1976-10-14

Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 43 I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Today, October 14, is a sad day for democracy. In the continuing struggle for power by the minority of the labour force under the influence of a few union leaders-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I think I should once again caution hon. members about getting into preambles that constitute subjects of debate. A preamble to a motion pursuant to Standing Order 43 ought to be only sufficient, I would think, to establish the urgent nature of the matter, and not to get into argument.


Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that this day of protest by the Canadian Labour Congress is in fact deemed to be a general strike by a minority, illegal in many parts of the nation, and damaging not only to our economy but to the very essence of our democratic way of life, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Portage (Mr. Masniuk):
That the government take all necessary and appropriate disciplinary action against the instigators of this general strike, in particular Joe Morris, president of the CLC, and other top union officials.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Such a motion pursuant to Standing Order 43 can only be presented to the House with its unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAM SUGGESTED AMENDMENT OR ABOLITION OF PROGRAM-MOTION UNDER S O. 43
Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this being labour's day of legitimate protest, I ask leave under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to move a motion of
urgent and pressing necessity. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow):
That this House urges the government to take immediate steps either to amend the controls program by providing effective checks on prices and profits or to abolish the program forthwith.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Such a motion can only be presented with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


SUGGESTED REPLACEMENT OF PROGRAM WITH AN INCOMES PROGRAM-MOTION UNDER S O. 43
Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a similar motion. In view of the fact that the Anti-Inflation Board purports to restrict professional incomes and has failed to do so, with medical incomes increasing at a rate double that provided under the A IB, and incomes of the legal profession increasing similarly, and in view of the fact that 35 per cent of professional service firms have failed to report under the requirements of the AIB, I would move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):
That this controls program be abandoned in view of its patent unfairness and that such program be replaced by a meaningful incomes program which allows inflation fighting to be done by the rich as well as the poor.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Such a motion can only be presented with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. Before receiving any further motion pursuant to Standing Order 43, I think I ought to indicate to the House that members might be reminded to examine the subject matter that is now being debated in the House. The motions that have so far been presented pursuant to Standing Order 43 would obviously be quite germane to the motion, and quite debatable pursuant to the terms of the amendment and sub-amendment now being considered by the House during the throne speech debate. I wonder if it is not simply a fiction to ask the House to set aside one motion under which these matters could be debated for the purpose of debating another one which is very similar in terms.

October 14, 1976
Oral Questions


MANPOWER
Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to introduce a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
In view of the fact that there is apparently no reduction in unemployment, that the Canadian people has gained confidence in the LIP program for the creation of jobs and the eradication of unemployment and owing to the considerable number of serious projects suggested under the program for 1976-77, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Roberval (Mr. Gauthier):
That this House advise the government to earmark supplementary estimates for this program, immediately increasing the estimates of the Department of Manpower for that item.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


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



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence today of the Minister of Labour I wonder if I could direct my question to the Prime Minister. In view of the fact that yesterday the Minister of Labour refused to say whether the government views the national strike as legal but went on to say by implication that it would be illegal unless the protest took place at lunch hour or off-working hours, and in view of conflicting decisions yesterday in different provinces which resulted in the strike being legal in British Columbia and not in Ontario, and given the well publicized fact that working people and others have been concerned about whether illegal action was appropriate in our democratic system, can the Prime Minister now advise whether he or his ministers or any of them ever asked for and obtained legal advice indicating that this strike would be legal in some provinces and not legal in others.


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Surely, Mr. Speaker, it is not for the Government of Canada to decide what is legal or not in particular provinces from the point of view of provincial law and collective agreements under provincial labour legislation. The federal position as stated by the minister, which is quite clear, is that if the protest does not involve illegal actions then the Minister of Labour said he could understand the right of individuals or associations to protest policies that they disagreed with by protesting in a legal way; in other words, if they protest by demonstrating during their lunch hour or after their hours of work. If on the contrary they are breaking a contract, then of course it becomes illegal and the Government of Canada cannot condone it; on the contrary we condemn it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Allen Fraser: It is all very well for government members to applaud, Mr. Speaker, but the question is one which all the public is asking. It seems very strange-


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


John Allen Fraser: Can the Prime Minister then tell this House, in view of the fact that for many months the government has known that the CLC was armed with the authority given it at the May convention to call for a national strike, despite the fact that members of the government did not feel it would take place, why there has been no direction from his Minister of Labour or from the government in general as to what the parameters of this particular form of protest ought to be in order to keep it legal, keeping in mind as the government well knows that this strike would be breaking a great many contracts which were not within federal jurisdiction, and especially in view of the fact that the Minister of Labour has confused the public even more by hoping that the strike would be a success.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I think the hon. member must have missed what the Minister of Labour said yesterday. He said quite clearly, as I understood him-and he said this outside the House also-that he could not condone illegal action but there was a way of protesting which was perfectly legal. The hon. member knows this. That is the position of the government. If under federal labour legislation there are any illegal acts we will condemn them, and we reserve the right to act in whatever way is appropriate to correct that situation. That is the federal responsibility and a responsibility which we hope the House supports. But we cannot say what position the provinces will take within areas in their own jurisdiction under laws they have passed. I could give the hon. member an opinion. I suppose it would be much the same as that of the federal government. If provincial labour laws are broken and something illegal is done, then I hope those concerned will be condemned in those particular provinces.


John Allen Fraser: The question, Mr. Speaker, is simply this: can the Prime Minister explain why there has been no leadership
October 14, 1976

whatsoever concerning the legality of this strike for the many months that the Canadian public has been looking at the issue and asking itself whether or not it would be breaking the law and whether or not that was appropriate. Where has been the leadership from the federal government?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I might answer the question.


John Allen Fraser: If I can ask the question of the minister, certainly he can answer it.


John Carr Munro: I do not know where the hon. member for Vancouver South, or whatever his riding is-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carr Munro: -I do not know where he has been.


John Allen Fraser: I have been talking to the people. Where have you been?


John Carr Munro: I do not know where he has been in the last two or three months. It has been clearly stated by myself and others time and time again that if it should be perceived, as a result of actions on the day of protest, that collective agreements in the public sector are broken, then sanctions can apply and there would be a breach of collective agreements. My colleague, the former President of the Treasury Board, has said the same thing on many occasions. That is the situation. In the private sector, under provincial jurisdiction, in many cases the option is open to employers to take what remedies they wish to take, if indeed they wish to take them. Would the hon. member propose we suggest something that is not right or incorrect? I trust the hon. member is not doing that-at least I give him that much credit.


John Allen Fraser: First of all, may I say-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


John Allen Fraser: How many ministers, along with the Prime Minister, are going to be allowed to get in on questions if the opposition cannot come back and ask them other questions?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Allen Fraser: They are as confused as the public, and that is the reason the public is so confused.


Mr. Speaker:: I was not denying the hon. member for Vancouver South the floor to put a supplementary question, as is often the case in leading off on behalf of the official opposition, if that is why he is seeking the floor. If not, I will recognize the hon. member for York-Simcoe.


John Allen Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. May I say that when the Minister of Labour asks where I have been, I can tell him I have been talking to the people and it is obvious that he has not.
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The question I want to ask of the Minister of Labour is this: What kind of leadership is it when you know there is a strike against a federal law, you know it will involve all kinds of people who are not under federal jurisdiction, and during all these months the government gives no direction to anyone regarding the conditions under which the strike would be legal or illegal? Why did you not take advice on this and why did you not say something?


John Carr Munro: The more the hon. member talks, the more ludicrous he sounds.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carr Munro: If he is implying that union leaders in this country are so stupid they do not know what is legal or illegal, that is a responsibility he can take. I have made it clear that if there are breaches of collective agreements in the public sector, then sanctions and penalties can apply.


John Allen Fraser: What about British Columbia?


John Carr Munro: The hon. member says, "what about British Columbia?" That is why I suggested that I did not know where he had been. I was out in Vancouver about two weeks ago and I made it perfectly plain at that time. I did not notice the hon. member complaining about lack of leadership at that time.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Allen Fraser: The minister did not say at that time that the strike would be legal in British Columbia and illegal in Ontario.


ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAM REQUEST FOR TABLING OF BACKGROUND PAPERS ON WHICFI DECISION TO CONTINUE PROGRAM MAY BE BASED
Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Finance. As the protest day is obviously designed in the hope that the government will terminate the wage and price control program at the earliest opportunity, I would like to ask the Minister of Finance, further to my question yesterday, whether he would lay before the House his analysis or other documentation which he plans to put to the provinces when he requests an extension of the present agreements with those provinces with respect to the wage and price control program. Will he lay that before the House immediately so that the provinces and ourselves can have a fair chance to review this documentation. Second, do we take from his answer yesterday that he is going to request a two year extension from the provinces?

October 14, 1976
Oral Questions


Hon. Donald S. Macdonald (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I pointed out to the hon. gentleman yesterday that the present agreements with the provinces run until April of 1977, which is nearly six months away, and that at the beginning of 1977, in the first months of that year, it obviously will be important, both for the purpose of debate in this House and for the purpose of discussions with the provinces, to talk about the progress of the anti-inflation program at that point and the considerations we would have in mind with respect to extension of those particular agreements. It seems to me to be a lot more sensible to talk to them about the impact of the program as it will have been experienced up to early 1977 on the then current facts rather than setting out the analysis now and talking about that in six months time.
So it is for that reason I pointed out to the hon. gentleman that the discussions will commence early next year. They should be carried on on the basis of the experience up until that time. Of course, the period of extension would be confined by the period of time which has been authorized by this parliament, which at the present date is for another two years.


GOVERNMENT COURSE OF ACTION IN DISCUSSIONS WITH PROVINCES ON EXTENSION OF PROGRAM
Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I wonder if I may put another question to the Minister of Finance with regard to his last answer. Assuming that in his discussions with the provinces such matters as compensation levels, productivity and profit will be dealt with, would the minister indicate if it is the intention of the government actually to put its position before this House and the provinces, or is it simply going to go into some kind of random discourse, asking others for their views as to what should be included in the agreement? Will the minister state a firm government position, for example, on the questions of profits, productivity and compensation levels?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Naturally, Mr. Speaker.


An hon. Member:: What would you expect?


BASIS ON WHICH GOVERNMENT JUSTIFIES PROGRAM
Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put my final supplementary to the Prime Minister. In his random remarks yesterday and in his rationalization of the anti-inflation program he spent some time trying to justify the program on the basis that in his view the CPI had gone down, and that it was not only because of the farm gate prices having declined substantially. Is the Prime Minister aware that the chief factor causing food prices in this country to go down is that the beef farmers have literally been murdered by the price of their product going down 20 per cent in the past year, and is this the only way the government feels it can justify its anti-inflation program?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that the hon. member is making a representation, not asking a question.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance arising out of some of the statements made by the Prime Minister yesterday. I should like to ask the minister whether studies have been made by his department or any other government department or agency to ascertain whether the more than 60 per cent of the labour force which is still unorganized in this country has received wage or salary increases in the past year, and if such studies have been made, can he indicate whether the information shows the size of these increases and whether they were above or below the increase in the cost of living in the past year?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, with regard to those under the anti-inflation program the Anti-Inflation Board has been analyzing the rate of increases, and indeed, in its report, which will be made available to the House within a matter of weeks, I expect that the board will probably have something to say about that.
With respect to a more extensive analysis of labour groups which are not covered by the mandatory controls, I would have to say that the board obviously has not. 1 do not know whether my colleague the Minister of Labour could advise in this regard as to whether his department, in its general survey of labour income, could respond to the question put by the hon. gentleman.


POSSIBILITY PERMISSIBLE MINIMUM WAGE INCREASE MADE MANDATORY
David Orlikow: Many of the people who are not organized work for small employers who are not covered by the regulations of the Anti-Inflation Board. In view of the feelings of many people that the anti-inflation program is not being applied fairly, is the government giving consideration to making the minimum increase of $600 a year, which is permitted under the anti-inflation legislation, mandatory in order that employees in the lowest income levels, most of whom do not belong to unions and have no bargaining power, can be helped to cope with the increased cost of living this past year?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, in a very substantial sense a great deal of the work force the hon. gentleman referred to is not under the jurisdiction of the parliament of Canada. With regard to the parliament of Canada, he is asking if it is our intention to increase the minimum wage to $3.50 an hour. I can say that is not the intention at this time.
October 14, 1976


David Orlikow: A final supplementary, Mr. Speaker. I had no intention of asking the minister if the government was giving consideration to increasing the minimum wage to $3.50 an hour. 1 want to ask the minister whether the government is giving consideration to, and consulting with the provinces in respect of, jointly raising the minimum wage of employees under their jurisdiction so that the large number of people who are working, many of whom are included in the large number who are still classified as living in poverty by such organizations as the Economic Council of Canada, can be taken out of that poverty group and given a wage on which they can live fairly decently?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, I can say to the hon. gentleman that both the Minister of Labour and I have continually had discussions with the provincial governments with respect to the level of the minimum wage and there is, of course, quite a spectrum of opinion in Canada as to what the appropriate level should be. As I said, I cannot give any assurance that the minimum wage generally in Canada will be raised either by the federal government or by the ten provincial governments to the level of $3.50 an hour.


MANPOWER
Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
Considering the great number of unemployed and the insufficient funds made available through the LIP program in the south shore area, could the minister advise what system has been devised by his department to assess the real number of unemployed and arrive at an equitable allocation of funds in the various ridings?


Hon. Jack Cullen (Minister of Manpower and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his representations. What we have endeavoured to do this year under the LIP program is to give the heavier allocation in the areas as described by the hon. member, due in large part to the representations made by him and others in the region. We have a formula that has been devised which we think is weighted very heavily in favour of the areas where most of the help is required. There will be more money put into those areas than the areas of less unemployment.
[ Translation]


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a supplementary question.
Since the decline of the economy in the south shore area stems from regional industries being in competition with similar industries in the Montreal region, hence the decline in the
Oral Questions
number of jobs and the increase in the number of unemployed, may I ask the minister to authorize a re-assessing of the unemployed in order to increase, if possible, the allocation of funds earmarked for the LIP program in the Bellechasse riding?


An hon. Member:: In all ridings!


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, if I did that I would probably have 265 re-evaluations to make, one for every riding. We are being as fair as we can.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Jacques Lavoie (Hochelaga):: Mr. Speaker, may I put a
question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
{Applause)


Jacques Lavoie: If I may be permitted to do so, Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the House that a year ago on this day, I received a similar ovation in Hochelaga, following a well deserved victory.
Considering that many requests have already been made to the Department of Manpower and Immigration about the Valdes family, that Mr. Valdes left Canada last Sunday and that a prohibition order and a stay of execution was presented to the Federal Court aiming at acknowledging the claim of Mrs. Valdes and her four children who have been harassed for over a year by the Department of Immigration, and in view of the fact that it is inhuman to keep this woman and her children in a state of uncertainty which has lasted too long already, would the minister advise the House whether or not he intends to bring this question before the Cabinet so that it may formally acknowledge the status of landed immigrant of Mrs. Valdes and her four children, and in so doing take into consideration the fact that hers was a humanitarian case?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, the situation the hon. member describes he declares to be humanitarian. There are many humanitarian situations outside the country. People endeavouring to enter this country face situations every bit as difficult as those facing the lady and family to which the hon. member refers; but they see fit to obey our laws and make application in the appropriate way instead of attempting to enter the country illegally and then go through a whole series of procedures. The family referred to has been given the benefit of the most generous appeal procedures in the world; it has been looked at carefully. At present there is an application before the court

October 14, 1976
Oral Questions
for an order of prohibition and we will await the outcome of that.
I think it is important for the hon. member to know that we have to deal with thousands of people making application to enter this country who go through legitimate processes. But some enter this country under false pretences and then throw themselves on the mercy of television, or of members, and so on. I do not think that is the proper way to establish an immigration policy.


Mr. Paproski:: What would you think if you could get shot when you return to your own country?
[ Translation]


Jacques Lavoie: I wish to ask a supplementary question of the Minister of Manpower and Immigration.
In view of his answer, and considering that we are presently in a period of austerity and that we are told to cut our expenses, if ever this family must leave the country the government would have to pay five one-way plane tickets. So why not keep them here in the country? Those people are accepted here and they are happy in our country. Can the minister say whether he is at least willing to consider his predecessor's statement about the L'Heureux-Dube report which indicates, on page 2, that an order in council may be put before the Cabinet to keep a family here in Canada?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has lost none of his fire during the past year. His representations are honest and straightforward. But once again I suggest that is hardly a basis for establishing an immigration policy.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Tell us about General Quang.

[ Translation]


REGIONAL ECONOMIC EXPANSION
Mr. Albert Bechard (Bonaventure-iles-de-la-Madeleine):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion.
Could the Minister state for the benefit of the people in the Lower St. Lawrence, Gaspesie and Magdalen Islands region whether he has concluded his negotiations with his Quebec counterpart as to the economic development of this region and if we can expect the signing of an agreement in the near future?


Hon. Marcel Lessard (Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to advise the hon. member that these negotiations are continuing, that they are not completed since, as I said, they are continuing, and that later on this afternoon, I shall have another round of negotia-
[Mr. Cullen.)
tions with Hon. Gerard D. Levesque and two of his provincial colleagues. We shall hopefully take advantage of this opportunity to progress and come to a decision so that we may be able to sign this agreement before the end of the current fiscal year.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr. Eldon M. Woolliams (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, may I direct a question to the Minister of Justice about a leak, deliberate or otherwise, with respect to recommendations for introducing a bill to abolish preliminary hearings and jury trials, something which goes to the root of the liberty of the subject. I ask the Minister of Justice, who has been quiet about that leak, if he intends during the present session, or in any session, to bring forward a bill in accordance with those recommendations?


Hon. Ron Basford (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, I have hardly been quiet. I held a press conference and made public the report to which the hon. member is referring. I made a speech in Vancouver in which I said that we do not intend to interfere with the jury system, the right of the accused to remain silent, and the protection against selfincrimination. The hon. member really was referring to two reports, one being on work done by the Law Reform Commission on pre-trial proceedings, the other being a memorandum for discussion with deputy attorneys general prepared by an official of mine. It related to other matters, namely, how to decrease backlogs in the courts.
Obviously, the suggestions coming from the Law Reform Commission bear the closest examination and scrutiny by all people of this country, including I hope the hon. member, who share my concern that we should, where possible, eliminate delays in the trial process without at the same time interfering with the fundamental rights of the accused. That work is going on, but 1 am not in a position to say at this time whether any bill will be introduced relating to that matter. I have formed no recommendations; I have not made any.


Eldon Mattison Woolliams: Mr. Speaker, may I ask a supplementary question? Since the answer of the Minister of Justice was full of ambiguities, I ask, is he going to introduce a bill? If so, will he refer the matter to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs? It is a most serious matter, going to the root of the very freedom and liberty of the subject. The right to trial by jury for indictable offences is as old as Magna Carta. Will the minister do as I suggest before the sort of confusion is created that we saw with respect to Bill C-83?


Stanley Ronald Basford: Mr. Speaker, I am not in a position to say whether or not a bill will be introduced as not even my own department is yet in a position to make recommendations or suggestions to me. Therefore, I am not in a position to say
October 14, 1976

whether or not a bill will be introduced. If one were to be, obviously, it would be referred to the Justice and Legal Affairs Committee.


AIR TRANSPORT
Hon. George Hees (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. In view of the strong objections voiced by the Montreal business community about the proposal to transfer domestic flights from Dorval to Mirabel airport, does the government intend to put off the planned transfer of those flights until a satisfactory rapid transit system can be built to reduce greatly the time of transit and cost of travel between Mirabel and Montreal?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, it is inaccurate to refer to the situation in relation to traffic going to Mirabel as a planned transfer. We have been investigating the type of traffic moving through Montreal and the two airports, in an attempt to arrange that traffic in due course in a way to suit the convenience of the region and the people in the area served by the airports. The investigation also deals with the desire to make Montreal a very useful interconnection point for passengers from other parts of the country. We are therefore investigating this matter. It is now clear that we will not make any major change for some months; I would say spring is the next possibility. Our real purpose is to meet the convenience of passengers in every way, and we will try to take all factors into account, including surface transport. But that is only one factor which has to be taken into account.


George Harris Hees: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. In view of information coming out of Mirabel today showing that the new airport was not needed in the first place, is it not now evident that this white elephant the government built was both a stupid and costly mistake?


Otto Emil Lang: No, Mr. Speaker. The increased traffic using Dorval would have created great problems at that airport and for the people of the area.


George Harris Hees: All you had to do was extend the terminal facilities.


Otto Emil Lang: I suppose the hon. member is familiar with the kinds of problems which would be created in Toronto for people living near the airport by the expansion of the existing airport. I suppose the hon. member may be familiar with the kinds of problems that would be created for the people living nearby by the expansion of the Toronto airport. The same kind of situation has existed in the case of Dorval.
In addition, the additional land that would have been required would have been extremely costly to expropriate. What we did instead was develop a new airport, which will prove to be an extremely fine example of air service facilities
Oral Questions
in Canada, in an area where we obtained control over an adequate parcel of land to ensure that the kind of problems that developed in other locations will not occur again. Of course, that airport does not spring into full and final usefulness the minute it is open. However, I have no doubt that if the hon. member opposite will be patient he will see the results, and he will be glad to know that in later days I will be generous enough not to remind him of his words today.


George Harris Hees: Is the minister not aware that the plans drawn up for both the Dorval and Malton airports demonstrate clearly that all of the traffic problems in the next 20 years could be served by the building of an additional air terminal in each case, for which provision was made in the first plans laid out? They are just as applicable today as they were at that time.


Otto Emil Lang: No, Mr. Speaker. That is quite untrue.


George Harris Hees: Get up to date because that is a fact.


Otto Emil Lang: The hon. member, as a former Minister of Transport, is still relying on data furnished to him at that time.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


George Harris Hees: That is what your people tell me today.


Otto Emil Lang: The very clear evidence in both cases was a major expansion requirement, including extra runway facilities and the like, which creates an additional noise problem in the respective areas.


George Harris Hees: Otto, you better stick to wheat.


Some hon. Members:: No, no.


George Harris Hees: I apologize. I am sorry.


Otto Emil Lang: We are, of course, making every effort to make the maximum use of the existing facilities, including Mirabel, to avoid undue and increasing pressure on Malton in the absence of the additional air facility which had originally been planned, with the concurrence of Ontario, in the Pickering area. We are making every effort to arrange for alternatives for all of the people who will otherwise be inconvenienced by the serious problem of stacking in the air over Toronto if nothing more is done. We are doing the best that can be done. The fact is an additional air facility in the Toronto region is the only way we know of solving the problem of increasing traffic which will be presenting itself.


ANTI-INFLATION PROGRAM FAILURE OF PROFESSIONAL FIRMS TO FILE STATEMENTS- GOVERNMENT ACTION
Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. In view of the

October 14, 1976
Oral Questions
report in the Globe and Mail that some 35 per cent of professional firms have failed to file their required statements under the AIB regulations, will the minister advise what sanctions there are under the legislation and whether he now intends to take legal steps against those firms which have failed to meet the AIB requirements. I hope mine is not one of them.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, my advice is that all of the firms have not yet completed the fiscal period for which the returns are to be filed. In that sense, to a substantial degree, that is the reason there has not been total filing. As to the sanctions available, the hon. member is a lawyer and I would advise him to read the statute.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: In view of the fact the AIB now has substantial information on professional incomes, will the minister advise why that information has not been made available to the public so that we can examine in a very accurate way what effect AIB has had on professional income. There is clear evidence that it has had very little effect on professional income. Will the minister therefore advise when he will be making an announcement in this House, where he will speak for all the people, not just the rich and professional, so that we have a program that controls professional incomes-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


IMMIGRATION
Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct my question to the Minister of Manpower and Immigration. In view of repeated assurances by the former Minister of Manpower and Immigration that a new Immigration Act would be forthcoming in the present session of parliament, will the minister now indicate if it is the government's intention to introduce a new Immigration Act during this session of parliament rather than amendments only, as indicated in the throne speech?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: A new act, Mr. Speaker.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: At the recently held premiers' conference, agreement was reached among the provinces that provincial involvement in immigration should be guaranteed in any future constitutional amendments. Can the minister indicate whether the principles of the new Immigration Act have received agreement in principle from the provinces?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I will have to check that out, but I understand that my predecessor had extensive discussions with various premiers. We have also read at length and in some depth the excellent report of the committee of which the hon. member was a member. Most assuredly consultation with the

provinces will continue. I hope we will be able to enter into agreement with the provinces comparable to the Andras-Bienvenue agreement we now have with Quebec.


AIR CANADA
Mr. Serge Joyal (Maisonneuve-Rosemont):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to put a question to the Minister of Transport.
In view of the fact that on October 1 last, Mr. A. D. Bone, one of the officials responsible for maintenance at the Air Canada base at Dorval, sent out a circular forbidding the wearing of the badge "II y a du franqais dans l'air", and bearing in mind the fact that last March the same vice-president allowed the wearing of the badge "English Only is the International Language of Aviation", can the Minister of Transport tell hon. members whether he is willing to take immediate steps to ensure that Air Canada employees who support the bilingual objectives of the government have the same rights and privileges as those who are fighting against them?


Otto Emil Lang: Mr. Speaker, certain of the matters to which the hon. member refers are presently before the courts and I would not want to elaborate on them. Naturally I have noted Air Canada's clear statements of its obvious willingness to follow the spirit of the Official Languages Act, which we would require of it in any case as a Crown corporation. That willingness was expressed by the Crown corporation once again only very recently.


COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. J. P. Nowlan (Annapolis Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Communications. In view of the absence of the word "communications" in the Speech from the Throne by a government which wants to communicate, will the minister advise what has happened to phase two of communications policy, and whether there will be any legislative initiatives in this session?


Hon. Jeanne Sauve (Minister of Communications):: Yes, Mr. Speaker. I intend to introduce a piece of legislation on communications in this session.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: I thank the minister for that answer. I wish to ask more specifically about the communications policy with regard to pay television. In view of the representations the minister has received with regard to the CRTC review of briefs that were submitted in private, has the minister had
October 14, 1976

consultation with the chairman of the CRTC with a view to either having the CRTC ventilate those briefs before a public hearing so that all parties will have a chance to discuss the briefs or, if it is not the CRTC, have that matter referred to a parliamentary committee before the CRTC makes a recommendation to cabinet on something so fundamental as a communications policy in this country?


Jeanne Sauvé: Mr. Speaker, I remind the hon. member that the CRTC held hearings on pay television some time ago. In this second phase, I have asked people to send briefs to update those they presented to the CRTC. This was subsequent to a speech I made in which I indicated some of the rules under which pay TV might be introduced in Canada and some of the structures that might be necessary if and when this is to be introduced. The briefs are now coming in. Indeed, if there is justification, I have no objection to new public hearings. I will be meeting the president of the CRTC on Tuesday to discuss this matter.


SMALL BUSINESS
Otto John Jelinek: Mr. Speaker, I wish to put my question to the Minister of State responsible for small business and to take this opportunity to congratulate him on his appointment.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Otto John Jelinek: In view of the fact that the government continues to make repetitive but vague promises to the small business community without as much as a hint of any specific policy proposals, could the minister confirm or perhaps deny that his scheduled trip to Moscow, which I think is his first trip abroad since he assumed his new portfolio, is being made for the purpose of putting the capitalist system in a new perspective?


Hon. Len Marchand (Minister of State (Small Business)):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to thank the hon. member for his congratulations. One of the reasons for the trip to Moscow surely is that the Canadian government is very anxious to sell a number of things, and if we can increase our trade around the world this is good for big business and for small business as well.


CRUDE OIL-ALLEGATION PETROSAR NOT APPROVED AS BUYER BY ALBERTA
Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and relates to the report this morning that the province of
Oral Questions
Alberta has indicated that Petrosar will not be an approved buyer of crude oil for feedstock purposes. In view of the hon. gentleman's responsibility to fulfil federal guarantees that crude oil will be supplied to the project, what does the minister intend to do about this situation?


Hon. Alastair Gillespie (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Mr. Speaker, 1 heard the same report on the morning news and I have not yet been able to clarify the statement or to define precisely what words were used. I have asked for that information. As hon. members will understand, the implications are very serious if the news report is an accurate one. Because it is so serious, I am anxious to defer my answer now until I have seen a transcript and clarified the remarks of the premier of Alberta.


STATISTICS CANADA
Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the new Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, whom I wish well in the discharge of his weighty responsibilities in a key portfolio. I ask him this question in his capacity as minister responsible for Statcan. Will substantiated breaches of confidentiality by Statistics Canada personnel in fact be acted upon with full vigour, as promised by the chief statistician of Canada in a letter published on August 4 of this year in the Ottawa Citizen, a copy of which I have already sent to the minister? I ask this question because Statcan can only properly function if it enjoys the complete trust of all Canadians in the inviolability of the information supplied to it.


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I wish to thank the hon. member for his very kind remarks. With regard to the problem he brought up, I am pleased to assure again the hon. member that Statistics Canada intends to operate according to the law, that is, to keep confidential the information received from Canadians.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, I thank the minister for his answer and I have one brief supplementary. Can the minister indicate the extent of investigations into Statcan by the RCMP in recent years with regard to breaches of the confidentiality provisions of the Statistics Act? Would he also indicate the scope of these investigations and is the minister prepared to give details at this time or later?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I do not have the requested information at the present time. However, I shall inquire and if I can make this information public, I shall be pleased to do so.

