they are

ill and who require medical attention ought not to be an excuse for imposing deterrent fees.


Samuel Victor Railton: We never got much of that in my time.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: I do
not know whether they took up much of the doctor's time, and I am not sure it did them any good to take up his time, but I do not want the hon. member taking up my time.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is putting the doctor in his place.


An hon. Member:: Carry on.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: course we are concerned about high costs, but the answer to the high cost of health care in this country is not going to be resolved by imposing ceilings on federal government or provincial governments' contributions. In fact, I think I can show the House that the imposition of such ceilings will be counterproductive rather than beneficial.
Many years ago, when some of us were first arguing for health insurance in this country and when we managed to get legislation passed for health insurance, first in the provinces and then in the federal House, we kept pointing out that there were two phases to health insurance. The first phase was to remove the financial burden between the individuals providing health care and those receiving health care. That is an important burden, and one of the things that this country can be proud of is that we have finally removed the financial barrier, thus enabling the person who is ill to go to the doctor and get whatever treatment is necessary, and to be put in hospital to have all the benefits which modern medical science can provide.
At that time we kept pointing out that there was a second phase to health insurance. It is that if we are not going to undertake almost impossible financial burdens, we have to begin immediately to change the health delivery system. That is the problem which really faces us. What strikes me about this minister and his department is that they have known for a long time, and they have said it in some of their publications, that they way to reduce the cost of health insurance in this country is to change the delivery system and replace some of the high-cost services with low-cost services.
The minister and his department have been told this by the provinces and they have been offered the co-operation of the provinces to bring this about. In May, 1973, when the federal government proposed to the provinces that Ottawa's contribution to medicare should be equated with the gross national product, the provinces rejected that, I think in September, 1974. The provinces put forth, as an alternative, the suggestion that the federal and provincial governments should begin immediately to work on programs to replace the high-cost services with low-cost services.
As the minister admitted when he introduced this bill, the federal government agreed with the provinces to set up committees to study how this could be brought about, but in the budget of one year ago the federal government sabotaged the work of those committees. Without consultation, the government announced it was going to give the required five-year notice to terminate the hospital insur-
June 17, 1976

ance and diagnostic services program, and only a few months later introduced Bill C-68, which we are now discussing, to put a ceiling on its contribution to medicare. The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) has done virtually nothing to work out with the provinces the kind of programs which would enable us to reduce our expenditures for high-cost programs by substituting low-cost programs. It is apparent to anyone that unless we introduce low-cost programs first we cannot eliminate high-cost programs.
For instance, in some parts of Canada today hospitals are being closed, but there is little value in closing active treatment hospitals if there is no place to put the patients who should be moved to low-cost nursing homes. There is no doubt that there are people in hospitals today who have suffered a stroke, who are incapacitated, and some are terminal cases-and it costs anywhere from $100 to $150 a day to keep them there-who could be cared for quite adequately in nursing homes, if we were building nursing homes. Once we build the nursing homes and can move these people into them, then it makes sense to close hospitals. But it does not make sense to close them if we have no place to put these people who are today in active treatment hospital beds.
I am sure every member of this House has come across cases of men who have had a stroke or who are bedridden and cannot be sent home because the wife is not well and there is no one to care for them. Until we get alternative programs we will not be able to cut costs. What we will do, as a matter of fact, is increase the cost in the long run, because if people cannot get into hospital and there are delays, when they get in and they are in an acute state they will stay for a long time. Everyone knows that a patient who comes in for an appendectomy may be out in a few days. If he comes in with a ruptured appendix he will be in the hospital for a considerably longer time. We are not saving money by putting the cap on. The intelligent way to deal with the problem of health care costs is to work with the province in instituting low-cost services and then be in a position to reduce the high-cost services.
The provinces have been trying to persuade the federal government to join with them in instituting cost-shared programs for such services. A lot could be done in this country by the establishment of more nursing homes, the provision of home-care treatment, meals on wheels, more extended care units in hospitals, more physiotherapy units in hospitals, more denticare programs in this country, particularly for children, in order that a preventive dental program could be carried on, and pharma-care for the aged. These are the types of programs that would reduce the incidence of illness and in the long run would cut down the cost of health insurance.
Those of us who through the years have talked about a new delivery system have been stressing the need for altering the focus on health care in this country. In the past we thought of the practice of medicine in terms of curative medicine and public health care, but many countries in the world now have switched their emphasis to preventative health programs. Some starts have been made in this country. But really there has been very little leadership from the Department of National Health and Welfare.
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We have a few community health clinics which have succeeded in involving the public in programs for physical fitness, proper dieting, weight watching and periodic medical examinations with a view to curing incipient illnesses before they have reached a dangerous stage. However, these are minuscule compared to the total need in this country. We really do not have a preventative health program.
No one need tell the members of this House that in the long run it costs less to keep people well than to cut them up and patch them up after they are dangerously ill. If the government really wants to tackle the problem of the high cost of health care in Canada, we ought to be tackling the problem of preventive health programs. For instance, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) could help a great deal by offering financial incentives for doctors to go into group practice, and for the establishment of group practice in the smaller hospitals where there would be diagnostic facilities, X-ray facilities and physiotherapy units.
This would save money and it would bring about better liaison between the general practitioners and the specialists, and better liaison between the medical personnel and the para-medical personnel who operate in the health field. I believe the day must come in Canada when we will have the facilities in the various communities so that the people will go regularly to clinics, so that the health of people will be checked periodically, and so that we will have a preventative program in which we get help to the people before they have suffered serious illnesses.
What has the federal government done in this field? I am disappointed. It is now eight years since we took the first step of establishing medicare in this country. It was a forward step. The late Lester B. Pearson and his government, along with the present Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen), who was minister of national health and welfare at that time, are to be commended for that forward step. However, we have taken few steps since to begin to change the health delivery system to any serious extent, and we are paying the price because the whole delivery system of merely curative medicine is expensive and will become increasingly expensive.
What have we done about nursing homes? Some steps have been taken, but they have been really meagre. A few communities have established home nursing care and meals on wheels programs, but only in isolated instances. Some of the hospitals have established physiotherapy units, psychotherapy units and extended care units. Many of the hospitals have not been able to do this. Such programs make a great deal of difference in the treatment of people, because outpatient units mean it is not necessary to feed and look after people in hospitals. They can come from their homes for treatment, and return again.
We have done very little to expand health clinics across this country. Many of the younger doctors would be prepared, with financial incentives, to go into health clinics across this country if they were set up. The other night I attended a meeting of health care executives. Some of the young health care personnel told me how delighted they were when they read the booklet put out by the Department of National Health and Welfare called "A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians". I do not know who wrote that booklet, but I pay tribute to whoever it is.

June 17, 1976
Medical Care Act
However, since I read it I have been wondering whether or not the minister has read it.


Marc Lalonde: I wrote it.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: If the
minister wrote it, then I congratulate him for doing so, but condemn him for having done nothing about the policy he enunciated in the booklet. It is not enough to write about very fine fullsome programs, and not put them into practice.
We have done nothing at all in this country about physical fitness programs. Countries in which the people are much less wealthy than we are have effective physical fitness programs. In the minister's pamphlet, which I am now glad to be able to identify, "A New Perspective on the Health of Canadians", we find this statement: "We must improve our lifestyle and environment". I think that is something with which all of us would agree wholeheartedly. But I ask the minister what his department has done, or what the government with which he is associated has done, about improving our lifestyle and environment. We need merely to look across this country and see the evidence of mercury poisoning from which the Indian people are suffering, the arsenic emissions in the Northwest Territories, the cancer from asbestos fibres, the cancer found in miners at Elliot Lake, and the situation in the oil sands where Syncrude is beginning to get its plant under way. The report of the Department of the Environment suggests a maximum emission of 40 tons a day, while we have an emission of 280 tons per day. We might look at the Eldorado situation and Port Hope where people are being moved out of their homes because of the radiation-contaminated fill there. That was put there 25 years ago. What has been done about it? How can this go on?
Last Thursday I raised the matter in the House. I spoke about the fact that the great Canadian Oil Sands are pouring 400,000 gallons a day from its tailings into the Athabasca river. When I asked the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Marchand) what he was doing about it, he said he would look at it. But his own department's report based on tests made in August, 1974, shows that there is an undue degree of toxicity in the tailings being put into the river. Do not forget, Mr. Speaker, it is only a short time ago that we were treated by the Liberal government opposite to a public relations program in which they were going to restore for Canadians clean air and pure water. What clean air and pure water? The Canadian Waters Act-and I remember when it was being introduced by the former minister, Jack Davis-


Stanley Howard Knowles: Now a Social C red iter.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: -
some of us said that this was simply a public relations gesture, and the government was very annoyed about this. Under that legislation, no national standards have been set up for what pollutants you can pump into a river, lake or coastal waters, as far as I know, and not one water quality management area has been established. When I asked the minister about it the other day, he said he would deal with 
the matter under the Fisheries Act. He has the power to act.
A moment ago when I spoke about conditions in which the people of this country have to live, somebody from across the way said that this is under provincial jurisdiction. Under the legislation for clean air and pure water the federal government has jurisdiction. Under section 16 of the Canadian Waters Act the Minister of the Environment has the power, if he chooses, to act without the provinces. He can do it under section 9 with the provinces, but under section 16 he can set up a water quality management area without the consent of the provinces, and thus deal with the pollutants that are being poured into the water.
Is this how we are improving our lifestyle and our environment? I ask the Minister of National Health and Welfare: Where are our programs for industrial health and safety in this country? In 1974, 1,415 people were killed on the job. Where is our industrial safety program? The government is very good at writing pamphlets and portraying the vision of what Canada could or should be, but I must say that it gets very low marks for putting its dreams into practice. This is a government of big smoke and very little fire.
If the government really wants to deal with the question of growing costs-and all of us agree in the House that costs must be held down to a reasonable percentage-then it is taking the most counterproductive method of dealing with increased health costs. As I have already pointed out, we are not spending an undue percentage of our gross national product in health care, but that does not alter the fact that we do not want it to get out of hand. We are going to put a ceiling on the federal government's contributions, but we are doing nothing about revamping the health delivery system so as to make it possible to give the people of Canada adequate health care at a reasonable price.
The provinces have indicated their willingness to cooperate in such a program. My plea to the government is that what we ought to do is set this bill aside until we meet again in the fall. If you set it aside altogether, I would not object, but the government would not want to do that. However, if we set it aside until the fall and gave the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the provincial governments an opportunity to see if they can work out changes in our health delivery system which would be less costly and just as effective, then this bill would be totally unnecessary.
On top of this legislation, the federal government has now announced a new cost-sharing program which it wants the provinces to accept. I must say that if I was disturbed about the government giving notice last June of its intention to terminate the agreement with respect to hospital insurance and diagnostic services, and very annoyed at Bill C-68 which puts a ceiling on the federal government's contribution to medicare, I am even more concerned about the proposals which have been placed before the first ministers this week by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau).
We have only fragmentary information about it. Many of the proposals are in principle and no figures are given, no base year is stated. But I take it from the reports and what the minister said today that the government is proposing that it withdraw from its commitment to pay 50 per cent of
June 17, 1976

the cost of hospital care and diagnostic services and physicians' fees, as well as its commitment to pay 50 per cent of the cost of post-secondary education. In proposing this, the government intends to replace the 50-50 share with the provinces by granting to them certain undefined tax points accompanied by equalization grants.
On the radio I heard the Prime Minister say that this will gear health costs to the annual growth in the economy, which he considers a more realistic approach to health care financing. I want briefly to give three reasons why I think this is a serious, retrograde step. First, we cannot equate health care with the growth of the gross national product. Capital costs for providing health care facilities may have to be adjusted according to the state of the economy, but health services cannot be geared to economic growth. The incidence of illness bears no relationship to our national productivity. Sick people have to be cared for and health services must be provided even in times of economic recession.
Indeed, this is one of the basic imperatives in establishing health insurance in Canada. We have no control over when epidemics may occur, and these must be dealt with regardless of the vagaries of the national economy. We can expand or contract highway construction or public building, but we cannot adjust health care to economic growth. Our first responsibility in a humane society is to get people well, and this must remain one of our major priorities. We had an illustration of this last year when the gross national product in this country showed virtually no growth, but the cost of living, the cost of health services and the cost of everything else went up. In a situation like that, how would it be possible for the provinces to provide health services which people need at a time when the gross national product stayed down? We might just as well tie the health contribution of the federal government to the temperature average for the year, or to how many gallons of water go over Niagara Falls, as tie it to the gross national product.


The Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. If the hon. member wants to proceed, he will have unanimous consent because his allotted time has now expired. Is there unanimous consent to allow the hon. member to complete his remarks?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Thomas Clement (Tommy) Douglas: thank hon. members for their kindness, and I will not impose on their good nature. I would just like to finish this point and I will be through.
The second weakness in this proposal is that tax points will provide proportionately less revenue for the less affluent provinces. The wealthier provinces may be able to weather the storm during a period of economic recession, but the poorer provinces will find it impossible to do so. The Rowell-Sirois report of the early 1940s, and the green book proposals of the late 1940s, were predicated on the goal of ensuring that all Canadian citizens, no matter where they might live, would be guaranteed uniform services with regard to health, education and social welfare. We are in danger of losing sight of this objective. Are we to return to the situation we once had, when the standard of
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services enjoyed by Canadians was determined by the financial affluence of the province in which they resided? If we take this retrograde step, we will remove the cornerstone of confederation and weaken the bonds which hold this nation together.
The third factor which disturbs me is that the less affluent areas of Canada will find that in order to meet their health care costs in a period of declining tax revenue, they must resort to deterrent fees and user service charges. In that event, the concept of uniform health insurance benefits will be destroyed and we shall have a patchwork of health programs across the country. The result will be that those areas of Canada which are already disadvantaged in many other respects will also have a lower standard of health care. To me, that would be the negation of the kind of Canadianism which we have been striving to create over the last quarter of a century.
In my opinion, a nation which is not prepared to make adequate health services available to all its citizens, regardless of income or residence, is a nation which is in danger of losing its vision, and when a nation loses its vision the people perish.


William Gordon Ritchie: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak on Bill C-68. We have heard today considerable discussion on the philosophy of health care, especially from the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) who as premier of Saskatchewan had much to do with the development of our present form of health care. This bill, essentially, involves limiting payments to doctors from the medical care portion of the federal purse. It points up a truism pointed out by the Hon. Enoch Powell when he was minister of health in the Macmillan government in Britain when he said that no matter what happens, health care must be limited in some manner. If it is not limited by taking from patients' pocket-books, it has to be done by rationing the health care system, mainly at the doctors' offices or at the hospital door. Of course, the British national health system was limited because physicians had to see 100 or more patients within an hour or two, and people waited four or five years for elective operations which we would consider should be done within a week or two.
Probably most health care legislation is founded on the philosophy that if we spend only a certain amount of money, and if we do things right, health care will not be necessary, hospitals will not be needed and physicians would be out of a job. As a matter of fact, during the war years the British Labour party promoted the idea of national health care and told the British people that if a national health plan came into effect, hospitals would only be necessary because of lack of attention, and that with a proper health care plan hospitals would not be needed, doctors' services would be superfluous and that eventually the whole system would cost much less, and few beds would be needed. Of course, this flew in the face of reality.
Our population grows older as we keep alive those who might otherwise have died of acute illnesses such as dipth-eria and acute appendicitis. We save those who otherwise would have died of gall bladder disease, which is reasonably easily treated now, or heart conditions. These people now live longer and are hospital satistics for a longer time as they become older and more senile. Indeed, our problem
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Medical Care Act
is only just beginning, because our population is aging. The generation of the 1990s will be faced with a very old population. Statistics in the United States show that at the moment about four people are working for every one who is retired. By 1980, three will be working for every one who is retired, and it is expected that the figure will drop to something like 2.5 working for every one retired, assuming our retirement patterns remain the same.
The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands expressed the idea that yearly examinations would do much to reduce the cost of health care. That is a noble idea, but somewhat impractical. For instance, if everyone in Canada had a yearly examination lasting half an hour, assuming doctors worked an eight-hour day, those doctors would have little time left to practice the curative portion of medicine. That is just how many people there are. Of course, in the case of special examinations such as heart, brain, eye, chest or gastrointestinal tract examinations, these could go on for hours and hours. So while preventive medicine is good in itself, it takes time, and the rewards have to be balanced against this.
The ideal of community health clinics have been promoted as having the possibility of providing good health care. I can only say that very often it amounts to: Let Joe look after the work today while I take a couple of hours for golf. No matter where they work, whether by themselves, in large hospitals or in large groups, the important thing with physicians is their own reaction to their patients, and community health clinics and other health bodies have many disadvantages. In many ways they are inefficient, and many doctors are temperamentally unsuited for them. From my experience, I would say that perhaps half of our physicians should not be involved with community health centres. However, that is a personal thing.
In this discussion on reducing health care costs it seems rather incongruous that the government has reduced the portion it is spending on research by something like $5 million when we consider that we have an $8 billion-I saw that figure the other day-health budget. To my way of thinking, this is a poor method of saving money. Unless governments fund medicine, there are not many other ways to fund it. If we did not have the sort of national health scheme we have, no doubt this circumstance would still be with us. Having got what we have, however, the government of the day must provide the vast bulk of the money necessary for health research. Of course, the Cancer Society and the Heart Foundation have collected the millions of dollars across the country, but these are special cases. These two funds have a certain appeal as many people lose relatives from these afflictions.
It seems unfortunate that the minister chose this method of reducing health care costs, as it is a very difficult exercise. In hospitals, the first thing that the management wants to reduce is the drugs even though they amount only to about 2 per cent of the total budget. When you consider that other than surgery and care, drugs are the most important part of getting a patient well in any hospital, to be penny wise is to be pound foolish when it comes to drugs. But this is a feature of the modern line of thought on health care.

This bill is really superfluous now that there has been the federal-provincial conference which took place a couple of days ago when the super-parliament of Canada met; that is, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the ten provincial premiers. I doubt whether Canada can survive as a democracy in a federal system if so much of the decision-making process is to go on behind closed doors when matters of great public importance are debated.
The provisions of this bill are only one small item on the agenda of the federal scheme. While we have days to discuss the proposal in this House, the federal-provincial conference had only a couple of hours. The public and the elected members of this House still do not know what they discussed. The item referred to as the established program financing proposals-EPFP-will go a long way significantly to alter the financial structure of confederation. I am not entirely against the proposal of the Prime Minister that the provinces should now take over and administer hospital insurance and medicare, even if some inequality should exist in the provinces. There are inequalities within the present system, and I do not believe there would be many more. There would be absolutely no point in doing this if there were a de facto redistribution of constitutional power which would permit the federal government to leave the health field and move squarely into the provincial field of education, as they seem to indicate they might.
We ask what the federal government and the Prime Minister are up to. Are they trying to get out of paying for federal-provincial programs such as hospital insurance and medicare and attempting to transfer these dollars to education? The proposals to give the provinces certain tax points by which the federal government would reduce its level of income tax while enabling the provinces to raise their tax, is without meaning until it is spelled out in actual dollars and until the effect it will have on the provisions of this bill is shown.
There has been a great deal of talk about per capita grants. I have always held that it would be better, in relation to shared-cost programs, to have a system of unconditional grants which would take provincial needs into account. I realize the very great difficulty in arriving at a formula which reflects the financial structure of each province, but presumably this new system of per capita grants to the provinces would be permitted to grow with the gross national product or some other escalator.
Will this formula provide a reasonable basis on which the provinces can plan and pay for medicare and hospital insurance that will give the citizens a reasonable standard of care and with, I think one might add, some uniformity across the country? There are differences in the medical care provided in different parts of this country, which cannot be ruled out. There is no doubt that people who live in large cities have a higher level of medical care available than those who live in the country. On the other hand, people who live in the country are not so likely to be run over by motor vehicles.
I can understand why the federal government wants to get out of paying half the cost of provincially administered programs when it can neither control nor accurately predict the cost. There are, obviously, several problems. In a general way, the richer provinces like the idea of extra tax points. At least, that is my view of what came out of the
June 17, 1976

federal-provincial conference and what was voiced by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands. He had a great deal of experience with this subject in his time as premier of Saskatchewan, because those were relatively hard days, although that province has now come up to the standard of the others.
There will still be problems with the poorer provinces, with their smaller tax base, being unsure that they will be able to cope with their obligations to their citizens. There will be the problem of maintaining national standards in the health care field, because under the federal proposal the tax points and per capita grants would be integrated with the actual cost of health services. As the provinces can spend the money they receive in any way they choose, almost certainly this will create some deviation in the standard of health care across the country. I do not necessarily believe this is an insurmountable problem.
In the way we measure health care, I believe there would be certain changes, but I have never been too sure that the standards we apply to health care are the best. For instance, we have hospital accreditation which, in essence, means that a group of super-civil servants go around the country looking at hospitals. The things they measure seem, to me, to reflect very little of the standard of care in any particular hospital. Teaching hospitals are rated by the American Medical Association or a branch of it which is involved in rating all hospitals on the North American continent.
Wrapped up in the proposals of the Prime Minister and their relationship to medicare financing and hospital insurance financing in relationship to this bill is the question of whether the federal government wants to get out of the funding of health costs in order that it can make a significant attack on the pattern of education in post-secondary schools across Canada. Will money that is allocated to health services such as contained in the provisions of this bill now be used for post-secondary education or in some other way such as language training or the promotion of Canadian studies?
Obviously, the government intends to introduce considerable educational content. This is typified by what came out of the federal-provincial conference a couple of days ago. There are major problems of how to relate the Prime Minister's proposals to the clauses in this bill. As I said, to me the bill seems to be quite superfluous to what we are now discussing. Here we are talking about a ceiling on hospital insurance, but in his proposals to the first ministers the Prime Minister gave no indication of how much money the federal government is talking about.
How many tax points are to be transferred? How large will the per capita grants be? With the Prime Minister failing to commit himself and making it virtually impossible for the provinces to assess the plan, it seems the height of ridiculousness when a federal official maintains that things will go much better if we can agree to the proposals first and then put the arithmetic on the proposals. Presumably, it is the federal government's idea of equality with the provinces, like the horse and the rabbit, even for the large provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
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The Prime Minister in his opening statement said: "We care about democracy which entails the formation of an active and informed citizenry". When the provinces are not even informed of the arithmetic of the proposals, how can the citizenry be informed, when conferences are held behind closed doors and the government will not even reveal its figures?
The impact of this bill has been superseded by this first ministers' conference which was supposed to come up with new arrangements for the financing of health care in Canada. Indeed, the necessity of the conference began with this bill and the unilateral action to put limits on federal contributions and change the terms as legally as possible. This bill smacks uncomfortably of rule-changing in the middle of the game, a game which, incidentally, Ottawa levered most of the provinces into in the first place.
I recall in 1969 when the province of Manitoba desperately tried to introduce and modify the federal plan in order to introduce some things that would have put a brake on spending and given more flexibility to the plan. The federal government was adamant; it was "all or nothing." The minister of health for Ontario, Mr. Miller, said what the Prime Minister had done was the most infamous action since the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
This bill has set the stage for the opting out of all provinces from the shared-cost program. It certainly is interesting to see the reaction of the provinces when faced with this. The proposition that the Prime Minister put forward to the conference, and which is embodied in this bill-"it is not the money, it is the principle"-did not turn out to be a very satisfactory one for the first ministers' conference on dominion-provincial fiscal arrangements.
Quebec, which had taken its tax points and which had perhaps foreseen that the federal government would opt out of the arrangements that the Pearson administration had set up, could have afforded to take the view that it could face the issue with equanimity. There was no answer to questions such as, "What proportion of the transfer will be in tax points?" or, "What will the equalization basis be and what proportion will be in cash?" The province of Quebec talked about the principle of keeping the federal finger out of the education pie. The maritimes obviously talked about the formula being deleterious for the poorer provinces, while Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia talked about the principle being good for richer provinces, and they all joined in the chorus of the federal government's reneging on earlier revenue guarantees.
There was even the odd one who had some thoughts about principle, that is, whether or not Ottawa, by backing out of fiscal and administrative responsibility, would be weakening the Canadian capacity to have national social standards in the national economic interest. As this bill indicates, the opting out formula which Quebec had from the very beginning is obviously the one that all provinces should have. The opting out formula that was to recognize Quebec's special status as the homeland of the French Canadian community seems now to be extended to other provinces as well.
We have to recognize that even in the opting out formula, which is essentially what the government has proposed, there will be more autonomy in different regions and provinces. This will create new standards and new
14628

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difficulties. It may well be a more divisive force in the country than we see at the present time.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Deputy Speaker:: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Frontenac-Lennox and Addington (Mr.	Alkenbrack)-Industry-Textiles-Request	for
tabling of report of Clothing and Textile Board on polyester yarn; the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre (Mr. McKenzie)-Labour Conditions-Possibility of lockout of Air Canada finance branch employees-Government action; the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock (Mr. Fries-en)-Canadian Broadcasting Corporation-Regional producers' request for investigation-Government action.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Lalonde that Bill C-68, to amend the Medical Care Act, be read the third time and do pass.
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to say a few words on the bill before us. It is perhaps largely because of my Saskatchewan background that I am concerned about the situation with regard to the medical profession in this country, hospitals, medicare and the like. When the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) was premier of my province, he and his government introduced the first hospitalization plan in the history of, not just Canada but North America. That was quite a feat for a very small, at that time, rural province which did not have much of a base outside the grain and agricultural economy, an economy subject to the whims of not just the international grain situation but the weather at home, an economy which was then in the stages of being developed. That was done without the aid of federal financing. It was done without the support of the federal government. I believe that was in 1946.
That was followed by the introduction in Saskatchewan of medicare in the early sixties. Again, it was a first in the history of, not only Canada but North America. I remember that time very well. I was still in high school when medicare was brought in. There was a vicious fight

in my province because of the strike of the medical profession in Saskatchewan. They were calling it state medicine, socialist medicine, an infringement upon the freedom of doctors, an infringement upon the freedom of an individual to see his doctor, and so on. That was a battle that was hard fought. It was a battle that was won. From there we have seen the growth of medical services and facilities all across this country.
A few years ago the federal government took the position of supporting hospitalization and medicare by doing a lot of the funding of these programs all across this country. There was a federal Liberal government which I thought was moving in a very progressive direction, putting more and more funds into what in fact in the most important thing in life, the health of Canadians. They were moving in a very progressive direction, getting more and more involved and participating more. Then all of a sudden we have this bill brought before us today for third and final reading, a bill which I am convinced, if it passes third reading, will allow the government to withdraw more and more from the financing of hospitalization and medicare in this country. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that if this were allowed to happen it would be a highly retrograde step, something which should not take place if we think of the future of Canadians and generations to come. Should the bill pass through the House it will result in great hardship falling on many Canadians, particularly those in the have-not provinces.
Back in 1968 the government said a great deal about regional disparities. It talked about a "Just Society . It is readily seen that a large part of a just society is making sure that medical plans and medical facilities are available to any Canadian no matter where he or she may live; that there is equal access to those facilities, regardless of the income or background of that person. It this bill goes through and if the federal government withdraws from some of the commitments it has made in terms of financing medicine across the country, the time will shortly come when many of the provinces-the Atlantic provinces, for example, which are much worse off than most of the rest of Canada-will be obliged to lower their standards of care and treatment. I think of the Atlantic provinces not being able to expand their medical facilities, not being able to purchase as much of the new and modern equipment, and therefore being able to offer only a lower standard of medical services and facilities to their people. I do not think that is fair, Mr. Speaker. The federal government should be involved in medical care throughout this country if there is to be uniformity of service in all parts of Canada.
As the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Ritchie) said, it may be very attractive for some of the wealthier provinces like Ontario, Alberta and perhaps, British Columbia, to have additional taxation points when it comes to funding things like medicare, hospitals, etc., but it is not so attractive to poor provinces like Newfoundland, because the taxation base they have is so much smaller than that in the province of Ontario or British Columbia or Alberta. If the federal government withdraws, we shall see a pattern of diminishing services occurring in those poorer provinces.
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We shall likely see in the not too distant future, the imposition of deterrent fees, utilization fees or user fees- whatever name you wish to use-in the provinces as one of the ways to help pay for medical facilities. In Saskatchewan we have the experience of deterrent fees. I remember very well a Liberal government in my province, back in the late sixties, imposing what it called a deterrent fee. If you went to a doctor's office you had to pay something like $2.50 per visit, regardless of the reason for your visit. When entering hospital you had to pay a utilization fee, no matter how long your stay or for what reason you entered the hospital. I do not think that is fair because these fees are nothing short of an extra tax upon those who are sick. I believe medical services and the availability of medical facilities must be universal regardless of where Canadians live.
If you are in Alberta, where they have all the oil money, or in the province of Ontario, with its wealthy industrial base, there would not be any need for a government with any social conscience to impose a deterrent fee of any kind. They could probably expand in the area of hospital care. But really, what choice is open to Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia or Prince Edward Island? Indeed the same thing applies if you are in Saskatchewan or Manitoba and the farm economy happens to go into a downhill slide, as it did back in 1969-70 and you lose the potential taxation base.
It is true things are good right now in Saskatchewan. They are good in Manitoba. But that is because we now get a higher price for the grain we are selling on the international market. The hon. member for Saskatoon-Biggar (Mr. Hnatyshyn) knows that. He is just taking his seat. He recalls the policies of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang) who is responsible for the Wheat Board. Back a few years ago we got just $1.97 for our grain. I am sure he remembers that. The minister was paying people not to grow wheat. The economy of the prairies was in bad, bad shape. And at that time had the federal government withdrawn financing from hospitals, medicare, and so on, we would have had no choice in our province but to increase drastically the taxation of the people of Saskatchewan or cut back on the services and facilities available.
I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that the cycle in agriculture which has been evident throughout man's history is probably going to continue. The time could well come when we would not have the base in the province of Saskatchewan or in Manitoba to finance the facilities which we enjoy today and this in spite of the fact that we are expanding, that we do have excellent governments, and that our provinces are diversifying their economies.
Another point I would like to mention, is that the federal government should be getting more involved in all aspects of medicine, not just in terms of what we are doing today, but in the future. We should be putting a great deal more emphasis on preventive medicine-finding out why people go to hospitals and helping before they get ill.
About a year ago the Food Prices Review Board commissioned a study on nutrition in Canada. One of the results published in that report-something which really astounded me-was that occupancy of about 40 per cent of the hospital beds in this country may be linked to improper or inadequate nutrition amongst Canadians. I believe it was
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also said that if you were to eliminate this cause of ill-health you would probably save about $2 billion in one year in hospitalization costs alone. If we had a proper food policy in this country we would not only improve the health of Canadians but we could bring down the cost of medicare and hospitalization in a very real way. Why do we not institute innovative programs to teach our citizens about good nutrition?
The same report said that about 70 per cent of old age pensioners in this country were suffering from calcium deficiency. Despite that, farmers have been told to cut back on their production of milk-that we have too much milk and production must be cut back by 16 or 18 per cent. They are told to suffer a drop in income. There is calcium in milk and there are people suffering from calcium deficiency. It would be possible to organize a school milk program; we could place a subsidy of fluid milk, and on milk products in order that people might buy more, be healthier, and eat more nutritious foods. This would be a beneficial, long-term investment, strictly in dollars and cents terms, let alone what it would mean in terms of people, of human beings who live in our country.
I visit schools. I believe the hon. member for Edmonton Centre (Mr. Paproski) does this once in a while. I went to a school last week in his riding. I see in the schools coke machines and pop machines, and kids drinking the Coke and the Pepsi, but I do not see many milk machines in the schools, Mr. Speaker. I ask why, when we in this country produce a surplus of milk, we do not have a school milk program through which students can have milk every day in the schools, free of charge?