October 14, 1976
Oral Questions SOCIAL SECURITY


REQUEST FOR COPY OF PROPOSED BILL RELATING TO SOCIAL SERVICES
Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare.
This morning, in his address to the national conference on mental retardation, the minister referred to a bill to replace the Canadian assistance legislation which will now be entitled the Social Service Act. Would the minister be in a position to table a copy of the proposed legislation or would it be possible to give a copy of it to hon. members as the public is now aware of this bill since the minister revealed it at the conference?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Mr. Speaker, I am glad to inform the hon. member that the bill in question which I announced this morning has been discussed at federal-provincial conferences for more than three years and that I have delivered many speeches on that subject in the House and outside. I would be pleased to send copies of my former speeches to my hon. colleague.
Concerning the bill, drafting is not finalized but various projects have been discussed with my provincial colleagues. As soon as it will be completed, I will be glad to table it for first reading. I hope that this bill will be supported by every member and passed quickly to provide Canadians with better social services than those available at the present time.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask a supplementary question merely to correct the minister somewhat. Had he been there after his speech, he would have heard delegates and all those who participated at the seminar expressing rather their surprise and their doubts about that bill, with the exception of federal officials who knew the bill in its present wording.


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I can very well understand that 600 people, of whom several attend a national conference on that subject for the first time, were not fully aware of the content of such a bill. But I must remind the hon. member that the Canadian Association for the Mentally Retarded is governed by an executive with whom I had several meetings during the past few years, particularly in January when we discussed the possible content of that bill. Therefore this is no surprise for the leaders of that association, 1 can assure the hon. member.


INQUIRY OF THE MINISTRY
Mr. Hugh A. Anderson (Comox-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Labour. In view of the fact that organized labour's share of the gross national product has increased rather than decreased on this the first anniversary of wage and price guidelines, can the minister advise the House

whether productivity in Canada in the last 12 months has increased at the rate of 11 per cent, the average general increase which was obtained by organized labour in the last 12 months-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.



FINANCE


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. In view of the fact that back in 1952 corporations paid some 54 per cent of the Canadian tax load and today this figure is down to around 30 per cent, is the Minister of Finance considering acting on the advice of a former colleague, Eric Kierans, and introducing an incomes policy under which corporations pay a much more equitable share of the tax load in this country?


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, any changes in the incidence of tax, of course, would have to be announced at budget time.



POST OFFICE


Mr. Leonel Beaudoin (Richmond):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my question to the Postmaster General, whom I want to congratulate on his appointment.
Since last year, during the general Post Office strike, the then minister told the House that collective agreements had been signed to the satisfaction of both parties, can the minister tell us, as sporadic work stoppages again occur everywhere in Canada, which are very expensive to taxpayers, whether he will take strict measures to bring people back to work since they have already signed a collective agreement?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Postmaster General: Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank the hon. member for Richmond for his warm feelings. I do want to indicate to him also that we agree that there is a collective agreement and the Post Office fully intends to abide by it. We indicated, and I repeat, that we intend to take the sanctions available to us to deal with any illegal action by postal or any other employees coming under the provisions of the collective agreement.
October 14, 1976



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture. Since the policy announced last April with respect to the dairy industry placed milk producers in a near catastrophic situation, and in view of the absence of measures dealing with that industry in the Speech from the Throne, could the Minister of Agriculture say today whether he intends to reassess as soon as possible the policy announced last April to meet needs and eliminate the difficulties milk producers must now face?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, under the agreement that we announced we are assessing the situation from month to month in order to see what is happening so far as production, markets and so on are concerned. We are doing this every month and receive a report from the Canadian Dairy Commission on what supplies are. Production is getting back in line, but not in all areas. There is a suggestion that there remain these shortages, but we still have tremendous surpluses of butter and skim milk powder.
[ Translation]


Roch La Salle: I have a supplementary, Mr. Speaker. In view of the answer of the minister that I find entirely inadequate I will put my question to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister told the hon. member for Richmond yesterday that his government had spent large amounts on the dairy industry, and I do not quarrel with that. But since those subsidies made available to milk producers are clearly inadequate and several of them not only in Quebec but also in Ontario could be faced with bankruptcy-and the minister is surely aware of that-I would like to ask the Prime Minister whether he intends to demand a decision or a reassessment from his Department of Agriculture to meet the needs or make a minimum income available to milk producers?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, when a decision is made it will be announced in the regular way.
*  *



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, since this is the first Thursday of the session could I ask the usual business of the House question. Before doing so I should like to extend congratulations to the government House leader on his ascension to that position, particularly in this instance when he embraces his return to the House with such relish and enthusiasm.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Business of the House


Walter David Baker: Since this is the first day on which we might discuss House business there are a couple of things I should like to raise with him on this point of order. The first is whether it is the present intention of the government to continue the throne speech debate consecutively until the end of the period of time allotted under the Standing Orders, or is there any intention to break into that with anything else? Is the minister now in a position to indicate the general shape of the legislative program for this session, the priorities of the government in respect of legislation, and can he inform us today if he has had any thoughts about the matter of opposition days? What are his intentions in respect of the white paper on banking? Does he intend to refer that immediately to the appropriate standing committee so that input can be had at this early stage from the general public as well as from banking institutions? I ask these questions about legislation particularly in view of the fact that the Minister of Manpower and Immigration indicated this morning an amendment to the act and the Minister of Communications indicated she was going to be bringing in amendments at least, dealing with some legislation. Is it too premature to ask questions in that broad way today?


Mr. MacEachen:: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his good wishes and felicitations on my return to this particular post, and express my appreciation also for the expression of good wishes extended by members of the House generally. I certainly appreciate that very much, indeed.
In respect of the immediate business of the House, I see no immediate relief from this particular debate that will engage us until the end of next week, but it may be that the dynamic character of the new ministers will cause us to change that before then.
The priorities of the government are generally set out in the Speech from the Throne, but 1 hope at an early date to have a meeting with my colleagues opposite to outline as clearly as possible the legislative program for the next several weeks.
Having regard to the reference to the white paper on banking, I have not had an opportunity of discussing that with the Minister of Finance or my colleagues. When I do so, which I hope will be soon, I will communicate the results to the House. I want to tell my hon. friend, and other House leaders, that I look forward to my association with them with a great deal of relish.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, may I preface my additional remarks on this point of order with these words. With your permission I should like to pay tribute to the former government House leader, the hon. member for Eglin-ton. 1 think I speak for all members of my party in expressing appreciation for the openness and the candor with which he dealt with me as representative of the Progressive Conservative party.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter David Baker: From the minister's answer, may I presume that one of the matters we will be

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Fraser
discussing shortly is the question of opposition days and the allotment thereof?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Yes, indeed.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I join with the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton in his words with regard to both the former House leader and the one before him who has come back to us. I welcome the President of the Privy Council back to the House leader level. I do not know whether that is a plateau, a peak or a valley, but in any event we welcome him back. I should like to say that if he can persuade this government to come through with legislation along the lines he was able to get the government to agree to when he was last House leader, this will be a very good parliament. I am sure the hon. member knows what I mean. If he can just do some of the things he was not able to do in May, 1974, that would be good for everybody.
Having regard to the business of the House in the weeks that lie ahead, since it has been the practice for a number of years to have a list of the bills the government proposes to introduce during the session presented to the House and placed on the record of Hansard, I am wondering if that will be done in this session and, if so, will it be done very soon?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: No, Mr. Speaker. I have considered that possibility and see no advantage in producing a formal list at this particular stage. I will give the hon. member and other hon. members as much detail as possible about the evolving legislative program.



SPEECH FROM THE THRONE


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, October 13, consideration of the motion of Mr. Maurice Harquail for an Address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, and the amendment thereto by (Mr. Clark) (p. 28) and the amendment to the amendment (Mr. Broadbent) (p. 37).
John Allen Fraser: Mr. Speaker, before commencing my remarks I want, through you, to congratulate the various hon. members on the government side on the recent positions to which they have been appointed, and wish them well in their endeavours.
I think I might also say they will be watched very closely because it is quite apparent to the Canadian public, and I think certainly to all hon. members who listened to what their constituents had to say during the summer, that there is much uneasiness with the present government and the present approach the government is taking. That uneasiness in my opinion is not just a passing phase but is deeply rooted and stems from a good number of years of not just mismanagement
(Mr. Baker (Grenville-Carleton).]
but no management at all. That lack of management and leadership is the underlying problem the country faces. I say with as much kindness as I can to the new ministers that this is the fundamental task to which they will have to address themselves and that unless they do so the country will not withstand another two years of what we have been through.
I must say I regret that the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent) is not here because a personal matter has required that he leave the House. However, I think it would be improper to rise in this debate without stating something bluntly to my friends and colleagues in the New Democratic Party. It is all very well for them to try to take the position on television or in other places that the Conservative Party has no policies or positions. The fact of the matter is that consistently in this House over a good number of years we have said that the country's recovery will depend on productivity, on a competitive market system and a high degree of management-labour accord as well as a close rapport and relationship between government, management and labour. We have said this repeatedly and we have said it in a responsible way. We have said it because it needed to be said since it was not being said by the members of the government or the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and certainly was not being said by some of my hon. friends in the New Democratic Party.
It is time that the New Democratic Party and the government began to realize that the public is not impressed with an economy that is stagnant as the result of the mismanagement by the government of the day and partly because of the philosophy and at times utter nonsense uttered by the other opposition party, the New Democratic Party. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party at times, even when it is headed-I was going to use the expression "in the right direction" but they would not like that-in the appropriate direction, handles itself with such complete irresponsibility that it cannot be taken seriously. I am sorry to have to say this as bluntly as I do, but it is true. It was exhibited in the amendment moved yesterday by the New Democratic Party. I wish to read that amendment:
We also affirm that the failure of the government to end the wage and price control program immediately, in light of...
Then, it continues. There is no question but that there are aspects of this wage and price control program with which not only do we, along with our friends from the New Democratic Party, quarrel but which we pointed out would cause trouble at the time the legislation was debated. But it would be completely irresponsible to end the program immediately; that cannot be done and the New Democratic Party ought to know that. So, we have to say we agree with the New Democratic Party that there are inequities in the control program and that it could be and should be improved.
We might take as an example the situation we have in the Yukon Territory at the moment where the Cyprus-Anvil Mining Company achieved an agreement many months ago. The Anti-Inflation Board rolled back the agreed wage scale once, and then changed it. Then, the administrator came in and rolled it back a third time to a lower figure. One result of
October 14, 1976

all that is that we are very cognizant of the faults in the system. The second result is that there are 400 people who have been and are on strike. The mine is not operating. The business community in Faro is suffering as is the community of Whitehorse. The White Pass and Yukon Railway has cut its operation in half and has laid off 170 drivers. In addition, the government-owned and operated power commission has increased its power rates. Just to make the matter more incredible, the Canadian Labour Relations Board says the strike is legal.
I agree with the New Democratic Party when members of that party point to this sort of thing and say it is not logical. We, of course, have said over and over again that it is not logical. Members of this party were in the forefront in respect of the situation in Thompson, Manitoba and every member of the New Democratic Party knows this. Someone just said that we would have frozen wages. If our party had been elected-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. Would the hon. gentleman please address the Chair.


John Allen Fraser: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker. I will watch myself. I was carried away with the enthusiasm of the moment. I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that if our plan, which would have placed a freeze on prices and wages, had been implemented in 1973 it would have ended quickly and we would have been out of the whole thing now. Not only that; we would have done it at a time when the inflation rate was only 5.7 per cent which was the situation in January 1973. We continued to advocate the need for some kind of controls in July 1974 when the rate of inflation was 10.6 per cent, and in October 1975 the government did what it said it would never do. But I repeat that if the advice this party had to give the House had been accepted, we would have had controls that would have been fairer. They would have ended by now and we might well have kept that inflation rate a little lower than it became.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Allen Fraser: Through you, Mr. Speaker, may I say that I notice some of my friends in the New Democratic Party are saying "oh, oh". What we have now, because they would not support us then, is a controls program that they agree is unfair and which we agree is unfair but which we still say was necessary. However, if they had taken our advice and joined us when they had the opportunity, we would have stopped the inflation rate when it was 5.7 per cent and not the 11 per cent or 10 per cent which it was last October. We would be out of the control system now and they would have done a lot more for the working men and women in Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Why did you not vote for it on third reading?


John Allen Fraser: I must answer this through you, Mr. Speaker, by saying what was well known by everyone in the House,
The Address-Mr. Fraser
including the Prime Minister who made comments on it in his speech yesterday. The reason was that, as we said, it was open-ended, and we advocated that the program be brought to a close by April of next year. Everybody in the House knows that that is true and it is just nonsense for the Prime Minister or anybody else to ask why we voted against it on third reading. We voted against it on third reading because it was a bad piece of legislation.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Orlikow: Why did you vote for it on second reading?


John Allen Fraser: I want to say, Mr. Speaker, that there is no doubt that, so far as all members of the House are concerned, there is a very serious situation in the country in the relationship or lack of relationship between employers and labour. It does not do this country any credit to have one of the worst strike records of all the western industrial nations. Quite frankly, the figures are appalling. If you think that I use language that is too strong, you should go to Europe and listen to both labour and management describe our disgraceful strike record. You should go to Germany where trade union members will say, as they have said to me, how can you have a country that has all the resources that yours has, that has people who have, relatively speaking, a very high degree of education, that has obviously people of initiative and competence, and yet so mismanage things, all of you, that you have slipped into a situation of being forced to impose a control system which, if left on long enough, will be counterproductive and in any event will cause a great deal of social and civil strife. This is what a German trade unionist told me. I had the privilege of meeting some of these people during this recent summer.
The record is appalling and all members of the House know it. We must find some way to do something about it. I should like to quote from a speech the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro) made on May 25, 1976. He gives government figures which I am sure are accurate. He said:
The number of man days lost in work stoppages has risen rapidly from an average of six million a year over the period 1970 to 1973 to nine million in 1974 and 11 million in 1975.
He went on to say:
The first few months of this year indicate that the record of man days lost may be improving.
That is highly dubious if you look at Mr. Flynn's articles. He has been studying the changing rate in strikes and they may be increasing again.
I want to point out something to all members of the House and especially to my friends in the NDP who sometimes seem to think that the Conservative party has no concern for the 2.2 million people in the CLC as well as the other million organized workers outside the CLC, their wives and families, and another six million Canadians who are in the work force. I want to say to the NDP that we are as aware as they are, and sometimes more so, that these people are Canadians, that they are our neighbours, our friends, our sons and daughters and

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Fraser
our mothers and fathers. We keep this in mind. Despite the appalling strike record, there are figures which indicate-[DOT]


Mr. Peters:: What is appalling about the strike record?


John Allen Fraser: -that approximately the same number of man days has been lost because of alcoholism and that a similar number of man days has been lost as a result of industrial accidents. I just say that to put all of this into perspective. Nonetheless, the strike record is appalling. It is appalling, of course, because it is unnecessary. It is unnecessary partly because it stems from the fact-


William Arnold Peters: Bad government and bad legislation.


John Allen Fraser: -that the system of bargaining has traditionally been in this country a system which involved the individual union and individual employer without any consideration for the total community in which these two parties were bargaining.


David Orlikow: That is the free enterprise system.


John Allen Fraser: It is a system which your party has supported enthusiastically and still does.


William Arnold Peters: We do not agree with it.


John Allen Fraser: I want to read to hon. members a comment made by the former minister of transport, the hon. member for Langelier (Mr. Marchand), about the system that we have today. He said:
How is the level of wages established? Is it according to a certain rule of justice, as I heard yesterday? No. It is according to the strength of each party. I have been in that trade all my life. I was involved in certain strikes where the justice of cause was very clear, and we lost. I was involved in others where it was less evident, and we won. Why? Because we were weak in the first place and strong in the second. This is the way disputes are settled. They are not settled according to certain criteria or principles known or accepted by everybody. It is free bargaining.
The problem with that, of course, is that it leaves us in a situation in this country where the strong unions will be able to constantly secure their position and the weaker unions and the unorganized will be left out. It also means that the philosophy in that statement is to be carried on, that you are going to have the collective bargaining system continue without any consideration whatever for the general climate within which individual bargaining is taking place. I think there are 100 affiliated unions in the CLC and of those there are 9,000 local unions. As many hon. members well know, there is an immense number of individual contracts worked out in the country. I might say in fairness that far more are worked out peacefully than with labour-management strife.
But we will have to find some way by which management, labour and government reach some basis of agreement as to where the economy is going, how it is to function effectively, and what are the appropriate shares that any one of these three groups should be able to take from the Canadian economy without jeopardizing the economy as a whole. It is very difficult to disagree with that statement because it should be

accepted as basic common sense. That statement is not misunderstood by trade union leaders in this country. It is misunderstood by some, but there are a good many who understand it perfectly well. One of the things that has happened this year, the most significant thing, I think, in a number of decades of Canadian labour history, has been the CLC manifesto which was declared in the May meeting at Quebec City of the Canadian Labour Congress. Every member in the House should pay a great deal of attention to that manifesto, not only to what is in it but to what is not in it and to why that manifesto was ever enunciated as well as what lies behind it.
Put very simply, the Canadian Labour Congress believed that after the doublecross they received from the federal government on wage and price controls they had to have a closer liaison with the government of the country because it was obvious that whatever their views were they were not being taken into account. Second, they could not trust a government which talked at them but not with them. If hon. members think those words are too strong, they should ask anybody who attended the so-called consensus talks which went on under the aegis of the former minister of finance month after month. During all that time the government never set out to labour what it thought the economy could do, what its own plans for the economy were or what its long term objectives were with respect to employment and industrial strategy.


William Arnold Peters: They didn't have any.


John Allen Fraser: They did not have any; that is why they did not indicate them. However, as a consequence of that we have a government day after day in the House of Commons retreating from questions by this party, by myself, by members of the NDP and the Social Credit Party with regard to what is happening in the relationship between government and labour in this country.
What did the minister of Labour keep saying? He said that the government was talking and that the former Minister of Finance was having consensus talks. What did the former Minister of Finance say? He said that it would not be appropriate to say what labour was thinking. The fact of the matter is that the government knew perfectly well what labour was thinking. The government was not listening, and in addition to that, during those entire consensus talks it never gave a hint that it was going to double cross labour and bring in the controls which it promised labour in 1974 it would not bring in. One of the problems we have now is that there is not any trust between labour and the government. Unfortunately, that lack of trust is also in other elements of the community. However, if we are going to have a better climate of labour relations, we must have trust. That does not mean that labour is foolish enough or naive enough to think that in all ways at all times every government will agree with it.
Labour is grown up; it is tough and it knows it will not get its own way all the time, but it would rather have a government indicate that it has to put in controls, if that is to be
October 14, 1976

done, rather than a government which indicates that it will never put in controls, that it would not do that to labour or that it would not freeze wages, as the Prime Minister said all during the 1974 campaign, and then double cross labour and do that without warning, despite the fact that consensus talks were being held.
What has been the response of the government since the controls program came in? The response of the government has been, first, to say that it is carrying on some talks with the Canada Labour Council, which was established. That did not last very long because Mr. Morris pulled his people out of that and the Economic Council of Canada. It is true that at the time I criticized labour for pulling out because I did not see that it would do any good. Labour's response was that it was not doing any good to stay there. That is more an indictment of the government than of labour.
So, what is the answer? The answer is found in the proposition that there must be, on a consultative basis, continual rapport, discussion and understanding between employers, labour and government. The CLC manifesto moves in that direction. Unfortunately, it also contains some other things which need some very careful analysis.
Speaking to the Trade Union Congress in Great Britain on September 9 Mr. Morris told his colleagues there about the CLC manifesto, and he said the following, which bears the consideration of every hon. member:
The new body, to be possibly called the Council for Social and Economic Planning, would be created by legislation and would report to Parliament through a Minister. The powers delegated to this Council by Parliament would be carried out by a number of subordinate specialized boards and agencies.
He went on to say the following:
The proposed tripartite body would also have delegated powers to redress the present distribution of income in Canada. The Council's activities in this area would include previewing draft legislation, reviewing current practices, proposing improvements to law and practice, and initiating new programs and projects. The fields of concern would include old age pensions; workmen's compensation; health, maternity, unemployment and other welfare benefits; family allowances . ..
That is an amazing amount of power to propose that parliament delegate to any agency, and the difficulty in this is that it is a delegation which really would remove decision making from the government and approval from parliament. It will be important to persuade trade union leaders that their proposal does go farther than our system can probably accommodate.
This ought to be well known by trade union leaders because certainly their rhetoric-and I am convinced much of their practice-is intensely democratic. One of the difficulties the CLC executive has had in obtaining the power to speak for all its members has been the reluctance of the affiliates to transfer the democratic power they hold within their locals to that executive. Anyone who understands labour relations in this country knows that that is true.
So, it will be incumbent upon us to speak with labour-and hon. members should notice I said speak with, not at-and try to persuade labour leaders that perhaps this proposal goes too far. I think a great many of the rank and file of labour will
The Address-Mr. Fraser
realize that it is not practical to take from parliament that amount of power. If hon. members have any doubt about just how much power is being asked for, I refer again to the speech given by Mr. Morris where he says the following:
We also adopted a policy statement, called Labour's Manifesto for Canada, which determines the general orientation of our movement and calls for the creation of a tripartite decision-making body which would have powers to plan social and economic policy, control private and public investment and supervise national income redistribution.
It is the position of this party that the powers asked for in the CLC manifesto are more than the democratic system can provide and that it would be a great mistake to establish in that kind of an agency. However, it is also recognized that what brought about the CLC manifesto was a determination on the part of a great many people within the trade union movement to play a more significant part in the affairs of their country. This is not new in the trade union movement. It can be found in Europe in almost every country which has a productive economy and a high degree of accord between management and labour.
What is called for is probably a multiparty consultative system which would be established at first on an informal basis in which government, management and labour would meet on a consistent basis to examine what the economy is doing, where it is going and what it will bear. Hopefully, the result of those discussions would be that nobody in this country, whether it be government, management or labour, would be destroying the economy, which is absolutely vital for the future well being of all Canadians.
We have some specific suggestions to make as to what form this body should take. We are convinced that there must be a consultative mechanism which involves labour, management and government. We believe this procedure ought to be followed in each province because we recognize federal and provincial divisions of responsibility. We believe that such an institution can only develop if it is, first of all, truly representative and, secondly, if both labour and management can send to it representatives who can speak for their respective bodies. I might comment that while labour has difficulty in finding representatives who represent all labour because the Canadian Labour Congress does not represent all organized labour and there are another six million Canadians who are not organized at all-


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: The hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser).


John Allen Fraser: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. As I was saying, management does not have any representative group that

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Fraser
speaks for management in this country. The Canadian Manufacturers' Association speaks for some manufacturers, chambers of commerce speak for some businessmen, boards of trade are usually local and confined to their own cities and provinces. As a consequence, when the government wants to speak to business it calls in half a dozen of the so-called leaders of industry, and now John Bullock to represent small business, and thinks it has had a discussion with business in this country. It just is not so. As a consequence, if this institution is to work, both labour and management will have to be able to send representatives who really represent and speak for them. We believe that, on the management side, both large business and independent business must have their own representation. Their views and interests are not always the same. Government and municipal employers must also be represented.
On the labour side, the Canadian Labour Congress is, at the present time, the principal labour association but some adjustment must be made to include the other one million union members and something must be done to recognize unorganized workers and farm workers.
We do not believe at this time that this proposed body ought to receive power delegated to it from parliament. Like anything new, it is too much a departure from the traditional Canadian practice to invest an untried association with what amounts to governmental executive decision-making powers. We believe that there should be recognition that the Canadian Labour Congress does not speak for all labour and big business leaders do not speak for all business. Keeping this in mind, there should be equal one-third representation from labour, management and government.
We believe that such a consultative body will only command public respect and confidence if it is clear that all three groups agree that, despite the differences, they will continue to meet and use their best endeavours to find agreement. Such a body will not function if government, labour or management insists on withdrawing just because there is disagreement. Disagreement must be anticipated; the task must be accepted and it is to find agreement.
There must not be any suggestion that such a body is a substitute for the government of the day or the parliament of the day; if there were such a result it would be the antithesis of our democratic parliamentary system and, not without importance, it would be contrary to all the rhetoric and much of the practice of democratic trade unions in Canada. It is also our belief that long before such an institution is established there must be a series of discussions and the form of organization must be agreed to, subject to modifications from time to time. For the present, we see no need to legislate the formation of such a body because its early success will of necessity depend upon flexibility and in all likelihood in the early stages, constant adjustments.
Mr. Speaker, there is a reason to emphasize the importance of this relationship between government and labour because, as I pointed out, we cannot continue to have a productive economy, hopefully giving more to our people as time goes on and caring for the increased number of Canadians that will be

here, unless there is fundamental agreement and accord on where we are going and what the economy will bear. This is going to require great frankness on the part of government and it is going to require great responsibility on the part of management and great responsibility on the part of labour.
I say to all hon. members-if you want people to act responsibly, give them responsibility, It is about as fundamental a fact in human experience as can be found. The message that is coming to us quite clearly from labour in this country is that despite all the anomalies and at times erratic behaviour, increasing numbers of trade unionists and trade union leaders are asking for responsibility. If this can be achieved, then all the other details of industrial bargaining will have some meaning. But unless there is fundamental accord between the various sectors of the economy on what we can afford to do and what kind of economy we want to have, all the other measures will be patchwork at best.
If there is any doubt that some such consultative process is necessary, I again remind hon. members that the European experience, while in a different environment than ours, clearly indicates that where you have a good economy and a high degree of accord between labour and management, some sort of consultative system like this exists.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I should like to say that it might be of advantage for this House to hear the words of the former prime minister of Great Britain on this matter. In the British House of Commons on July 7, 1976, Mr. Heath said;
Those countries which have had the greatest success in dealing with their industrial situation are those which, in one way or another, have the closest form of consultation with both sides of industry. Those who have studied this will know that in Japan, Germany, Sweden or even Singapore-in those countries where there is close consultation-there is always the best result from the point of view of industrial production and, incidentally, from the point of view of dealing with inflation.
Mr. Speaker, on this day on which labour has chosen to take an unusual step in Canadian history by calling for and launching a national strike or national day of protest, it is important to look beyond today to see just what we can do in the coming months to repair the damage of the last several years. Fundamental to that is the establishment of a climate of trust within which management and labour can deal with government. It is my hope, Mr. Speaker, that before too long this party is going to have an opportunity to establish that climate of trust for the well-being of all Canadians.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, at the commencement of my remarks I should like to take occasion to express my congratulations to the mover (Mr. Harquail) and the seconder (Mr. Lachance) of the address- to the member for Restigouche (Mr. Harquail) who joined us in this House just last year but has already given an indication that he will carry on that fine New Brunswick tradition in the House of Commons.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
October 14, 1976


Donald Stovel Macdonald: It is a tradition which I share by inheritance as the son of a native of Saint John.