An hon. Member:: Why not ask your provincial government about that?


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: All the provinces should become involved in this program to provide the young people with milk, if not free, then at reasonable prices.


An hon. Member:: Nova Scotia is doing it.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I commend them on their action. I believe all provincial governments should follow their example. But a lot could be done by the federal government. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) was asked about a school milk program a week or so ago. He said he would ask the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) to look into the matter. I would like to see the minister take the lead in this field by calling the provincial governments together and saying, "Look, we are willing to help you finance a school milk program in a serious way." I do not know exactly how it would be set up. Perhaps it would be on a 50-50 basis. Perhaps it would be on a 60-40 basis. Maybe the federal government could supply the milk and the provinces could set up a delivery system.
We have the capacity to produce milk in this country yet we are asking people to cut back the production of milk when there are people who are suffering as a result of an inadequate diet. People around the world are starving, yet the government tells farmers not to produce more milk. It is no wonder that they come to Ottawa and throw cheese and powdered milk at the Minister of Agriculture. When farmers can produce food it is immoral to tell them not to do so. This milk could be used in our own schools, rather

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than have our children drink coke and other liquids that are not nearly so nutritious as milk.
Another matter that I think the government should treat much more seriously is additional money for medical research. As a result of research we may find cures for a lot of diseases that are presently plaguing Canadians. I talk not only of finding a cure for cancer and heart disease but of a number of other diseases afflicting Canadians. I think of people in my own family suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. These people have to go through life taking painkillers because no medicine has yet been discovered to cure diseases of that kind. Yet the government is cutting back on money that should be spent on medical research, and I think that that is a crime and a shame.
I realize that we need restraint in various parts of the economy, but surely to God there are certain areas of the economy that should not be controlled, and I suggest one of them is medical research. I hope that the majority of the members of this House feel the same way.
It seems to me that all too often things are not done unless it is profitable to do them. Let me give one example of research that is being done in the food industry. In the United States they found out that a lot of the protein in chicken food went into the feathers. So a few guys had the bright idea of breeding, through genetic engineering, a featherless chicken, and then the protein, instead of going into the feathers, would go into the chicken and you would make more money with fewer chickens. A featherless chicken has in fact been bred in the United States, but unfortunately it suffered from a number of side-effects such as pneumonia, nervous conditions, and probably sunburn. My point is that you do not do this kind of thing unless it is profitable.
They have also discovered that when people buy chicken, whether Kentucky fried chicken or other kinds, they prefer the drumsticks, and they are now in the process of trying to breed a chicken that has four legs-the fourlegged chicken. You do not do that unless it is profitable.


An hon. Member:: Are they right wing or left wing?


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I prefer the left wing. Maybe you prefer the right. Anyway, restraint program or no restraint program, the government should be putting more money into medical research so that we can help people in a serious way.
Before I take my seat let me say we should be more concerned about uniformity of health plans and programs. You will not get uniformity if the government begins to pull out of some of its commitments. You cannot get equity or equality in this way. As a socialist I believe that it is not enough in this country to talk about equality of opportunity, about laws, peace and understanding, as the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) does. I think what we have to talk about is equality of conditions for all Canadians, regardless of where they live or what their backgrounds may be, be they in oil rich Alberta or in a province like Newfoundland.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Or in the potash rich province of Saskatchewan.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: You can only redistribute wealth at the national level, by using national plans. I know some of my Tory friends are not socialists, not even the red Tory from Edmonton Centre. However, I know that a red Tory like him must have a heart when it comes to some of the poor people of the Atlantic provinces. I am sure he would not mind sharing just a small portion of that oil money, perhaps just one or two per cent, in order to help finance better medicine and hospital care for those poor Canadians living under a Conservative government in Newfoundland.
In the world today we are polluting the atmosphere, spewing out 100,000 tons of DDT each year. Every one of us has DDT in our body fat. Carbon dioxide is being spewed out at the rate of 20 billion tons a year, and nuclear reactors are emitting waste materials, with unforeseen results on generations to come. We have polluted our waters with mercury. We do not know what effect some of these pollutants will have on the human body. For that reason, Mr. Speaker, we should put a lot more money into medical research to help generations to come, and so I plead with the government to reconsider the bill before the House. I ask the government to remember that it has a heavy responsibility to finance medicine and hospital care. It is only through leadership shown by the government that all Canadians in all provinces will have equality of conditions.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. I suggest to all hon. members that, if they are going to speak, they get back to the subject of Bill C-68 instead of wandering all over the field. The hon. member for Pembina (Mr. Elzinga).


Mr. Peter Elzinga (Pembina):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether I am forewarned or what the situation is, but before I get to the meat of my remarks I should like to share with the House a few observations that I have made during the course of my brief stay here of two years. It has not been prevalent in this debate because I think hon. members have treated the subject matter very responsibly, but when I go back to the debate on the motion moved on our opposition day which condemned the government for its failure to act in regard to medical research, all members on all sides of the House were guilty of playing politics. We saw hon. members opposite condemning the Conservatives when our critic had to go to the graduation ceremonies of his daughter; and we saw members on this side condemning the government when, for legitimate reasons, the minister and his parliamentary secretary had to be absent from the House. However, in all fairness it should be pointed out that the minister's capable parliamentary secretary has been here for the majority of this debate.
If one also goes back to the budget debate one can see the cross-play that took place. The hon. member for Davenport (Mr. Caccia) spent pratically all his time criticizing what our critic, the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens), said in his participation in the budget debate. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) devoted half his speech to criticizing the proposals that we had put forward. I had always thought that this was the role of the opposition. It may be that the Prime Minister is indulging in the role of the opposition because he is preparing himself for that role in the future.

June 17, 1976

The bill before the House proposes to limit government spending on health care costs. The only way that we can realistically hope to accomplish a cutback in this area is to be realistic about our expenditures on medical research. The hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) did an excellent job of conveying that to the House. I also have a few thoughts that I wish to share in that particular area.
On May 28 the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs was told a story, a horror story, and unfortunately it is a true story. It is called "The Slaughter in Tunney's Pasture, 1976" and it was told by Dr. Kaplan, chairman of the Canadian Federation of Biological Societies. The slaughter is brought about by the amputation of an anticipated $5 million from the federal budget for the Medical Research Council, leaving it slightly over $50 million. In terms of real dollars this means a cutback of 15 to 20 per cent. There is a slaughter of time and talent. As one medical researcher puts it, "I face the possibility of having to give up my major endeavour of the last eight years. I cannot help but feel personal bitterness at such a prospect". And I, Mr. Speaker, can well understand his bitterness.
It is not just the doctors who are going to be adversely affected by these restrictions, but their technical and support staff as well. It sometimes takes as long as ten years to build up a cohesive team of technicians and doctors and to assemble equipment. If a grant is cut off after a viable working situation exists and then has to be dissipated, how many years are actually wasted? What happens to the personnel and the equipment involved? How can we evaluate the slaughter of hope, the hope that is to be denied many, many people who are afflicted with debilitating diseases for which there are presently no cures? There are no statistics to enumerate the chronically ill or to indicate the degree of suffering which they must endure.
How many Canadians will have to die prematurely from heart disease and cancer, our two major health adversaries, while we withhold medical research funds that could and should be used to push on with research which has been under way in these areas, or to establish new programs to study their cause and cure?
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) tells us that there is no brain drain, that 101 doctors have come from the U.S. to Canada while only 60 have gone the reverse route. Does the minister not take into account those 353 young Canadians who are now working in research fields in the United States and who hold foreign medical visas? That figure was given to me today by the director of special programs in the United States.
The frustration in the ranks of the medical research fraternity is immeasurable. The agony of the "on-again off-again" programming instils such a sense of insecurity that many of our top notch research doctors are simply giving up their hopes of being able to continue their work in Canada and are leaving the country. Submission after submission from medical doctors engaged in conducting research in our universities has indicated that they will not be staying in Canada. We are heading for the second age of the brain drain in Canada. Surely it is a national
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disgrace that young men and women, graduates of our own schools, are forced to anchor their careers south of the border.
If the government continues to take the shortsighted view that medical research is a frill, a large number of young scientists will have no choice but to stay in the United States, or to leave Canada because of the lack of opportunity to use their highly qualified skills here. Given the current government attitude, Canadian universities cannot continue training and graduating research scientists if there is no future for them in this country. In Canada it is necessary to work out of the universities because there is no central medical research establishment such as exists in many other countries.
We are making involuntary exiles of some of our most promising and responsible citizens of the future. Can we afford this drain on our society? Can we afford to lose the $100,000 it has cost to educate each and every one of these doctors who will not be remaining in or returning to Canada?
What are the priorities of the government? A few days ago representatives of the federal government were sitting down with the provincial premiers. This government announced to them that it wished to cut back on health care. The government has already cut back on health research. I ask you what kind of reasoning this is, because without research to solve some of our medical mysteries how will we ever be able to reduce the cost of health care?
With the spiralling costs of hospital and health care institutions, who can say what a dollar spent today in finding cures will save in ten years? I think a new adage can be coined; we are no longer penny wise and pound foolish, but in this instance we are millions wise and billions foolish. Who can say that billions of future dollars could be saved by present research investment? Who knows what suffering and premature death could be saved by that same investment? When the government speaks about the cost benefit of research, how can it be measured in terms of health and the very lives of people?
In multiple sclerosis alone $200 million is spent each year in caring for victims of this crippling disease and less than $1 million is spent in searching for the cure. Science has proved that it is a virus causative illness, and the President of the MS Association told the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs that the basic research has been done. Now they are ready to move into the more expensive clinical phase but research money is drying up.
How can increases of 25 per cent or more to the Department of National Defence, the Public Service Commission, the Post Office, and the Canadian Radio Television Commission be justified while the Medical Research Council has not even received the 15 per cent increase the government indicated would be allowed for over-all government expenditures? When less than 1 per cent of the total National Health and Welfare budget is allocated to the Medical Research Council, and when its real dollar funding has actually declined by 8 per cent while other federal expenditures have increased by 105 per cent, that is pretty indicative of the status that is placed on explorative medicine.

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The federal government should not have to be convinced of the value of medical research when many of us can remember the time, not so long ago, when tuberculosis, polio, and diabetes were rampant killers. I ask whether the government is truly concerned about the health and wellbeing of Canadian people. If that is the case, then how can we in all conscience say that the emotional and physical health of the present and future population of Canada is only worth $50 million?
The Minister of National Health and Welfare has proposed that we spend $70 million on influenza vaccine during the next year. That is $20 million more than the whole Medical Research Council funds from the federal government. That is $20 million more than the government will put into research for every type of medical problem now being studied, while at the same time one outstanding doctor has had his application for a modest grant to continue his research curtailed. It is conceded that this doctor has achieved a breakthrough in the study of one of the bacteria that can cause meningitis, a disease which has reached epidemic proportions in some countries.


An hon. Member:: Oh, oh!


Peter Elzinga: Is the hon. member rising to make his maiden speech in the House?


Steve Eugene Paproski: Just let him speak, doctor. You have had your say, now let him have his.


Peter Elzinga: We do not mind the interventions.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Get back in your own seat if you want to talk.


Peter Elzinga: We do not mind the hon. member. It appears that he makes all his major speeches from his seat in the House of Commons.
Let us look at some of the areas the government seems to consider are worthy of vast expenditures of our tax dollars while cutting back on essential health services. The unoccupied housing in Halifax was deemed to be worth $214,000; there was the bill of $34,000 from Information Canada for miscellaneous little jobs; what about the $3.8 million which was wasted by the Department of Supply and Services for a computerized government payroll system that did not work and had to be abandoned? Then there was another little bill which cost $16 million for advance financing to the Lockheed Company, and this is a saga for which we may not have received the final price tag. We also have linguistic and artistic projects for one year at a cost to us of countless numbers of dollars, but a low estimate is several hundred millions. Just one example of waste, pure and simple, was the issuance of $197,000 in tobacco stamps in excess of what was actually needed, and over $39,000 in liquor bottle labels fell into the same category.
These are just a few examples of fiscal indiscretions, and it makes me wonder in reality where the government does have its priority. I am sure that the people of this country would give their health and happiness and the health and happiness of future generations their highest priority.