I take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague the hon. member for Lafontaine-Rosemont (Mr. Lachance). I was in the class of 1962 with his father and I am confident that his constituents, the Quebec caucus as well as all members of the House compliment him on his eloquence. We are therefore grateful for the services which he will render Canada, as can be expected from his behaviour in this House.
On a personal note, may I join other spokesmen in expressions of regret at the passing of our colleague from Louis-Heb-ert, Madam Morin. She was a person of great personal charm; at the same time she showed considerable steel in her personality. Both personality traits were combined in a felicitous way and we are all losers, in this House and outside, because of the passing of a valued member, one for whom there was genuinely high regard on both sides of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Donald Stovel Macdonald: It is appropriate on the anniversary of the first enactment of the price and income control program to review the events of the past year, talk about the impact of the controls and of certain events which have occurred, particularly with regard to the so-called day of national protest. I intend to do so in the course of my remarks.
When the government announced the controls program a year ago we said that we would rely on four instruments to recapture economic stability. The first three of these, fiscal and monetary policy and controls on profits and incomes, I shall have occasion to talk about during the course of my remarks. I want to begin by referring to the fourth of the instruments to which we made reference, that is to say, to the approach which would comprise an examination of structural deficiencies in our economy and its institutions.
This afternoon I want, on behalf of my colleagues, to table in this House and release to the public a Government of Canada working paper on the Canadian economy in the post-control period. If we are to act to preserve our long-term interests as individuals and as a nation, we must arrive at as common an understanding as possible of the nature of the prospects and challenges before us.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. Does the minister have leave to table the document referred to?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: We suggest that the policy directions set out in this paper be viewed as an agenda for future consultations. We welcome the advice of all Canadians in the modification or the further elaboration of the analysis contained in this paper and the policies it suggests. I would ask that this paper be read with consideration. All will find
The Address-Hon. D. S. Macdonald something here that they disagree with, or that argues against their particular interest. We expect that they will make known that interest. Frankly, we expect that they will do more.
This paper suggests that there are deficiencies in our economy and its institutions that of themselves contribute significantly to inflation. If these factors continue to operate, inflation may well return at intolerable levels once controls are removed.
Continuing inflation will give rise to greater public demands for government intervention to offset the inequities generated by the inflationary process. If governments are to be able to meet social and economic objectives with less rather than more intervention in the economy, inflation must be held to a minimum. I think we must recognize that the Canadian economy may continue to be vulnerable to inflationary forces as we move into the 1980s. This is why there needs to be a wide understanding of the nature of problems and as broad a consensus as possible on measures to correct them.
The international economy will be marked by strong competition for resources and for markets in the 1980s. Continued growth will add to pressures on the prices of foods, energy and mineral resources. The rate of growth of the labour force in Canada will slow in the 1980s, leading to tighter labour markets. Very large investment requirements will put pressure on our capital resources. Competition for financing, equipment and skilled labour will increase, bidding up the prices of all these economic goods.
There are indications that western industrial democracies in general may be entering a period of declining increase in both productivity and growth. Our expectations of rising standards of living will therefore have to keep step with economic performance. These and other challenges will tax our skills and our ability as Canadians to seek the common good of society and co-operate toward its realization.
Hon. members will note in this paper that an essential theme that emerges is the necessity to increase both the reliance on and the effectiveness of the market system as it operates in the Canadian economy. The interplay of dynamic forces that results from an effective market system and has led to continuing economic growth must be encouraged. The role of government policy therefore cannot be to direct and manage the economy in detail. This not only would threaten growth, but could result in a government presence that intrudes too much in the daily lives of Canadians.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: It already has intruded too much.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: At the same time this government has no intention of participating in or permitting a dismantling of the socially progressive society Canadians have built in this country. It will therefore be necessary to devise means of assisting the market place to serve fully the social goals and aspirations of Canadians. This may require policies to improve the operation of the market economy. Such policies must be developed and managed in a way that allows governments to fulfil their responsibilities with less rather than more direct intervention in the economic system. Such policies must

October 14, 1976
The Address-Hon. D. S. Macdonald
provide effective alternatives to increasing public expenditures and expanding public bureaucracy.
In this paper we have indicated a middle role for government. That means that we are looking to the other groups with power in the economy to join with us in the formulation of policy alternatives and to take upon themselves some of the responsibility for the achievement of our society's goals.
This will require a closer degree of consultation than we have undertaken to date, without eroding the powers of parliament and the responsibility parliament vests in government for ultimate decision-making. An approach of this nature could enable us to attain our economic and social goals while maintaining the maximum freedom from interference and freedom of initiative. Perhaps I may call it one o'clock.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. It being one o'clock p.m., I do now leave the chair until two o'clock p.m.
At one o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, when the House rose at one o'clock I had indicated to the House the government's approach to the post-controls period, and put before the members a suggested agenda for consultation to deal with the economic problems we now face and will face through into the decade of the eighties.
As I mentioned, this is also an appropriate time, on the first anniversary of the anti-inflation program, to speak as well about that first year and to pose the question, "Where do we stand after the first year of the program?" I suppose that the most direct response, the ultimate measurement by which inflation has always been gauged in this House, is the consumer price index. On that criteria, the year's review gives some ground for optimism.
Statistics for October are, of course, not yet available. In September, the inflation rate in Canada, on a national basis, was 6.5 per cent. Last year, in October, when the anti-inflation program was introduced, it was at the level of 10.6 per cent.
While that 6.5 per cent rate is still higher than is sustainable over an extended period of time, it represents the fourth best inflation performance within the OECD nations and, of course, is a considerable relief from the double-digit inflation we had been experiencing for nearly 18 months prior to October, 1975.
What, then, is behind that general aggregate? Where have the decreases occurred? The most dramatic decrease, of course, has occurred in food. That is partly because of a dramatic drop in the costs of certain meats, because of a drop in the cost of grains and, over the current summer, because of a drop in the price of fresh vegetables.

It may be argued that those declines, welcome as they are to the consumer, owe no particular credit to the anti-inflation program. To the extent that food costs to the consumer are represented by prices at the farm gate, that is correct. However, as we have often heard in this House, as a result of the work of the Food Prices Review Board, and what now seems to be forgotten, is that up to 60 per cent of the cost which the consumer pays for his food arises from the costs of transportation, processing and distribution of food products. It is these additional costs, transportation, processing and distribution, which have been under the control of the anti-inflation program, and those controls have made certain that the lower farm gate costs have been passed on to the consumer.
Looking at other goods excluding food, we have seen an encouraging decline in the rate of increase. It is in the cost of services, most of which are beyond the control of the antiinflation program, where dramatic rates of increase are still occurring. In September this rate of increase was 12.3 per cent.
There are certain price increases which we anticipated would find their way into the consumer price index this month. As part of our over-all energy policy we have to take account of higher prices for oil and natural gas. Because the junior levels of government, particularly municipalities, have had to face higher payments for the services of their employees, there have been higher levels of municipal taxes. In summary, then, the program has been effective. In those parts of the economy where controls have applied, they have been effective to restrain the rate of price increase.
What has happened to wage settlements during this period? First, let us cast our minds back to the bargaining atmosphere in late September and early October, 1975. People are inclined to forget the kind of wage claims that were then being pressed for. For example, 22,000 members of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers were looking for an immediate pay increase of 71 per cent and a 30-hour week. Ontario doctors were asking for an increase of between 35 and 40 per cent. Alberta doctors were asking for an increase of 40 per cent. British Columbia bakery workers, meat cutters and retail clerks were demanding immediate increases ranging from 38.6 to 76 per cent. Ontario high school teachers were looking for 43.9 per cent, plus a full cost of living allowance and a $720 lump sum payment. Construction tradesmen in various localities in Ontario demanded increases in wage and fringe benefits ranging between 43 and 96 per cent in a two-year contract.
In other words, let us recall that because of the experience with inflation in the previous 18-month period, there had been these wildly inflated wage claims that were being put forward at the time the controls were put into effect.
What has been happening to compensation increases, wage settlements in particular, in the period of the program? One area of comparison may be made between the average increases in the second quarter of 1976 as reported by Labour Canada, where the rate was down to 13.4 per cent, compared with an average rate of 21.8 per cent in the nine months of 1975 which preceded the introduction of the program. That is
October 14, 1976

a rate which does not yet reflect the impact of all anti-inflation roll-backs. Despite the slowing down of nominal wage increases, there have been significant gains in real earnings, in the order of 3.6 per cent for the last three months, over the same period a year ago. Labour income increased by 16.4 per cent between the first half of 1975 and the corresponding period of 1976. The labour share of the gross national product has been sustained at the record level of 56.6 per cent. Therefore, the working man and woman gained in real terms as a result of the anti-inflation program.
It is true that because of wage roll-backs by the Anti-Inflation Board, exceptional rates of increase going beyond the necessities of inflation have not been permitted. But those who previously had not had an opportunity to catch up with the work force as a whole have been permitted to do so, while others who had favourable settlements before the program have at least been able to hold themselves even with the rate of inflation during the past year and achieved some real gain.
At this point, and in light of those particular figures, one must ask, "Why a national day of protest?" Mr. Speaker, it will be clear from the foregoing that the protest is not related to any real disadvantage that the worker has suffered. The problem with the national day of protest is the leadership of some of the national trade unions, rather than their membership. I am confident, today, that there are many workers who will support the so-called day of protest more out of loyalty to their trade union affiliation than from any real sense of grievance arising from the anti-inflation program.


An hon. Member:: Tell that to the guy whose wages have been cut.


Donald Stovel Macdonald: Mr. Speaker, let me tell the hon. gentleman this. Recently there has been a lot of talk about polls, and I was therefore interested in the following poll that appeared in the October 6 issue of the Toronto Star in which the question was asked, "Is the Canadian Labour Congress acting in a responsible manner in calling for a national day of protest?" A decisive 62 per cent answered no to that question, another 13 per cent said they did not know if the CLC executive was being responsible, and only 25 per cent said yes.
Hon. members opposite say that they represent union members here in this House and that the leadership of the CLC represents union members. What was even more significant about this poll was that 58 per cent of union households said that the CLC leadership was being irresponsible in holding a national day of protest. Another 10 per cent of union households said that they did not know whether the CLC leadership was being responsible or not, and only 32 per cent were prepared to support the leadership of the Canadian Labour Congress.
Indeed, criticism of the CLC leadership has not been confined to the rank and file. We have seen the remarks of Mr. Donald Secord, of the 40,000 member Canadian Brotherhood
The Address-Hon. D. S. Macdonald of Railway, Transport and General Workers, criticizing the approach of labour leadership to negotiations and advocating a greater sense of responsibility in maintaining the stability of our economy.
The CLC have legitimate views to express concerning the Canadian economy, and they have important interests to defend. But a vocal minority within that organization appears to be seeking to build a base from which they can dictate terms to the rest of the Canadian people. They are demanding that certain of the decision-making powers which are entrusted to parliament be delegated to an extra-parliamentary body. While they suggest that this body report to parliament through a minister, they still wish to be able to have power to direct investment into certain channels and to have undefined authority over labour markets and pricing decisions without referring to parliament on specific decisions.
The CLC has today chosen an extra-parliamentary route to make its protest heard or its power felt. It seems to be demonstrating an increasing preference for the extra-parliamentary approach. 1 suggest that as it does so it will find an even further declining response to its methods from the Canadian people. This government is on record as favouring a continuing and increasing dialogue and exchange of views with organized labour. Indeed, we are willing to explore the modalities of increasing and more effective consultations on the economy with labour, business and other groups, as I have already said. But those who seek to use the problems of our economy to challenge the authority of our political institutions will find no encouragement in their objectives from this side of the House at least.
To be balanced, let us take a look at the other side of the equation. What has been the business experience during the period of the program? There is no doubt about the fact that during this period corporate profits have been under a squeeze. In the first half of 1976 they were up only 5.5 per cent from the first half of 1975, and the share of profits in the gross national product has fallen over the period from 11.3 to 10.3 per cent.
The role of the anti-inflation program in the restraint of higher profits has been important. About 100 firms have been required by the board to return to the public excess revenues gained during the first period of the program. A thousand price prenotification cases have been referred to the board and the full details of these particular cases will be laid before the House when the board makes its report, as it is required to do under the statute.
As the House knows, at budget time I announced the intention to introduce some changes to the price and profit rules under the anti-inflation program, and for this purpose draft regulations were put out for consultation with those affected. There was an extensive program of consultation throughout the summer, as a result of which the government has confirmed its intention to remain with the basic elements of the guidelines, namely, holding corporate profits back to 85 per cent of the net profit margin in the base year, but permitting by way of an investment credit additional revenue

October 14, 1976
The Address-Hon. D. S. Macdonald
where there have been productive investments by a particular firm.
There has been a great deal of talk in the business press and by some business leaders alleging that the anti-inflation program is the cause for the relatively low level of business investment during the current fiscal year. There are really three rejoinders to that observation. In the first place, most major business investment does not look for a total pay-out in the first two years during the life of an investment, and hence would be hardly deterred by a temporary program. Secondly, at this stage in the economic cycle, and with a very substantial degree of unutilized capacity still in the economy, it is not surprising that at the moment additional capital investment is not being put in place. But even apart from those two factors in the Canadian economy, cognizance should be taken of the fact that investment as a whole is not strong throughout the developed world.
I should like to refer the House to the conclusions of Business Week. In this regard it observes:
The world's key economies may be exhibiting the outward signs of recovery, but the growth of capital spending-which should be rising with the recovery-is extraordinarily sluggish.
The article goes on:
Capital spending is lagging behind growth in all the big industrial economies. In the U.S., money is again available in the capital markets. But capital spending is making its slowest post-war comeback from recession.
I would just repeat again to business leadership what I have had to say outside the House, namely, that they and their shareholders stand to gain as much from defeating inflation in Canada as anyone of the rest of us. Purely negative opposition to the anti-inflation program, whether by the Canadian Labour Congress or the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, is shortsighted and against their best interests. As we turn into 1977, what all intelligent management should be looking to is the need for additional capacity and the opportunity during that year to initiate projects in favourable economic terms, rather than postponing those kinds of decisions, lest we find ourselves again with spiralling costs of the kind we had in 1973-1974.
As a postscript to this review of the controls program, I recently had the opportunity to meet my counterparts from other nations at the International Monetary Fund meeting in Manila. The primary area of concern among developed countries was the need to control the high rates of inflation being experienced in all but a few of them.
The success we have had in lowering the rate of inflation, limited through it is to date, has caused certain individuals to declare that in their view the time has come to drop the controls program and leave it to the marketplace to bring inflation still lower. They cite the relative slack in current market conditions as being adequate to work against excessive wage and price increases. No one would be happier than I, as Minister of Finance, to be rid of the burden of controls at this time. But I am not convinced that market conditions on their own would be sufficient to lead to a continuation in the decline of inflation. Those who advocate the early termination of

controls have failed to give any reason why, in the absence of the kind of national consensus to which I have referred, the rate of inflation should drop in Canada.
In conclusion, I think we should observe that while, of course, the traditional instruments of fiscal and monetary policy would have been available to control inflation in Canada, by using controls to bring down the rate of inflation we have been able to avoid the massive unemployment that would have been generated had we attempted to achieve the same price target relying solely on those two particular fiscal and monetary instruments.
But controls cannot be a permanent part of our economic system. We still have to rely on continued restraint on fiscal and monetary policy, restraint that has already been in effect this year. We have cut government expenditure and we are committed to holding its increase to no more than the rise in the gross national product. The Bank of Canada, with our full support, has announced new monetary targets for growth in the money supply that will decline with the rate of inflation. We cannot be certain at this time as to the outcome of world inflationary forces in the months to come. But one thing we can decide is that we as Canadians should moderate our own demands on the economy so as to make certain that the inflationary forces are not further revived in this country.
The preference of myself and this government is to achieve that kind of objective by consensus, and it is that consensus we are seeking in the consultations I have referred to, for which the documents I have tabled today are the basis. Until we can arrive at some effective agreement of that kind, and so long as we can be certain that the impact of the program is not creating economic distortions that will work against the interest of the economy as a whole, a controls program of the kind we have put forward, we feel can and must be carried through to effectiveness, and in this we continue to seek the support of the Canadian people and members of this House.


Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Mr. Speaker, in the more than 19 years I have served as a member of parliament from the province of Nova Scotia, I have been privileged to speak in the throne speech debate and I therefore welcome the opportunity to comment on the proposals put forth by the government at this time.
I would first like to congratulate the mover and seconder of the address, the newly appointed cabinet ministers, as well as those who have been newly appointed as parliamentary secretaries. I look forward to working with them during the balance of this parliament.
If we look carefully over the doors of the Speaker's chamber in the other place we will see a number of inscriptions in Latin. One of these quotes ins from Cicero, and translated it means, "Let reason prevail with me, more than popular opinion". I would recommend that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and his governnment give serious thought to the sound reasoning contained in those words. Unfortunately, it would appear, after
October 14, 1976

reading the Prime Minister's statements, that reason no longer prevails among him and his colleagues and, of course, Mr. Gallup has indicated that this administration no longer enjoys the popular support of a vast majority of Canadians.
Apparently, this fact has finally seeped through the vast bureaucratic buffer, built at great public expense, which surrounds the Prime Minister and his cabinet. It has been interesting to the Canadian people to note the Prime Minister's reaction. At first there was disbelief, then frustration, then annoyance over what the Prime Minister construed as the stupidity of many Canadians who, despite an army of bureaucrats, consultants and public relations men, were seemingly unaware of the benefits provided them by this government. "We will soon fix that," said the Prime Minister. "We will take more than $1 million of the taxpayers' money and in this year of restraint we will run some ads in all the newspapers from the Atlantic to the Pacific".
"What shall we say?" asked his supporters. I presume the Prime Minister told them something like this, "Run the ads and say Pierre Trudeau practised his judo while eating his humble pie; he put in his thumb and pulled out a plum and said, 'What a good guy am I' ".
In light of recent political visits to Atlantic Canada and elsewhere in this country, as well as recent events in this splintered cabinet, the Prime Minister may well feel like emulating Dean Martin who goes around singing, "Everybody loves somebody some time; why don't you fall in love with me somehow?" However, the Prime Minister's fall love fest is as divisive as it is expensive.
In fact, one of the most misleading statements recently made by the Prime Minister is reported in the headlines of the Halifax Chronicle-Herald of October 4, in which he stated, "Time is running out for the Liberals" and that Canada was in danger of breaking up over bilingualism. That statement reminded me of headlines I read one time when I was in the United Kingdom. They read, "Gales lash British coast-continent is isolated". It was not the continent that was isolated at that time, and it is not Canada that is in danger of breaking up over bilingualism. It is the Liberal ship of state which is in danger of breaking up, not on the rocks of bilingualism but on the shoals of faulty economic policies.
I suggest to you, sir, that it took real experts to make a complete mess of one of the world's richest economies. We insult our friends south of the border with our policies on communications, trade, national defence, finance, and external affairs, to name but a few. Then we wonder why they do not come up to visit us during the tourist season. We neglect our resources, and then we wonder why we are short of such necessities as electrical energy, oil and natural gas. We ignore our customers, and we wonder why they no longer buy our goods which are no longer competitive in world markets or competitive in our own. We define Canada as the thickly-settled areas of Quebec and Ontario, and then we wonder why our national policies almost never work.
I say to you, sir, that this government has honed the art of evasion and delay until it is razor sharp. The government has
The Address-Mr. Crouse
established the survey and the study as the normal substitute for action and decision. Regionalism and bilingualism are nothing more than symptoms of a fed-up feeling by the average Canadian with the central government which is not legislating in the best interests of Canada.
This administration has endeavoured to choke off every effort by the individual citizen or by the people of a region to develop their full potential. Private enterprise has been systematically destroyed, and today we have the absurd situation in this nation of a flight of capital from our country, at a time when our nation is desperately in need of investment capital.
I say to the Prime Minister that his present-day wearing of sackcloth and ashes comes too late to undo the chaos brought about by his blind hopes, his exhortations, his incantations, his studies in depth and his sweeping theories. They have brought about a steady decline in living standards, a steady rise in living costs and a constant sharpening of the cleavage which exists between regions and between interests within a region.
I would remind the Prime Minister and this government that they cannot, by order in council, make everyone wealthy. They cannot legislate prosperity. If this were possible, it would have been done long before any members who are presently sitting in this House were born. The only way Canadians can enjoy a better way of life and a higher standard of living is through increased productivity. This is not only possible but it is absolutely essential in a growing nation like Canada, and it is long past the time that we should get on with the job of increasing our productivity.
The Prime Minister is reported as stating, in Toronto, "The Liberals are out of touch with a large section of the grass roots-especially west of the Manitoba-Ontario border". His recent tours of Atlantic Canada should indicate, even to him, that he is out of touch with the people in our provinces. There is no better way to learn the problems of a region than by at least listening to members of parliament, who collectively represent all of Canada, which I believe is what democracy is all about.
In the time remaining to me, I hope to alert the Prime Minister and his government to some of the problems affecting my province and my constituency, and I hope my suggestions for improving these conditions will receive at least some consideration by this government.
The problems facing Atlantic Canada, and Nova Scotia in particular, are many and varied. It is difficult to classify one as being more important than another, but one of the main problems facing Nova Scotians at present is the high cost of electrical energy and the fact that it is projected shortly to increase by some 65 per cent without any relief in sight from the federal or the provincial governments. It is true that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Gillespie) recently issued a new "Energy Strategy for Canada", but its broad outlines barely touched the Atlantic provinces and their power potential. After reading his policy, I could not help but feel the minister is obsessed with oil, that he is ready to allow
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October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Crouse
petroleum prices to rise to world market prices, and that he is satisfied to let the people of my area pay increases of some 25 cents a gallon within the next two years.
He mentioned electricity in its nuclear and coal-fired forms, but he steered clear of what 1 believe to be one of the greatest sources of power in Canada, namely, the development of the tides of the Bay of Fundy. On page 103, under the title "Renewable Energy Resources", he states:
The potential for general application of such resources as solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and tidal power has yet to be evaluated properly in a Canadian context.
So much for tidal power, but it was ever thus! Nobody wants Fundy power except the people; therefore it gets no consideration by Ottawa's planners. If the minister knew that a $3 million study had just been undertaken on tidal power, another in a long list of studies, he gave no indication of it. His desire for oil production and conservation left him far afield. 1 therefore feel it necessary this afternoon to remind him that by establishing Fundy power he would save Canada billions of barrels of oil. The output of Fundy tidal power has been estimated at 87 billion kilowatt hours a year. It would take 125 million barrels of oil to equal that production. Ten billion barrels of oil conserved for other uses over 75 years; that is what the minister failed to say.
These are mind-boggling figures, but the experts in tidal power confirm them. In light of present-day needs, to say nothing of future requirements, it is therefore difficult for me to understand why Fundy power still has no priority in federal government policy, and unfortunately there is no indication in the throne speech that action will be taken on this vitally important matter. Evidently the old fears still exist that developments in Atlantic Canada could provide competition for central Canada. There is apparently a belief among the members of this government that a tidal power project would bring the natural north-south lines of economic co-operation closer; that the captive market-which Atlantic Canada has been to central Canada for generations-would begin to burst its bonds. Obviously, this government prefers to see the maritimes and Newfoundland exist as second-class provinces, with their people dependent on its doles and hand-outs, rather than help them move forward to economic and social maturity, which was the promise of confederation.
The Atlantic provinces, and this nation, need Fundy power for a number of reasons. For example, there has been a tremendous rise in the cost of thermal fuels. There is a growing fear of possible thermal and nuclear pollution. There are new techniques which can spread tidal power over to the peak periods in which it is most needed. There is an extensive market south of the border for energy. There is a huge saving of scarce and expensive oil to be gained by a mobile nation. We should be using Fundy tides to produce electricity, and oil to turn the wheels of transportation. There is an opportunity to improve our infrastructure, to correct our chronic unemployment problem, for I say that industry will always move to a location where there is a large and constant source of power.

There are other arguments for Fundy. The need for electrical energy in our area is expected to double within the next eight years, and every source of energy will be required. Fundy's tides can go a long way toward meeting Atlantic Canada's needs. The development of Fundy is too important for interprovincial and federal-provincial bickering. It has to be a political decision, like the decision to build the St. Fawrence Seaway, or the decision to help repay the $2 billion deficit of the Olympics. In fact, the feasibility of tidal power development in the Bay of Fundy was studied and reported upon in 1969 by a board having representation from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the federal government, and the total capital cost of the three sites at that time was listed at $2 billion, which is the same amount as our Olympics deficit and only half the amount of the funds to be set aside by the federal government and by industry this year to take care of unemployment in Canada, a figure which amounts to something like $4 billion.
I say to this House, however, that the development of Fundy tides will not be an expenditure but, rather, an investment which will repay its investors a hundredfold in vast power production, part of which can be sold at a profit and, best of all, in conservation of Canada's vital oil supplies which everyone knows will not last forever.
Let us put our unemployed to work, not next month or next year, but today, building Fundy power plants. Where shall we begin? Feasibility studies show that an installed generating capacity of 8,828 megawatts-and one megawatt equals 1,000 kilowatts-could be obtained if Shepody Bay, Cumberland Basin and Cobequid Bay were all developed to the fullest extent that modern day technology allows.
This massive outfit of power can be placed in perspective when it is equated with the installed generating capacity of each province around the Bay of Fundy which totals some 3,600 megawatts, or less than half the generating capacity of the proposed three sites. However, the studies have only covered three sites, at a proposed cost of $2 billion, which seems to have paralysed this government into inaction.
Their attitude seems to be that if it is too big for them to handle, they will do nothing, or, "If we cannot do the big things, let us not do anything". I submit to this House that there is a fourth site, with the dam already constructed and with control gates looking after the flow of water in and out at every change of tide. This site exists at the causeway between Annapolis Royal and Granville Ferry and there is a sufficient flow of water through this causeway which could, when harnessed to generators, provide electricity to a large part of western Nova Scotia. With very little additional cost, generators could be installed at the present site without interferring with highway traffic, for the causeway could fulfil both functions. An estimated $1 million would provide sufficient generators to at least set up a test plant at this site, and since this government seems to have no difficulty in finding a million dollars to shore up its failing image, I would ask that this amount be made available to the Nova Scotia government
October 14, 1976

immediately toward a test plant on the Annapolis River causeway.
Since Nova Scotia is also considering the construction of its first wood-burning plant for the generation of electricity, which indicates the depth of our need, I would also ask that the federal Department of Energy, Mines and Resources assist my province in carrying out a study of all the possible sources of electricity which could be generated on our rivers. 1 believe that the Mersey River, for example, in Queens County, could provide more electricity for our area, and the beautiful falls at Milton are, in effect, at present wasted energy. At one time electricity generated from a power dam on the Petite Riviere looked after the electricity needs of Bridgewater. Another power dam at Mahone Bay looked after that town's electricity needs along with Lunenberg. In light of Nova Scotia's soaring electricity costs, I believe we must immediately examine the possibility of harnessing the power available to us on all our rivers, power which will not materially escalate in cost once it is developed and which will not use up our non-renewable reserves of coal and oil. Let us get on with this job immediately.
I have dealt with this issue at some length due to its importance in Atlantic Canada, as well as the fact that the increased energy cost is having a marked effect on another very important problem in our area, namely, transportation. The former minister of transport described the problem very well, if not in a very complimentary way to himself, when he said that transport is in a mess. I agree with his assessment. Today it is in a mess that has reached crisis proportions.
I am glad that the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang) is here, because I intend to deal rather extensively with the problems that are faced by his department. Part of the present problem is brought about by the fact that the railroads, which should provide a national service to all parts of the country at equal cost, are in effect providing a regional service at competitive cost only in the heavily-settled areas of Canada while being required by this government to provide service in Atlantic Canada, for example, on a user pay basis. This concept could put our farmers, our fishermen and fish processors, our lumber producers and other industries out of business.
This is not a cliche or a statement made off the cuff. This fact was made quite evident at the transport hearings in Caledonia, Queens County, on September 14 when transport officials were told that the termination of freight service between Caledonia and New Germany would put two large lumber dealers out of business, directly affecting the employment of 70 people and indirectly affecting the whole community. Because Atlantic Canada is a geographical extremity of our nation, we have a greater need for an efficient transportation system than any other part of the country. In light of increasing costs of air and automobile transportation, we should be taking steps now to improve our railway system. Unfortunately, however, I get the impression that this government since 1968 has had a national policy which has brought
The Address-Mr. Crouse
about a gradual elimination of the passenger rail service, while at the same time forcing up freight rates to the detriment of business in the geographical extremities of Canada.
Our railroads are the only mode of transportation made responsible for all costs, while at the same time they are charged with the responsibility of providing service to areas of the country where alternate forms of transportation do not exist. This places management in a very unfair position, and obviously they cannot carry out these two conflicting duties without being granted federal funds toward capital improvements which would increase efficiency.
Government supporters will undoubtedly ask, "Where will you get the funds?" No one seemed concerned when the government was talking about a new airport for Toronto which would have destroyed valuable farm land, at an estimated total cost of $2 billion. The government spent $157 million for a parking garage at Toronto's terminal two, and $90 million for road improvements to serve Mirabel airport in Quebec, to say nothing of the $440 million which was spent on Mirabel which now is referred to as the greatest white elephant in Canada. The government has on its drawing boards, at a cost of something like $250 million, a plan to provide rapid transit service between Mirabel and Montreal. Where is the user pay concept brought into play when you are talking of making these expenditures, and where do you plan to get this money? Our railroads are still the cheapest means of transporting large numbers of people or heavy loads of freight or machinery over great distances, and they will become more important as fuel costs escalate and fuel is in short supply.
They must be placed in a similar competitive position with other modes of transportation. At present, sufficient funds are not being provided in order to make this possible, and this can only be described as a penny wise and pound foolish policy. The value of our railroads was all too evident only a few months ago when air service was terminated as the result of a strike. The trains were filled with passengers from here to Montreal and reservations to Halifax from Ottawa were impossible to obtain. In my opinion, it is a national folly to let this service deteriorate when it is obviously so important to the well-being of Canadians. It would be interesting to see the response of the travelling public to a new turbo or light, rapid, comfortable train service over tracks from Montreal, through Maine to Saint John, Moncton, Amherst and Halifax. The trip would only take a day, thereby eliminating the need for sleeping accommodation, and it could be provided at an attractive price.
I believe the time has come for a reassessment of our transportation problems and for a new list of spending priorities as they apply to our railroads. Regional as well as national interests must be paramount in any transportation policy. It would also be advisable to consider using electricity as the motive power for our trains. This concept has been adopted with great success throughout Europe for many years. Incidentally, this would be a further use for Fundy power.
After serving for two years as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I could not help but come to the conclu-
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October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Crouse
sion that this government needs a new list of spending priorities. The money for investment which would develop our country and improve our infrastructure is available, but it must be funnelled into the proper channels.
Finally, I wish to deal with some of the fishing problems as they relate to Atlantic Canada. Quite frankly, these problems are many and complex and they are not necessarily related simply to the supply of fish. After attending a seminar at the Nova Scotia Fisheries Exhibition in September, I could not help but come to the conclusion, after listening to fishermen, processors, industry representatives and officials of the Department of Fisheries, that every aspect of this industry, from the ocean to the ship to the processing plant to the wholesaler to the retailer, was in need of attention.
In my view, extending the Canadian territorial limit to 200 miles, as is proposed in the Speech from the Throne, will not by itself restore the industry to health. Rather, this action, although desirable and in fact essential, will only attack one problem among many, namely, that of continued supply. In fact, with both Canada and the United States adopting the 200-mile limit, a new set of problems has arisen. Here I refer to the ownership of Georges Bank, an area claimed by both Canada and the United States and an area that produces a large quantity of our groundfish catch and the bulk of our scallop catch which is one of our most valuable fisheries.
Mr. J. H. Warren, Canadian ambassador to the United States, described the over-all jurisdictional issue in a speech to the Rotary Club of Boston on September 15 as follows:
The new era will involve fresh opportunities for and challenges to our bilateral relationship. We shall be challenged to demonstrate that coastal state management does not exclude effective international co-operation.
Negotiations with the United States over bilateral fisheries relations are expected to be protected and complex, a fact confirmed yesterday by the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Jamieson) in response to a question I put to him concerning this thorny problem. A similar problem has arisen with France, since St. Pierre and Miquelon are asserting their right to a corridor extending out to sea some 200 miles either as a free fishing area or as French waters. At present, the Atlantic coast provinces contain more than two-thirds of the people who work in the fishing industries. In these areas, as a general rule, with some minor exceptions in certain areas, the more a community depends on fishing, the lower its average income tends to be.
A major problem for Canada's fisheries, especially in Atlantic Canada, is stock depletion brought about by overfishing. Foreign fleets, especially those of the U.S.S.R., are generally held to be largely responsible for this depletion. Since 1949 the International Commission for the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, ICNAF for short, has set the total allowable catches, or TACs, and allocated quotas to member nations. Clearly, the regulating effort of ICNAF has not succeeded in its purpose of regulating fish stocks in the northwest Atlantic, for many stocks, especially our groundfish stocks, are badly depleted. It is this situation, in light of the failure of successive sessions of

the Law of the Sea conferences, that has brought about the promised unilateral declaration by Canada of a 200-mile limit.
This government, of course, must share some of the blame for the depletion of our stocks. It has dillied and dallied over the years, holding out like a carrot on a stick the promise of doing something for our fisherman. It has been the government's delays over the years in implementing the 200-mile limit which have brought about the present situation, and it will take years for our fish stocks to improve to a point where there will be beneficial improvement in Canadian catches.
One problem which concerns me, as well as the fishermen and processors, is the amount of fish declared surplus to our needs by bureaucrats when negotiating fishing treaties with foreign countries, without an adequate scientific study on which to base these figures. To talk of fish surplus to our needs only indicates the lack of knowledge of the government about Canada's fishing capacity. In fact, the Canadian offshore and inshore fleets presently have the capability of catching the entire allowable catch of all the traditional groundfish stocks, with the exception of the Hamilton Bank cod stock. This is especially true when we keep in mind the reduced total allowable catch which will be necessary in order to rebuild the stocks.
In my view, this is simply another area in which there is inadequate consultation among the federal and provincial governments. There should be discussions and consultations among all provincial fisheries ministers and the federal government before any agreements giving away our fish stocks are signed with foreign nations. Our provincial fisheries ministers are closer to the scene; they are aware of the problems, and their advice and guidance would be most helpful to the government. I submit this type of advice and counsel is more important today than ever before.
I also believe that in order to develop a sound management scheme for our fisheries, consideration should be given to such factors as the time of the year when fish can be most efficiently caught, and here the fishermen's knowledge should be utilized. Consideration should also be given to the seasonal variations in the quality of fish, as well as other biological factors relating to the spawning period. We cannot continue in our old ways and habits if we are serious in our intention to rebuild our fisheries resources, and this applies to all ships licensed to fish on our banks, whether they be Canadian or ships of other nations.
In conclusion, in order to clear up our difficulties with the United States in the Georges Bank area, as well as in other areas, we should establish, after consultation, a joint management fisheries commission to manage fish stocks in all Cana-da-U.S. boundary areas. These suggestions will not by any means solve all our fisheries problems, but unless the 200-mile limit, when established, brings greater economic benefit to all Canadian fishermen, the whole exercise will be merely a mirage and a delusion. The throne speech barely mentions Canadian fishermen, and in light of the lack of leadership
October 14, 1976

given by this government on many of the problems I have outlined, I welcome the opportunity to support my leader's motion of no confidence in this administration.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I would like to inform the House that we have in Mr. Speaker's gallery the Minister of Forestry and Wood Processing Industries of Poland, the hon. Mr. Tadeusz Skwirzynski, and I would like hon. members to welcome him.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Although I do recognize that hon. members are always happy to welcome guests in the gallery, I might remind the minister that this is not the proper procedure and this should not be taken as a precedent as to the time when this should be done.


SPEECH FROM THE THRONE
[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Harquail for an Address to His Excellency the Governor General in reply to his speech at the opening of the session, the amendment thereto of Mr. Clark (p. 28) and the subamendment of Mr. Broadbent (p. 37).
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, in 1972 and 1973 when the Progressive Conservative Party began to propose its 90-day wage and price freeze program to deal with the problem of increasing inflation, we opposed that plan.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Your leader did not.


David Orlikow: We said then that the program would not work and that it would be inequitable if it was tried.


Mr. Friesen:: Schreyer liked it.


David Orlikow: The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) opposed that suggestion, fought an election on that issue and won by promising the Canadian people that he would not impose wage and price controls, because he said they would not work. Having won the election, he then, in a very few months, adopted essentially the Conservative program.


Steve Eugene Paproski: What about Schreyer?
The Address-Mr. Orlikow


David Orlikow: I will come to the premier of Manitoba in a little while.


Mrs. Holt:: The Prime Minister said there were contingency plans.


David Orlikow: We opposed the anti-inflation program of the government in 1975 because we said, as the Prime Minister has said, that inflation could not be dealt with by wage controls, that price controls would not work and that the program would not be equitable. The events of the last year have demonstrated the validity of the arguments we used in opposing the program.
We have never opposed a genuine incomes policy. A party like ours, which believes in democratic socialism and which works in the same spirit as the social democratic government of West Germany and as the socialist government of Sweden did for more than 40 years-


Steve Eugene Paproski: They went down the tube.


David Orlikow: -did not oppose, and does not oppose a genuine incomes policy which would treat all Canadian citizens fairly, which would not discriminate against the poor and benefit the rich, as the present program does. Let me give just a few illustrations of what I mean when I say that. In the constituency of St. Boniface, which is represented by my friend, the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Guay), the large hospital there recently concluded an agreement with its workers which provided for a 16 per cent increase. The lowest rate for unskilled workers at that hospital was the magnificent sum of $3.06 per hour. That works out to just over 6,000 per year, just barely over the poverty level. What did the AntiInflation Board, helped by the administrator, do? It rolled that increase back to 8 per cent, so that these people, of whom there are hundreds, will in fact live with an income which has been described by the Economic Council and by Senator Croll-certainly no flaming radical-as being in a state of poverty.
The workers in the Cyprus-Anvil mine at Faro, in the Yukon, about whom the hon. member for Vancouver South (Mr. Fraser) spoke this morning, have been on strike for months despite the fact that they reached agreement with their company, because of the stupidity of the Anti-Inflation Board and the administrator in not facing up to the reality that unless the workers get that increase they will not stay in the Yukon, they will move	to Sudbury,	to Thompson	or to Sault Ste.Marie. Within	a year that	mine	will be	virtually closedbecause nobody	will want to	work	there at	the rates of paywhich the AIB	has imposed.	That	is what	has happened to
ordinary workers as a result of the program.
Let us look at the other end, at how the government and the AIB has dealt with people in the upper income brackets. I am sorry that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) is not here. The hon. member for Edmonton Centre (Mr. Paproski) asked about the premier of Manitoba. Let me tell him something about the premier of Manitoba. He really believes in an incomes policy. He was naive enough to believe that this
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The Address-Mr. Orlikow
Liberal government meant business. When it said that the increase which any individual could get last year would range from a minimum of $600 to a maximum of $2,400, the premier was naive enough, or foolish enough-whatever term you want to use-to believe that the government meant it and that it would apply to all Manitoban citizens, including the doctors.
But what happened when he tried to get the Anti-Inflation Board and the Minister of Finance to put that into operation? The premier of Manitoba believed that doctors are no better and no worse than the other citizens of Manitoba and that they should have to live under the same rules. Suddenly the chairman of the Anti-Inflation Board and the Minister of Finance disappeared from the scene and the premier of Manitoba received' absolutely no co-operation. Indeed, he received opposition from the Liberal government and its stooge bureaucrats on the Anti-Inflation Board.
How can the government expect workers like the hospital workers in Winnipeg or Toronto, or the many other workers who are living on poor incomes, to believe it is serious, when they can pick up a recent issue of the Financial Times that indicates the incomes or salaries some of the senior officials of corporations in Canada are earning? Incidentally, Mr. Speaker, the only reason we have this information is that tax laws in the United States require that it be filed by companies whose stocks are traded on the American market.
Let us look at how hard done by some of the senior corporate executives are in this country. Last year, the income of the chief executive officer of Alcan Aluminium Ltd. was $235,000; the chief executive officer of Carling O'Keefe Ltd. was $164,000; the chief executive officer of Imperial Oil Ltd., one of those corporations which is crying that unless it gets better tax breaks it cannot continue to look for oil in this country, was $234,000.


Benno Friesen: What about the UAW?


David Orlikow: Massey-Ferguson Ltd.'s chief executive officer received $353,000.


Benno Friesen: What about the Teamsters?


David Orlikow: That is the kind of situation which exists, Mr. Speaker. It is no wonder that people in Canada simply do not believe that this program is working or that it is fair.
Let us look at the profits some corporations made in the last year. The Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister have said that the controls program put limits on corporations and they would have to make sacrifices like everybody else in this country. Let me put a few examples on the record. Cadillac Fairview Corp. Ltd.'s profits went from $13 million to almost S16V5 million, an increase of 26.4 per cent. The Toronto Star, a great supporter of the government and a great supporter of the anti-inflation program for everybody but itself, went from just over $7 million to $9 million in 1976, an increase of 25 per cent. Of course, the Toronto Star likes having an increase of

25 per cent for itself, and it wants the government to see that its employees do not get a fair share of that increased profit.
Bell Canada, a company which has distinguished itself by asking for rate increases every year since I came to Ottawa as a member of parliament, saw its profits go from $114 million in 1975 to $148 million in 1976, an increase of 30 per cent in this year of controls.
Mr. Speaker, the controls program is not working. Despite what the Minister of Finance has said today, every poll taken shows conclusively that the public, by a large majority, believes it is not working and that it is being applied unfairly. The minister made a great deal of the fact that the consumer price index showed an increase of only 6Vi per cent for the last year. But he ignored some very important facts and glided over some others. He admitted that to a large extent the reduction in the increasing rate of the cost of living is due to the fact that the cost of food has decreased. It has gone down despite the fact that food production is specifically omitted from those fields in which the Anti-Inflation Board can apply controls. It has gone down as a result of very good weather on the North American continent we have had bumper crops and this has led to reductions in the price of beef, pork and vegetables.
If you exclude food, you find some very interesting facts. The cost of housing went up by 11.2 per cent last year. That is not surprising when one realizes that interest rates on mortgages are at an all-time high and there is a tremendous shortage of housing. We are doing little to meet the needs of people in the lower and middle income brackets for housing. The cost of operating a house has gone up by 11.2 per cent. The cost of fuel and utilities went up by 20.4 per cent last year.
Those costs are just beginning to go up, because when we talk about an increase of 6.5 per cent for September-the figure which was announced a few days ago-we know, and the minister knows, I am sure, better than most members of parliament, that this is the first time the increase in the price of fuel has been calculated. The minister knows that by November the full increase which was permitted some weeks ago will show up, and he knows that the government has authorized another increase in the price of fuel in January.
The price of utilities has gone up. The Ontario Energy Board has recommended an increase in hydro rates for the coming year of 30 per cent. That is not the only reason the figure only shows 6V2 per cent. The minister knows, or should know, that the increase in municipal taxes shows up in the cost of living figures only one a year, and the month it is taken into account is November. There has been a very sharp increase in municipal taxes in every city in Canada.
There is another important factor which is not shown at all in the consumer price index. That is the cost of health insurance. The reason it is not shown is that in every province the financing of health insurance is done in a different way. In some provinces it is done through premiums and in others it is paid for out of general tax revenue. That is how it is done in Manitoba. In the three largest provinces, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, health insurance premiums doubled in
October 14, 1976

the last year. I speak from memory, but I believe it has added in the neighbourhood of $100 or more to the cost of living for every family in those three provinces. That figure does not show up at all in the cost of living figures.
I say the cost of living increase for the year, by January or February, 1977, will not be the 6I/2 per cent about which the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister were able to crow yesterday and today, but will in fact be in the neighbourhood of 8'/2 per cent. Indeed, although the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister crow about a 6.5 per cent increase in the last year, the fact is that if one excludes food prices, the increase from September, 1975, to September 1976, was 9.3 per cent, compared with about 10.5 per cent for the same period in the preceding year. To say the least, gains have been minimal.
A good deal has been made today and in past months about the hostility of the labour movement, of trade unions, to the anti-inflation program and the controls program. For some time the labour movement was alone among the interested groups of this country in opposing the controls program implemented by the Fiberal government. It is interesting to note that the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which originally supported the anti-inflation program, has in the last few weeks opposed that program. This country has been governed by Liberal governments since 1963, and by the government led by our present Prime Minister since 1968. Why is the business community now opposed to the anti-inflation program? The reason is obvious: business is having it tough. It claims that this government is making it almost impossible for business to survive.
Let me read two paragraphs from a speech made by a former Liberal cabinet minister who is now a professor at McGill University, Eric Kierans. About a month ago he was addressing the Conference Board of Canada in Montreal and he told the board that business had never had it so good in this country. Fie gave two examples. I quote his first example:
The Royal Bank of Canada was founded-in 1870 and by 1970, 100 years later, had accumulated $11.4 billion in assets. Five years later, i.e., 1975, these assets had risen to $25.2 billion, an increase of $ 13.8 billion or far more than the accumulation of the previous century.
I quote his second example as follows:
The CPR was chartered in 1881 and had accumulated $2.3 billion in assets by 1970. Five years later, and after a consolidation of accounts, the CPR has assets of $6.2 billion. If the CPR is now looking south, it may be because of its size and finds no new worlds to conquer in Canada but not because Trudeau is a socialist who has prevented them from growing.
Why does the business community now oppose the controls program? It is not hard to see why, if one reads business magazines and newspapers. The government promised business that the Anti-Inflation Board would not create a new layer of bureaucracy. Although I have no precise figures in front of me, I knew we were told that the Anti-Inflation Board could do its work with fewer than 500 employees. I have not seen the most recent figures, but I am certain that the board now employs more than 1,000.
The Address-Mr. Orlikow
Further, it was said that the board would not interfere in the day to day decisions of business organizations. The facts are clear. Now decisions are not being made. Workers and companies find they must wait months, sometimes six months or more, for decisions cortcerning agreements concluded with regard to wages. Companies find that the rules are complicated, cumbersome and changing all the time. Instead of using their time to improve business, increase productivity and find new markets, business leaders must spend more time filling in forms and meeting the demands of the Anti-Inflation Board. The current issue of the Financial Times devotes a full page to the woes of business leaders. Apparently, when the program began middle management was given the responsibility for dealing with the Anti-Inflation Board; now business leaders themselves find it necessary to deal with the board. That is how they spend their time.
The business communities of West Germany, where a socialist democratic government is in power, and of Sweden, where a socialist democratic government has been in power for more than 40 years, can communicate better with their governments than can the business community in Canada. The reason has nothing to do with the philosophies of those foreign governments which espouse philosophies similar to those of the NDP. The reason is simple. In the two countries alluded to, where the social democrats are or were in power, and in Sweden they were in power for more than 40 years, business has to pay its fair share of the cost of operating the country; but business also knows the rules of the game, knows what it can do and what it can invest. This country's business community has turned against the anti-inflation program because it does not know how to operate under the new bureaucracy and the new regulations with which this government has saddled the country. They are not working.
1 now come to one of the main reasons for the NDP's opposition to the whole concept of the anti-inflation program. It made no sense to us to dampen the expectations of the people of this country, given present circumstances. It made no sense to say to people of this country who wanted houses, "Well, there just isn't enough money: We cannot build them for you this year, next year or the year after." It made no sense to say to people who wanted a television set, "We can't build enough television sets," or to people in city cores who wanted old schools torn down and their children educated in modern, middle class schools like the ones built in the suburbs, "We can't build new schools; there isn't enough money." It made no sense to say this one year ago or two years ago.
Mr. Speaker, in recent times more than 7 per cent of this country's people have been unemployed. For 17 months we have had greater than 7 per cent unemployment. For months and months more than 700,000 people have been out of work. Given this government's policies, policies which it obviously intends to continue, it is very likely that more than 8 per cent of our work force will be unemployed this coming winter in January and February, 1977. Close to a million people in this country will be unemployed.

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Orlikow
1, as a member from Manitoba where between 18,000 and 20,000 people were unemployed in recent months, or about 4.5 per cent of the work force, find it hard to understand why some hon. members are not more concerned about unemployment. For instance, the newly appointed Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. Jamieson) represents a constituency in Newfoundland where unemployment is running at almost 15 per cent. Nova Scotia is suffering from double-digit unemployment, at about 11 per cent. Unemployment in New Brunswick is running at about 12 per cent, and in Quebec at over 9 per cent. In Quebec, in August of this year, 234,000 were unemployed. The September figures, which were released several days ago, are even higher.
However, members representing those provinces do not seem at all concerned. Do they believe, as do some well paid media people and tenure professors in our universities, that many people do not want to work? Do they believe that unemployed wives are not really unemployed because their husbands are working, despite the fact that the only way they can buy a home and make mortgage payments is if both husband and wife work? Is that what they believe? We do not think so. We in this party believe that we can have full employment. We do not believe that except for the United States Canada must have the highest rate of unemployment of any industrialized western country. We are not alone in our belief that Canada can have full employment.
Senator Hubert Humphrey, who has had long experience as a United States senator and vice-president since 1948, introduced into the United States Senate a bill entitled the llurn-phrey-Hawkins bill. The objectives of that bill have been endorsed by the Democratic presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter. We believe, as Senator Humphrey believes with regard to the United States, that we can and should have full employment. It is the responsibility of the Canadian government to ensure that this is the case.
The record proves conclusively that the Liberal government does not believe that full employment is either possible or important. We in this party are prepared to make a national commitment to full employment. This should be done through legislation. A bill should be introduced setting out clearly and unequivocally a specific timetable for achieving full employment in this country.
We in this party propose that unemployment be reduced to 5 per cent nationally within one year, and to 3 per cent within two years. This can be achieved in Canada in the same way that Senator Humphrey believes it can be achieved in the United States. The Liberal government will not do that.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. 1 regret to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has expired. He may only continue with unanimous consent. Is there consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Orlikow: We believe we can have full employment. We believe that employment can be meaningful. We do not accept what the Liberals have been proposing in recent years, alphabet soup projects such as LIP, LEAP and OFY which have been the main thrust of Liberal employment programs. We believe people want to work and will do so if given the opportunity. We are committed to that. The government's anti-inflation program as it has been developed over the past year goes in the other direction. Therefore, we are going to have even higher unemployment than we had before the program began.


Mr. Gus MacFarlane (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this debate on the Speech from the Throne. 1 believe very strongly that the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has set before us a great challenge, one which the Canadian people might have expected and in all probability wanted. I will divide my speech into two sections. First, 1 wish to point out some of the specifics 1 see in the Speech from the Throne. Second, I want to indicate the inspirational way in which I feel it can have an effect on the Canadian people.
Before the Speech from the Throne 1 wrote to many of my constituents. 1 circulated among many people I know in business, labour unions and professional people and suggested that they write indicating to me what they, as Canadians, would like to see in the Speech from the Throne. I am pleased to say that these Canadians, being as responsible as ever, took the time to do that. Some sent a very short note. Some older people replied in plain ink on scribbling paper. Others with secretaries made four, five and six-page replies. They indicated what they would like to see in the Speech from the Throne. In looking over the speech, I discovered that it deals with the kinds of things they wrote to me about, indicating a response to the Canadian people.
A paramount issue in my constituency is national unity. Most people who wrote said that we need better understanding among French and English-speaking Canadians, but we must achieve formal constitutional independence and increase the effectiveness of training in both official languages in the shod systems across Canada. Those are three paramount thoughts on national unity in my constituency. They have been reflected in the Speech from the Throne.
My constituents wrote to me about equality of opportunity. They talked of a reduction of inflation, creating employment opportunities, practicing fiscal restraint, reducing growth in the public service, transferring some government activities to the private sector and, to increase trade, that we modify our industrial assistance programs. The poeple who wrote to me are ordinary citizens, not paid members of parliament. However, they said many things that were said in the Speech from the Throne.
They asked that we improve financial assistance to small business. In many cases when people talk about small business, they refer only to capital expenditure. Many small businessmen get loans from industrial banks, provincial governments or their own banks for capital expenditure. However, they often find they do not have the funds with which to purchase
October 14, 1976

the ingredients for the new products necessary to fill the orders they receive. They do not have the funds for ongoing expenditures. This is true of many small businesses in Canada. In the fro?.en food business, many small businesses have difficulty fulfilling contracts because they are unable to buy the necessary ingredients. In addition, it has been requested that the amount of paperwork to be completed by small businesses be reduced. For example, a small business with six employees might require the services of one or two employees just to complete government forms.
With regard to unemployment, my constituents wrote that there should be year-round job creation. They do not believe that the work ethic is dead. They do not accept the fact that Canadians are lazy. Often it is businesses, companies and others who utilize unemployment insurance for their own benefit, laying off people in order to achieve new methods.


Walter David Baker: Did you like the speech?


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: It said that we should create jobs to supplement private sector activity, that we want retraining programs and a merger between the Unemployment Insurance Commission and Manpower. This has been said before, so 1 would not want the hon. member to think I liked the speech because it came only from the minds of great Liberals or the mind of a great Prime Minister.


An hon. Member:: Is there such a thing?


Angus (Gus) MacFarlane: Sometimes a speech like this is the vehicle for the expression of the opinion of the Canadian people, and we have a Prime Minister who is becoming very expert in reflecting the opinion of the people.
So far as immigration is concerned, they are asking for some amendments that will further the cause of family reunification. We are all aware of sad cases, yet one of the things that Canadians still continue to ask is whether we are going to assist in the reunification of families. We have always done this, and they want to know whether we are going to continue to do it. Canadians have also indicated their concern for a balance to be struck between immigration and employment opportunities.
1 could go on for pages talking about reflections on the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker. In the field of labour-management relations people are asking about collective bargaining centres, about a greater rate of participation by plant workers, expanded labour education programs, a voluntary code of fair practices, a national institute to improve quality of life in the workplace, and establishing an industrial safety and health centre to identify and remove hazards. These are things that the people want this parliament to do. 1 do not suggest for a moment that the opposition parties will not, in their view, play a very strong role in the legislation that will finally come forward from the Speech from the Throne. Their amendments and suggestions, if for the good of the Canadian people, will
The Address-Mr. MacFarlane certainly do much to mould the policies put forward by the government in the Speech from the Throne.
As for competitions policy, we should strengthen laws for mergers and monopolies and give protection against unfair freight rates. In the field of energy we should increase research and exploration. Other items include social policy, settling the land claims of our native peoples, increasing federal support for amateur sport, family law, external affairs, individual freedom and the role of government. These are all subjects about which ordinary Canadians have written in their letters.
One area where I might be critical is amateur sport. The government has indicated that there will be increased federal support. I will always say that this is not enough, that the support does not go far enough. 1 shall probably never be truly satisfied until we have a minister of sport. 1 do not accept a ministry of state for fitness and amateur sport, but at least this does provide a good plateau from which to start. We can then go forward up the ladder and do things properly in the long term. Those are the matters of substance in the Speech from the Throne.
I have often thought, as I have looked at this great country of ours, at this brave new world, at this Canada, that there must be an unusual and great destiny for us. Indeed, when I saw many of our youth fight in the last great conflicts for Canada, World War II and the Korean war, fighting for what they believed to be the cause of our free society, I thought that at some point we would harness all our human resources and move on to our destiny, which was to bring a new light and a new attitude to all the world.
South of us were the lands where the Statue of Liberty beckoned. These were the lands where they said, "Give us your poor, your hungry, your tired". These were the lands which for so long held hope for a tired, weary world. I remembered, in another generation, how my father had gone to fight the war to end wars, and how he had been so maimed. Lie came through it and brought a family through that terrible depression. 1 remembered living as a family of five in two rooms, and yet I once again remembered how my brother went to the army and my sister to the navy, I myself to the air force, and came through a second great conflict. My hope continually was that this present youth, this present generation, would really not go to war and therefore would end war where my father had failed, where I had failed and my brother and sister had failed.
This must be the destiny of Canada, I thought. Surely this new world had a destiny to bring to the entire universe as we went to the moon and looked back at the earth, a feeling of hope, a feeling of greatness for the future. To my surprise, it seemed as though a destiny had been broken off, not just interrupted but broken off. It seemed as though we had become involved in wars which some people said were none of our business.
It seems as though we had lived in a land of luxury and were no longer interested in other human beings. We had become self-satisfied and we ourselves were all that counted in this tired world. We were taking back our invitation to the poor
70