John Robert Holmes: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to make a few comments at third reading stage of this particular bill. Let me say at the outset I was extremely interested and really gratified to hear the minister state that the present situation in respect of federal-provincial negotiations is somewhat encouraging. I think he amplified that he is hopeful that those negotiations will come up with a new formula for cost sharing relationships with the provinces. I find this most encouraging, but on the other hand it seems to be somewhat inconsistent with the bill that was introduced.
I want to remind hon. members that, as I understood the purpose of the bill when it was introduced, it was in effect to limit the rate of increase in federal spending on medical care but that there was also the important addition that it was to allow for federal-provincial cost sharing on new alternatives with the development of less expensive health care delivery programs and services. As the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas) indicated somewhat earlier, and certainly I concur with this, one must be somewhat suspect concerning the degree of progress which has been made in this particular area. Having said that, I think one also should look the possibility that the minister may well have had an alternative purpose in introducing this particular legislation in view of the encouraging comments he made somewhat earlier, that is, perhaps it was a method to manipulate the provinces in terms of these negotiations.
May I simply say that if the minister is correct in respect of the facts he presented this afternoon, then in fact this entire piece of legislation is redundant. Indeed the particular negotiations which are going on at the present time, if they are as fruitful as the minister indicated, may be far more important than this particular legislation we have before us today.
I wish to make one or two references to the comments made by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands. If I may say so, certainly I am in agreement with the theme he developed about the importance of the universal concept of the medicare program. However, I think we must also recognize that there have been some inequities in the program. I think if one were to assess the program now-and the minister has the figures at his disposal-we would find that there is evidence to suggest that the very people we had hoped to reach through this type of program, principally those at the poverty level, have in fact not been reached by this program. So in fact in this universal program there are indeed inequities which exist. I think this is one area to which the minister must direct his attention. I refer to the fact that the great proportion of the medicare program, universal in concept, really has not reached that group of individuals, which was the intent of the program in the initial instance.
The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands talked about the importance of looking for alternative low-cost programs to replace our high cost programs. Certainly one can sympathize with this. I am sure there are ongoing discussions between the federal and provincial governments. However, I think it is important to bring one matter to the attention of this House, that is, that we must avoid what I call the add-on principle. Certainly if one is
June 17, 1976

replacing a high cost program with a low cost program then indeed one must show that these high cost facilities, this high cost technology, and these highcost projects are indeed replaced by the so-called low-cost type programs.
I think there is a trend from time to time-and I believe, Mr. Speaker, that all of us have seen evidence of this-in which we end up with an add-on principle. In principle it seems nice to have a low-cost program, but if in fact it does not replace the high cost program to which I referred then it has been a failure in terms of economics.
The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands referred to the minister's new health perspective for Canadians. I want to emphasize that I think this is an important part of the equation of the health care program in Canada. I think this is an area in which the federal government must and should give greater leadership. The hon. member has discussed several aspects in this regard. There are one or two things on which I want to enlarge in a moment in respect of which I think the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) can and should give leadership.
I also agree with the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowi-chan-The Islands when he referred to the problem of attempting to equate health care with economic factors. I would go one step further. I think there is a myth which exists which should be exploded, that is, that good health care can be equated with good health. I think this would be one of the advantages if the minister were prepared to take action along the general tenor of the philosophy that is outlined in the new health perspective.
I wish to make one comment regarding the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) who talked about the introduction of a medicare program in the province of Saskatchewan. I would simply say in passing to him, and I apologize for not remembering the year, that the Canadian Medical Association long before that program was introduced actually proposed a universal program of medicare for Canada which in fact was rejected by the federal government of that day. I am sure if the hon. member is interested I could give him all the details of the facts regarding that particular situation.
As I indicated somewhat earlier, I feel there is an important part of the equation which has been referred to previously in which I believe there should be very strong leadership at the federal level. I would like to refer to some of these areas. Perhaps in the first instance I might come back to what one might refer to as environmental health hazards and environmental health problems which are very numerous. The hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands referred to some of them.
I believe this House will recall, I think it was on May 7 this year, that there was a debate on mercury poisoning. This really in effect is a prototype of several types of environmental hazards which exist in Canada. Obviously, however, it has had a very devastating effect principally upon the native people in Canada, particularly the Crees in northwestern Quebec and the natives in northwestern Ontario. Let me simply emphasize that over and above the destruction we have seen within these native communities there is no question that the myth that Minamata disease does not exist has been eliminated. I am sure we are all aware that Dr. Barbeau of the Montreal Institute of
Medical Care Act
Neurology, who is well known both nationally and internationally, has demonstrated the presence of Minamata disease among the Cree people, and among two white people in that particular area. As I understand it, there is recent evidence to suggest that there are symptoms among the native people in the northwestern part of Ontario.
The member also mentioned the problem of radiation. Irrespective of my personal concerns about the growth of atomic energy, and particularly in terms of weaponry, I think we also must recognize that there is substantial evidence to point out that radiation itself is a hazard. We have had the recent situation, for example, at Port Hope and Uranium City. I think it must be made very clear that the federal Atomic Energy Board has not clearly established safeguards. We now have well documented evidence that radiation hazards are possible, and certainly do cause illnesses such as cancer, leukemia, and other disease entities. I do not know of one expert who will not say that there is a potential health hazard from the possible radiation effects of uranium. This is another area of course which requires additional research.
The problem of polychlorinated biphenyls, or pcb's, has received a great deal of attention lately, particularly in relation to the smelt in the Great Lakes system. We know that this particular substance is stored in the fatty tissues of individuals, indeed probably stays there for a long period of time, and perhaps indefinitely. We are well aware of the potential health hazards in this particular area.
One other rather interesting aspect is that of birth defects. I think that if one were to look very carefully at the Canadian context the two most common birth defects we see are related to spina bifida anencephalus. Spina bifida is the condition in which the neuro sheath is incompletely formed, and anencephalus implies the incomplete development of the brain. Let me say, without going into details, that it is important to know that there is now a substantial body of evidence to suggest that environmental health factors play a substantial role and are perhaps one of the most important causative factors in this regard.
Somewhat earlier mention was made of asbestos in connection with the pulmonary problems it causes. I should point out that it has not only been a problem in Ontario, but a recent judicial inquiry in the province of Quebec indicated very clearly that approximately 15,000 workers in that province are risking their health each day that they work in the mines. The problems of lead poisoning have been well documented in an excellent report prepared by the province of Ontario in recent months. Carbon monoxide, chlorine, smoke inhalation, various solvents, occupational hazards-all of these are problems which play a most important part in terms of environmental health hazards. There have been new findings with regard to health hazards encountered by polyvinyl workers. A rare form of cancer was recognized at the Goodrich plant in Kentucky. I would remind hon. members that there are now well documented cases of this disease entity in the Canadian context.
I could go on and talk about many other environmental health problems which, in my view, require a great deal of attention, but there are three points that should be made
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about environmental health hazards. First, when we talk about environmental health factors this implies that individual Canadians have no control over certain disease entities, and that there must be intervention on the part of the government. I suggest that in the national context leadership should come from the federal government, and a strong role in terms of our health care system implies a far greater involvement by the government in the entire area of environmental health hazards. As I indicated previously, in my view the federal government has the responsibility of demonstrating this leadership.
As indicated earlier, basic research is most important in the area of environmental health because, as has been alluded to, although we have many of the answers in this area, certainly there are many aspects of pollution and environmental implications with which we are not yet familiar.
Having mentioned the area of research perhaps I should make some comment on the direct relationship between the economics of health and the use of basic medical research, despite the fact that a debate was held two days ago on the importance of medical research, and the point was made by the hon. member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands.
Let me take a moment to compliment the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville on some of the remarks he made earlier, and the hon. member for Pembina (Mr. Elzinga) on the excellent speech he gave. I am sorry the Minister of National Health and Welfare was not here last Tuesday, but I know he had an excellent excuse for his absence. Perhaps I might make reference to one or two aspects of this subject which I think he would find interesting. I do this, Sir, because I believe that in terms of the total health care system one cannot divorce Bill C-68 from the most important component that was involved, that is, negotiations with a view to finding alternative forms of health care referred to by the minister in the past.
I would like to review briefly the types of technology in medical research because one must understand the importance of research and the part it plays in improving health care. There is an excellent article by Dr. Thomas Lewis from the University of Cornell in which he writes about technology being divided into three broad groups. The first group is the so-called non-technology. This is the type of technology which is most important, what we often refer to as supportive therapy, the sort of care that is used for cases of rheumatoid arthritis, osteo arthritis, cancer, etc. We must recognize that it requires a great deal of money, time, and effort by specialized personnel, whether they be physicians, nurses or paramedical people, and it requires a great deal of money for hospital care. Yet we must recognize that there is no definitive answer in terms of the actual disease mechanism. We do not have an understanding of the disease process.
The second group is referred to as the half-way technology. It is very significant in today's health care. We see it in connection with organ transplants, and the treatment of coronary heart disease in intensive care units. It involves sophisticated types of equipment and highly trained technical personnel. It is obvious that this type of technology is very expensive, and yet I must remind hon. members that it is only half-way technology, something that compen-

sates for the breakdown of a particular organ, something that is used to prolong the life of a patient. But again in these cases we do not have a complete understanding of the disease mechanism. I believe that the public and many members of this House do not fully understand this type of technology.
Every day when we pick up a newspaper we read about some new organ transplant which is interpreted as being a major breakthrough in research. Yet in many respects it is primitive in its approach, and although sophisticated technology is used there is an incomplete understanding of the disease entity.
Third, we have a type of technology which really goes unnoticed, the technology that introduced the antibiotics which in effect eradicated the very severe problem of infectious diseases which occurred in our hospitals many years ago. The other day I gave the example, which is probably worth repeating, of a case of typhoid fever. In terms of the treatment methodology that was used many years ago, a patient with a case of typhoid fever would probably be admitted to hospital for 50 to 60 days, would require intensive, highly skilled nursing care, and a careful monitoring of laboratory tests. The cost of that was astronomical. A conservative estimate would now be about $10,000 to $15,000 in today's terms. What are we talking about today? A case of typhoid fever is treated with a bottle of cloramphemical, with two or three days of fever, after which there is improvement. I would simply emphasize what my colleagues have said previously, that basic medical research has a very direct cost effect relationship over a period of time.
I want to congratulate the minister on the position he has taken with respect to motor vehicle accidents. It is a matter that has concerned me for many years. As the minister well knows, in recent years it has been the leading cause in terms of potential years of life lost in relation to other deaths. The latest figures I have show that back in 1971 there were 5,690 deaths from motor vehicle accidents, a great number of them in the younger age group. As I recall, 50 per cent were in the age group between 15 and 25. I do want to compliment the minister at least for taking some aggressive action regarding motor vehicle accidents, seat belts, speed, etc.
Another matter which might be looked into is that of alcohol and drug abuse. I am sorry that I cannot compliment the minister in this regard. I recognize that he has allowed some funds for-


Marc Lalonde: It won't be long.


John Robert Holmes: I am sure I can compliment him for at least a small degree of action with respect to native people, but when one recognizes that there are direct medical costs which exceed the total intake of provincial and federal taxes, which, as I understand, run very close to $1 billion per year, we must recognize that we have a very serious problem on our hands. I want to emphasize that this does not include the indirect costs for loss of work, loss of productivity, family break up, etc. I must remind the minister that, in my opinion, he has not scratched the surface,
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and a great deal must be done. This is another area which requires federal responsibility and federal leadership.
There is another matter I want to mention in passing. It is related to this whole subject, and I hope it has been discussed at federal-provincial meetings. It is the problem of drug misuse. I am somewhat appalled when I see the amount of drugs used by the average Canadian. From the recent figures I have, Canadians on the average use approximately one million tranquilizers per day. We have to consider the large number of accidental poisonings and overdoses of drugs which take place. The incidence of drug reactions is very high indeed.
There is a good deal of evidence to suggest that somewhere between 5 per cent and 10 per cent of admissions to hospital is really related to the problem of overdoses of drugs and reactions to drugs, and I should remind the minister that in this particular instance there is really a geometrical progression in terms of drugs. In other words, if a person takes two drugs, that does not produce twice the chance for a reaction. It really produces three or four times the probability of a reaction. Of course the more drugs one takes, the greater the propensity for this problem. The minister should be looking at drug misuse very carefully with the provinces, and if there is an area in which leadership at the federal level would fit into the philosophy the minister has described in his new health perspective, obviously this is it.
Another matter concerns me immensely because, in my opinion, the federal government has directed no appreciable attention to it. That is the whole area of mental health. From the limited information which has been obtained from the federal-provincial meetings, I understand that there have been some discussions about this, but I think it is worth while to take a moment to consider the magnitude of this problem. I would like to remind hon. members that approximately four out of every 1,000 Canadians occupy hospital beds because of mental illness at any particular time. I should also point out that there are one million children, or approximatley 5 per cent to 10 per cent of schoolchildren, who suffer from emotional or learning disorders.
I am sure hon. members who have been on school boards or who have been associated with schoolchildren will recognize the effects of dyslexia and learning disorders of all kinds. These youngsters really have the basic innate ability to do just as well as any youngster, and yet we have directed very little or almost no attention to this problem.
We should also recognize that approximately 50 per cent of the time of physicians is devoted to dealing with emotional problems. Here again we have no response from the federal government, and no help in this area. There are innumerable other statistics one could cite in this regard, but let me stress that the federal government has demonstrated no leadership with regard to mental health. That is left entirely to the provincial governments, and I urge the minister to recognize that this is an area which is national in scope. It is a problem which occurs in every province and every territory in Canada, and requires initiative on the part of the federal government and leadership from the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Our aging people were alluded to earlier, and their problems require leadership at the federal level. We must
Business of the House
recognize that we have a growing population ratio. I recall the present figure, something like 7 per cent of our population is over the age of 65, which represents about 1.7 million people. However, it is also projected that by the mid 1980's somewhere between 9 per cent and 10 per cent of the population will be above this age. If we look very carefully, we will see that a very high percentage of these people utilize hospital beds. The attitude toward these senior citizens is certainly not conducive to an over-all program of rehabilitation or to an over-all program of handling their particular problems. They have more than just medical problems per se, whether they be, for example, arthritic problems or genital urinary problems in females, or muscular problems which are more common in males. However, what we tend to ignore, and have not concentrated sufficient energy on are the psychological problems of senior citizens.
Far too many senior citizens are lonely, far too many are out of the mainstream of society, and far too many live at the poverty level because their incomes have not been adequately supplemented. Far too many live in isolation. A great deal could be done, not only at the community level- and there should be far more community involvement- but also at the provincial level. However, this is the type of problem which is national in scope and demands leadership from the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
Another important area in the delivery of health care is consumer involvement. I have been concerned for some time that in the evolution of our health care system there has been a great deal of misunderstanding with respect to the health care system. Some of this misunderstanding has led to irresponsible comments by many individuals, and the minister should give some consideration to the creation of an advisory council which would involve not only various professionals, but also consumers, who are the most important part of the program. Mr. Speaker, may I call it six o'clock?


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mitchell William Sharp: Mr. Speaker, the House leaders met this afternoon and have agreed, in accordance with the House order of May 20, to fix the time for recording the vote on second reading of Bill C-84 at 12.30 midday on Tuesday, June 22.
May I also indicate that tomorrow the first order of government business will be the report stage of Bill S-32, followed, if there is unanimous agreement, by third reading of that bill, and if by that time third reading of Bill C-68 has not been completed we will return to the debate which is now under way.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: It being six o'clock I do now leave the chair until 8 p.m. this day.
At 6.02 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
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[Stage Direction]
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[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Lalonde that Bill C-68, to amend the Medical Care Act, be read the third time and do pass.
John Robert Holmes: Mr. Speaker, when I called it six o'clock I had already developed two or three themes. I have indicated and attempted to describe in some detail the irrelevance of Bill C-68 in terms of the federal-provincial negotiations that are being conducted and have been conducted within the past two or three days. I was attempting to make some reference to the health perspective as introduced by the minister some time ago, particularly in the areas of environmental health, problems relating to the aged, mental health, and several other areas where I think the minister should be showing greater leadership and responsibility than he has demonstrated in the past.
Before terminating my remarks I want to deal again with the health perspective as presented by the minister. As I recall, he developed four categories, one of which was the so-called health organization or management system, environmental health matters, lifestyle health, and the area of biology, recognizing of course that the organizational health area is that traditional area of health that in the past historically, politically, and on a community basis has been a provincial responsibility. There were, of course, the other three areas which I alluded to earlier.
I want to turn now to the so-called organization health aspect which as I indicated is, in my view, and has been a provincial responsibility and to touch on two or three matters with which the minister should have some direct concern and input and should show greater leadership. One area is physician manpower requirements. If one were to assess the situation in Canada there are indications that the physician-patient ratio is adequate, but there is no question that there are inequities in various parts of Canada. For example, if one would look at the rural areas, particularly in the northern parts of Canada, he would find that frequently there are not enough physicians.
It is also important to look at the various types of specialties present in the Canadian context. One frequently finds that there may be an over-abundance of certain specialists. Surgery may fit into this category and yet there may be other areas where there is an urgent need; for example psychiatry, opthalmology, and dermatology are frequently bypassed.
Having said that, I believe there is an immediate need for high level negotiations between the federal and provincial counterparts to achieve certain objectives. It is very important that they should help to define these various health needs, some of which I alluded to a moment ago. It is important that they identify these manpower requirements in terms of geographic location. It would also be useful if they established specialist requirements in all of the areas of post graduate studies. This would be extremely important in giving more diversification across Canada.
[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner).]
It would also be useful to determine the appropriate numbers of specialists needed in the various segments of Canada, certainly in relation to population. They must find means to attempt to encourage physicians to practice in various parts of Canada. Again I refer to those areas such as northern Ontario where in the past there has been an absence of their presence. In this regard it is essential that they look very carefully and re-evaluate the medical schools in Canada to ensure we have the production capability to turn out students which are highly qualified in the Canadian context.
There is another area where the minister could play an extremely important role. I now speak in terms of computer technology. We know there have been rather unfortunate experiences in terms of records. In many instances hospital data is outdated. It is certainly not current in terms of what is happening in Canadian society.
Despite the fact that we had a nutrition survey in the past, we see very little data regarding the health status of Canadians. It is therefore difficult to know the extent of the health problems as they exist on a day to day basis.
It would be useful in this regard if the Minister of National Health and Welfare were to demonstrate some leadership and launch an effective program in this area with adequate help in order to assess the health of Canadians. We would then be far more informed in terms of developing future programs. I have no doubt that, with co-operation from the provinces, we could update and modernize this kind of technology which would give us this kind of information.
Finally I want to refer to what I call the regionalization of health care. We hear a good deal about regional variations regarding health care in Canada. There has certainly been some effort in the past to rationalize the delivery of health care in the various regions of Canada. I think of those so-called depressed or under-privileged areas of Canada. I should emphasize that in the past we on this side of the House have agreed in principle with the concept of community health centres.
In his negotiations with the provinces and in re-defining the new formula in terms of federal-provincial negotiations, the minister must ensure equitable standards across Canada. He must pay very close attention to such provinces as the mari times, and other so-called have- not provinces. In any formula it is absolutely essential that we ensure those provinces have the same standards and universality as the rest of Canada.
I wish to summarize by indicating that Bill C-68 is redundant in terms of the negotiations going on at the present time. Unfortunately it does not address itself to the comprehensive problems we see in the delivery of health care across Canada. I have attempted to allude to many of these problems for which I feel the minister has a direct responsibility and should be providing leadership. I certainly hope that he will take heed of the observations made by many members in this debate today.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, with your indulgence and with the co-operation of the hon. member, I wonder if I could address a brief question to him because he has expertise in this area.
June 17, 1976


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Will the hon. member for Lambton-Kent (Mr. Holmes) permit a question from the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom)?