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. MacFarlane and the hungry to come and bring their tiredness and tribulations with them. The Statue of Liberty had closed its eyes. North America had shut its voice. We might have even shut our ears. It seemed that the entire country was in an internal turmoil. Canadians looked askance at Canadians. New Canadians were looked upon as different. There was talk of separation both east and west. Loud voices spoke out representing each of the founding races and threatened to be unreconciled. It was even evidenced by the fact that racial tension began to rip through our neighbour to the south.
In parts of Canada, new Canadians were looked at as not of our stock. It seemed that we were not in search of a destiny at all, but we wanted to mark time and enjoy the good things that we have for ourselves and we would never share them with anyone else.
In the midst of all this, great problems of corruption were alluded to in government. There seemed to be a lack of moral fibre in our leaders. There was a complete loss of hope in this generation. It seemed as though everyone was out to get what they wanted for themselves. It seemed that destiny was involved in survival today and there was no bright hope in the future.
How could this selfish, self-centred, non-sacrificing community fulfil its destiny to leave the world a bright new future? Our destiny was gone. If we were destined for anything, it was to wallow in the fields of mediocrity and in the valley of sloth. If we were in charge of our own destiny, then our destiny was not to clean the pool but to pollute the pool, the earth, the air, and even the minds of those around us. We had not merely lost our path on the road. We had not merely taken the low road or mistakenly meandered through the fields. We had lost our destiny.
Somewhat bewildered, I stood as though all alone on a mountain top and I could hear voices. Some were very old voices and they spoke of when the days were hard and difficult during the days of the depression, the tragedies of wars. These were pruning days. They had come through these days together, although having faced great tragedies, having lived together, worked together and accomplished something for the future. These older voices said, "You can't lose your destiny. There is a future for you. Look to the new generation". Then I heard many other young voices. These young voices kept talking of how they would gather with the youth of the world. They would gather with the youth across the land. They would unite in love and security. They would bring to society a brave new world.
As I heard these two voices, I heard a clamour which almost drowned them out, and this was the clamour of a third group. They had gone to the best schools, had lived the rich, affluent life. They were the ones who had everything given to them on a silver platter because their parents, having been through so much pain, had said that their children must live better. These were the ones who said that the past was wicked, the future was rotten, let us live for today.
It was in this simple moment, on top of that one hill, hearing those three voices, that I understood the problem we faced on
[Mr. MacFarlane.)
this continent. We were facing the death of a generation. We were facing a clawing, clinging, screaming people who knew they were going, a materialistic group who had no hopes for the future. This middle generation could see only itself and really resented the voice of the grandparents of the past who could talk so joyfully about their hardships. They really resented unknowing youth who talked as though there would be a bright new dawn.
For them, life was measured in pennies and dollars, cars and television sets and all of the materialistic things and objects on which you can put your hands and view and taste, touch and feel. There was no imagination left-the imagination that was so vivid in the stories told by old grandmothers, the imagination that was so vivid in the young boy or girl who thought that he or she might be a pilot, or a fireman, or a nurse, or a doctor, or a missionary.
This society that was dying was cynical. But, you know, the great chance was there. Joined with the youth and the aged, some of this society, you and me, may pull ourselves out from this dying generation. We do not have to sit on the Titanic and slide into the ocean ahead of time to meet it, or just go down with a gurgle.
We have a chance to pick ourselves up and reach for the stars. We have a chance for a second destiny, and that second destiny will be made by the volunteers, the ordinary citizens of Canada. It will not be made by the highly paid employees. It will not be made by the experts. It will not be made by the academics or by all of the researchers or all of the social workers or by all of the greatest of management experts in the world. It will be made by the ordinary citizens from all walks of life. Businessmen, athletes, artists, dancers and corporation owners will give of their own talents, one to the other. We believe our export will be the export of attitude; that our most important resource in this part of the world is human resource and our youth.
We will indeed achieve our second destiny, and our second destiny is a bright new world. Our second destiny is not a city paved with gold. Our second destiny is not all of honey and flowing fields of wheat. Our second destiny is somewhat a drawing in of the belt. Our second destiny is a commitment to be concerned about all others, regardless of their race, colour or creed. Our second destiny means that we will be willing and joyful to sacrifice in order to help others. Our second destiny is no mere ride over the river Styx to the valley of death. Our second destiny surmounts even death. This generation, those of us who will join the youth of the future, will indeed prove, "It's coming yet, and yet shall be that man to man shall brother be".
Service clubs, fraternal organizations, churches and institutions and cities and countries, with this new wave of nationalism will exhibit not our differences but will exhibit what we bring to the table: our talents from Canada, our talents from the old country, brought together not in a melting-pot but in a grand mosaic, a grand stained-glass window which shouts out
October 14, 1976

our destiny. It is our hope for the disenfranchised and our hope for the world. Our destiny is indeed a road that climbs up until it disappears in the light at the end of the tunnel.
Destiny is in the doing. Those who stood side by side and saw their comrades slain in battle in the cause of a new world will join us. Those who survived the great depression have empathy for the poor of Canada and the poor of the world. The challenge of our youth is not once more to be cannon fodder. Elowever, like the noble ones who came before them, their sacrifices will be great. Let us join with them in the doing. We are on the verge of a new generation. We are witnessing the death of one. Let us toss off the tentacles of the materialistic past. Let us move together to a bright new world.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, this is going to be a very difficult act to follow, as I see that the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. MacFarlane) has just emptied the press gallery. This is the first time that has happened since 1 have been here.
I should like to start by congratulating the mover and the seconder of the address in reply to the Speech from the Throne. In supporting the government's programs, those two backbenchers displayed what 1 think is an inordinate amount of courage and fortitude. My intention is not to give a wide-ranging speech on the economic ills of the country, as that certainly will be left to other hon. members. 1 would like to give a brief rundown or expose of my thinking about the case for a long-term food policy for Canada and outline some of the reasons we should have such a policy and what has happened in agriculture over the past decade.
My interest in agriculture is certainly both political and practical; political since my constituency is totally agricultural and practical in that I am proud to say 1 am a practicing agricultural producer in Manitoba. I believe the greatest occupation in the world is that of agriculture. To my mind, there is no greater profession than that involved in the raising of food for one's fellow man. Canada has always had what was considered a progressive agriculture, that is, up until the last few years. What 1 would like to do is build a case, as I have mentioned, for a long-term food policy for this country.
It has become increasingly apparent that Canadian agriculture in recent years has gone through a crisis of leadership. As a result, agriculture has been found wanting. Some of the issues which have consumed our farm leaders over the past few years have been egg marketing, dairy quotas, rail line abandonment, feed grain policy, the tinkering about with the beef industry, to name only a few. All of these are essentially negative issues. The strategy each time seems to have been to cut losses rather than to maximize opportunity or try to preserve something that might have made sense decades ago, rather than to sec if they would make sense decades from now.
The leader of this negativism that has spread over Canadian agriculture has been the present minister, and during his term as Minister of Agriculture, Canadian farmers have faced the best opportunities they have ever seen. Such opportunities
The Address-Mr. Murta
usually come to an industry only once in decades, and for Canadian agriculture it has taken over 50 years since it has had the opportunities agriculture has faced in the past three or four years.
One could ask what the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) has done about these opportunities. I think the very simple answer is that he has made a mess of them. About the only product the Minister of Agriculture seems capable of getting Canadian agriculture geared up to produce is milk powder, and that is about the only major export product Canadian farmers produce that is really not needed in quantities in world markets.
As an example, world grain markets have expanded by about 40 per cent in the last five years, yet the United States has taken about 85 per cent of those expanded markets. There is much evidence of the failure of Canadian agricultural policy in the past decade. As an example, Canadian agricultural productivity has been pitiful. When all resources are taken into account the level of Canadian agricultural productivity from 1972 to 1974 seems the same as ten years ago. No wonder a good portion of the industry is running to hide behind the negative sort of policies we have adopted in this country, policies that have been expounded at great length by the negative Minister of Agriculture.
One can ask whether this can be turned around. That is a fairly legitimate question, the answer to which is, hopefully, that it can be. Certainly, at the present time some of our top economic policy thinkers in the federal government have become aware of the problems related to Canada's approach to farm policy. The unfortunate truth is that this would require a new Minister of Agriculture. The most positive thing the present Minister of Agriculture could do for Canadian farmers is quit. That is unlikely to happen, at least in the foreseeable future, and Canadian agriculture is likely to be adrift and leaderless for some time.
In talking about a long-term national food policy, we must ask ourselves what we should be looking at. I suggest we will have to deal with this very important question in the very near future. It would be wrong to say that no food policy exists in Canada. On the contrary, there are dozens of policies at both levels of government affecting food production, distribution and consumption.
If you want a good example of non-cooperative federalism, it would be hard to beat the array of legislation and regulations affecting the food system in this country. Not only is there a frequent inconsistency of regulation from one jurisdiction to another, but there have been cases where within the same jurisdiction one department's policy has conflicted with that of others. A good example of this can be found in a situation surrounding border control on eggs. It would be interesting to know how the authorities at Industry, Trade and Commerce rationalize their policies with those of the agriculture authorities when it come to Canada-United States trade policies.
80001-6V2

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Murta
Given the propensity for the right hand not knowing what the left hand is up to, no doubt there have been many attempts to provide some over-all structure to governmental activity in the food sector. For example, 1 understand that the federal government formed an interdepartmental committee of senior officials a year ago to deal with food questions. It was established to co-ordinate departmental programs affecting all areas of food. Although this group has doubtless been very busy during the past year or two, there has been no public indication suggesting that this group has seriously engaged in a long-term food policy. It would also be an exaggeration to say that no province has adopted long-term food policies. In Quebec, for example, I understand that the government has set its sights on self-sufficiency in food over the long term.
I have to ask myself how practical that policy will prove to be. It may make sense politically, but it certainly is highly questionable in economic terms. But at least it is a long-term food policy against which the various short-term government measures in that province can be measured. It provides an objective against which the means adopted in particular circumstances to solve a problem can be evaluated. It is precisely the type of clear enunciation of long-term objectives, based on a national consensus, which I think Canada requires.
There are good reasons Canada has not yet managed to develop a long-term food policy, reasons other than obstruction and the negativism of the Minister of Agriculture. First, there is the fact that for several decades food has not been a pressing concern for most Canadians. We have taken very low relative prices to be the normal state of affairs. We ignore the fact that by international, as well as historical standards, Canada has been extraordinarily blessed in its food resources.
Another important factor which has militated against the development of our national food policy, and which will continue to do so, is the array of jurisdiction of authority over the various aspects of the food question. 1 do not believe it would be an exaggeration to say that there are more than 25 separate departments and ministries of government in Canada with regulatory authority over one aspect or another of the food system. This kind of confusion of responsibility remains a major deterrent to the development of a national food policy. In my view, it can only be overcome by firm and statesmanlike leadership at the federal level. Nothing is more basic to society than food. Reflecting this fact, the various elements of Canada's food industry constitute a very large portion of the total national economy.
As a fundamental concern, it is questionable whether we can afford to leave this sector any longer without an over-all direction or framework on which the activities and planning of both government and the private sector can be based. It is questionable because circumstances have been changing. It is evident that when people no longer can count on cheap, abundant food, when instability affects both their stomachs and their pocketbook, there emerge powerful passions and forces in our society which could very well be destructive.
(Mr. Murta.|
At the risk of oversimplifying the problem, existing policies in Canada were generally designed to cope with the problem of food surplus. As time goes on, we seem likely to face a situation of increasing global food scarcity. When the world situation has reached a point at which a country like Brazil decides, as a matter of foreign policy, to increase production of food because of the political influence food will give it in the world council, then circumstances have indeed changed radically from the decades of bulging granaries. When food begins to become a political and even a military weapon, it is indeed time for Canada to disregard the luxury of co-ordinated short-term, ad hoc food policies.
The next question that could be asked would be, what would we be looking at in terms of a national food policy? I am sure the government will be asking this question, because apparently it has no idea what a national food policy should look like. At the national level, I think we should be looking toward an umbrella framework which would provide a consistent orientation to policy-making. It would provide agreed parameters within which discussion affecting food production, distribution and consumption could be taken. The framework for a longterm national food policy should be relatively inflexible in terms of the goals or over-all objectives which it would describe, but it would not otherwise be limited by the means of achieving these goals.
Another important characteristic of a food policy should be that it be practical. It must provide a useful perspective on real problems and offer fairly straightforward guidance, reflecting a national consensus so that it can be adopted by successive governments in any particular region of Canada. Of course, it is easier to describe the characteristic of a long-term national food policy than to actually articulate a policy with those characteristics. The process of articulation will require contribution from as many interested and informed people as possible. It should not be left exclusively to government officials or politicians.
A comprehensive national food policy should address itself to the following concerns: first, output. Canadians must be assured an adequate supply of good quality food. Second, nutrition. The quality of food for all Canadians must be maintained at the present high standards. A national food policy would certainly have to ensure this particular aspect. The national food policy would have to address itself to the most important question of farm income. Without going into any details, adequate incomes to producers will in the future have to be available to those willing to participate in a modern, up to date agricultural industry.
In a comprehensive, long-term national food policy, we must also address ourselves to the problem of Canada's role vis-a-vis the world. We cannot consider our food situation in isolation alone. Thus, our food policy would have to be concerned about our trading relationships and be as aggressive and market oriented as possible. We have already seen, in the case of beef, what can happen if we forget that there are two sides to the case of import controls. Similarly, a long-term food policy would have to articulate Canada's role in alleviating world
October 14, 1976

hunger. Before being able to arrive at any kind of policy conclusion in this area, it would be necessary to attempt to identify exactly what the world food situation is now and what it is likely to be in the near future. With the government's track record, we may see some of the suggestions I have made in a national food policy proposed at some time by the Liberal government. If this is the case, so much the better.
One thing is clear: unless the Minister of Agriculture changes his tactics, he will go down in the history books as one of the most negative ministers of agriculture this country has ever had, and along with the negativism he will leave a legacy of confusion and distrust and a clear record of total lack of any constructive policy.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, I would like at the outset to pay a special tribute to His Excellency the Governor General of Canada and extend to him my best wishes of good health, because it is our best asset and only when it has somewhat deteriorated do we appreciate it further. I would also like to extend to his wife, his helpmate, my wishes of good health and long life.
I would also like to congratulate the mover and seconder of the address in reply, a difficult and unrealistic task that follows parliamentary tradition. It is a long-established custom in our Parliament and in the Canadian legislatures and it is always with some pride that members are called to move and second this motion. This is why I wish to extend to them my warm congratulations.
Mr. Speaker, I am deeply pained that the leader of the Social Credit Party of Canada (Mr. Caouette) is not here because he lies in hospital. I am sure that he would have liked to be at present the opening of this second session of the thirtieth Parliament and to take part in its proceedings. Any responsible and sincere individual acknowledges that he is a great Canadian who has worked for the unity of our country while remaining a French-speaking Canadian who has advocated the same ideas in the same terms throughout the country.
So I want to pay him a special tribute and wish him good health so that he can see some day the implementation of an annual guaranteed income through national dividends for everybody and a compensated discount on Canadian products that would be paid through the creation of a new credit from the Bank of Canada, the only democratic financial institution really owned by Canadians, as opposed to the present system that takes the money from the workers through taxes to give it to the less privileged so that someday, if we continue along this line, we shall all be poor.
Mr. Speaker, the first session of the 30th Parliament lasted two years and enabled the government to refrain from announcing its policy sooner. Yet, at the opening of the second session of the 30th Parliament, I thought that in the Speech from the Throne this government would announce several new measures to resolve the many problems faced by Canadians.
The Address-Mr. A. Lambert
So it is to fulfill my duties as representative of the people in Parliament that I take part in the debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne. The government says that it will continue to fight against inflation but it does not say which means it will use to do it efficiently. The Social Credit Party of Canada would be made responsible for this calamity called inflation if it ever had the opportunity to implement its financial and monetary credit system instead of the present credit-debt system applied and supported by the present government.
In fact, some members of this House and sometimes even the press made unfair judgments concerning the Social Credit Party of Canada without knowing the least thing about its philosophy. 1 even heard recently on the radio in the Quebec area the moderator of a hot line who was ridiculizing this policital trend, this economic philosophy and who admitted at the end of the program that he did not know a thing on the subject. It is unfortunate that people with such a large audience demonstrate so much irresponsibility because either you say the truth or you lie to the people. You cannot do both at the same time. So I urge the management radio stations to assign to those programs people who are responsible. I am not against the fact that our attitudes or ideas are criticized but at least it should be done by knowledgeable people. It is the least we can ask.
Yet, Mr. Speaker, after the government announced its antiinflation measures in October 1975 I declared to the House that once more this government, as the unconscious servant of the big financial institutions, was making the poor bear the burden of inflation in the present credit-debt system. So I declared then that a general wage increase of about 10 per cent would widen even more the gap between the small wage earner and high income people. It was obvious that the injustice would be worsened as a 10 per cent increase for a worker earning $6,000 would give him only $600 more a year whereas those earning an annual salary of $20,000 would get an increase of $2,000 a year which would widen the gap by $1,400 a year.
And that even if the essential needs are the same for all. That is what low income people complain about, those who are not organized, who cannot benefit from regular salary increases, who get only the minimum wage. In my view, this is insufficient for a decent living.
There are thousands of low income people who pay taxes to pay for salary increases of persons who earn much more than they do. That is why I say the gap is widening and discontent growing. That is why we are now experiencing protest throughout the country, even from organizations that benefit-ted from these measures. Nevertheless the low income people who are unable to make representations and demonstrations say so by their silence. They write to their Member of Parliament to complain. I am sure all members receive communications of this kind. These constituents expect us to speak on their behalf on the floor of the House and invite the govern-

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. A. Lambert
ment to change its position on that matter and give them a fairer deal.
I think, as it has often been said in the House, that the real solution would be a guaranteed annual income. The government is aware of that question but it makes very little progress on that road. As on other occasions, I am quite afraid that when this measure will be presented the damages will already be too great, it will already be too late, we will be outdistanced by events, and we will not obtain the results that we could get if we acted immediately.
In the Throne Speech, the government reassures us about its intentions as far as the bilingualism policy in Canada is concerned. At last the Liberal party has understood that it will take a long time for Canada to become a bilingual country and the best means to reach that end is to act at the level of the primary and secondary schools, without encroaching upon the provincial responsibilities in the field of education. I sincerely think that the federal government can find a formula that could help the provinces even more, it could grant the fiscal incentives that would enable them to adopt programs for teaching languages, a second language, at the primary level.
I think that that very measure has been adopted in several countries in Europe, countries which are bilingual, and when we go there, as several hon. members may have realized, we often meet people who can speak two, three and sometimes four languages. There is no quarrel about that, it is a recognized fact, an accepted fact and, in these countries, languages do not create any problems. I think that the same thing could be done in Canada.
There are presently some linguistic problems in the field of aviation. Everybody knows about that. We hear more about those problems in the province of Quebec because our Frenchspeaking fellow citizens are directly concerned and they are the first victims. But I do not understand why this useless battle goes on because some claim that people will travel in much safer conditions if only the English language is used in that field.
It is double Dutch to me. How could you have more safety just because English only is spoken in air-ground communications! I cannot believe that we are not intelligent enough to find ways and means to translate faithfully into French all the words used in air-ground communications.
I think this is just an excuse and it seems to me we should show sings of good will throughout Canada, whether we are French-speaking or English-speaking Canadians and try to find a fair and equitable solution not only for the majority but also for the minority.
I was stunned to see ministers resign on this issue. If my information is correct, the resignation of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson) yesterday had something to do with bilingualism in Canada. I really cannot understand that. The whole thing reminds me of a fireman. We all know what a fireman is. It is a man who fights fires which are out of control. Some people are proud to be firemen as long as there is no fire to fight, but the moment one breaks out they resign

because they will not fight it. I feel that the best way to be efficient is to stay on the job and try and push one's own ideas without damaging anybody else's cause, but with the conviction of fostering the interests of all Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, I should like to deal with the resolution of a municipal council which I received last night. It comes from the City of Montmagny. In this resolution, the city council members state that they support the "Gens de 1'Air" in their efforts to establish French as a useful and practical language in communications. The city council concludes, and I quote:
That it assure ['"Association des gens de 1'Air du Quebec" of its moral support in their fight;
That it authorize the Association to run a subscription and organize a badge selling campaign within the territory of the City of Montmagny for the purpose of obtaining money for their fight;
That a copy of this resolution be sent to the hon. members representing the constituency in the Quebec National Assembly and the House of Commons in Ottawa, to "l'Association des Gens de 1'Air du Quebec", Hangar No. 2, Quebec City Airport.
That is signed by the clerk, Yvon Lemay; the mayor of that municipality is none other than Dr. Cajetan Gauthier whom several of you know for his services to Canada when he was in the Canadian forces. I congratulate the Montmagny city council for having taken position on the matter and I trust the message will be heard in high places so that instead of quarrelling we might get along and finally act like intelligent people and solve the problem.
Mr. Speaker, I was astonished that, in the Speech from the Throne, not one word was spoken about agriculture, as if it were an economic sector of no importance. Yet, as far as Quebec is concerned, it is the very foundation of agriculture, which explains the considerable dissatisfaction expressed by the producers of that province on hearing that, as a result of the dairy policy we know, their income has been cut by 23 per cent as of today. I have here a document I shall not read because it is very long and complicated; I received it yesterday from the dairy producers' union of the south shore, and it is signed by its secretary, Adrien Lavoie. One paragraph reads as follows, and I quote:
Economic situation
The drop in incomes as defined will be $5,350,000, representing 23 per cent.
Considering that 1,200-odd producers in our region will have to face such loss, this will mean for them an average decrease of $4,458 per dairy farm.
Those are official figures which I quote trustfully because usually those people give us very precise information.
Together with the same document I also have here a letter dated September 24, 1976 that was sent to a producer of my region. In this letter, it is said that for five successive remittances, the producer has not received one cent. Each cheque carried the mention "cancelled". I do not know whether it is legal to proceed in such way, I am not qualified to pass judgment but, at any rate, this is called a cheque and no payment whatsoever can be made with it. The producer is unable to pay for his meal account, his hydro and gas bills.
October 14, 1976

Therefore, it is a sad situation but something even worse adds to it. I will quote from the letter, Mr. Speaker:
The Federation of Quebec Industrial Milk Producers have instructed us to deduct from your pay cheque covering the period September 1 to September 15 and the following ones, if applicable, an amount of $1,200.54. This amount represents a deduction for export costs exceeding quotas (penalty) which had not been taken off your pay for the period June 16 to 30, according to the 50 per cent formula as applied to your performance between April 1 and June 30. This 50 per cent formula was cancelled on August 1.
Therefore, for the period I just mentioned alone, June 16 to June 30, this represents $1,200, that is 50 per cent, whereas 100 per cent amounts to $2,400. Consequently this farmer whom I know very well is going to go bankrupt and yet he was among those who were encouraged to remain on their farms because they were employed outside the farm and their wives were running the enterprise with their children. Therefore, he was encouraged to remain on his farm, but for this purpose he had to increase his herd to make his business profitable. So he believed that; he bought cows for a good price, he accepted quotas and he was sure that he would have a normal year. But he happens to do so at the wrong time and the dairy policy that we know serves him badly and at the end he is not the one who leaves the farm, it is the mother who finds a job outside the farm to save whatever is left. Therefore, when I say that it is a disaster for many, I do not exaggerate.
I would like to take this opportunity to tell the government that they are dishonest to put the blame solely on dairy producers because, in fact, it is well known that loans from the Farm Credit Corporation have been easier to get this past year and that farmers were invited to have more producing farms and, of course, it was impossible to forecast everything. But 1 blame the government for allowing the importation of heavy shipments of dairy products to the point that in 1975, according to an official document I have in hand and which stems from serious research, our importations reached $56 million while our exportations only reached $35 million. Normally, we are an exporting country.
So I think we should do more to encourage research for a greater utilization of our milk so that we can find new products we could sell on our market and I think that in this way we could safeguard the basic industry in Quebec, namely the milk industry.
I have here a press release published in a paper dated October 6 which happens to confirm these possibilities. It says the following, and 1 quote:
A new milk product has been on the market for one year already, UHT milk, which is treated at ultra high temperature and which may be preserved longer than traditional pasteurized milk.
Thus I think we should encourage to a greater extent the production of this milk so we may store it and send it to underdeveloped countries. Mr. Speaker, when we talk about giving milk to underdeveloped countries through the CIDA program, we hear people make the following answer: But African people do not want to drink our milk. They are not used to that kind of milk and they do not drink it.
Mr. Speaker, it is my belief that the Creator made everybody the same, either in Africa, in Canada or elsewhere in
The Address-Mr. A. Lambert
America and anyone can see for himself that females are surprisingly like our mothers who fed our children. Like us, they consider milk as a natural product and it is widely appreciated. In that sense, I would like to relate an incident to hon. members. Fifteen days ago, a nun who has lived for 20 years in Africa made a visit in our parish and spent two days in my home.
During meal hours, I took the opportunity to inquire about African families and about the way they feed themselves. I asked her the following question: If we give them some milk, would they use it or throw it away? She answered affirmatively. She told me that her community had bought for $40,000 of powder milk last year that this milk had been distributed to the poorest and most hungry families and that if it had been possible to buy more, Africans would have welcomed it.
Now I think it is an excellent means to help these hungry people while disposing of a production exceeding the needs of the domestic trade. Mr. Speaker, another means we could use to settle that problem would be to restore discounts on dairy products so that, larger families and those with lower incomes might take advantage of these products at bargain prices.
Two or three years ago, that policy did a great deal of good when it was introduced. I think we should go back to it. That would be another way of eliminating the dairy problem. The right hon. Prime Minister was telling us yesterday that the Canadian government is spending $250 million a year to help the dairy industry. That is right, but this is not the only industry being subsidized in Canada. Look at all industries which are subsidized through regional economic expansion and you will notice that there are many industries in other sectors, many people taking advantage of legislation meant to help their businesses.
In my opinion, while thanking the government for its generosity towards Canadian dairy producers, it would be advisable to add a few million dollars to diversify our policy, as I just suggested, so that Canada as a whole can take advantage of it and therefore save the dairy industry from disaster. Mr. Speaker, I see that my time is running very quickly, but I would have another subject to deal with, and I refer to unemployment. In our area, in the south shore region, people are very uneasy. There has been talk of industrial decentralization for many years. In theory, this sounds great if done with good intentions. But in practice, this is not what is happening. Again recently, in my region of the south shore, certain industries have had to reduce their personnel because they have lost contracts, customers who ordinarily had certain materials subcontracted by these industries. Moreover, while saying that it wants decentralization, this government is now helping industries in Montreal to expand. It is helping the same type of industries as those in our area to develop.
I am quite sure that there is no intention of wrong-doing, but it still remains that the movement is towards the large centres and that the less favoured centres suffer more and more. When we look at the figures, it is not surprising that unemployment is increasing in these areas. This is why today I asked the Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. COMMONS DEBATES
October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. A. Lambert
Cullen) if there were modern methods of evaluating, finding and compiling data on the healthy unemployed and whether he would earmark additional funds to implement as many LIP projects as possible. The minister replied-and if I had been in his place, I would perhaps have done the same-that if he did this for the Bellechasse riding, he would be asked to do the same for all other constituencies in Canada.
This is a reply that I had been expecting, but I still believe that the Local Initiatives Program has been greatly improved in the last two years, and when this year's program was announced, I took the responsibility of sending forms to each municipality to invite them to take part in the program and of asking them once again to submit serious projects which would make good use of the money of Canadian taxpayers so that something would remain afterwards. I believe that this is the best advice that we can give to those whom we must serve. The population replied and many projects were submitted. However, I was discouraged to receive a week or two ago a letter from the minister informing me that only a certain amount would be made available to us.
Mr. Speaker, you can imagine the situation of a member of Parliament who has $2 to $3 million worth of serious projects before him and who is offered about one tenth of the money he needs. With the best will in the world, how to distribute this money-


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[ Translation]


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, as well as all my colleagues. It is not my habit to abuse the generosity of the House and my comments will be brief. However, I am very grateful to you for allowing me to finish what I want to say. As concerns the LIP projects, I would like everyone in the House, all the members whose ridings are most affected, to join me in telling the government that they appreciate this program and would like to see more money allocated to it for the creation of jobs, because even if we do not give work to those people, we shall have to support them. If we do not support them through unemployment insurance benefits, we shall do so through welfare benefits and nothing will be accomplished in this way.
I believe that the government should seriously analyse the situation and think during the next few days about giving the Minister of Manpower and Immigration additional credits so that more projects can be implemented.
As you may have noticed, Mr. Speaker, I am not making my remarks as a criticism, patronizingly. Rather, I am making them responsibly, conscious of my responsibilities towards the population as a whole, proud of the experience in my constit-

uency, especially last year when various monies were put to very good use. That is why I will request that this year again the government carry on along this line.
I would have liked, in conclusion, to touch on the subject of housing as I had promised I would last night to the Minister of State for Urban Affairs (Mr. Danson) but I do not want to impose upon the goodwill of hon. members. I will take up this matter at an other time. Meanwhile, I would like, if I may, to make a few suggestions which I consider to be good ones in order to help him perfect his program for the improvement of housing facilities in rural areas. However I can say today to the minister that this program, a very recent one, is already under way in my constituency.
Numerous projects are submitted, some are finalized and people feel quite satisfied about the way things are going. That is why I have asked the minister last night, in private, to see to it that this program be extended so that a greater number of municipalities benefit from it, which would also enable us to reduce unemployment, create jobs, while promoting housing improvement for the rural population.


Hon. Iona Campagnolo (Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport)):: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues on both sides of the House. As one of those who was first elected in 1974 and who has not yet made the traditional discours de debut-frankly the words "maiden speech" seem too amusing to comment upon-it is my intention today to address my remarks to several areas concerning both the branch I represent in fitness and amateur sport, and the riding I represent, as well as areas pertaining to the larger picture concerning the health and fitness of our nation as a whole.
I am sure hon. members noted with interest the following short statement in the Speech from the Throne on Tuesday:
[ Translation]
In the aftermath of the highly successfull Montreal Olympics, and the gratifying results achieved by Canadian athletes, federal support for selected amateur sport and fitness programs will be further augmented.

The key word is "augment." My message to the Canadian sport and recreation people across this country is, "augment."
I should like to point out to hon. members that the two primary areas under my administration, Sport Canada and Recreation Canada, are both in the forefront of improving the participation of Canadians both in excellence in amateur sport and in ever greater numbers in upgrading physical fitness. Sport Canada will be further strengthening the national sports governing bodies and increasing the understanding of amateur sport in our nation. There will be further activity in medical research as it pertains to amateur sport, and new initiatives will be undertaken in assembling sufficient data on which decisions may be based for the greater advantage of amateur athletes.
October 14, 1976

It is my intention to place considerable emphasis on coaching as a preliminary move which, with the advice of the National Advisory Council, I am confident will form another part of a firm foundation that is required to create the continued evolution of excellence Canadians expect both in competition and in personal fitness.
I serve notice to you, Mr. Speaker, that I shall be asking your leave to rise in my place and speak of the enhancement of Canadian fitness many times in this session, and 1 frankly ask the co-operation of hon. members on all sides in acquainting me with recreation and amateur sport needs and aspirations in their home areas. If some of them do not hear me, they may not get any.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Iona Campagnolo: I come here, too, Mr. Speaker, as a parochial politician from an area which has very great and immediate concerns. First, I wish to briefly acquaint you with some of my parochial concerns. I have never found "parochial" an improper word in the House of Commons. What are my parochial objectives? I want to assist in setting a standard for the nation during a time of proposed development undertaken by both the federal and provincial governments, by working with conscience and responsibility in employing expertise in adapting development to the environment, and not the other way around, to provide incentives to professionals to work and live in the north, and to reduce the eternal east to west flow of everything from freight rates to the national news, and then start work on the south to north differential that denies the one-tenth of Canadians who live above the fifty-second parallel and below the sixtieth parallel their fair proportion of this world's goods at the same price as their southern neighbours pay.
We have been given a golden gift in this nation, and are in danger of allowing regionalism, grievances and differences of language and culture to shatter our rich heritage. We in this House know we must share, through a solid constitution, these gifts, and even more than most citizens, recognize that a constitution is not a whimsical Gallup poll reflecting day to day changes in the pulse of public opinion as the pulse of the nation orders. The Department of National Health and Welfare is concerned about other matters, about which I am sure hon. members will be interested.
It is usual for those who speak for the government in such debates as this with a twofold purpose: to defend the ideas and proposals put forward in the throne speech itself and to comment upon the remarks made in reply to the throne speech by hon. members opposite. I am most pleased to be able to address myself to the first of these purposes, but find that 1 am in a bit of a quandary with respect to the second. I should like to take issue with the comments made by the official opposition but, since the leader and his colleagues have produced only words without substance, I find it impossible to do so.
The Address-Mrs. Campagnolo
Continuing a tradition which has been well established in the official opposition since last February-and, indeed, for much longer than that-all we have heard so far in this debate is sterile negativism. Our proposals allegedly serve the interests of no one. Well, if that is the case, where are the bold alternatives to which Canadians are entitled? This House and all Canadians might have expected that the opposition would finally begin to put substance to its easy generalizations, but since we have all been deprived of that once again, I can make no further comments on the remarks emanating from that source.


Mr. Horner:: Oh, oh!


Iona Campagnolo: I remind the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Horner) he was not here to listen to his leader yesterday.
I remind him of a premier from British Columbia who was a pretty good one-line stand-up comedian, but he did not last that long.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to set the record straight. The reason I was not here yesterday is that I was in Montreal listening to some former Liberals tell me about the problems of transportation in the province of Quebec.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. That is not a point of order, it is a point of debate.


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I bow to the hon. member for Crowfoot in his knowledge of transportation, but not of Liberals.
But to continue: I cannot make quite the same comments about the remarks of the other parties in opposition. They have at least tried to list some things to which we did not address ourselves in the Speech from the Throne. That is fair enough, but it ignores the fact that governments cannot do everything at once, and it flies in the face of this government's philosophy that governments ought not to try to do too much lest they sap the initiative of the private sector. I am sure the hon. member for Crowfoot would be very concerned if we began to do that.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Your words do not convince me of your intentions.


Iona Campagnolo: I hope you will have an opportunity to speak.


John (Jack) Henry Horner: I remember the words of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau).


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: Order, please. The hon. minister has the floor. I suggest we listen to her. We may learn something.


Iona Campagnolo: I appreciate the comments you have made, Mr. Speaker. Today, then, I wish to address myself primarily to social policy and particularly to our proposals with respect to the Canada Pension Plan, family allowances,

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mrs. Campagnolo social services and the status of women. While all parties in opposition have tried to shy away from these areas in their comments, probably in recognition that the government is providing solid and popular proposals dealing with these subjects, 1 do want to draw your attention to them. They reflect, directly, this government's feeling that the apparatus of the state exists to do things for people, not to people. Thus, we hold that while we must apply a firm hand where necessary, we must also demonstrate compassion wherever that is appropriate. One place where compassion is vital is in the provision of social services.
In my previous occupation, and indeed in the present one, I have often been brought face to face with what can happen when social services are not available: at one end of the scale, people pushed to extremes of suicide and criminality, and at the other end people weighed down by troubles they have not been able to solve by so-called conventional methods and who are living Thoreau's life of quiet desperation. Somewhere in between lie homes broken by family and financial stresses, people with what society defines as handicaps who are on welfare only because they cannot get transportation to a job, people who desperately need subsidized day-care services, and single-parent families struggling to retain their unity and dignity.
Because I have seen these problems, I take particular pleasure in commenting on the proposed social services act. 1 am very pleased to be the first person to bring to this chamber's attention this very positive outcome of the social security review which was begun by the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) some three years ago. There are a number of ways in which this legislation is special. For instance, the very fact that the provision of social services is being considered quite separately from income support legislation is a break with tradition, a forward-looking step which is making Canada the envy of many other countries.
Developing a separate piece of legislation is an important step because it recognizes the fact that those who need services, such as day-care, homemakers' services, crisis intervention services, credit counselling or rehabilitation services, are not only poor people. It reasserts that giving people more money does not magically solve all problems, not even the problems of the poor. It is not enough to be able to pay for a service; the services must first exist.
In effect, this means we are recognizing that social services are needed at one time or another by everyone, although to date not everyone has been able to take advantage of them. Children, regardless of their parents' situation, may need protective services. Their parents, regardless of family income, may need the kinds of services that help bring the family back together again or prevent it from falling apart in the first place. Families with handicapped children need a number of services to make it possible for the child to flourish in a warm family atmosphere without putting impossible strains on family life, exactly the kinds of strains that in the past have forced families to give up their children and place them in institutions. Rehabilitation services which were once reserved

only for people who could work will now be available to people who may not be able to, especially children and older people retired from the work force.
Day-care services are no longer seen as services reserved for the poor; all kinds of people are now using these services. The proposed legislation will make it possible for a much larger number of them to have the whole or a portion of their fees reimbursed. Moreover, day-care is not restricted to children. Many retired people who might otherwise enter an institution will be able to remain in their community and enjoy their retirement a lot more because they will have the opportunity of going to centres where they can meet friends, just relax, or get together to find ways of improving community life not only for themselves but also for others.
Another very important consideration is that the legislation was not conceived in a vacuum. Since this is cost-sharing legislation, thorough consultations were held with the provinces. Moreover, the Minister of National Health and Welfare from the very outset invited submissions from individuals and organizations and received them. The proposed social services legislation from its very conception was a response to the kind of things government was hearing from people. It listened to their concerns and incorporated as many solutions as was feasible into the legislation.
People were saying that no one-not the physically handicapped, not the elderly, not the mentally retarded-no one is so useless that society should automatically put them away in institutions, regardless of how good these may be. Everyone has something to contribute and the right to stand on their own two feet to the extent that that is possible. For the handicapped, this proposal will mean transportation services to get a job or other community activities. It will also mean a range of rehabilitation services which get them ready for a job and make it possible for them to keep it. It will mean living in their own apartment with the help of a visiting attendant or homemaker. It will mean homemaker services for the elderly who want to live in their own home for as long as possible, and for some of them it might mean the provision of badly needed meals on wheels, or a visiting nurse.
We believe that social services are cost-effective. They save tax dollars. There are short-term savings in keeping people off welfare and in the labour market and a number of services do this, including day-care services and rehabilitation services. It is also cheaper in many cases to keep people out of institutions because these have become a very expensive form of care. There are other longer-term savings especially in the prevent type of service. If we can provide children, for example, with services at critical points in their lives, and promote positive personal development, we can be reasonably sure that they will not become dependant adults, dependent on alcohol, drugs, or welfare; they will not be subject to chronic mental illness, or become criminals. For all these reasons, I am sure that many hon. members are looking forward, as I am, to the forthcoming debate on this important legislation.
October 14, 1976

As a result of the recently concluded federal-provincial review of our social security system, several significant amendments have been made to the Canada Pension Plan over the last several years. These amendments improved both coverage and benefits under the plan. For example, the ceiling on pensionable earnings was raised substantially in 1974 and set to increase at 12.5 per cent per year until it catches up to the national average industrial wage level. This means that new Canada Pension Plan benefits payable are much improved. Also, the minimum income levels required in order to obtain access to Canada Pension Plan coverage were reduced in order to expand the scope of the program and extend the protection of the plan to a larger number of Canadians.
In addition, the earnings and retirement tests which applied to Canada Pension Plan retirement pensioners between the ages of 65 and 70 were abolished. This measure ensures that Canada Pension Plan beneficiaries with low pensions are not penalized for trying to improve their incomes by continuing to work. At the same time, the limitation on the adjustment of pensions-in-pay in line with changes to the consumer price index was removed to fully protect pensioners against the erosion of the purchasing power of their pensions.
Another very significant amendment to the Canada Pension Plan was the introduction of equal protection and coverage for male and female contributors and their families. That is, the limitations that had once existed in respect of benefits paid to the survivors of female contributors were removed. This recognized the principle that the earnings of either marriage partner should receive similar protection under the Canada Pension Plan against the contingencies of disability, death and retirement.
The government is now advancing a further improvement to the Canada Pension Plan as part of its continuing program to ensure the plan continues to meet the challenge of this changing world in which we live. These proposed improvements represent one result of several years of study, federal-provincial discussions and dialogue with interested groups and individuals across the nation.
In 1970, the report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada recommended that provision be made under the Canada Pension Plan for spouses who work at home. This approach was supported in the reports and recommendations of the Advisory Council on the Status of Women and the Canada Pension Plan Advisory Committee, both of which greatly assisted the government in developing these proposals. These groups expressed the need to give recognition to work in the home and to provide financial security under the Canada Pension Plan to a spouse who works at home. As well, a great deal of correspondence was received from individuals and interested groups which indicated that some concrete steps should be taken as soon as possible. These proposals have also been the subject of study and discussion throughout the federal-provincial social security review.
As a result of these consultations, a two-part proposal for amending the Canada Pension Plan is now being advanced.
The Address-Mrs. Campagnolo The first part of the proposal would allow the CPP pension credits earned by both spouses during marriage to be split equally between them upon marriage dissolution-that is, upon divorce or annulment.


Benno Friesen: What does that mean?


Iona Campagnolo: It means you get half. The second part of the proposal would allow contributors who leave the labour force to raise young children to drop those periods of low or zero earnings from the calculation of their average lifetime earnings in calculating CPP benefits. The hon. member for Scarborough East knows a great deal about this since he was on the committee that helped evolve many of these proposals originally.
The provision to split Canada Pension Plan pension credits upon the dissolution of a marriage is aimed at ensuring, for the "spouse at home", an equal share of an asset that has been accumulated as a result of the efforts of the two partners during the marriage. This provision thus provides a measure of financial security and recognition for the spouse who works at home, and his or her dependants, at a time when Canada Pension Plan protection may be extremely important. The spouse would have immediate financial protection under the Canada Pension Plan against disability, and the children would have protection against the death of their parents. In the longer term, the spouse would be entitled to Canada Pension Plan retirement benefits. This provision is consistent with the view expressed by the federal law reform commission on the economic nature of marital partnership.
The second proposal would allow a contributor who leaves the labour force to raise a family to drop out those months of low or zero earnings from the calculation of average lifetime earnings. This would ensure that any parent who worked at home caring for children under the age of seven would not be penalized for that period during which she or he had low or zero earnings. Consequently, this proposal would protect the potential pension benefits and eligibility acquired by such a parent either before or after the child-bearing period.
Both of the above proposed revisions are endorsed by the government of Quebec which intends to introduce an amending bill to give effect to identical provisions in the Quebec Pension Plan. As a result, the introduction of our proposed amendments at this time will enhance the universality, portability and transferability of social insurance coverage under both the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans. That is, Canadians will be largely unaffected by their occupational locale or career mobility because the parallel structures of the two plans will be maintained.
When the government launched its anti-inflation program last fall, it recognized that it had to set an example by curtailing expenditures wherever possible. One of the areas of greatest expenditure is in the income security field. In 197475, federal expenditures on this sector were $ 10V4 billion. However, we also recognized that any cutback in these expenditures would work hardship on the people these programs were designed to help. The family allowance program is the

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Friesen
one welfare program that reaches into all the strata of our society and supplements family incomes without regard to the levels of these incomes.
We concluded that, on balance, a cutback in this program, although it would mean hardship for some families, would cause less disruption of total family income than would a cutback in any other federal welfare program. And by limiting the cutback to the amount of escalation that would otherwise have been provided in 1976, the government sought to limit the impact on family incomes of this anti-inflation measure. The government therefore suspended the indexation of family allowances for 1976; families continued to receive a $22 monthly allowance instead of the $24 allowance that escalation would have provided for. Estimated federal expenditures on this program in 1976 were thus reduced by $220 million.
It should be recalled that in 1972 the allowance rates were $6, $8 and $10 a month, depending on age. In October, 1973, they were raised to $12 as part of the government's program to help people cope with the effects of inflation. The following January, the new family allowance program set the rate at $20 a month, and in 1975 indexation raised it to $22.
However, it is a basic tenet of this government's philosophy that its income security programs should be indexed so that the purchasing power of the various pensions and allowances will not be eroded by rising prices. It would be inconsistent with this philosophy to continue the suspension of family allowance indexation beyond 1976, and therefore indexation will be resumed in January. The exact amount of the increase will not be known until November when the October price index figures are available, but on the basis of current figures I would anticipate family allowances will increase by close to 8!6 per cent in January of next year.
It should be clear, then, Mr. Speaker, that the program of restraint to which our government intends to hold does not imply an end to the improvement of social measures to help those who truly need our help. In places where it is appropriate, we are moving to introduce greater cost efficiency based on the lessons we have learned over the years. In other places we are moving to increase the social justice of our programs. In all cases our ongoing concern will be to provide the very best social security system possible for Canadians at a cost which the nation can afford.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to bringing information to this House on fitness and amateur sport.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I do not know why it is, but every time the hon. Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport (Mrs. Campagnolo) speaks she evokes in my memory statements made by our mutually admired William Shakespeare, and today has been no exception. After listening to 30 minutes of that purple prose I must say that, by George, King Lear is right, "Nothing can come of nothing."

I must comment on the observation she made that the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Horner) was not here during our leader's speech yesterday. I could not help but notice that while the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) was speaking half the government benches were empty. Then the government whip, the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Guay), was good enough in the performance of his duty to go out and bring a few stragglers in so the government benches were at least two thirds full by the time the Prime Minister was finished.


Mr. Guay (St. Boniface):: You certainly don't have much of an audience, do you?


An hon. Member:: You are here, Joe.


Benno Friesen: I was pleased to hear the Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport on one of the Vancouver hotline shows about two weeks ago. I was very pleased to hear her, and I hope she appears very often because every time she does she helps the Progressive Conservatives a great deal. At that time she gave her unqualified support to the Prime Minister, and is therefore among the elite of Canada as there are fewer and fewer of those people left. I should like to point out to her the kind of leadership she supports when she supports him.
Let me refer to the Prime Minister's speech of yesterday, specifically to his words as reported at page 30 of Hansard. This is the kind of logic for which he is well known. He was referring to food prices when he said:
Some have calculated that 60 per cent of the retail price, more or less, is not made up of the price at the farm-gate but of the price of those after-operations, processing, distributing, and so on.
Now get these golden words:
That is why our prices are rising so much more slowly than in the United States, at a time when both countries are experiencing a similar deceleration in farm-gate prices because of excess supply.
Even the Prime Minister knows that the average hourly wage rate in Canada today is higher than that in the United States, and knows also that productivity costs per unit today are higher in Canada than in the United States. How in the name of logic can he say that prices are climbing more slowly in Canada than in the United States?
I know the Prime Minister is not given to grocery shopping and that the taxpayer pays for all his groceries, but there are many housewives in the lower mainland of British Columbia who would like to take him shopping for a few days-perhaps not by the hand, but rather by the ear. He seems to forget that we are losing $5 million each month because shoppers in the lower mainland of British Columbia travel into Washington State to buy groceries cheaper than they can in Canada. In spite of this the Prime Minister has the unadulterated gall to say prices are climbing less rapidly in Canada than in the United States. I would like him to meet a few of the housewives who do their shopping in British Columbia. He should know, for example, that cookies baked in British Columbia are cheaper in Washington than in B.C.


Simma Holt: And we pay our food packers three times as much; come on!
October 14, 1976


Benno Friesen: But that is post farm-gate prices.


An hon. Member:: Listen to the arguments before you open your mouth.


Benno Friesen: This is why we are losing markets to the United States and why agricultural products are creating growing inventories in the warehouses of Canadian producers. It will not be long before the farmer in British Columbia is frozen out and our shoppers will be at the mercy of the United States corporate farmers. That is something the Prime Minister is not considering when he makes these bold statements. So much for his credibility regarding those remarks!
Let me make a few comments on the contents of the throne speech which at best can be described as a political survival kit. The Prime Minister is doling out K-rations to his supporters in order that they can stay alive at least until the next election and, hopefully, after it. We, however, hope to lose a few Liberals the next time.
The pablum that was served in that speech was more important in respect of what it did not say than what it did say. For example, the statements regarding the war on the high inflation rate were well taken. This is the number one priority in Canada. While the statements themselves were very innocuous, it is important that we keep that fact in mind. We cannot minimize the anxiety that high unemployment and high inflation create among our people, or the terror they face at the end of each month when they try to pay for their groceries. This war on inflation had better be a real one instead of just shadow boxing.
Even though we might be able to solve all our economic problems in Canada and beat inflation in the very near future, we would still have to face another overriding problem that is perhaps even more serious. 1 refer to the problem resulting from government officials trying to decide for Canadians what kind of people they ought to be, or ought to become. Broadly speaking the problem results from cultural determinism being forced on us. As an example we have the CRTC-and I know there are other such agencies-which have never had to face the electorate, and its members never have to put their jobs on the line. These officials sit on the 14th floor at 100 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa, deciding what Canadians can watch on television and listen to on radio. This is always done in the name of or in the interest of Canadianism.
I would remind hon. members of one thing common to all governments that believe in strict control, as does this government. They always couch their strict controls in the name of and with the cloak of patriotism. They do it for the good of our country and its culture. This means that those who oppose restrictive policies are unpatriotic and un-Canadian.
I remember watching a news broadcast some years ago coming from across the line. That was something I would not have been able to do had the Maple Leaf curtain been properly draped along the 49th parallel. It was a news report by Huntley-Brinkley in which they referred to the parable of a couple of dogs in Germany.
The Address-Mr. Friesen
One dog was from West Germany and the other was from East Germany. The West German dog asked the East German dog why he would want to leave his country. He said he looked well fed and well taken care of, his coat was shiny and he did not appear to be lacking anything. The East German dog said, "I like to bark".
The CRTC wants to tell Canadians how to bark, when to bark, how they ought to listen to the bark, and what the quality of the barking ought to be. But you see the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. MacFarlane) is so used to government restrictions that he does not listen any more. He is totally mesmerized by it. The whole Pavlovian theory is working beautifully in his case.
The CRTC bureaucracy with its 700 employees is no longer a regulatory body but rather is a control agency in respect of the Canadian people. It determines what Canadian culture should be. The members of that bureaucracy are the wise ones. No doubt there is a need for supervision, but the main function of the CRTC seems to be to take choices away from the Canadian people. Let me give an illustration by referring to a letter which came to me that was written to the Chairman of the CRTC by someone from Trail. Part of the letter states:
These new FM regulations caused us to lose our local FM station. Small radio stations in rural areas cannot meet these new regulations, and the public does not want its FM listening pleasure ruined. If you are so intent on Canadian FM, how about getting us in Trail some Canadian FM? Your regulations killed our local FM and CBC took over, only to broadcast CBC-AM on our FM station. For years I have been writing trying to get CBC for Trail. Now we have it-but we lost our local Canadian FM in the process. Is this progress?
There you have an example of CRTC brilliance. I should like to refer to a statement made by a very brilliant and outstanding liberal. I have to go back one hundred years to find one, John Stuart Mill, who said:
The cultivation of the active facilities by exercise, diffused through the whole community, is in itself one of the most valuable of national possessions.
There you see is the secret. The community does establish these functions and creates these facilities. We do not need these national bodies to tell us how to live and what kind of people we ought to be. We do need a clear service on the network, but we do not have to be told what to read, what to listen to, and what to watch. It is my firm contention-and I know there are people in this House who agree with me-that it is time for the CRTC to go and that we should have a body which is purely regulatory and not an oppressive control body. That is one area that was omitted from the throne speech. I should like to refer to another.
I refer to page six of the throne speech and read these words:
. .. the government believes most unemployed Canadians would much prefer to secure that income through worth-while work than through public assistance.
I agree, but there is nothing in the throne speech that makes it possible to have the kind of tax relief that would allow private enterprise to expand the way it should if it is to provide these jobs. If Canadians want to work, so do the businessmen. So long as the government continues its oppressive and exces-

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Friesen
sive tax policies, business will be driven out of the country. 1 have a very active but relatively small business in my riding. That business is now diverting some of its activity to the United States. It is tempted to do this because of the tax policies of this government. It is tempted to make its Canadian operation a warehousing operation because it can operate more profitably in the United States. Effectively we have four levels of government all trying to tax the same person. Because the federal government has the over-all tax power it makes sure it gets its tax first.
There is a new television production company operating in Vancouver which some time ago wanted to bring its equipment across from the United States because it could not get that equipment in Canada. It could do so if it would be willing to pay in advance about $100,000 in federal taxes and customs duties. This is a new Canadian company. Meanwhile an American company could have come in and done the same work for $1,500.
All the while the government talks about wanting Canadian business to be totally and purely Canadian. It wants Canadians to own business, but when Canadians have the opportunity preference is given the foreign operators. Now the government talks about a job-creation program. There is no mention of tax relief for business. The government would rather collect all those excessive taxes, recycle them through the government funnels here in Ottawa and give them out in a job-creation program so that more bureaucrats can get a job, rather than let them work there in the private system which they would have been doing in the first place. This is totally unproductive. That is the second point the throne speech fails to discuss.
The third point is that the throne speech says really nothing about criminal law or correctional philosophy. Canadians are crying out for law and order, but they really want more than that. Every totalitarian government in the world can have law and order. What Canadians are desperately crying for is a balanced perspective in criminal law and correction. Their sense of moral and equitable justice, rather than of technical justice, has been completely raped.
Those of us who live in British Columbia and represent the people there have very fresh memories of the incidents in the B.C. pen. Two residents of my constituency were held hostage during the last incident. Fourteen months ago, in a previous hostage taking, several of my constituents were involved in that one too, so I think I have a right to speak on that particular problem. 1 do not envy the job of the Solicitor General (Mr. Fox) in trying to negotiate with criminals in that kind of situation. But there is something wrong when there are at least eight hostage takings within the one federal penitentiary within an 18-month period. Surely those prisoners have found that there is some kind of a reward bigger than the risk involved in that kind of activity. The balance is all screwed up.
We have a member of the citizens' advisory committee coming into the penitentiary and telling the RCMP how they ought to treat the prisoners. We have the prisoners being served hot meals while the guards on duty have cold lunches. Something is really all screwed up. We have local officials who

are deemed by Ottawa not to be smart enough to make decisions in a local emergency and therefore these officials have to funnel all suggested decisions back to Ottawa, with a delay of three or four hours before they can make a decision on the scene. We have a situation in which the federal government leases the most expensive floor space in Vancouver in the Pacific Centre but cannot find the money in order to provide more guards or stop overtime, or to provide the kind of training those guards need. The government says it must exercise austerity. This is the time it picks in which to exercise its austerity. I should like to refer to another aspect of this.
Another constituent of mine, named Marshall Green, was in a predicament a few months ago. He tried to prevent a murder. He states:
I managed to push the muzzle of the gun downwards before it went off, shattering my left leg at the groin. I then wrestled for possession of the gun with the man who appeared intent of finishing me off. Just as I passed out, witnesses arrived on the scene and disarmed my attacker, Kenneth Earl Marquardte.
The local RCMP charged Marquardte with attempted murder. He entered no plea when charged, was remanded for psychiatric assessment and was subsequently released on his own recognizance and $5,000 bail. The preliminary hearing was originally set for August 5 and I learned, only after I caused a number of telephone calls to be made in early August, that the hearing had been adjourned.
I heard nothing further from the Nakusp RCMP or the Crown prosecutor's office in Nelson. On Monday, September 13th, I received a newspaper clipping from the Nelson Daily News which stated that "Kenneth Earl Marquardte, 47, of Nakusp, was sentenced to five weeks in jail to be served on weekends and probation for six months on a charge of wounding with intent..


Steve Eugene Paproski: A psychologist's decision.


Benno Friesen: He goes on to say:
When I caused an inquiry to be made of the Crown prosecutor handling the case he confirmed that Mr. Marquardte had pleaded guilty to the charge of "wounding with intent" and that after his counsel had called two character witnesses and read in the psychiatric report, Marquardte was sentenced on September 2nd, 1976, as reported in the newspaper.
The prosecutor then confirmed that the Crown did not propose to appeal the sentence. The prosecutor went on to explain that I had my civil remedies, which I understand means that I can sue my attacker for damages, or that the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board can settle with me and then sue Mr. Marquardte, if they choose to, under their rights of subrogation.
My concern is that I have lost my livelihood, have and will suffer terrible pain, will have to undergo extensive surgery at least twice, may loose the use of my leg forever; and my assailant has scarely lost any time away from his job after admitting that he tried to kill me.
Where is our sense of justice? It is not enough to have law and order. What we need is a balance in our approach to justice in our system.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Benno Friesen: Then he goes on to say:
I must now spend years in civil litigation against my attacker or elect to claim from the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board who can only award a maximum of $15,000. Is that justice?
Is it any wonder that law abiding citizens, peaceful people in our country, are discouraged? I think that the throne speech is woefully lacking in the attention it pays to the needs of the common, ordinary citizens who are entitled to a return to
October 14, 1976

morality and justice, and to a balance in that area. Sooner or later we must come to a time when the criminal has to accept responsibility for the consequences of his behaviour. As I said before, a situation where prisoners get hot lunches and guards get cold lunches is not acceptable.
A fourth and final area to which I should like to address myself is in regard to the lack in the throne speech of any mention of the need for increased medical research. 1 know there will be others in my party who will address themselves to this matter, but again this is an ominous and condemning example of the scale of values that the government has established for itself: help to criminals, nothing for those who are incapable of helping themselves.
The Minister of State for Fitness and Amateur Sport dwelt on the need for social services, and I agree with this because we do need that kind of help. But she said nothing about the fact that the government has made cutbacks in medical research. I want to refer to some statistics, which admittedly are a number of years old, but that makes it even worse because since that time the government has cut back even more.
I wonder if hon. members are aware of the fact that Canada spends per capita only one sixth of the amount on medical research that the United States does. Canada spends $2.08 per capita and the United States spends $12.91. These statistics relate to the time before the government announced its so called austerity program and before it made cutbacks in funding for medical research several months ago. How much more shameful is the situation today.
I should like to refer hon. members to the statement made a few days ago by the president of the Association for the Mentally Retarded. Here we come to what could be construed as being very crass and cold dollar and cent statistics on the care of the mentally retarded. The president of that association said:
As an illustration, the lifetime cost of serving one person severely mentally crippled by a preventable condition or cause may be conservatively estimated at $400,000. For instance-
He gives the name of the disease which I cannot even sneeze out, let alone pronounce.
-phenylketonuria, a condition which produces massive brain damage, is one condition for which research has given us the means of detection and prevention. In a year, screening turns up an average of 20 PKU babies who, untreated, represent a potential lifetime bill to Canada of $8 million for each year's crop.
If you want to look at the crass dollar and cent expenditures you see you find what a foolish way it is to exercise austerity to take away money for medical research which would prevent this kind of expense. But how much more debilitating and soul destroying is the knowledge of all these people who are trying to help those who cannot help themselves, how much more discouraging is it for them to realize that here we have a government which is cutting back on medical research rather than trying to help those people who need help the most. This is the kind of government we have. It is time we had a restoration and a balance, as well as a sense of proportion, in the way in which the government applies its energies to help
The Address-Mr. O'Connell
those who cannot help themselves and make us a kind of people who can face each other with a sense of honour and dignity.
1 cannot in all conscience support the motion of the hon. member for Restigouche (Mr. Harquail) and his colleague, as good as their speeches were, and I am happy to support the motion of our leader that we have no confidence in this government.