John Robert Holmes: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I ask this question of the hon. member because of his background in the medical profession. He touched a bit on nutrition. Will he comment a bit further on that? The hon. member said we need some new programs. As a medical doctor, what kinds of programs does he feel should be looked at? What would be the cost of an adequate nutrition program? I ask this in light of the reference I made to the report last year of the Food Prices Review Board which stated that 40 per cent of hospital cases are possibly linked to the fact that we do not have adequate nutrition in this country. I would be interested in the hon. member's comments on that.


John Robert Holmes: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville has raised a very valid question. I will answer as briefly as I can by referring to the nutrition survey carried out in Canada. If one looks carefully at that survey one will see that it not only involves all provinces and territories, but special groups across Canada. For example, the nutritional standards of the native people of Canada are very bad. In urban areas where there is a great deal of poverty, the problem exists.
In response to the hon. member's question, the most important point at this time is that we should in a very scientific way identify these areas of individuals who need our attention immediately. Some have been identified. I refer, of course, to native people. I also refer to the urban areas in which there is poverty and where nutrition is poor.
This afternoon the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville referred to the nutritional problem as it relates to the youth of Canada. He made reference to the sorts of things that we see in some of the schools.
In answer to the hon. member's question, the most important thing at this time would be an educational program on the part of the government. Of course, there are certain areas which were alluded to earlier today in which direct government involvement in terms of subsidies and other programs would obviously be of value in resolving this particular problem.


Mr. Charles-Eugene Dionne (Kamouraska):: Mr. Speaker, I very much enjoy participating in this very important debate on health. There is often talk at federal-provincial conferences of readjustment of federal subsidies to the provinces, and in various areas, as was recently the case with respect to health.
In the Montreal La Presse dated June 16, 1976, Mr. Marcel Adam pointed out in very interesting comments summed up in an editorial the results of the attitude of the federal government which continued to drag the provinces into joint programs in the areas of health, social welfare and assistance to post-secondary education whose costs have increased in recent years because of inflationary tensions.
Medical Care Act
The circumstances are appropriate to quote an excerpt from that editorial as follows:
Committed to paying 50 per cent of the cost of those programs the federal government now finds the bill exorbitant, and decided to cut back its financial participation. It feels all the more justified in doing so that it is paying for programs it cannot control from an administrative point of view because they affect areas-health and education-of provincial jurisdiction. There is in that new federalism proposed by Mr. Trudeau something a little annoying because he is amending unilaterally under the law of the strongest the rules of a game that his partners accepted to play on the condition that both parties would respect them. Now that the federal government has exhausted the electoral viability of those joint programs he would like to shift on weaker shoulders a burden in which he does not see anything more than financial embarrassment and political inconvenience.
We all realize that the monetary problem comes into play here and becomes at certain moments a determining factor. It is readily seen that provincial health ministers are interested at the smell of federal dollars. On the other hand, the federal government faced with the problems of inflation and monetary instability is attempting to impose restraints. The results can be disadvantageous from several points of view.
Recently, in a document undoubtedly sent to every member of parliament, the chairman of the medical research group mentioned two specific points that I shall quote:
1.	Research is the sole practical solution to reduce the cost of the various medical services as it enables to develop treatments for diseases affecting thousands of people and costing the government more than $7 billion every year.
2.	The majority of our leading physicians and surgeons are attracted by teaching hospitals with active research programs mostly sponsored by the Medical Research Council. While it allows a general spending increase of about 16 per cent, the government did freeze the budget of the council at the previous year level. This action results in a significant reduction of activities at the medical research level. The greatest scientists have to go elsewhere to continue their research work. This action will have important effects on the quality of medical education throughout the country.
Following the announcement of Bill C-68 concerning the review of federal-provincial agreements in the hospital insurance field and the limitation of credits for the federal contribution to health insurance, the Quebec medical association submitted a brief where it mentioned on the last page, and I quote:
However, if Ottawa persists in its plan to reduce its contribution to health services without giving to the provinces an equivalent transfer of the taxation base we think that the provinces would be encouraged to impose a deterrent fee to medicare consumers or to use private insurance companies to insure the difference in the medicare costs that the federal does not seem in a position to support any more.
Health is a basic right for every citizen. In principle, this right has been recognized for many years; in practice, however, it was violated since medical treatments were available only to some people within society. Since then, the state has intervened. I am not in favour of public-controlled medical services. However, considering that a large percentage of the people were and still are assisted in one way or another by welfare agencies and that many workers have suffered from endless unemployment periods, considering further the inadequate wages of a number of heads of families, the state felt it necessary to direct this legislation in such a way as to enable everybody to enjoy a good health which present medical knowledge allow us to have.

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These are in short the reasons which contributed to the implementation of medicare plans. However, it has to be noted that no concensus was reached to determine what would be the best service: federal or provincial, comprehensive or partial, universal or restricted, compulsory or voluntary. And how many other things should be specified, how many other questions would have to get an answer, among which the following which is of vital importance: Who will pay? To whom? And how?
On several occasions, during the debates which led to the implementation of the present socializing medicare plans, we had submitted proposals which were probably not complicated enough to deserve the attention of the politicians of the time, or too realistic according to their usual idea of administrative difficulties which arise from the different plans in effect. We had suggested that the state might contribute through an assistance at the level of insurance premiums which would have enabled every citizen or group of citizens to select the medicare policy which would suit them best. Based on the Social Credit Party's proposals, the medicare plan would have been more easily implemented, more comprehensive and less costly, while securing everybody's safety with no obligations to all parties concerned. Unhappily, the government opted for a medicare plan prepared by bureaucrats who have complicated things.
Following a lengthy period of hesitation when it was sometimes difficult to determine whether we had a sickness medical care insurance or the sickness of insurance, we finally contracted the sickness of socializing insurance. We all agree on the common objective: access for everyone to every form of medical care. However we realized that a number of difficulties had risen when time came to determine the conditions to be applied.
I want to point out in passing that the health care plans have contributed precious little towards training more physicians, even though people are complaining of a lack of physicians. To remedy this situation, two solutions presented themselves; either train more physicians or allow other persons to take part in dispensing some medical treatments and relieve the physicians from a number of chores. The medical profession has not taken up any of these solutions with regard to the possible cooperation of other professions. We all know the attitude physicians are taking faced with chiropractors, optometrists and even pharmacists.
Health is priceless. So is the service that restores it. Yet most doctors manage to use that imponderable to their advantage. In the newspaper La Presse dated April 18, 1966, a journalist quotes the testimony given by Dr. Benoit Deshaies at a seminar on proverty, and I quote:
Protected by some politicians and constituted into a real bourgeois and priviledged cast, oblivious to social ills, a minority of some 15 per cent of all doctors, whose income fluctuates between $75,000 and $100,000, rule as masters, at the expense of the population, on an empire: that of their profession and the medical organization.
Too often, qualified and willing students cannot have access to the courses that would allow them to complete their training as medical doctors. The number of candidates seems to be controlled by an organization that wishes to keep its monopoly in the field. If we add to that the

disastrous effects of extended strikes which finally penalize defenceless patients, we get a rather dark picture of the result of the various health insurance plans. Those urging undiscriminate change must recognize that too quick a conversion of methods has serious disadvantages.
I have here today's issue of La Presse, from which I quote a paragraph concerning hospital admission problems:
The President of the Council of Physicians, Dr. Paul Henri Royer, noted there were two very serious cases of heart trouble but only one can be cared for. So the younger was treated. We were thus faced with irrational choices.
This is what is happening. I also read in La Presse of July 30, 1975 an article titled:
Yesterday's and today's medicine.
That article was signed by Dr. Leo Ladouceur, who has this to write concerning today's medicine, and I quote:
Today's medicine is capable of extraordinary things that used to be unthinkable. It is in its every day practice that it has become inefficient, and even harmful.
Who is responsible for that state of affairs? The article gives the following answer:
The government, the patient and the physician. The government, by establishing free care for everybody. What was needed was free care for have-nots, leaving the majority of the people with the obligation to pay a small part of the cost of medical care. This would have prevented abuses, avoiding that physicians' offices be literally invaded by patients with either imaginary or benign sores. Under current conditions physicians do not have the time or enough of it to get interested in those who are really ill. There is no way to prevent clients from going from one physician to another to ensure that the first diagnosis was the right one, and the first prescription the right one, to prevent that imaginary patients besiege waiting rooms and examination rooms because the program is free. The physician, obsessed by the idea of making money and who hands out medicine like a dry good merchant. One patient every ten minutes, assembly line medicine, where symptoms are treated instead of illness. Diagnosis means an investigation, therefore questions and answers, an examination, X-rays, laboratory analyses and monitoring to correct your mistakes or confirm your forecasts. And the poor physician, not as consciencious or tired out, with clouded cerebral processes, makes out a prescription for drugs which are effective, but sometimes contradictory. This is what can come from good intentions and an, extraordinary level of science, which is nevertheless necessary.
In another paragraph entitled "Castonguette or Char-gex", he adds the following:
As much respect as I have for today's surgery and medicine, with its examination, diagnosis, excision and transplant methods, which bring back yesterday's surgeons to the exhalted barbers that they once were, today's medicine is too often practised in doctors' offices where patients pass through at rates that the Medicare Control Board would like to see increased and come out with hastily written but duly signed prescriptions for a series of drugs which are highly effective, sometimes contradictory and capable of bringing a dead man back to life or killing someone.
In view of the present results, of the application terms, of medicare plans, of the many formalities resulting from this bureaucratic system, of the total or partial paralysis of services due to multiple strikes in this area like elsewhere, it is rather difficult to foresee where this expensive and unstable system will lead us.
In closing, to illustrate certain events that can happen, I would like to quote a passage from an editorial of the CJRC station dated March 15, 1971, and entitled:
June 17, 1976



A TELLING STORY ABOUT HUMAN NATURE

[Stage Direction]
A good family man, when seeing that his sick daughter was not getting any better, desperately tried to have a doctor come to his home. Exasperated by the many refusals of the doctor who told him dryly to take his daughter, to wrap her in a blanket and to bring her to him, the father did as he was told even though the temperature was freezing cold.
A few days later, in the middle of the night and during a cold spell, the doctor's furnace broke down. He looked in the yellow pages to find a heating specialist. He finally reached one who, it happened, was the father of the sick girl of a while ago. Recognizing the voice of the doctor, the plumber-father paid his nighttime customer in his own coin, saying: Take your furnace, wrap it up in a blanket and bring it in to me.
Doubtless, the doctor concerned learned a good lesson. Several ailing persons have had to wait interminably before being hospitalized, and the application of health insurance plans complicated the situation. It would be a good idea to come back to good old common sense. That may be one of the virtues we lack most in our era of insecurity in various fields.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: The hon. member for Broadview.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. John Gilbert (Broadview):: Mr. Speaker, I hope I can meet expectations. When I spoke on second reading on February 24 the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) was not in the Chamber but his parliamentary secretary was here. The minister is not here at this moment but I am sure he will be, and I notice that his parliamentary secretary is coming into the House. I am also happy that the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Stol-lery) is present tonight because he may recall that when I spoke on February 24, 1976, I tried to dramatize the actions of the Ontario Conservative government in regard to the closing of hospitals. The hon. member will recall that they closed the Doctors Hospital, which I think is in his riding.
I am sure that he will get up this evening and attempt to do what I am hoping to do, namely, that if we could persuade the Ontario government to reopen Doctors Hospital, we will also be able to persuade the minister to take a second look at Bill C-68.


Jean-Jacques Blais: It was the courts which did that, not the government.


John Gilbert: The Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais) says it was the courts that did it. I would disagree completely with him. The courts may have made some input, but I am sure it was the persuasion of members like the hon. member for Spadina and the hon. member for Scarborough West (Mr. Martin) who have spoken out about the closing of hospitals across Ontario that had a direct effect on the Ontario minister of health. You will notice that the minister of health for Ontario swept across the province closing hospitals. This was followed by an onslaught of criticism because of the closing of the hospitals, the loss of employment, and the resulting decrease in medical health care. Then what happened? That minister of health had a heart attack.