Hon. Martin O'Connell (Scarborough East):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to raise a subject with my colleagues in the House which deals with the matter of what we as a parliament can do to control government spending.
In the Speech from the Throne a subject matter was raised which I think is worthy of a rather prolonged debate in the House, that is, a debate between the proponents of a greater involvement of the state in the economy and the opponents of a deeper involvement of the state in the economy. However that debate may proceed, there is no doubt at all that there has been an enormous increase in the spending of the state and that this parliament, through its various committees, is not in a position, in my view, to control this government spending in the way that is expected of it. So the purpose matter of my remarks in the throne speech debate is to raise this issue among us and to make some suggestions of ways in which the government itself might contribute, and ways in which parliament by changing its committee structure might come to a better control of government spending. The stakes are very high, and they are not only in monetary terms.
The size of the public sector today is very large. It is estimated that governments at all three levels spend some 40 per cent or 39 per cent of the incomes in our country. They spend that proportion of the total economic effort registered as the Gross National Product. It may indeed be the view of some, which 1 do not share, that the public sector may become so large, or is already so large, that it may tend to destroy the very market system it is designed to support and regulate. We noted in the Speech from the Throne that the decision of the government was to proceed down a middle road as between increasing involvement or lesser involvement in the economy. Whether the government is able to proceed down this middle road will depend in some part on how this parliament can control government spending.
The point I am going to make is that we do not now control government spending except in a technical, legal or constitutional sense because, after all, parliament is the sovereign. But as a parliament we do not have the means-and I include hon. members on all sides of this House-to hold any government to the middle road, or to any other road, because we do not have the structures here which would enable us to play that role.
In my view it is urgent that we find new means of controlling government spending so that we can influence the degree of involvement which we feel appropriate for the state in the

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. O'Connell
market economy which we wish to see continued. It is urgent also because there is already such a built-in bias in public expenditure growth that, unless we find better mechanisms, the state will perforce play a much greater role, whether or not it is described as a middle road.
The suggestion I want to make is that the government itself should be publishing annually a white paper giving a five year record of what it has spent, in some detail, and including a five year forecast of what it plans to spend in the coming five years. For example, with the appropriate committee structure we should be able to look in some detail at what happened between 1971 and 1975 and with some considerable detail at what the government plans for the years 1976 to 1980 with respect to expenditures on all programs.
I think that such an annual white paper would put us in a position to grasp the totality of the increase in government spending spread over a period of time, and that it would show the extraordinary rise which has taken place. It would also no doubt show us that there is no real strategy for containment or reduction in the plans for the future. We would at least be in a better position, if we saw those plans, to exercise some judgment and restraint. We cannot exercise that judgment or control if we as a parliament do not have the mechanisms to do so. The case I am putting is that we do not have those mechanisms. I am going to ask also whether we have the will to create them. It is important to do so not just in terms of partisan debate over whether a program should be expanded or not, but, more significantly, whether the market economy will survive the incessant growth of the public sector, a growth which proceeds at rates of increase substantially in excess of the average growth rate of the economy. Therefore unless we find better mechanisms, the public sector will inevitably get larger and larger.
The white paper which I am suggesting on the part of the government-and in a moment I will come to parliament's part as opposed to the government's part-would also put hon. members in a position to tackle in a more effective way the question of wastage in expenditures.
And now what about ourselves as a group of members of parliament as opposed to ministers? I think we ought to admit that the experiment in having standing committees review the estimates is only a limited success. I personally doubt that the standing committee approach is adequate to our needs. I doubt it in part because we fragment our view of government spending when we deal with it by separate departments. For example, there is a group of 20 of us who will be considering the expenditures of the Department of Regional Economic Expansion, and another 20 who will be considering the expenditures of the Department of National Health and Welfare. And so it goes. But we do not have any vehicle by which we can look at the totality and the plans, and get an over view, and thus try to find some means of control, which is something more than a recording of what has been happening and a reporting back in a manner that is not really an effective control.
I think we must go beyond the standing committee approach to another device, and the suggestion I make is that we no

longer look at the estimates through the various 20 or so standing committees, but that we consider a single expenditure surveillance committee. Perhaps it should be quite large-40 members or so-because its members may have to divide into subcommittees. It seems we should have a single expenditures control committee or surveillance of expenditures committee- or call it what we will-which would examine, as the present standing committees do on a selective basis, some departments where there is special interest, grouped perhaps more into larger categories than presently. However, apart from looking at the Department of National Health and Welfare and the Department of Regional Economic Expansion to use the same two examples, it would have as its main function the question of examining the over-all rates of spending, the over-all balances between departments and programs in terms of that five year plan which I have suggested, and in terms of what we on our part feel is appropriate for the dimensions of the public sector within the total economy and in terms of the requirements of a market economy for some control on this really unrestricted growth of the public sector.
The main duty would be to make comparisons, reach a view, and make greater efforts to get at the question of control, which parliament has really lost.
I think one of the questions which is most exercising our constituents today is control of government expenditure, and I do not think we are in a position to respond to them. That puts us in the position where we are going to face increasing cynicism about parliament as an institution. There is no doubt that the public is right, and it is not just because of the restraint program which is currently in operation. It is not just because expenditures have increased. It really is because of the basic issue of what is the role of the state in a market economy. We are not in an adequate position to influence that expect in ineffective debate. We need a mechanism which will help us contribute in terms of control of actual spending.
There is one other point I should like to make with respect to my suggestion for a new committee. It has been discussed recently in the House of Commons Committee on Procedure and Organization, as some hon. members will be aware. This kind of committee would be a counterpart, as it were, to the Standing Committee on Public Accounts which looks at the record after the money has been spent; what we really need now is a similar over-view committee that looks at all the estimates taken together before they have been accepted. The present fragmented approach through the standing committees will not give us sufficient leverage to exercise the parliamentary function of control over spending before they are agreed to in the House.
A further point which is worthy of consideration is whether we ought to have the budget debate much closer in time- perhaps it cannot occur simultaneously with the estimates, but we should be looking at taxation and supply questions as well as spending questions much closer together in time.
October 14, 1976

I entered this debate on rather short notice, Mr. Speaker. While I feel this is one of the most important questions to which we could turn our minds, 1 also know that we will have an opportunity soon to look at the recommendations coming from the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization.
I hope we will give more attention to the matter of a revised committee system, certainly not from the point of view of change for the sake of change but to ensure that we can do our part to keep government on that middle road.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Peter Elzinga (Pembina):: Mr. Speaker, along with my colleagues in this Chamber I am very pleased to participate in the opening debate of this second session of the Thirtieth Parliament. As a member who came here first in 1974, and having participated in the first session of this parliament which was the longest in the history of our country, I found it rather refreshing to hear the Speech from the Throne on Tuesday of this week. In many ways, even though 1 am in opposition, I was rather pleased with what I heard.
I think one should bear in mind though that a Speech from the Throne is nothing more than a collection of high-sounding words until the government decides to act or implement it. We should also remember that a good many of the promises made in the last Speech from the Throne have not been kept so perhaps I should review a list of those unkept promises.
In the last Speech from the Throne we were promised new consumer credit legislation, including the disclosure by lenders of effective rates of interest on loans; total revision of bankruptcy law to help the consumer debtor; the improvement of urban and inter-city transportation services; legislation to provide for an efficient port system; measures for government intervention in cases where a Canadian company may be prevented by its foreign ownership from fulfilling export orders; revisions to the Public Service Staff Relations Act; human rights legislation; provisions to broadcast the proceedings of the Commons. We see several of these items again in this Speech from the Throne. The government also has not delivered on guarantees for the domestic control of uranium mining. It makes me wonder just how much of this Speech from the Throne will be implemented.
I should like to quote some portions which I find encouraging, and yet which are hard to believe. The speech is reported in Hansard for Tuesday, October 12, and on page 2 there appears the following passage:
... the government will continue to practise fiscal restraint. The control of inflation will remain the single most important condition for economic stability in Canada, even after price and income controls are removed. Determined restraint in fiscal and monetary policy is essential to the long-term control of inflation.
I am puzzled when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) makes the statement that he is going to restrain government spending, and yet when we examine the facts we see that he is not. That is amazing, Mr. Speaker. The Prime Minister said exactly the opposite in his musings last New Year to what is
The Address-Mr. Elzinga
stated in the throne speech. At that time he said we needed more government intervention in the private sector.
In the New Year's Eve message the Prime Minister stated we were going to have more intervention in the private sector, yet in the Speech from the Throne he states that he would like to leave things more to the private sector. We have seen this flip-flop so often with this Liberal administration, Mr. Speaker. We saw it in 1972 when our party campaigned on certain proposals and was severely criticized for them, yet when this government was in a minority situation it implemented pretty well what we had campaigned on. In 1974 we saw exactly the same thing. As I said earlier, Mr..Speaker, I am still optimistic that it will implement certain areas of the Speech from the Throne and I feel that many are noteworthy.
Another promise which appears on page 2 of Hansard is as follows:
The government will introduce measures to assist small businesses by improving local access to financial assistance and other services provided by government departments, the Federal Business Development Bank, and financial institutions in the private sector.
The merger of the Unemployment Insurance Commission with the Department of Manpower and Immigration is also proposed. This is a measure which my good friend, the hon. member for Hamilton West (Mr. Alexander) has advocated many times in this House. Moves are proposed in the area of labour-management relations. I think this is important and I hope some proposals are forthcoming. One only meeds to look around at the difficulties experienced on the labour- management scene today, such as the day of protest organized by the Canadian Labour Congress. Also mentioned is the National Transportation Act. We have been promised amendments to this act before, but to date no concrete steps have been taken to improve it.
One thing that is noteworthy is the absence of specific programs in an area that perhaps concerns the Canadian population more than any other, and that is the matter of criminal law or correctional philosophy.
There was no mention whatsoever of the constitution in the Speech from the Throne. We have seen how significant the constitutional debate is to the governing party with the resignation of the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Richardson).
As I have said on several occasions, Mr. Speaker, the purpose of politics is not to justify our own existence but rather it is to dedicate ourselves to the welfare of our country and its population. As my leader and others participating in this debate said so well, it appears that the government is concerned strictly with the winning of elections. There is a limit to the power of governments; they cannot solve all our problems. Therefore we must, as individuals concerned about the welfare of our country, strive to make this a better country for all our citizens, but I seriously question whether this government is doing that.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, would the House be willing to call it six o'clock?

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. S. Knowles


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Does the House agree to calling it six o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, in the speech that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Macdonald) made earlier today, he made one statement which I thought was very important. As I took it down, these were his words: "This government has no intention of participating in or permitting a dismantling of the socially progressive society Canadians have built in this country." I regard that as a noble sentiment. It is one to which I hope we can hold this government.
It is true that during the last half century Canadians have managed to build a socially progressive society. At least we have moved in that direction. Most of it has come about since the end of World War I. Indeed, the greater part of it has come about since the experience this country had in the 1930's.
I may also say, as everyone knows, that most of it has been in the form of legislation we have won because of the prodding of those who have sat in this House under the leadership of the late J. S. Woodsworth, the late M. J. Coldwell, the present member for Nanaimo-Cowichan-The Islands (Mr. Douglas), David Lewis, and our present leader, the hon. member for Oshawa-Whitby (Mr. Broadbent). It is true that governments of other parties have put the social legislation on the statute books, but what a struggle it has been to pry it out of them. However, now that we have it I am glad that this government states categorically that it does not want to participate in the dismantling of our socially progressive society.
None of us imagines that the government would actually dismantle that society by taking it apart or by abolishing some of the social legislation that has been passed. However, the main point I want to make in my remarks tonight is that the progress we have gained can be lost if it is not kept up to date. If the social legislation that is on our books is treated with indifference, treated as though we have achieved the last word and have nothing more to do, the value of that legislation can be whittled away just as much as if it were actually dismantled.
My plea tonight is that this government not forget its responsibility to make improvements in the pieces of social legislation that we have on the statute books of Canada.
I have quite a number of things that I want to mention, so I will have to speak briefly about each of them. I suppose in

effect what I am doing is indicating the things that I think ought to have been in the Speech from the Throne. If these things had been in the Speech from the Throne, it would have been a much brighter, more hopeful document than the one that was read to us a couple of days ago.
First, despite the fact that the Old Age Security pension is ever so much more in dollars today than it was when it was started back in the middle 1920's, most of our senior citizens 65 years of age and over are having a difficult time to get by. Even with the supplements they get in one form or another, in a society in which the cost of living is rising, and in which the standard of living is improving, thus creating a different milieu in which these people are living, they are finding it difficult to get by on the amount they receive.
In my view there ought to have been in the Speech from the Throne a commitment to increase the basic amount that is paid under the Old Age Security Act. That basic amount at the present time is $100 as specified in the act, plus the escalation that has taken place, which brings it during the present quarter to $139.39 a month. In my view that amount ought to be greatly increased. As a matter of fact, in light of today's cost of living and in light of our responsibility to our older people, it ought to be as high as $250 or $300 a month. But I suppose it is just as unrealistic to expect that substantial an increase all at once as it was when I argued that it ought to be $50 when it was only $30. However, we should be moving in that direction. What we should have before parliament at the present time is a proposal for a substantial increase in the amount of that pension.
At the same time, Mr. Speaker, I insist that the time has come for a lowering of the eligible age, certainly for all those who are out of the labour market. The spouses' pension that was introduced in June of last year recognizes that there are people between 60 and 65 who should be given a pension under the Old Age Security Act, but that is all that can be said for it. The means test on that spouses' allowance, and the fact that it is payable only to a person between 60 and 65 years of age married to and living with an older spouse, cut out widows, spinsters, widowers, bachelors-a great many thousands of people in that age bracket who are just as much in need of pension income as those who happen to meet the conditions of that provision. This, of course, would be taken care of if my proposal were accepted, namely, that all persons between the ages of 60 and 65 who are out of the labour market should be entitled to receive the basic old age security pension and the guaranteed income supplement as well. So I put that down as an item that is missing from the Speech from the Throne but which ought to be there.
While I am talking about old age pensions-and the same point applies to the rest of the pensions-I suggest the time has also come for a revision of the formula under which escalation takes place. Members on the government side frequently get up, as did the Minister of State responsible for fitness and amateur sport (Mrs. Campagnolo) this afternoon,
October 14, 1976

and tell us that the government has provided escalation that enables pensioners to keep up with the rising cost of living. It does no such thing; they are always behind. The consumer price index measures price increases in a general way and does not necessarily cover the things our elderly people actually have to buy. Whether it is quarterly or annual, it is always three or four months, eight or ten months, or even a year or more behind.
1 contend that the escalation formula should be put on a current basis so that in any quarter recipients of old age security or other pensions receive an escalation that will enable them to meet the rising cost of commodities in that very quarter. That is at the top of my list in the Speech from the Throne, Mr. Speaker. These substantial improvements in the Old Age Security Act ought to be in that speech.
I call also for significant improvements in the Canada Pension Plan. There were doubts about this plan in some quarters when it was brought in, but it has proven to be a very successful piece of social legislation, so successful in fact that some of us think it should be greatly improved. The main improvement that in my view should be made is that the plan should be amended so that the pension that one receives on retirement is more than the present 25 per cent of one's average earnings over the prescribed period. There are those who have advocated that it should be as high as 75 per cent, but certainly we should move to 40 per cent or 50 per cent very soon.
There are two or three other aspects that ought to be improved. The requirement that a contributor be in the plan for three years before there is a survivor's benefit, or for five years before there is a disability benefit, does not correspond to ordinary insurance practices, and 1 think those provisions should be changed.
Tonight I wish to emphasize in particular that the two changes that the Minister of State referred to this afternoon, although they go in the right direction, do not begin to provide equality for women under the provisions of the Canada Pension Plan. Let me examine the two things that are being done, as outlined quite correctly this afternoon by the minister. First, there will be a provision that when marital breakdown takes place, whether divorce or separation, the total assets, whether there is one contributor or two, will be divided between the two partners fifty-fifty. But there is no improvement in the total situation of the two spouses; it is a case of splitting assets, and you only get a so-called advantage if you have a marriage breakdown.
The other provision that was announced this afternoon-at least, spelled out this afternoon; it has already been announced-is one regarding women who are in the work force and therefore contributors to the Canada Pension Plan, who take a few years off to stay in the home to raise their children, and who then subsequently go back into the work force. They will be permitted to drop out from the computation of their pension benefit those years that they spent at home.
The Address-Mr. S. Knowles
That is fine, Sir, but what about the wives who have spent the whole of their married lives at home raising the children, looking after their children and their husband, playing their part in the life and work of that couple or family? There is nothing for them at all. They are not contributors so therefore do not get an advantage. The fine principles which were referred to by the Minister of State will not be realized until there is full equality. I realize she referred to the fact that there is equality at death: when a female contributor dies, she can leave the same benefit to her surviving widower that a male contributor can leave to his surviving widow.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: That is equality.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is equality that you get at death. You also get equality in terms of a fifty-fifty split in your marriage breaks down, and you get some consideration if you have been in the labour force, stayed out for a while to raise children, and then you return. But if you are an ordinary spouse at home the whole of your married life there is not one cent of benefit for you.
I contend that that is falling far short of equality between men and women. I noticed the other day that the hon. member for York South (Mrs. Appolloni) asked the minister whether the references in the throne speech to pension improvements meant that housewives were now in the Canada Pension Plan. The very guarded answer that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Mr. Lalonde) gave made it clear that they are not.
I know a little about the Canada Pension Plan. It is a wage related scheme, and there are technical difficulties working it out and so on. But we will not have done the fair thing and established the kind of equality that we talk about until there is for homemaker spouses, in one way or another, the same pension benefits that there are for women, spouses or single, who are out in the labour market. This is extremely important, and I hope in this session when we deal with human rights legislation and have more amd more said about equality between men and women that this will be done. It should have been included in the throne speech itself.
I am also sorry that there is no reference to the position of the blind and disabled. It used to be that every time we made improvements for other categories, their position was improved as well. But since we have got into old age security, the Canada Assistance Plan, into services and so on, there does not seem to be special consideration for the blind and disabled. 1 appreciate the fact that there is to be a social services act before us in this session and it may be that under it, with the co-operation of the provinces, something more will be done for all persons who need assistance. However, I am sorry we have reached the point where the blind and disabled do not get the special attention that I think they deserve.
I move on to list two or three more things that I feel should have been in the Speech from the Throne. One of them has to do with the position of retired civil servants, and I couple with them retired Royal Canadian Mounted Police personnel and retired Canadian Armed Forces personnel. Generally speak-

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. S. Knowles
ing, the pension plans respecting these groups have been greatly improved, but there are two or three pieces of unfinished business that some of us thought we were going to get resolved during the last session, especially when we were dealing with these matters before the special joint committee on employer-employee relations in the public service. However, in the end we lost out. It is most unfair that some persons who worked for the government in one way or another can get the escalation in their pensions prior to age 60 while others cannot. Those who feel this discrimination the most are retired RCMP personnel and retired members of the Canadian Armed Forces. That is a point I hope will be looked at more seriously during this session than was the case during the one that finished a couple of days ago.
I also press the point which again we thought we were going to have dealt with during the last session, and that is the position of the widows of any members of these groups, retired public servants, retired RCMP personnel or retired armed forces personnel, where the marriage took place after the contributor had gone on pension. In these days it can happen that the second marriage may last longer than the first one, yet we have this rule that denies to a widow in such cases the right to a pension when the husband dies. We had representations from delegations here during the last session who made the point extremely well and we were given the impression that the government was sympathetic, but in the end nothing was done to right this wrong.
Those are points that ought to be taken care of and there are others that affect retired public servants, retired RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces personnel, but I put these two points before the House with particular emphasis. I suggest there ought to have been references to them in the Speech from the Throne and I hope something will be done about them during the course of this session.
As I speak about these groups of retired persons I mention in particular the matter of escalation. Let me say that one of the most significant reforms we have won around here in recent years was the provision for the escalation in pensions at least in keeping with the rise in the cost of living. When we applied it to old age security we had to go on and apply it to retired public servants and all other groups, including those who draw war veterans' pensions and allowances. I deplore the kind of attack that occurs in some of the financial papers in this country against this principle of escalation. Usually the line is that others do not get it, so why should these groups get it? The answer to that is that all groups should get it. What we have started by way of providing escalation to old age pensions, pensions of retired public servants and others who work for the government, should be extended to apply to all pensions in both the public and private sectors.
Another area in respect of pensions which has concerned me all the years I have been in this place and which I think should have been in the Speech from the Throne has to do with pensions of retired railway workers, it is now over two years

since Dr. Noel Hall was commissioned to study and report on all railway pensions in Canada. I suppose the number of questions I have asked the Minister of Labour (Mr. Munro) about that report, such as when were we going to get it, is legion. I understand he does now have the report, that it is being translated, and that sometime fairly soon it will be tabled. I understand also it will be printed in large enough quantities so that all those who are interested will be able to get copies of this important report. The next step will be to implement the recommendations I am sure that report will contain.
I cannot imagine that Dr. Noel Hall could have spent two years examining the pension situation so far as railway workers in this country are concerned without coming up with recommendations that call for improvements. Many railway pensioners have died in the two years he spent carrying out the study. Let us not take two, five or ten years to make the improvements he will probably be recommending. We call for action soon, not just by the publicly owned Canadian National but by the privately owned Canadian Pacific as well.
As I say, that is another of the items 1 think should have been in the Speech from the Throne. I have already made the point that if the things I have been lining up for a throne speech had been there it would have been a much better document than the one read to us in the other place a couple of days ago.
I come to the last of the items I wish to mention and these have to do with veterans. First I should like to commend the Royal Canadian Legion on "Operation Service", a program or project the Legion has in effect right now under which it is trying to locate veterans, or their widows or survivors, who may not have known the benefits that were available to them, in the hope that they can now apply for and obtain those benefits. I am glad to see the publicity that has been given to this project, not only by the Legion itself but by others. I hope it will result in many cases of veterans or their survivors obtaining the benefits which are available to them but about which they have not known.
I am happy to say there have been improvements. The present Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald) has given us good leadership in this area and has fought hard for veterans in the Cabinet and we like what he has done. The fact is that this far away from the wars, and in a time of restraint, to get anything done for veterans is significant. We are glad that improvements have been made. But even in the last session when we were making the improvements involved in the bill that dealt with pensions for prisoners of war the government overlooked two or three things we had recommended, and I should like to put them in my proposals for a more adequate Speech from the Throne.
First of all, when we provided pensions for those who were prisoners of war we provided them only for those who were prisoners during World War II. We covered those in Hong Kong and in Europe, but there are still around aged veterans who served in World War I, who were prisoners of war and had horrifying experiences, yet they are not covered. The
October 14, 1976

number of dollars it would cost to provide pensions for the few of them around would be almost nothing. To have overlooked them I think was a disgrace, and I hope we may yet cover that inadequacy.
The government also erred, the committee did not, last session in not including pensions for those who were escapers or evaders. The prisoner of war compensation goes only to those who were actually in the prison camps, but there are others, at least one of whom is a member of this House, who spent months in Europe afraid for their lives as escapers or evaders, and it seems to me they should not be overlooked. I should like to see them included.
A very important recommendation was contained in the report of Dr. Hermann, and that had to do with widows of veterans on disability pensions. It was the same recommendation that Mr. Justice Mervyn Woods made when he gave us the Woods report several years ago.
As matters stand, if a war veteran is on a disability pension of 48 per cent or more and dies, his widow gets the full widow's pension, but if the veteran's disability pension is less than 48 per cent she gets zero-no pension at all. Mr. Justice Woods recommended, as did Dr. Hermann, that there should at least be pro rated pensions for such widows. Two or three times in the parliament before last, in the last one and in this one, the standing committee has recommended that this change be made, but the government turned us down. This ought to have been included in this Speech from the Throne. I hope it will be considered during the course of this session.
The other point I wish to make is that in terms of veterans' affairs some very real improvements should now be made in the War Veterans Allowance Act. It has been a good piece of legislation and has filled the bill in many cases where the Pension Act which provides war disability pensions did not, but it seems to me that this long after the wars we have had, at this stage when our veterans from those wars are getting into the upper years so far as age is concerned, we should move more in the direction of a guaranteed annual income for those veterans. I want a guaranteed annual income across the board. I hope we move in that direction and I hope the discussions between the federal government and the provinces produce something along that line soon-soon, please. But if it is going to take time to do this for the whole population at least we can start with an adequate and guaranteed annual income for war veterans, and this could be done under the aegis of the War Veterans Allowance Act.
Mr. Speaker, I agree with the Minister of Finance in what he said this afternoon, that there should be no dismantling of the socially progressive society Canadians have built in this country. But that means more than just not taking destructive steps. It also means we must keep all these measures up to date. Therefore, I contend that the things that I have talked about tonight, such as improving old age security, the Canada Pension Plan, pensions for retired civil servants, pensions for RCMP and Canadian Armed Forces personnel, for retired railway workers and certainly for veterans and their survivors, are things which ought to have been in this year's Speech from
The Address-Mr. Lee
the Throne. If they had been it would be a much better speech than the one that is before us.


Mr. Art Lee (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, it is always indeed a pleasure and honour to follow the last hon. member who just spoke very ably on the Speech from the Throne. As a member who had the honour and distinction of seconding the motion in reply to the Speech from the Throne in the first session of this parliament I would like to congratulate the hon. member for Resti-gouche (Mr. Harquail), and the hon. member for Lafontaine-Rosemont (Mr. Lachance), for their excellent speeches the other day. I should also like to congratulate all the new ministers on their appointments, particularly the new Solicitor General (Mr. Fox). He is certainly handling a difficult situation in the British Columbia Penitentiary very ably, and 1 look forward to working with him as his parliamentary secretary.
I rise to enter this debate to express to the people of my great riding of Vancouver East and my province how I feel the Speech from the Throne will better their lives. I do so not only as a British Columbian but as a westerner. What is a westerner?
In my speech during the debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne in October, 1974, I attempted to define a westerner as follows:
It is true that Canada is made up of many diversified regions and economies. It is equally true that western Canada in its make-up is not homogeneous but is, in reality, very heterogeneous. There are, however, some regional traits common to British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.
First, industries in western Canada are predominately resource-oriented. Second, westerners are individualists; each of us has a feeling that we can make our own way and direct our own life. Third, westerners judge a person for what he or she is, and not so much on the basis of where he or she comes from. Fourth, westerners take great pride in our earnest hopes for a unified Canada based on the diversity of our ethnic origins.


An hon. Member:: I think you got that from Chatelaine.


Arthur John (Art) Lee: No; it is from my speech during the last session. Because of these regional traits we feel that the west is unique. We are more confident. We are more optimistic. We are more outward looking. Economically most of us westerners believe in the free enterprise system and undoubtedly welcome decentralization of decision-making, especially decision-making on the federal scene. That is why I, as a westerner, am gratified to see this government outlining a legislative program that strengthens the faith in the individual and strengthens the capacity of the market system. Among other things, the encouragement to small business, and the Human Rights Act are welcome words to westerners.
What does the west want?


An hon. Member:: They do not want Liberals.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: James Richardson.


Arthur John (Art) Lee: We want to do our own thing. We want to shape our destiny in Confederation. One thing which we westerners want is an atmosphere in which individual enterprise and the

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Lee
market economy can thrive. I shall not reiterate the reasons and the encouraging results of the government's control program, for others have done so. I would, however, like to say a word about the day of protest.


An hon. Member:: Lang and Goodale have got to go.


John Allen Fraser: What do you have in common with Goodale?


Arthur John (Art) Lee: An extreme amount. He is a westerner as well.
The labour movement has held a day of protest against the anti-inflation program. The methods used by some of the trade union leadership in seeking the support of their rank and file membership have unquestionably cast a shadow upon their credibility and, more important, have left many of their rank and file with doubt that their leadership believes in the protection of one of the hallmarks of our great democracy, namely, the freedom to dissent.
A peaceful protest is a part of a democratic tradition, and I support the right of any and all Canadians to make representations to the government or to criticize governmental policy at any time. But from my point of view the trade union leadership has not made the right decision on the anti-inflation program. The program to restrain prices and wages was the government's response to a world inflationary trend which, in Canada's case, was combined with an unacceptably high level of employment. For some weeks before the program was introduced public opinion polls showed that the majority of Canadians wanted the government to do something to stop inflation and turn it back.
This time last year an inflation rate of more than 10 per cent a year was making it very difficult, if not impossible, for ordinary Canadians to make ends meet. Fear of still higher prices was causing trade unions to ask for wage increases of 20 to 25 per cent or more in a one-year contract. Companies were unable to predict their costs even three months ahead and they were forced to make their prices subject to revision without notice.
Nobody likes controls. I don't like them. The government does not like them. We would all like to get out of controls as soon as possible. Critics of the program are insisting that the government get out of the program now. But this is not what the majority of Canadians want. The polls show Canadians have some reservations about some aspects of the program, but they want the restraints to continue, at least for a temporary period.
Since the program came into effect we have made some encouraging improvements in price levels. Prices are still going up, but not as fast as a year ago, and remember it is a control program, not a freeze. In September the rate of increase in the consumer price index was 6.5 per cent over September 1975. This compares with a rate of 10.6 per cent a year ago.
On the wages and salary side, the Anti-Inflation Board is approving increases that average between 11 and 12 per cent for 1975-76. It is quite obvious that workers are now keeping ahead of inflation, whereas a year ago wages were falling behind price increases. On average, workers are 4 per cent

better off in real take-home dollars, not inflated dollars, than they were a year ago.
I hope that labour's day of protest did not involve any breaches of the law. We all recognize the right of citizens to protest against government policy, but a general strike could breach collective agreements and therefore could be illegal. The labour movement has a vested interest in maintaining its collective agreements.
Following the day of protest I urge trade union members to get behind the program and help us reach to our goal sooner. I also urge them to tell their leadership to accept the invitation of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to continue the consultation meetings which were started last June. The door is still open.
Another thing we westerners want is a unified Canada based on the diversity of our ethnic origins. We westerners regret the resignation of the former minister of national defence, one of our spokesmen in government. Although I respect his decision, I believe it was premature. The discussions and negotiations between the federal government and the provincial governments regarding the patriation of the constitution have not been concluded. Unfortunately I feel that his resignation has again crystallized the issue of billingualism.
As a Canadian of Chinese ancestry, who has unfortunately lost most of the use of the Chinese language, I can understand and sympathize with those who wish to preserve the French language in Canada. This worth-while and earnest attempt to preserve and foster the French language is not an easy goal to obtain. The government has recognized this in the Speech from the Throne by placing more emphasis on teaching French in the schools.
Certainly it is difficult being a western representative. Often when I travel in western Canada I hear words such as these, "You should be ashamed of yourself, selling out western Canada to Quebec-let them separate". I can assure my fellow westerners that it is equally difficult being a representative from Quebec. My colleagues from Quebec, I am sure, often hear words such as, "What are you doing there in Ottawa selling out our interests to English speaking Canada? Let us separate".
Canadians in the past have faced, and undoubtedly in the future will face, these emotional questions. As a westerner I am confident that we will respond positively because we westerners take great pride in our earnest hopes for a unified Canada based on the diversity of our ethnic origins.
I wish to touch on another thing that we westerners want. We westerners want freer trade. First, let me lay a myth to rest. Let us consider the Canadian tariff. Protectionism costs Canadians money-Canadians from coast to coast. Beat protectionism down and everyone will benefit, easterners and westerners alike. We are all consumers whether we live west of the Rockies or east of the Ottawa river. Do away with import duties and we will all be better off from an economic point of view.
October 14, 1976

What then is the present political climate for this long standing dream which we westerners have? Trade policy, or to use the term that economists prefer, commercial policy, is a matter of the highest importance. In fact it relates to a subject that is centuries old. But the fact remains that it is more important today than ever to determine whether we are to establish our policy by basing ourselves on the past or by looking toward the future. The problem was most recently brought up very forcefully in a report of the Economic Council of Canada in a document entitled "Looking Outward" which deserves very special attention.
Essentially the Economic Council of Canada's report suggests that Canada adopt a new commercial policy. This policy would be one that has always been advocated by westerners, namely, freer trade. The logic of those who drew up the report lead them to say freer trade would mean greater producer specialization, production spread over a longer period of time, and lower costs. As for the consumer, he or she would benefit from a movement toward freer trade in that prices would be reduced both for imported products and for products manufactured in Canada, while at the same time he would have the advantage of the wider choice of goods to purchase.
What is of equal, if not even of greater importance, is that the council maintains that unless we adopt a freer commercial policy, our relative position internationally will continue to deteriorate. Already it can be observed that during the past few years Canada has gone from our traditional second to eighth place in terms of our standard of living. Although I realize that such international comparisons of standards of living are subject to technical criticism, the fact remains that such a relative decline gives food for thought. I believe that Canada should adopt a gradual policy which works towards freer trade.
1 believe that the conclusions of the Economic Council of Canada on this subject are correct and therefore should have generated a much wider national debate than they have before. We must debate openly and candidly what our intentions should be as regards the future of our commercial and industrial policy. The issue is not a partisan one, it should not be a regional one, and it must be addressed soon. It must concern labour as well as management. Long after our price and income controls are finished and forgotten, the consequences of the policy decisions taken over the next few years will affect the lives and livelihood of Canadians well into the 1990's.
I am concerned that to date the report has generated so little discussion. I must say that whatever discussions have taken place have left me somewhat disappointed by their superficial and, let's say the word, frequently too nationalistic character.
I take the liberty of emphasizing the fact that we must not confuse our more emotional short-term feelings with a rational analysis of what could be beneficial for all the provinces of this country over a long period of time. The 23 recommendations made by the Economic Council of Canada illustrate clearly the exhaustive and practical nature of its analysis of Canadian commercial and industrial policy. Oriented toward the reduction or abolition of tariff and non-tariff barriers to internation-
The Address-Mr. Lee
al trade over a period of time, they do not neglect various matters connected with foreign investment and the operation of multinational companies. Moreover, the council looks at and recognizes the problems related to economic dislocation, the adjustment process, and the additional administrative requirements.
1 want to reiterate that my primary objective and hope as a westerner are to generate a much more vigorous and positive debate on the whole body of problems posed by the report of the council. That report must absolutely be given every consideration, and I encourage the government to do so.
Perhaps it would be a good idea at this point to summarize the basic advantages that greater freedom of international trade would have for Canada. Forecasts for economic gain from the elimination of tariffs are from 5 per cent to 10 per cent of the Gross National Product. As regards producers, Canadian corporations would benefit from the specialization which would be brought about by increased access to foreign sources of raw materials and to foreign markets.
This would enable them to use their capital more effectively by channelling it into activities where there was higher productivity, and by reducing under utilization. In the same way, workers could benefit from better paid jobs since their productivity would be higher. It is believed that Canada will have to face a probable shortage of workers during this decade. Consequently, according to the council, possible unemployment should not be a major obstacle to the enactment of its recommendations.
The advantages Canadian consumers could draw from a liberalization of trade are evident. The effect of the reduction or abolition of import duties on goods entering Canada would be to reduce or even eliminate some hidden subsidies presently paid by consumers. Even if this means only a few cents here and there, over-all import tariffs represent quite a heavy price to pay for the maintenance of often short term production opportunities in Canada. As a secondary consequence greater interdependence between nations through liberalization of trade should dampen domestic inflationary pressures, a result which must also be considered beneficial to consumers, particularly those people on fixed incomes.
The recommendations of the council are therefore aimed essentially at the liberalization of Canada's international trade with other countries on as broad a basis as possible. Thus the council feels we should do everything in our power to lower both our own barriers to trade and those of other countries by seeking to form free trade associations with other countries, for example, with the United States, the European Community, and Japan.
I repeat that I am here as an advocate of freer trade, but one who realizes the issues are complex and there are no easy solutions. I do feel, however, that the council's report is a serious effort to deal in a practical fashion with a body of economic problems which Canada will have to face in the coming years.