An hon. Member:: Don't blame him for that.
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John Gilbert: None of us wants any person to have a heart attack, but I am sure that the minister of health for Ontario as a result of that heart attack had second thoughts with regard to closing of hospitals. I would not wish that the present Minister of National Health and Welfare should have a heart attack, but I hope he will have a change of heart with regard to Bill C-68. It is very important that he have that change.
This has been quite a week, Mr. Speaker. On Monday we had the premiers of the provinces meeting with the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) trying to work out problems with respect to equalization payments for health and education.
I am sure you will remember that on Tuesday we had a Progressive Conservative motion condemning the government for its funding of medical research. I asked at that time whether there was a doctor in the House. There were many doctors in the House, some of whom spoke on that subject. Many laymen also spoke, and most were very critical about the cutbacks in medical research grants across the country. They realize how important medical research grants are if we are to maintain a high standard of health across Canada. We now have, and it seems to be very timely, the third reading stage of Bill C-68 which deals with health and contributions by the federal government toward health costs incurred by the provinces.
We heard many speeches during second reading of this bill and we had many amendments at the report stage. Before this bill passes I am sure we will hear many speeches on third reading. As a result I hope the minister will have a change of heart and a change of attitude. In my February speech I said I always considered him a man of compassion, and a man of high intelligence who could carry some of his ideas in respect of social needs into legislation. However, I have been bitterly disappointed by the Minister of National Health and Welfare, and bitterly disappointed by his parliamentary secretary who has been unable to persuade the minister.
It is my hope that the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Marchand), who gave me such healthy applause at the beginning, is able to persuade his colleague in cabinet regarding the contents of Bill C-68. That minister was at the Habitat conference, and I shared some of my time there with him. He is a person who is concerned about human settlements. When we talked about human settlements we were talking about housing, about water, about health and the environment. We spoke about all these subjects at the conference. It was my hope that the Minister of the Environment, after meeting many of the delegates there, would have had a change in attitude and heart, and come back and impose the moral tone in the cabinet that Sister Theresa imposed at the conference in Vancouver.
One thing I like about the Minister of the Environment is that he is a man of very high moral fibre. The minister has been a representative of labour throughout his life. He made the decision to join the Liberal party, which I think was wrong, but he made it. He has had a certain input in some legislation, although it has not been much. I hope he will be able to change the attitude of the Minister of National Health and Welfare regarding this particular bill so that he can put legislation on the books of Canada that will be acceptable. I hope the Minister of the Environment will put legislation on the books in respect of the environ-

June 17, 1976
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ment and pure water. It is only men like the Minister of the Environment who can persuade other ministers. I have noticed some nodding applause from some of the ministers regarding my statement about the minister's strength, calibre, and intelligence. The Minister of National Health and Welfare is not here tonight, so I hope the Minister of the Environment will take the message to him that I hope to convey in the next 20 to 25 minutes regarding Bill C-68.
It is my belief that the Minister of the Environment is not fully aware of the contents of this bill. It is a complex piece of legislation and I wish to read some of its contents very slowly. Under the Medical Care Act the federal government contributes to provincial medical care insurance plans on the basis of 50 per cent of the per capita cost for the year of all new insured services provided under the provincial plan, multiplied by the average for the year of the number of insured persons in the province at the end of each month. That just indicates how complex the calculation is in respect of health care expenses experienced across the country.
This bill would also limit the increase in the federal contribution to the provinces. It imposes a maximum yearly percentage increase in contributions for 1976-77 of 14.5 per cent, for 1977-78 of 12 per cent, and for 1978-79 and thereafter of 10 per cent. These maximum increases include an amount of 1.5 per cent for the increase in the population of the provinces, and if a province grows in population by more than 1.5 per cent the minister has said the maximum increase would be adjusted upwards accordingly. He said that in a speech he made on September 15, 1975, in Montreal. That indicates how complex this medical care bill is, and it also indicates how slowly we must move in respect of making changes.
One of the best contributions I could make on third reading would be to impress upon the Minister of the Environment and the parliamentary secretary what has been set forth by the Canadian Association of University Teachers at the conference held on Monday and Tuesday. When the first ministers discussed health and education the Canadian Association of University Teachers issued a statement in which it was suggested that, before any changes are made regarding equalization payments for post-secondary education, there should be a royal commission established to study the problems of education across the country. This association said this was necessary to establish national standards of education and to maintain the high quality of education in this country.
I was rather proud that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) moved a motion under Standing Order 43 asking the House for unanimous consent regarding a recommendation of the Canadian Association of University Teachers that a royal commission be set up to study education before any changes are made to equalization payments. Perhaps we could apply that type of recommendation to health costs so that before any change is made in equalization payments there would be a royal commission set up to study health costs across this country. Surely that is a reasonable request by a reasonable person to reasonable people. I am sure the ministers would accept that proposition.
Why do I say that? You will remember that back in 1958 when the hospitalization bill was passed this gave all the

provinces the right to contribute or to participate in contributions regarding national health care costs. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, that there was a loophole in that bill. Who closed that loophole? It was closed by the Conservative party. Not only that, but the Conservative party under the leadership of the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker) set up a royal commission on health under Mr. Justice Emmett Hall.
It was the Royal Commission on Health under Mr. Justice Hall which laid the foundation for the legislation on medicare which was set forth in 1968 by Mr. Pearson. We owe a great debt to Mr. Justice Hall in respect of the report of the health committee of 1960-61. At the present time we are now acting on another report of Mr. Justice Hall in respect of the railway unions. It looks as if we will have peace with regard to the railway unions across Canada as a result of the recommendations of Mr. Justice Hall. We have in Mr. Justice Hall a man who has studied the question of health in depth. Surely it behooves us to request Mr. Justice Hall to set up another commission to study health.
Why is there the need for a royal commission on health to be chaired by Mr. Justice Hall? The reason is plain. Only hospital and medical expenses are covered under the present Medical Care Act. This does not include paramedical expenses, pharmacare expenses, dentacare expenses, and the expense of medical appliances. At this stage it is the provinces which bear the cost in respect of paramedical services, pharmacare, dental care, and medical appliances. Surely the cost of $1.5 billion to all the provinces across the nation is an indication of the necessity that these things be included in a national hospital and medicare program. We need national standards. National standards have been established in respect of medical and hospital care. We need an expansion of this type of standard to include paramedical care, pharmacare, dental care, and medical appliances.
Let me turn for a moment to the question of paramedical care. Perhaps I might mention the Habitat Conference. At that conference many films were shown. There was a film shown by the Republic of China. It was called "The Barefoot Doctors in China". For 15 minutes the film set forth the excellent work the barefoot doctors in China are doing in meeting some of the needs that can be met by paramedics across the country. The average doctor will tell you that a great deal of his time is spent doing things that nurses and paramedic people could do just as well and just as efficiently.
That film, "The Barefoot Doctors in China", indicated the type of work that is being done. These people conduct preliminary examinations; they prepare certain drugs from herbs and give out medicines to the people. They also keep records. Some of them give acupuncture treatments. This allows the regular doctors to perform some of the more necessary functions. In China these paramedics are trained in one and one-half to two years. Surely in Canada we should have paramedics playing an important role in the field of national health care.
We talk about national standards. National standards are required in relation to pharmacare. It is only some of the
June 17, 1976

NDP governments across the country which have provided pharmacare as part of their medicare program.
Perhaps I might relate a personal experience in respect of dental care. I have three children. They all required immediate orthodontal care. I had to pay $900 for each child. I am able to afford the $900 for each of my children. I was happy that their teeth were straightened out. This gave them confidence and a better appearance. However, there are many people across this country who cannot obtain orthodontal care. Therefore it is necessary to establish dental care and pharmacare as part of our national standard in respect of our health and medicare programs.
I notice that the Minister of National Health and Welfare is now in his seat. I hope he will listen to this, because when we talk about national standards and compare provinces like Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia with some of the have-not provinces such as the maritimes and Newfoundland it becomes apparent how necessary it is that national standards be provided and that these services be available to people who do not have the money to buy them.
First it is necessary to determine what should be included in health care. Second, the question arises concerning who should bear the burden because at the moment in respect of health and medical care there is a sharing between the federal and provincial governments. I ask the minister to give some thought to this. I also ask the hon. member for Spadina to give some thought to this because I am sure he will be speaking on this subject. It may be that we need a national program with regard to medical and health care across the country in the same way we have a national pension plan and a national unemployment insurance plan.


An hon. Member:: And a national lottery.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: And the NDP.


John Gilbert: I will not comment. What do we have at the present? We have different premiums in Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Alberta-you name the province. It seems to me we should study the advisability of determining whether we should have a national medicare policy which would include national standards, which would include all the things I have spoken of, such as medical care, paramedical care, pharmacare, dental care, and medical appliances. Who should bear the burden? Should it be participatory between the people, the provinces, and the federal government? It seems to me it should. I do not believe our medical care and hospital care should be determined by the province in which we live. I think we should have national standards and national premiums. There should be a national program and there should be full availability of all health services to everybody.
My third reason for a royal commission is the persuasion aspect. At the beginning of my remarks I pointed out how able we were to persuade the Ontario government to change its attitude and methods concerning the closing of hospitals across the province of Ontario.
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One of the problems I have noticed about the Minister of National Health and Welfare, and I have observed him in pension debates, in family allowance debates, and in medical care debates, is that he does not listen. If you look at the bill as passed in committee and at the report stage you will find that he has not made one change of any substance to the bill. That tells the story. We know that he has moved from a position of compassion to a position of contempt, callousness, coldness-you name it. He has become a hardened, indifferent bureaucrat.
Perhaps I can persuade the minister. I will try to tell him that he has his priorities out of whack, out of kilter. Can you imagine the cabinet deciding-and I am glad the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson) is here because I will speak about a very important subject-that it should spend about $1.2 billion on 18 Orion aircraft when all we give for medical research is $50 million. It seems to me that if you are determining priorities you should put high on the list such issues as health, housing, unemployment. The best that they could do was to put the Orion on the top priority list. It was only because they could not get the necessary financing that the Orion deal did not go through.
Let me tell the minister about the second priority. Can you imagine a country like Canada spending $1.5 billion on the Olympics, which are only going to last for two weeks? Surely if we had our priorities in order we would have said that this $1.5 billion should go to health, housing, pensions, and medical research-things that affect people. What does the government do? It sponsors a national lottery to pay for the Olympics.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


John Gilbert: What is a national lottery? A national lottery is nothing more than a tax on the poor. It is the poor people who think they will win a substantial prize. The result is that they pay out $10 on a regular basis. This is taxation of the poor. I am not the least bit proud of actions in Manitoba with regard to lotteries, nor am I proud of the actions of the federal government with regard to the national lottery because I realize it is a tax on the poor. Men of reasonable and rational thinking, men who have any compassion, would realize that this is what it is. Surely there are other ways of getting money to pay for the necessities of the public.


Mr. Guay (St. Boniface):: That is not what Nystrom said.


John Gilbert: Have you seen the federal cabinet make any reduction with regard to corporate welfare grants that we make? Not one penny. In fact it has increased capital cost allowances. It has shortened the time with regard to depreciation. It did not touch depletion allowances.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, Oh!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. I suggest all hon. members take a look at Standing Order 12(3) which reads:
When a member is speaking, no member shall pass between him and the Chair, nor interrupt him, except to raise a point of order.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

June 17, 1976
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: I suggest that we all adhere to that rule.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In view of your suggestion may I remind the hon. member, or suggest to him that we are now debating Bill C-68 which has to do with the Medical Care Act, but he is discussing lotteries, and I am certain he will end up discussing farm bills before long.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: I suggest that we all get back to Bill C-68. We have been wandering again.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: I want to suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, in view of what the hon. member for Broadview (Mr. Gilbert) has been saying, that lotteries are not a tax on the people. People do not have to buy tickets if they do not want to do so. Lotteries are a voluntary expense that you can incur or not. It is not a tax.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: I suggest to the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Guay) that this is not a point of order but rather a point of debate.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Gilbert: Thank you for your protection, Mr. Speaker. I need it.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: The Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson) will not help.


John Gilbert: I tried to tell the Minister of National Health and Welfare how out of whack his priorities are, and I really had to dramatize it to persuade him because democracy depends on persuasion. I hope the minister realizes that, and I hope he has a change of heart and a change of mind.
Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, what the minister has done with regard to his response on medicare. He said that people will have to change their lifestyles.


Benno Friesen: They will have to give up heart disease.


John Gilbert: Yes, and they will have to give up cancer, and they will have to give up all the other attendant diseases. They will really have to change their lifestyles. He said it is up to the provinces to pass the seat belt legislation. This was his great contribution. Most of the provinces have passed the seat belt legislation. This is the minister's response to the health needs of the people. The minister said that we must have an educational program on alcohol, on cigarettes, on drugs. I could not agree more, but surely the very people who are affected by alcohol, drugs or cigarettes are those who need hospital and medical care, those who need pharmacare, and drug care. It is not an educational problem, it is a funding problem. There is a requirement for the establishment of national standards. It is a problem of expanding the programs and funding them. Therein lies the duty of the minister.
The minister also talked about air and water, and I saw the performance of the government with regard to water at the Habitat Conference. It was a pretty pitiful perform-
[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner).]
ance. In fact the government would not undertake to make any dollar commitment for clean water, not only for Canada but for the world. The government made no contribution whatsoever, and I am sure the Minister of the Environment was not the least bit happy about that, but that just indicates that perhaps the Minister of the Environment has his priorities out of order.
What has the government done with regard to clean air, mercury poisoning, lead poisoning, or asbestonosis?


Jean-Jacques Blais: Asbestosis.


John Gilbert: The Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Blais) really must feel ashamed of what his government has done for the people of the north, and more especially for the native people, with regard to mercury poisoning in fish. What has the government done? Not a thing.
What has the government done with regard to lung cancer? Nothing. What has it done with regard to lead poisoning? There is a plant in my riding which the minister says does not fall within federal jurisdiction but comes under provincial jurisdiction.
Mr. Speaker, it falls both within federal and provincial jurisdiction, and it imposes upon the minister the duty to expand health care, the duty to provide money, to help the native people of Canada and to help people who suffer from lung cancer and from different industrial diseases. I am rather ashamed of the minister for his pitiful performance.
Surely I have aroused the minister and persuaded him and his cabinet colleagues, the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of the Environment, to take a second look at our medicare legislation to determine what they are going to do. Surely it behooves the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of the Environment to accept my simple proposition that, before any change is made, a royal commission should be set up to study the expansion of services and to study the sharing of the burden of the costs. I have recommended Mr. Justice Emmett Hall, who has experience in the field, and surely that is a reasonable request.
I hope the minister and his fellow ministers will accept that reasonable and rational plea to stop the debate on this matter and to take that recommendation with regard to a royal commission on health, and the recommendation of the Canadian Association of University Teachers with regard to a royal commission on education, to the cabinet. I am hopeful, and I hope that hope is fulfilled.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker,-


An hon. Member:: Tell us about pensions.


Stanley Howard Knowles: had this matter for a full year is to suggest that the mills of parliament grind about as slowly as the mills of the gods.
I suggest that the time we have had this bill around indicates that it is a bad bill. Indeed there have been times when the government itself considered not proceeding with it, and whenever we have had a chance to debate it in the House, in committee, and now back in the House, we have done our best to persuade the government that the bill should not be proceeded with at all.
Lest my reference to Mr. Turner's announcement of June 23, 1975, suggests that we have been debating the bill all that time, I might put one or two other dates on the record. Bill C-68 was actually introduced and given first reading shortly after that. The date was July 8, 1975. However, the government in its shame about the bill did not seek to move second reading of it until January 28, 1976, so the actual debating of this bill in parliament spans just the last five months.
We have said on every occasion on which it has been possible to do so that in our view this is a bad piece of legislation. There were times when we thought that the government would decide that its anti-inflation program, for what it was worth, was good enough and that this bill did not need to be proceeded with, and there were other times when we thought we were persuading the government that the bill should be withdrawn, but here we are at third reading with the government still trying. However, as is obvious to the government, we are still trying to get across the message that this is legislation which ought not to be passed by the parliament of Canada.
I referred to Mr. Turner's announcement in his budget speech of June 23, 1975.


Mr. Stevens:: June 25.


Stanley Howard Knowles: No, June 23. I have it right here in front of me. The hon. member thinks it was on June 25. I can tell him that it was on June 25 that he made his speech.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: That's right.