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Lee
Aside from the more or less traditional arguments that I have cited about basing international trade on the most productive industrial sectors of a country, the economic council also emphasizes the appearance on the scene of other international forces which indicate that trade liberalization offers a more advantageous future for Canada.
Among the trends that have developed during these last decades, one of the most significant is without doubt the creation of integrated international economic systems. While 20 years ago there were more than 20 developed countries in the non-Communist world, each having an essentially separate economy, today we are confronted with the economic superpowers, namely, the United States, the European Economic Community, and Japan. The other economic entities seem very small by comparison with this trio of giants. The thrust of expansion in these affluent economies is generally orientated toward industrial activities requiring advanced technology and intensive utilization of intellectual resources. In the manufacturing sector, at any rate, the key to efficiency is modern organization of production, that is, large-scale production necessitating a vast industrial infrastructure and a very high degree of product specialization.


Mr. Oberle:: Is this still the west you are talking about, Art?


Arthur John (Art) Lee: Yes, it is something I hope your party stands for as well, freer trade.
The emergence of a certain number of new "Japans" is a phenomenon of equal importance. These are developing countries-Taiwan and Singapore, for example-which show great ability to produce technologically uncomplicated goods such as those Japan manufactured before the Second World War. And as was the case in Japan in that era, the wages paid by industries in those countries are relatively low, labour is industrious, their machinery is advanced technologically, and hence their products are quite inexpensive.
These countries export a large part of their production to the richer, more industrial countries such as Canada, where they easily compete with comparable, although more expensive, local products.
These changes in the international economy are of particular importance for a country such as Canada, for while we are an economically advanced state, the size of our internal market is too small to enable us to increase adequately our level of efficiency through mass production and specialization in our manufacturing sector. This situation limits our ability to compete with the production of the major industrial nations and the newly industrialized areas of the Third World. This is increasingly the case not only in foreign markets but also even within Canada. Moreover, it tends to prevent Canadian industries from undertaking the development of technological innovations which could make up for the disadvantages stemming from high unit costs.
Canada is thus caught in a vise between industrialized countries and developing countries. As time goes on this pressure on Canadian industry will continue to get more intense.
The practical character of the council's recommendations therefore is underlined by the emphasis placed on the need to establish an over-all major program of industrial readjustment with high employment, of which the costs would be a matter of community rather than individual responsibility. As hon. members can see, this is the only equitable course, insofar as Canadian society as a whole is concerned, which will reap the benefits of trade liberalization.
The practical nature of the council's recommendations is also reflected in recognition of the fact that it will be extremely difficult for Canada to gain increased access to foreign markets. Although since the Second World War there has been a notable drop in the customs duties charged by the industrialized countries, particularly from the prohibitive levels they had reached in the 1930's, there has been observable for some time an appreciable multiplication of the noncustoms barriers which have the impact of restraining foreign competition. Not only will these non-customs barriers be more difficult to remove, since it is easy to justify them for reasons such as, for example, national security or fraud protection requirements or dangers to health and safety, but the mere detection and defining of these barriers pose numerous problems which must be overcome if trade liberalization is to have any real meaning. In short, our country must be prepared to make concessions in some important areas of domestic policy in order to remove obstacles to our exports.
Nevertheless, the most relevant argument advanced by the Economic Council in support of its recommendations is precisely one which I mentioned earlier, namely-according to some statistics-the drop from second to eighth position internationally in Canadian income per capita, since the Second World War. If at least some of the changes advocated by the council are not made in the commercial and industrial policy of Canada, low productivity levels could remain a problem for our country, and its international position or the real income per inhabitant could continue to fall relatively in the 1980's and 1990's. The question is whether Canadians are prepared to accept this to protect the status quo.
If the answer is affirmative, then they need not heed the recommendations of the Economic Council. But if the answer is negative, then they will at least have to examine carefully and discuss the matters raised by the council.
In conclusion, I strongly feel, as a westerner, that there should be a much more vigorous debate on the Economic Council's report on commercial and industrial policy. If I have encouraged the government to read this report, which will not grow stale over time, and to think about it in the months to come, I shall have attained my goal. Thank you for your attention.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Battle River):: Mr. Speaker, I take pride in rising to speak so early in the debate on the Speech from the Throne in this second session of the Thirtieth Parliament. It is also interesting to follow the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), who spoke a few
[Mr. Lee.)
October 14, 1976

moments ago on the need for increased pensions. It almost makes one wonder whether he ought not to have been declared to have a conflict of interest for the stand he took.
I was amused, though, at the rather latex imagination displayed in the interpretation of the Speech from the Throne made by the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mr. Lee). 1 could commend the hon. member, however, for some of the other thoughts he expressed. The only sad thing is that those thoughts were not expressed in the Speech from the Throne nor was there any indication that they might be used in forthcoming legislation.
A careful reading of the Speech from the Throne indicates that it must have taken a search of two volumes of the thesaurus to find a definition of the world "hollow"; I am sure this is the only Speech from the Throne that will echo when we drop it.
The Liberal party told Canadians in 1974 that the issue was leadership. 1 think there was nothing in this country's history as important as October 12 to demonstrate that that is a fact. That is probably the only true statement they made in the 1974 leadership campaign.
There was one omission from the speech that I think was obvious to every Canadian. If we recall for a moment the first session of the Thirtieth Parliament we remember that two of the important thrusts at that time were the abolition of capital punishment through Bill C-84, and the accompanying Bill C-83, the act to tighten up security in this country. Virtually every Canadian recognized that Bill-83 was simply a cosmetic measure to try to get the capital punishment bill through this House.
The fact is, Mr. Speaker, that our prisons have been getting very drafty lately; people are going in and out of prison just like they go in and out of the theatre. It was a natural follow-up to the last session that there be something in this Speech from the Throne about law and order. The problem has been documented by recent events, particularly in the federal prisons and most particularly the prison in New Westminster, British Columbia.
There is in Canada today what we would have to call a law and order crisis. If we were really to talk about security in this country under a Liberal government, we would conclude that we would have greater security if the citizens were locked up and the prisoners let go free.
Bill C-83 introduced in the last session of this parliament was in truth nothing more than a gimmick to get Bill C-84 through the House. That has been proven by the fact that in the Speech from the Throne there was no further thrust toward peace and security in this society. This flies in the face of some very devastating facts, and we note that the gun control legislation was really a fly coil collection of concepts jumbled together in a manner that in no way linked one to the other. It was put before the House, and dragged on for months on end simply because the government had not made a sincere or earnest attempt to do something about law and order.
The Address-Mr. Malone
I think it is time we looked at some of the facts relating to peace and security in this country to see exactly what is happening. In a recent 12-month period four prison employees have been killed; since 1970 60 prisoners have committed suicide, 14 inmates have been slain, and a much larger number were bludgeoned, beaten or stabbed. In the last ten years there has been a 90 per cent increase in violent crimes. Three out of every four prisoners are graduates of the prison system. Prisoners are simply being recycled. We do not have a prison system in Canada; all we do is reintroduce them to their old homes.
Last year we spent $256 million to house some 9,000 men and women in federal penitentiaries, which is three times the amount spent only seven years ago. If the annual prison bill continues to increase at this rate, by 1984 it will be in excess of $1 billion. I think we have to ask ourselves to what extent are we going to provide federal funds, government funds, taxpayers' funds for a prison system that is not working.
There is no doubt when you get well over three-quarters of the prisoners re-entering the prison system, when you get stabbings and killings taking place at the present rate, when the prisoners are becoming the rulers of the prisons, that there was an obvious need for something in the Speech from the Throne that dealt with law and order. That was omitted, and it simply underscores that Bill C-83 was gimmickry when it was introduced in the last session. The government talked about peace and security but it had only one thing in mind, and that was the abolition of capital punishment. It achieved this without giving Canadians an assurance that it would do something about peace and security. I think more Canadians would have accepted the abolition of capital punishment had the government acted in exactly the reverse way-had it done something about peace and security first and then come in with a position on the abolition of capital punishment.
The annual cost of maintaining a prisoner in a maximum security prison is 60 per cent more than the average Canadian industrial worker earns. I think that underscores one of the faulty priorities we are imposing upon our society-when we simply recycle people at a maintenance cost considerably higher than the average Canadian is earning today.
The basic cause of the problems in our prison system is the government's ambivalence and its confused policy on peace and security. The government is in a spin; it is totally unsure of its priorities. It does not know whether a prisoner should be rehabilitated, whether he should be punished, or whether the intent of prisons is to protect the public. On any one of those objectives ministers tinker and experiment at great risk to the public at large. I think we can say with considerable assurance that the government owes it to the Canadian people to come forward with something in a Speech from the Throne that will guarantee to Canadians a sense of security and a feeling of peace.
In this country we have the wrong attitude toward first offenders. Through the judicial system, first offenders today are getting off without any form of punishment whatsoever. In fact once a first offender is released it often happens that he is simply enticed, by the system itself, to repeat the crime.

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Malone
Anyone who has ever trained a horse or a dog, anyone who has ever worked in the field of child psychology, is well aware that bad behaviourial patterns should not be allowed to be repeated time and time again. There can be no hope of successful rehabilitation that way.
Every farm boy knows that you cannot allow a dog access to the chicken coop all summer long and then in the fall of the year attempt to train him to keep out of it. Our court system today is saying that when a person commits an offence for the first time he should be allowed out on probation or let go free. What 1 am saying does not necessarily mean of course that every first offender should end up in jail; it just means that every first offender should be given some penalty.
If the government had any imagination it would design a system that would show first offenders that when you do not live within the law you have to face the consequences. I think that concept is missing from our law and order system today. Those who have disobeyed the law and have been the gainers because they disrespected the law obviously will be encouraged to repeat the commission of crimes. One of the most important omissions from the Speech from the Throne is this; the speech says nothing about law and order. That is to say, there is no hint at follow-up legislation to that proposed in the first session of the thirtieth parliament.
May I now deal with another subject of tremendous consequence to Canadians. I submit that misleading information coming from the federal government has caused tremendous damage to some regions of Canada and brought about what some in this country today call the beef crisis. People who talk about this crisis are really talking about the low prices cattlemen are getting for livestock to be sold for slaughter, that is, for beef.
in this country there is not a crisis in the beef marketing system; the crisis has to do with the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan). What has happened since the minister assumed his responsibilities? Between 1973 and 1974 we heard 29 ad hoc, short-term policy pronouncements affecting the beef industry, the third largest industry of this country. Those 29 ad hoc, short-term pronouncements tended to disrupt the market, alienated our American friends, and put ranchers and cow-calf producers in a net loss position, in that their production costs exceeded income. Sadly lacking is any long-term policy in this field. That is shameful. The meat packing industry is this country's largest food producing industry, and the third largest industry over-all.
Let us consider some data to see how important meat is in the economy. For example, please note that annually some 200,000 freight cars filled with meat products are shipped in this country. The meat industry is, as I said, this country's third largest; it is a $2.5 billion industry which pays $265 million in wages and salaries to employees here. Approximately 275,000 ranchers across Canada supply materials for the meat industry. Interestingly, about 80 per cent of Alberta cattle killed weekly ends up in the Montreal consumer market.
[Mr. Malone.)
I do not for a moment think that the importation of beef from Oceanian countries, that is, from New Zealand and Australia, an importation which has depressed the meat industry of this country, has come about by accident. It is my firm conviction that our federal government planned such importation in order to keep meat prices down because it wanted to show that its anti-inflation program is working. When the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) spoke in the Atlantic provinces he repeated, again and again, that the anti-inflation program is working. It was suggested that this is evident because food prices in recent months rose 6 per cent, whereas one year ago they were rising at the rate of 10 per cent. He repeated the same message in southern Ontario. As recently as one or two days he again said, on television, that the anti-inflation program is working because the cost of food is down.
The truth is that the cost of food is not down. One would find, if one itemized all food costs, that the price of all food except pork, poultry, and beef has risen. Consumers have made major savings in beef. In other words the Liberal government, which has most of its support and seats in two provinces of Canada, is saying to the ranchers and producers of Alberta and the other prairie provinces that they are expendable. The government is writing off the prairie provinces. It recognizes that it has no seats from Alberta. It is saying that it does not care about the damage it is doing to the enterprising ranchers of the prairie provinces: they are considered as expendable. Therefore the government intends to import cheap beef from Oceanian countries, beef which is sold at low prices, in order to prove that the anti-inflation program is working. That is an insensitive and callous position. It is wrong to fight inflation on the backs of those who are made the victims of a crisis brought about by the importation of cheap beef to this country. It is wrong in this way to write off certain voters.
Remember, we had a surplus of meat in this country because of the policies this government introduced in the first place. They date back to when the Liberal government introduced the LIFT program, which was designed to encourage farmers to take land out of grain production and seed it to grass. This policy encouraged the production of cattle. I submit that the LIFT program ought to have been called the goof program. That program brought about an increase in the country's cattle population, to the extent that as of February, one year ago, the cow and heifer population of this country had increased 45 per cent over that of one year before. We saw high levels of domestic over-production of beef, and now we see the devastating results of an increase of 139 per cent in beef imported from New Zealand, and of an increase of 10 per cent from Australia. This is wrong. The government is writing off people in regions where it has no political support. Is it any wonder that the government seems to be dividing the country instead of unifying it?
The government's policies are at fault. There is nothing wrong with Canada. I do not take the position that Canada is a country divided by nature. What is wrong is this: the government's policies have pitted one part of the country against another. Putting it another way, the government has
October 14, 1976

tried to trade off the loss of votes from the raw material and producing areas of this country against the gain of votes in the large transportation and population centres, which by their nature contain a larger number of seats and votes.
Let me repeat the importance of the meat industry to Canada. It makes annual sales of about $2.5 billion, is the third largest manufacturing industry of this country, ranks second from the standpoint of materials used, materials worth over $2 billion, spends about $5 million every day on livestock purchases, employs over 31,000 people, and pays $265 million annually in wages and salaries. Further, it contributes over $20 million annually in income taxes, and spends over $13 million annually for fuel and electricity. Yet the government is willing to write off that entire sector of the economy in the prairie provinces and southern British Columbia. It is saying these people are expendable, and it is doing this to prove that its anti-inflation program is working.


Mr. Hnatyshyn:: The hon. member for Winnipeg South (Mr. Richardson) would probably agree with what the hon. member is saying.


Arnold John Malone: I agree. Probably he is in Winnipeg, telling people that he likes some of the things he is hearing from my side of the House.


An hon. Member:: Nonsense!


Walter David Baker: Read the last part of his letter.


Arnold John Malone: May I refer to something else, which, ironically, shows what is happening in this country. The Prime Minister has created a new portfolio and appointed a new minister in charge of small business. Who can deny the importance of such a portfolio? Obviously it is important for us to give more attention to small business in this country. But the fact is, as can be documented again and again with good examples, the services and policies of the government are deliberately driving away small business from this country. If there is anything that could underscore that better, it would be a review of what the postal system is doing in relation to small business.
We are getting absolutely terrible service from two major post offices in my home province, namely, Edmonton and Calgary. In one rural post office in my constituency complaints have been received from Medicine Hat, Armstrong, B.C., Salmon Arm, B.C., Kamloops, B.C., Oshawa, Ontario and Edmonton.
One constituent who receives a regular mailing of a weekly paper has kept a record of dates on which he has received it. He received a paper on June 21 that was mailed on June 2, one on June 21 that was mailed on June 9, one on June 30 that was mailed on June 23 and one on August 17 that was mailed July 28.
Letters to the publisher of a local weekly from a disgruntled client states that it takes ten days for the paper to get from
The Address-Mr. Malone
Stettler to Medicine Hat by mail, and eight days to Edmonton. The fact is that people can walk to either of those places in half that length of time. That is a literal fact. Virtually anyone, except the hon. member for Vancouver-Kingsway (Mrs. Holt), could walk from my constituency to Medicine Hat, but it takes ten days to get the mail delivered that distance.
One weekly paper laments that if the poor service continues, in due course it will be out of business. The government has the gall to give us what it calls a minister of small business while at the same time its actions and policies are driving small business out of a profit situation.
There are two or three other things I would like to put on record with regard to the Speech from the Throne. One deals with a request for an investigation into farm implement service. When the harvest season rolls around in the fall of the year, that is the time when grain people make almost all of their annual income. It might be said that a grain farmer can make several hundred dollars an hour during the harvest season. However, during this past harvest season the equipment repair situation was nothing less than atrocious. For example, on a major combine produced and serviced in the prairie provinces, there is a particular "V" belt. If that had broken on a machine this past summer, there was not another one available in any of the three western provinces.
It has also been reported and calculated that in numerous communities there have been waits of over two weeks for replacement parts for farm machinery during the harvest season. That should point out graphically that during the two to three weeks harvesting season, depending on good weather, parts for farm machinery should be available. There should be an investigation into the whole supply and service of the implement situation in this country.
It is incumbent upon the government to cause an investigation and have a hearing in the farm communities so that people involved in farming can voice their concerns and complaints. There should be some rectification of this problem that is causing serious economic concern in the wheat and grain producing areas of the prairie provinces.
It is not right for some people to be able to harvest a bumper crop when, because of a mechanical breakdown and having to wait several weeks for replacement parts, their neighbours must suffer a devastating loss.
I note also from the Speech from the Throne that the government intends to increase the status or importance of the female in society. While I commend and applaud those words, I cannot help but be suspect about their content.
We recently witnessed what was labelled International Women's Year. It was really nothing more than a $3 million campaign of "Why not?" buttons. That is no way to treat women in our society. If we did a study of what has happened to females in this country in terms of improvement of their status since International Women's Year, we would not see any improvement in the hiring rate of women in the public service. There has been no real improvement in terms of
80001 -iVi

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Malone
legislative action in relation to women. The only thing that would be demonstrated, and demonstrated soon, in terms of women in this country that would help upgrade their status would be an increase in the number of women in the House of Commons.
I wish to give a concrete example. The government should take legislative action in relation to farm wives. Anyone associated with farming or ranching communities is well aware that the farm wife often works just as hard as the farmer. They work side by side. She often drives farm equipment and machinery, trucks grain in the fall of the year, and puts in a 15 to 16 hour a day during spring seeding and fall harvesting. What an insult it must be to that farm wife in April when her husband writes her off in income tax for $1,644. He could hire a man, but he cannot pay his wife. If he did, it would be considered as part of the family income. If the government is sincere about attempting to do something for females in this country, that is one place it could start to do something meaningful.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arnold John Malone: In a collection of throne speeches the government has talked about what it is going to do for women. It is high time that the women in this country asked when this action is going to come about. It should again be repeated that the best symbol of what will happen with regard to improvement in the status of women in this country will happen on October 18.
I wish to spend some time discussing another extremely neglected area in terms of the Speech from the Throne. I refer to the government's commitment to do something about the elderly in our society. Being elderly is not treated as a stage in the development of life. In many ways these people are treated as though they were a separate species. They are taken out of the main stream of society, often put into homes or, more often, made to feel as though they are without purpose, without participation, citizens of a different status from others in the adult society.
I cannot think of a more real plight or blight in society than the treatment given to senior citizens in this country. One answer might be to expend more money in terms of pensions. That might help to some degree. However, a government with any imagination would realize that the problems being faced by senior citizens go far beyond the simple financial status. They should be able to participate and have the opportunity to become fully involved in doing something. True, it may be at a slower rate; true, it may not be at the same pace. They are able to participate in their younger years, but there has not been a structural system set up in Canada today to allow these people in their golden years to have an opportunity to feel useful, as if they are people of self-esteem who can do something. This is robbing us of a great deal of talent, and moreover is creating tremendous expense not only in terms of human happiness but in terms of social cost and medical bills. It also treats them in a way in which we really would not want to treat the most
[Mr. Malone.)
lowly person in this country. The fact of the matter is that Canada was built by the senior citizens of this country.


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


Some hon. Members:: Continue.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: He may continue with unanimous consent. Is it agreed to allow the hon. member to continue?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Arnold John Malone: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I heard the young maiden across the way say he thought this was my maiden speech.


Joseph-Phillippe Guay: You have not changed all that much.


Arnold John Malone: While talking of senior citizens I would also like to commend the new minister in charge of fitness and sport-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arnold John Malone: I have not come to the commending yet but to what she might do. Whenever we talk of fitness and sport, the general emphasis is on the youth. I hope the new minister in charge of fitness and sport will take it within her jurisdiction to look at senior citizens' homes. Because in truth, while they may not be the kind of people who will be challenging for Olympic competitions of some kind, fitness obviously is important to our senior citizens, just as it is important to the health of any other age group in society.
If there is any place where we need to talk about fitness and the availability of physical exercising equipment, it must be in relationship to our senior citizens. When we stop and think of the very poor architectural design of our senior citizens' homes, the fact that residents are often cooped up in one room with a hallway down to the dining lounge and with a piano at the other end, when we recognize that fitness is important to the whole circulatory and respiratory system, one of the things we should do is to expand the concept of fitness and sport beyond our young people to the senior citizens of our country. If we are talking about the health of a group of senior citizens, people who can fully participate in and contribute to our society, then it is incumbent upon us to try to extend to them all the amenities of life that are traditionally enjoyed by anyone of adult age.
One other concept I should like to put forward for the consideration of the House is that it would do us well to give consideration to establishing in each province in Canada a co-op store in which senior citizens can sell their products, such as doilies, pillow cases, sheets, bookends-whatever it may be-and receive a significant tax break. I make that suggestion on this basis. The truth of the matter today is that we always talk of giving more money to our senior citizens.
October 14, 1976

What we fail to do is provide an avenue by which senior citizens might become participants in their own well-being.
Whether this example I have given is utilized or not, it is imperative that we discover a method whereby senior citizens are able to advance their own status economically, have a sense of participation and a feeling that somehow they have gained more self-esteem because they are able to take part in the social and educational structure of Canada. A senior citizen has to be treated like a regular human being, not as a species separate from the rest of society. In other words, we need a whole rethinking as to how we analyse and talk about our senior citizens.
In the same vein, when talking about how the throne speech fails to recognize senior citizens, we should also take a look at the age group that is soon to become a senior citizen. In truth it can be documented by a considerable number of psychologists and sociologists that the vast majority of Canadians, without a shadow of a doubt, are not prepared for their retirement years. What happens is that they go into psychological depression following their working careers, and this often happens because no program has been established in this country, either through the industrial factory or by the public service, to prepare people for a meaningful, creative and involved retirement.
In the provinces and through the dominion government we provide a health scheme that pays for medical costs. What we have failed so miserably to do is to establish a preventative medicine system. In the same way, there is no preventative system in the social justice sphere that we spoke of earlier when talking about the prison system. I think we need to readdress ourselves not only to the problem of inflation but to our prisons, to agriculture, an area in which this country is falling far short of its potential, to the problems of our senior citizens, and more important, to opportunities for every region to be able to feel like it is a part of Canada, linked together by some kind of transportation system.
The subject of transportation has been in the throne speech for I do not know how many times now, but I do know that for at least the sixth time the Department of Transport has promised a complete review of the rail network on the prairies. Such a review is now back in the throne speech and all we can hope is that this promise will culminate in some action that is over 100 years late in coming. This has left the prairies still the producer of raw material and has made central Canada the sole manufacturing area of this country. The three prairie provinces are placed in a tremendous deficit position in the economic sense because of an inequitable freight rate structure.
It does not make sense that we in this country have a freight rate system under which it is cheaper to ship products from Toronto to Vancouver than it is to ship products from Toronto to Calgary. Nor should it be in this country that we have a kind of freight rate structure in which rapcsced as a raw material per rolling ton costs half as much to ship in the same kind of boxcar from Lethbridge to Toronto as it docs to ship the processed rapcsced meal back from Toronto to Lethbridge,
The Address-Mr. Malone
Alberta. You have the same tonnage, the same car style and the same mileage, but a freight rate structure that is obviously biased against a certain region of Canada.
The Prime Minister shrugs his shoulders and wonders why the Canadian people are wrong in not being able to understand that the country will become divided. Obviously it is going to be divided so long as government policies are divided. This is not a country that is bent on being divided, but we do have a government that is bent on dividing people.
I have been looking at what is happening in terms of transportation. We are going to establish a new port policy. A new port at Churchill which will increase the grain flow out of that port during the production year would be something that would reduce the transportation costs of prairie farmers. It would increase to a tremendous degree the amount of income which could be generated within the prairies. There would be a decrease in transportation cost resulting from opening the port of Churchill to handle a much greater proportion of the grain produced in the prairie provinces. But the fact of the matter is that the government has reneged on its promise over and over again.


An hon. Member:: That's not true.


Arnold John Malone: In response to the hon. member who just said that this is not true, let me suggest he has not been back to his constituency recently. His is a farming constituency, and if he had talked recently to any of the people there he would know that one of the things that is wanted and needed very badly for economic advancement is this improvement to the port of Churchill, and a whole new ports policy. This is a fact with which we have to reckon very soon.
Having regard to the throne speech, what we have again is simply a hollow piece of paper that echoes when it falls. It is nothing more than a collection of adjectives from a thesaurus. It is nothing more than the empty promises we continue to hear. All we can hope for is that legislation will in some way give the Canadian people some hope.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Is it agreed that we call it 9.45?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[ Translation]


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being 9.45 p.m., it is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38(3), to interrupt the proceedings and forthwith put any question to dispose of the subamendment which is now before the House. Therefore, the question is as follows:

The question is, therefore, on the amendment to the amendment. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.

October 14, 1976
The Address-Mr. Malone


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: All those in favour of the amendment to the amendment will please say yea.


Some hon. Members:: Yea.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: All those opposed will please say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five members having risen:


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.


Mr. Speaker:: I declare the amendment to the amendment lost. It being after ten o'clock, this House stands adjourned until eleven o'clock tomorrow morning.
At 10.14 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.


Friday, October 15, 1976