Stanley Howard Knowles: But Mr. Turner introduced that budget on June 23. He announced not only the proposal to bring in this bill to amend the Medical Care Act, but he also gave the provinces of Canada a five year notice of the termination of the agreements under the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act.
It has taken us an exceedingly long time in this country to get legislation in the health and medical field, but I believe a good deal can be said about it in its favour. I think we have made tremendous progress, but what really disturbs me-and any hon. members who paid any attention to the speech I made on second reading will know what is in my mind-is that it was in 1919 that the great Liberals of that day first promised that something would be done about health insurance. It took us about half a century to get it out of the Liberals and, as I have already intimated, the kind of legislation we got from the Liberals, with a great deal of input from other parties, other persons and outside agencies, was not bad. The reason it was not bad was because of certain principles that were locked into the legislation, namely, universality and the attempt to
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structure it in such a way that Canadians would get the benefit of our health legislation on equal terms no matter where they might live in Canada.
One of the problems that we in this country must yet solve if we are going to have national unity, if we are going to have one Canada, is that of achieving economic levels and service levels that are the same right across the country. All Canadians should enjoy the same standard of living no matter what province they live in. That is one of the real problems of Canadian identity and Canadian unity.
The Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act and the Medical Care Act both paid their respects to this goal by providing that the federal contribution to hospital costs and medical costs would be of the order of 50 per cent of those costs in the provinces, the goal being not just to help provincial governments with their problems but the goal being to establish the same level of hospital and medical services for Canadians wherever they might live. I think it is this kind of thing, the same level of hospital and health services anywhere in Canada, the same level of old age pension benefits-when I began this speech my friend across the way said he hoped I would get pensions into it, so there it is.


Mr. Francis:: It is the same speech as in 1959.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friend says it is the same speech as in 1959. Where was he for the 17 years before that? I have been making this kind of speech in the House since 1942 and, if necessary, I shall keep on making it until 1999. I say the things that have done the most for Canadian unity and establishing in Canadians a pride in being part of this country are in this social legislation field-health insurance, family allowances, unemployment insurance, hospital and medical services.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: And CNR pensions.


Stanley Howard Knowles: My hon. friend wants to get pensions into it too-CNR pensions and the CPR pensions are areas where we have not yet got things to be as proud of as we should like. My point is, however, that we have progressed. We have moved in a civilized direction by getting these services on the same level for our people in this country wherever they might live. One of the tools used to achieve that has been for the federal government to put what was admittedly a generous input into these services as represented by the so-called or roughly 50 per cent formula.
Tonight we are not dealing with the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act, the Old Age Security Act or the Family Allowances Act; we are dealing with the Medical Care Act. The Medical Care Act, as passed by the parliament of Canada after half a century of our struggling for it, provided and still provides that the federal treasury will pay 50 per cent of certain defined costs for certain insured health services in the provinces. That was good- good not in the sense that it helped provincial governments with their financial problems, but good in the kind of health security it provided for Canadians in all parts of

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this land. What does this bill do, Mr. Speaker? It changes that formula; it jeopardizes that important principle that provided for federal financial participation to the tune of 50 per cent. It does it by a new formula which is precise for a couple of years, and then is as uncertain as it can possibly be.
When we debated this bill in the House at second reading, or in committee where we had it for a long time, the spokesmen for the government side tried to counter our arguments by saying that there would be more federal dollars put into health services this year than were put in last year and there could well be still more dollars the year after that. They asked why we say there is any cutback. What one has to do, Mr. Speaker, is not compare this year with last year, or next year with this year, but to compare what will be the story next year under the new legislation with what it would have been under the old legislation.
The old legislation said the federal treasury would pay 50 per cent of the health care costs of the provinces. The new legislation, under this bill if it passes, will say that the federal government will pay the lesser of two quantities; either it will pay the 50 per cent of the provinces' cost or it will pay last year's cost escalated by a certain fixed percentage. If the costs go up more than that percentage the result is that the provinces will get less than 50 per cent of what their health costs are in the current fiscal year or the one that follows this.
There is no question about it, Mr. Speaker. Even though there may be extra dollars in one year compared with a former year, the fact of the matter is that the provinces are being told that they are almost certainly not going to get the 50 per cent which has been the rule-the 50 per cent which enticed them to come into it, the 50 per cent which provided some reasonable guarantee that Canadians would get the same level of health care in any part of Canada. We regard this as a most regressive step. That is why we have done everything we could to persuade the government not to proceed with the legislation. That is why we have played our part in keeping it around for a full year, and if we have our way it will not be passed into law at all.
I said that the bill provides for precise limits that the federal government will pay to the provinces in this fiscal year 1976-77 and for the next one, 1977-78. After that there is no formula in the bill. When it was first brought in there was a percentage there and the government said, "We will be very nice and take that interest percentage out." Instead there was put in a right for the government to fix the percentages of increases that will be allowed after these two years by order in council. Sir, that means that the government will make the decision itself. That means it is a cabinet decision. The provinces can make their representations, there can be consultations-we had that in the Conference Centre on Monday and Tuesday of this week and everyone knows what the provinces felt about those consultations-but they have no input. Parliament has no input.
The government will be free in the fiscal years after the end of March, 1978, to determine unilaterally how much it will cut down on health care revenues for the provinces. The result of this is going to be that the provinces will be getting less than the 50 per cent which brought them into the scheme-the 50 per cent which, while not a sacred

figure in itself, has meant a useful contribution to the implementation of the principle that health care should be the same for Canadians all over Canada whatever province they may live in.
In the process of putting in this provision for future years to be governed by order in council, the government acted as though it wanted to be kind to the Tory party which felt that this should somehow come back to parliament. Therefore into the bill was written the provision which states that after the government has passed an order in council fixing a limit on federal contributions to the provinces in the years in the future, if 50 members of the House of Commons sign a motion calling for the matter to be debated, it shall be debated in the House of Commons right away.
If a motion is put down by those 50 members wanting an order in council to be revoked, if that motion is passed in this House and also in the Senate, then that order in council gets revoked. However, what chance does such a motion have of getting passed in the House of Commons or the Senate dominated by a government with a majority, a government which uses that majority in the way it is used by the government that is across the way?
The provisions in this bill about reference of these future percentage limits to parliament are really a farce. The whole business is thrown into a state of great uncertainty. In particular it is a matter of uncertainty for the provinces. They do not know what the score is going to be in the future. They do not know what the limits will be on federal contributions. They do not know how to plan their health services for the years ahead simply because of the uncertainty that is in this bill.
If this creates uncertainty for the provincial governments, that means in the end it creates uncertainty for the citizens of our various provinces. They may not feel it as quickly as the provincial governments, but they will feel it where it hurts. Somewhere down the line the poorer provinces, once they find the government not providing 50 per cent of the money, will have to resort either to extra charges such as special taxes, deterrent fees or what have you, or to cutting down on health care services. That is a real possibility. Flowing from this bill is a picture of Canada retreating from the high ideal of one nation from coast to coast in which the health care services for our people are to be the same right across the land.
My friend across the way says this is the same speech I have been making since 1959. I realize the hon. member is a young man. He does not realize what was going on before then, although he was in the department and he should have known. Some of us were preaching this kind of thing long before that. Apparently we will have to keep at it for a long while yet.
The point I am trying to make, and I may have said this in 1959 or 1942, or I may have to say it in 1999, is that it is not just a matter of dollars and cents. It is not just a case of one group of cabinet ministers in Ottawa not being concerned about the financial problems of groups of cabinet ministers in Toronto, Winnipeg, Victoria and so on. What is at stake here is the whole concept of Canadian unity, which I submit calls for far more than our hearing
June 17, 1976

the same radio and television programs, enjoying the same football or hockey games, solving our language problems, or what have you.
The surest way to provide some unity and establish pride in being a Canadian anywhere in this country is to ensure that the basic needs of our people are met on the level of equality. If we cannot do it right away in everything, we can do it in terms of health and medical care. I deplore as strongly as I can a measure that is certain to have the effect of creating differences in the levels of health and medical care in the various parts of this country.
Criticisms have sometimes been levelled about speakers not staying close to the bill. I have tried to talk about the bill before us, Bill C-68, which amends the Medical Care Act. However, I think I am entitled to refer to it in the context of things that are related to it.
As I pointed out earlier, when Mr. Turner brought down his last budget on June 23, 1975, he made, amongst other announcements, two in that same budget that related to health. One was that the Medical Care Act would be amended as the government is now trying to amend it. The other was that the provinces were then being told that in five years the agreements under the Hospital Insurance and Diagnostic Services Act would be terminated.
These two things have to be taken together. If it was only medical care that was being changed, maybe the provinces could adjust to it. However, when the provinces are told that not only will they have to handle their health and medical care costs with less help from the federal treasury but they will have to provide their hospital services at this point not knowing what they are going to get from the federal government when the five year period is over, you throw the whole business into a state of jeopardy. When you add to that the kind of thing that was put before the provinces and the country by the federal government at the Conference Centre on Monday and Tuesday of this week, you create a situation that is serious for the future of this land.
I have not had time to read everything that was said, even those things of which copies have been given to us, at the Conference Centre on Monday and Tuesday. However, I read enough of what the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) said to note that he thinks the federal government, the Liberal party, have done enough because they have played a part in getting hospitalization, medical care, and improved post-secondary education established in this country.
The Prime Minister is almost proud of the fact that his government, and governments before his, gave the money to get these things going. He seems to think that is all the federal government needs to do. I say to the Prime Minister that this is not a static matter. It is not something that comes to an end. You do not just bring proper hospitalization and medical plans into effect and reasonable assistance in the field of education, drop all this, and expect that they will carry on. They will only carry on if there is a formula which provides money from the place where money is most available, and which provides money of the kind that will achieve as much equality as possible right across the country.
Medical Care Act
The Prime Minister also said at the conference that the desire for the same level of service should not simply become a case of our having a stereotype situation right across the country. In my opinion that was just a rationalization, an excuse for backing off.
Any Liberal in this House who is a Liberal, any Liberal who has respect for what his forbears forecast in 1919, any Liberal who has respect for the dreams and hopes which Mr. Mackenzie King had and which Mr. St. Laurent had, and which Mr. Pearson tried to carry forward, should be mortally ashamed of the steps proposed in this bill as well as in the accompanying termination of the hospital agreements and in the fiscal plan proposed on Monday and Tuesday at the premiers' conference, because these things they are doing amount to turning their backs on the sense of national unity which former Liberals possessed.
I remember-it was a personal conversation but that is no reason why I cannot recall it-being at the United Nations in London in 1945-46. The leader of the Canadian delegation to the preparatory commission was Mr. Dana Wilgress, and then when the first session got going in 1946 the leader was Louis St. Laurent, who was then either minister of justice or the secretary of state for external affairs, later prime minister.


An hon. Member:: How long was he prime minister?


Stanley Howard Knowles: Long enough to do a lot more good than is happening now. The time came when some of us were hoping the deliberations would come to an end. Mr. St. Laurent said he hoped the UN session would end soon because he wanted to get back to Canada. The 1945 federal-provincial conference had been something less than a success. I remember him saying, "We can't go on when the advantages for our people are so uneven in different parts of the country." This was the kind of dream some of those Liberals had. Mr. St. Laurent had it; Mr. Pearson had it. They wanted to round out their promises concerning old age security, labour legislation, and adequate provisions in the areas of health and welfare. This meant involving the federal government and the federal treasury so that we might have unity from coast to coast.
The present Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues are now saying, "We were just getting things going; we got the provinces into these things to do the job and now we propose to back away and let them carry the load." Mr. Speaker, the wealthier provinces can carry it and perhaps provide even better levels of service than their people have enjoyed up to this time. But Canadians in the less wealthy provinces will suffer set-backs and cuts. This will not be good for Canada. That is why we are so strongly opposed to this bill.
As I may have said earlier, if this bill were the only one of its kind maybe the provinces could absorb the shock. Even then we would say that the legislation was wrong. We have said so right from the night Mr. Turner announced it on June 23, 1975. It is still our hope that the bill will be dropped as far as this session of parliament is concerned, at least. But when you consider the fact that the hospital agreements are to be terminated five years

June 17, 1976
Medical Care Act
from last June, and when you add to that the new fiscal arrangements the government is trying to foist on the provinces, and when you add to that the fact that the government is cutting back funds for medical research, the point comes at which one is tempted to ask the question: what is a federal government for? Surely its purpose in a country such as ours is to bring the standards of our people up to the same level from coast to coast, particularly in services which really matter.
I submit that nothing matters more than health and education, and these are the things the federal government has been attempting to cut back this week by the proposals made to the conference on Monday and Tuesday, and health services in particular are damaged by the bill which is now before us. I therefore reiterate our party's determined opposition to Bill C-68. In our opinion it should not pass.


Miss Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, we have before us today another element of the government's so-called restraint program. I say "so-called" because this, like so many other aspects of that program, is not restraint at all but rather, intergovernmental buck-passing.
What the federal government is proposing to do is limit the growth in its per capita contributions to the provinces under the Medical Care Act to 13 per cent in this fiscal year, to 10.5 per cent in 1977-78, and to a percentage to be determined by the cabinet in subsequent years. The minister assures us that the cabinet-and for once I trust the government's assurances in the field of federal provincial relations will be worth the paper they are printed on-will set the percentage caps for the years after 1977-78 in accordance with an appropriate formula to be developed after consultation with the provincial governments. But that assurance itself is a hollow one because there is no commitment to negotiate this formula with the provinces, merely a pledge to talk with them about it before it is introduced.
The question before us, Mr. Speaker, is whether this unilateral arbitrary action by the federal government is going to hold down the cost of health services to the taxpayer. Most certainly it will hold down the share which appears in the federal estimates, but if we are merely transferring the burden to the provincial level there is no saving to the taxpayer.
The Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) has argued that this bill will provide the provinces with an incentive to hold down the cost of the program because the federal government will no longer be around to pick up half the cost of any increases over the guidelines. That is a clever argument, but it ignores two important facts. First, the provinces already have a strong incentive to hold down costs. After all, they pay a varying but substantial share of the cost of these programs, just as the federal government does. Moreover, it removes the incentive to poorer provinces to close the gap between their per capita expenditures for medical care and those of the more affluent provinces.
Let me quote from the statement of the minister of health for Prince Edward Island, Catherine Collbeck, at

the Victoria conference of provincial ministers of health in August, 1975:
The implementation of Bill C-68 would have a very serious effect on the level of health care in Prince Edward Island ... Our resources are severely strained to meet the rising costs with federal contributions under the present agreement.
Under the new proposal-
That is, Bill C-68.
-it will be difficult to maintain the present standards of health care services with no hope of ever attaining the national standard.
That, Mr. Speaker, from a Liberal health minister in the province of Prince Edward Island! Any real financial restraint that we will obtain under this bill-that is, financial restraint imposed on the provinces as a result of these caps or ceilings-will be purchased at the cost of locking in existing regional disparity in health care. The federal government will bear responsibility for that, but it designed the bill so that the provinces will have to accept the lion's share of the blame. It is the federal government's responsibility, Mr. Speaker, but it shifts the blame to the provincial level, and that is the meaning that the government attaches to the phrase "co-operative federalism."
I note that the minister has made a modest amendment to Mr. Turner's original proposal in that provinces, with the consent of the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the sanction of the federal cabinet may extend insured services without the increased costs which are attributable to those services being subject to the guidelines. A wise and generous use of that power by the minister and his colleagues might provide a measure of benefit to have-not provinces, but because medical services in Canada are already comprehensive the benefit will be slight at best.
On Tuesday in this House the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) argued that his proposed new financing arrangements for the established programs of hospital insurance, medical care, and post-secondary education would benefit the have-not provinces because the principle of equal per capita grants means a larger contribution from the federal treasury to their coffers. That was the Prime Minister's statement in this House.
I hope he is right and I wish he had allowed the premiers of the have-not provinces to test his hypothesis this week by revealing to them the financial details of his proposal. Instead it remains locked in secrecy. He is once again playing his old shell game of what comes next. However, in the field of medical care that program, whatever its merits, is still at least two years in the future. In the meantime this bill could do serious damage to the principle of national standards in health care services and will certainly leave a legacy of bitterness and frustration with the provincial governments. I would say to the minister that that kind of legacy does not augur well for the future of Confederation.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Mr. Speaker, I have just been handed a blank piece of paper by my colleagues so that I can begin.


Paul Yewchuk: Is that the content of your speech?


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: This iniquitous piece of legislation
attempts to cap the federal contribution to medicare to 13
June 17, 1976

per cent in 1976-77, to 10.5 per cent in 1977-78, and to 8.5 per cent the following year. Thereafter authority to set ceilings is left with the federal government. The reason I describe this legislation as iniquitous is-


Mr. Rodriguez:: -because it is.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Yes, it is, but also because if there is ever going to be any inducement to the federal government to expand provision of medical care in this country, it must come from federal leadership. What the government has said is that it no longer seeks to provide leadership in the provision of medical services in this country. The government has said that it thinks everything is great, and that it is backing out of medicare.
What do you do, Mr. Speaker, in a place like P.E.I. or Newfoundland if you want to go to a dentacare program?


An hon. Member:: What about St. Pierre and Miquelon?


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: They have good teeth there so do not need it. Just look at the job that St. Pierre and Miquelon did on the Canadian delegation at the Law of the Sea conference. This little island in the Atlantic is claiming 200 miles all around it, and Canada is fluttering around worrying about this tiny little island. That is why I say they have very good teeth in St. Pierre and Miquelon.
There has been a clear change in the philosophy of the government, Mr. Speaker, a move to the right, a clear abandonment of the kind of idealism that a few naive individuals in 1968, 1972 and 1974 thought the government had. As we see these capping moves and abandonment of responsibility in providing some kind of consistent medical care and social services in this country, we know where their heart of hearts lies. The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) is making passionate love all right; it is passionate love to the chambers of commerce in Canada, but he has abandoned most of the people of Canada. All that we have accomplished in Canada in terms of medicare has been just the first phase.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Ten o'clock.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: I would like to call it ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker, but there may be just a minute to go before I can do so-unless the House would like to call it ten o'clock. This may be something members are not really interested in.


Jean-Jacques Blais: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that we are finding the hon. member's comments so enlightening, might I suggest we not see it is ten o'clock for the next few minutes, so we might all be stimulated on our way home.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: May I just comment on that.


The Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. It is now ten o'clock.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: That was hardly a point of order.


The Deputy Speaker:: Unless there is unanimous consent to continue, we have to proceed with the adjournment debate.
Adjournment Debate



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Almonte Douglas Alkenbrack: Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight at the adjournment session to bring again to the attention of the government and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Jamieson) the precarious position of the Canadian textile industry and of the depressed markets for Canadian textiles at the present time. This depressed and adverse condition particularly applies to the makers of polyester yarn and filament. My words tonight are, of course, pursuant to my question asked of the minister on June 11. I asked it because of my deep concern for the welfare of the industry in my riding.
Celanese Canada, with its plant at Millhaven, is a major employer in my constituency and the area around it, as well as in Kingston, but because of the exposure of its product to the competition from cheap labour from Asiatic competitors overseas, the company has been forced to make major lay-offs in its personnel. This has naturally resulted not only in protests to the government by this great Canadian producer but also has brought sharp protests to the government from the county council of Lennox and Addington. I also have letters from employees and from the reeve and council of the Township of Ernestown.
Let me quote this resolution moved by councillor Grant Mcllquham seconded by councillor Ian Wilson:
Be it resolved that the Council of the Corporation of the Township of Ernestown express concern to the federal Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce regarding the depressed state of the Canadian textile industry resulting from excessive volumes of imported textile products. The impact of this recently resulted in the lay-off of 235 employees from our local Celanese of Canada plant situated in the Township of Ernestown. In addition delay in expansion programs involving upwards of 40 million dollars has resulted. To date 360 employees of synthetic fibre producing plants have been laid off in the Kingston area. Potential summer employment opportunities in the area for upwards of 385 students have also failed to materialize.
Needless to say, this motion was carried by the township council unanimously, and it is strengthened by a personal letter I received from Mr. Mcllquham in the same vein.
There is no doubt about the seriousness of the situation. There are some strange anomalies abroad in the Trudeau government. Why is the minister hesitating? The answer I got to my question on last Friday was that a report would be tabled on the matter of the dumping of cheap textiles into our market from other countries, and that this report would be tabled at the end of June. The end of June means that this House will be adjourned and the government, the cabinet, and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce can then go back to sleep. The House will not be sitting, the government will be rid of the opposition, and generally eased of any further pressure from this belea-

June 17, 1976
Adjournment Debate
guered Canadian industry. That is not a good enough answer for me, Mr. Speaker. This matter should have been dealt with long ago by the minister and the anti-dumping tribunal, but there are some strange happenings and some stange anomalies in the Trudeau administration. The government, figuratively, is not "looking after the store."
The chairman of the anti-dumping tribunal is apparently too busy with his varied commercial activities, trying to sell and introduce the products and munitions of other countries to Canadian consumers. There must be terribly illegal conflict of interest there.
The situation of the textile industry is a case which should be dealt with immediately by the anti-dumping tribunal. What about the cabinet? It does not seem to be interested in the welfare of Canadian industry. Far from it, the ministers are busy now drumming up support for the abolition of capital punishment in the coming vote on Tuesday night, and there is one minister over in France deeply interested in the dangerous proposition of pressing bilingualism into air traffic control in Canada.
You cannot blame me for pointing this out, for most of us here know that if Canadian industry, and especially secondary industry as in this case, does not prosper, then neither does our country nor its workers in industry. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Roy), when speaking during yesterday's textile debate, said that an increased willingness to buy Canadian would be one element in the solution to the problems of the industry. That is all very well, and I think most of us do try to buy Canadian. But we see in our stores a flood of foreign goods from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea where the workers in the plants receive 14 cents an hour, Canadian equivalent. This flood of cheap goods is so great that lately one picks up quite a few garments from display cases in stores before finding one made in Canada.
Having regard to the problems of polyester yarn products in the textile industry, I brought to the attention of the House last week the fact that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce had then had a major recommendation of the Clothing and Textile Board for over five weeks. The hon. member for Laval (Mr. Roy) replied on behalf of the minister that no action would be taken until the end of June. The minister is thus taking seven weeks or more to act in a crisis where action in two weeks was indicated.
I was distressed initially by this reply, having in mind the hardship it implies for the hundreds of people who have been laid off their jobs in Frontenac, Lennox and Addington, and in the Kingston district and other constituencies where this product is efficiently made and processed. Further investigation of the problem has revealed something more distressing still.
Previous outbreaks of the polyester yarn problem were studied on two occasions by the Clothing and Textile Board. The board made recommendations in December, 1972, and in February, 1975. In both cases the government failed to table or implement the recommendation of its board. The present inaction of the government, which the hon. member for Laval says will continue until June 30, when this House rises, suggests that the government may not be taking any action at all to restore the loss of jobs.

In this grave matter affecting hundreds of my constituents, I request that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce tabled without further delay the recommendations made by the Clothing and Textile Board five weeks ago, and to announce immediately the actions the government will take to implement them.


Mr. Marcel Roy (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat surprised to hear tonight about that matter on the late show on a subject that was debated yesterday during an opposition day. I would have preferred to see the hon. member for Frontenac-Lennox and Addington (Mr. Alkenbrack) participating in the debate we had yesterday. He would have understood what the textile policy was. I think the only answer I would have to give would be the following. Either the hon. member just wants to table a report without it having been considered to determine its full application and implications for all parties involved, or he wants the report to be brought forward without any follow-up, or again perhaps he wants some time to be taken to consider the implications of that report and then see what it could mean for the parties involved.
I would refer the hon. member to the speech made yesterday by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Jamieson), as reported at page 14578 of Hansard, and he will see then the exact answer given to his question, and I quote:
I do not, however, deny the legitimacy of the claim that the process is on the slow side. I have looked into this and asked that once a report comes in from the Clothing and Textile Board there should be no delay in taking appropriate action. In this connection I am faced with something of a dilemma. We could table the report quite quickly after it is received from the board, but the policy has been to hold off publication of the report until a decision has been made on the action to be taken.
I suggest that if we table the report without simultaneously announcing our decision on the action to be taken a whole series of representations could be made which would further delay the process. For the moment we think it is preferable to receive the report, decide on the action to be taken, and made the announcement accordingly. If hon. members think that another amendment to that method could further step up things and they have information or know another procedure that could be used we would be quite happy to listen in an objective manner.
So, Mr. Speaker, once again I am somewhat surprised to see that matter discussed on the late show because if the hon. member had participated in the debate yesterday he would have had the answer.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION-REGIONAL PRODUCERS' REQUEST FOR INVESTIGATION-GOVERNMENT ACTION
Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, on June 4 a group of producers representing all the producers within the CBC who are not of the Toronto-based organization put out a news release asking for the establishment of a royal commission to examine the organizational structure of the CBC and to find ways of decentralize that organization. I rose on June 8 to ask the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) the following question:
June 17, 1976

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?
Would you believe, Mr. Speaker, that the minister's answer was as follows:
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.
That is a staggering statement. I wish to give a couple of examples of the ludicrous nature of that kind of statement. I have before me a question from the order paper which was put by the hon. member for Burnaby-Richmond-Delta (Mr. Reynolds), dated March 25, in which he asked why the ten o'clock p.m. CBC radio news program coming from Vancouver is to be cancelled on April 1, 1977. Here, among some other reasons, is what the CBC representative wrote:
The English services division of the CBC decided that the resources available in the British Columbia region would be better devoted to improving B.C. newscasts and B.C. contributions to national newscasts than to the largely editing job involved in the present 10 p.m. news.
First of all, the answer does not tell you who the English services division is. Obviously it is part of the division in Toronto which cut off the news program coming from Vancouver. It means that all those people in the Koote-nays, in the Chilcotin region, in the north country, in the Okanagan, who want local farm news from Vancouver are not going to get that program any more because Toronto knows best. Toronto will decided what will be on the ten o'clock news. But the English services division in Toronto has decided how those resources should be distributed. That is exactly the argument.
What is bothering the producers and directors across Canada within the CBC? Is is not that they do not have quality equipment; it is that they have no decision making power. Toronto knows best. Because I knew that the president of the CBC was going to Vancouver to meet with this informal group known as the Committee of 100,1 posed the question to him when he appeared before the Broadcasting Committee on May 6. I asked him about the pilot project of the Peter Gzowski show. Somebody told me that a group of 16 technicians had been shipped from Toronto to Vancouver to do that pilot project. Mr. MacPherson, the vice-president and general manager of the CBC English services division, happened to give me the answer at that time. Here is what he said:
The unit would be a producer, researchers, bascially the travelling group that also produced the pilot program, there would be a director involved-
Here we have a program produced and directed in Vancouver, but the CBC has to bring their crew from Toronto to do it in Vancouver and, above all, they bring a research man. What kind of lunacy is it to have researchers coming from Toronto to produce a show in Vancouver?
The Secretary of State has the gall to say that the problem of directors and producers in B.C. stems from the fact that the CBC has been overly successful. We have a $30 million monument in Vancouver which looks like a grain elevator. The government has poured $30 million into that building, but the CBC is keeping the producers and directors there out of work because Toronto wants to make the decisions. Any time there is a program emanating from
Adjournment Debate
Vancouver it looks across the country for producers and directors to put on that show. And what do you know, you cannot find any good ones in Vancouver so you have to bring them from Toronto! The same is true for the Mari times.
I know the parliamentary secretary cannot speak on this subject, but I know Nova Scotia is suffering in this way, and so is New Brunswick and Newfoundland just because Toronto thinks it is God and has all the answers and nobody else in the country knows anything.
A few weeks ago the House passed a resolution unanimously asking the committee to examine why the CBC abandoned or cut back its farm broadcasts. This is another example of CBC in Toronto deciding that there is a segment of the community in Canada that does not need the show that is going on. This is the point of my question to the Secretary of State. Why has he this penchant, this fixation, on buildings and equipment but not on people who produce the show in the first place?
While I think a royal commission is no answer to this because the report would be gathering dust as soon as it was finished, we do need a Secretary of State who will be serious about the real issues in public broadcasting. Forget about all the fancy, sexy projects that he has going in the country, and get to work to provide the kind of projects that will find work for the producers and directors in Canada and bring about unity.
The president of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has said that one of the greatest issues within the CBC is that there are a lot of fractious factions within the CBC. The reason is that nothing is being done which will honour the intelligence and the decision-making processes in the regions.


Coline M. Campbell: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member emphasizes that it is the Secretary of State (Mr. Faulkner) who is in charge of the CBC, but the CBC comes to the committee quite often, and the hon. member can question there.
During questioning on May 7, 1976, by the hon. Member for Surrey-White Rock (Mr. Friesen) when the CBC was before the broadcasting committee, the CBC president, Mr. A. W. Johnson, outlined how he intended to deal with the three major propositions of the Committee of 100. One proposition had to do with the autonomy of decision-making within the British Columbia region; one proposition had to do with the extent of production in the British Columbia region; and the third proposition had to do with the kind of programming that CBC should be emphasizing.
In connection with those propositions, Mr. Johnson told the broadcasting committee meeting that as for the autonomy of decision-making in respect of productions for the network, the CBC must use the best talents, the best executive producers and producers that it can find and that the CBC regards the producers in British Columbia as it regards the producers in Toronto, as being a pool on which to draw. Excellence, not quotas, must be used as the basis for the CBC's determination of what is the best team for producing programming which relates to a particular part of the country.
At the subsequent meeting with the Committee of 100,
Mr. Johnson stressed his concern for proper balance be-

June 17, 1976
Adjournment Debate
tween national, regional and local programming and for over-all consultation in the program decision-making process at all levels. He assured the Committee of 100 that this area would be a priority for regular review during his term of office.
At the meeting in Vancouver the CBC president further agreed, as he had said he would when before the broadcasting committee, to give the Committee of 100 the facts, both in statistical and program terms, on what is being produced regionally for regional consumption, what is being produced and used in other centres across Canada in the regional exchanges, and, thirdly, the amount of production emanating from British Columbia on the national network.
On the third question concerning programming emphasis, Mr. Johnson told the broadcasting committee, and subsequently the Committee of 100 in Vancouver, that he thought the short generalization of the point of view of the Vancouver group was that the CBC should leave situation comedies, family dramas, and variety to the Americans because they are good at them. If the CBC were to do that,
he said, it would be leaving to the Americans a very large proportion of programming and viewing time of Canadians, and he did not believe that would be a good thing.
The desire of CBC television producers for even more regional involvement is understandable and CBC program managers in Toronto and the regions have discussed and will continue to discuss this question with producers.
I am informed further that the CBC has been reviewing over the past several months both its regional organization and regional program production, production both for regional and network use. It was with this review in mind that the CBC president visited all regions of the corporation during his first nine months in office and met with representatives of the Committee of 100 in Vancouver last month. Mr. Johnson has advised that he expects to be in a position to make a statement sometime this fall on the proposals which result from this review.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but the three minutes time allotted to her has expired.
Motion agreed to and the House adjourned at 10.20 p.m.

Friday, dune 18, 1976