1978-11-10

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, each year, on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, Canada pays tribute to the memory of her heroes of two generations who laid down their lives in the cause of freedom. Three times this century, Canadians went off to war to defend our basic aspirations, freedom and peace. Tomorrow will be a time of remembrance. Once again across this vast land we shall honour Canada's heroes of two world wars and the Korean conflict, recognizing the sacrifices they made.
Tomorrow is a very special day, for another reason: November 11, 1978, marks the sixtieth anniversary of the armistice which ended what they called the war to end all wars.
I should like to take a moment to tell hon. members of the House that this morning I met upward of 100 First World War veterans whom I brought here for a special occasion this year; to take part in ceremonies at the monument, to attend a state dinner and various functions such as that. Among that group was a gentleman who will be 108 years old on November 19. He is from Elk Lake, North Bay, Ontario. His health is exceptionally good.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Daniel Joseph MacDonald: He had just finished a 20-minute interview on the radio before I left.
Nearly one in every ten Canadians who fought in that First Wcrld War did not return home. More than 50,000 lie in the war cemeteries of France and Belgium. Others found their earthly resting place in graves in the United Kingdom, in the Near East, in north Russia and Siberia, or in native Canadian soil. Some were lost at sea.
Few members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force were soldiers by profession; the force was largely an army of citizen soldiers. From every walk of life they came to render their service, and those who did not return left their country-our country-the poorer for their loss.
At the outbreak of the First World War, with a population of just over eight million people, Canada was on the verge of attaining nationhood, with a future full of promise. In 1914, as part of the British Empire, we faced the most imposing threat to peace and freedom ever experienced up until that time in history. Our very existence, and that of other peace-loving nations, was threatened by war in Europe. For that reason, as war was declared, a generation of Canadian youth lined up and marched off to defend their nation.
Even after 60 years, the mention of such names as Vimy, Passchendaele, Ypres and Arras evokes memories in the minds of many Canadians. Tomorrow, some will remember the mud, the trenches and the suffering. Others will sadly recall the death of a buddy, a friend, a father, a brother, a son. But Canadians collectively should remember with pride the bravery, the heroism and the great military achievements of our Canadian servicemen and women.
Those of both world wars and the Korean conflict who served and returned home, as well as those who stayed "over there", had an ideal. They served, suffered and died to ensure that Canada's path would be upward, that she would take her place in the world as a great, prosperous and happy nation. Tomorrow, with the poppies in our lapels, as wreaths are laid at our cenotaphs, let us all as Canadians observe a few moments of silence and remember the sacrifice of our war dead. Let us, at the same time, reflect on what they gave their lives for; a Canada united, strong and free. We owe it to all of them to keep it that way.


Mr. William Knowles (Norfolk-Haldimand):: Mr. Speaker, before I pay tribute, on behalf of the official opposition, to this speech and these special people, I would preface my remarks by paying my thanks to the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald) who early this morning sent me a copy of his remarks. I especially commend those who made it possible that this tribute should be made at the very beginning of the proceedings of this House. We feel, now, that it has a priority which it so justly deserves because we are as close as possible to the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
We are, once again, summoned by a most solemn admonition to pause for a moment amid this busy world's activities, to pay silent, moving tribute to the memory, not only of those fallen in battle but also those who faced the ordeal of combat and now lie in hospitals and nursing homes with broken bodies and disturbed minds, who, as someone has said, "limp and grope their way down the corridors of time." In the words of President Lincoln, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here today".

November 10, 1978
Remembrance Day
By the sacrifice of thousands of young Canadian men and women who put their very lives on the line for king and country, this day has been hallowed far beyond our poor power to further consecrate it.
Canada forged her nationhood with the sacrifice of her sons and daughters on land, on the sea, in the air and at home in field and factory. The debt Canadians owe to that generation of valiant men and women can never be completely and adequately discharged.
However, successive governments, following World War I, have over the intervening years put together a framework of legislation to try to compensate our veterans and their families who gave their all, and lost so much, that we might today live in a land where "freedom slowly broadens down from precedent to precedent". These acts of parliament on behalf of veterans are collectively referred to as the veterans' charter. We are still correcting and replacing old laws and enacting new measures in light of today's lifestyle.
While we on this side of the House continue to press for more improvements, we recognize in the present Minister of Veterans Affairs a man who bears the painful scars of conflict and a man who conscientiously and faithfully works for the welfare of veterans.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William David Knowles: We also know his activities are limited in this field, and that he has difficulty in convincing certain cabinet colleagues that aid to veterans is the very last place in which spending restraints should be applied. We feel they have their priorities all wrong.
On this Remembrance Day in 1978, therefore, we once again press this government to give all widows of veterans with disability pensions some form of widow's benefit, and to adjust ceilings and other constraints affecting war veterans' allowance to a figure commensurate with today's cost of living. This would be the very best wreath to deposit in memory of our veterans.
In closing, I call upon all Canadians, as they bow before cenotaphs across this land, to renew their covenant in the fallen and carry high the torch of freedom thrown to us, which is also a touch of Canada united from coast to coast.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Arnold Peters (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, I join the spokesman for the official opposition, on this sixtieth anniversary of the armistice of 1918, in congratulating the minister for bringing to Ottawa 100 of the World War I veterans, including one of my constituents from Elk Lake who is 108 years old.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Arnold Peters: Mr. Lepage will be able to remember, I am sure, many of the promises that were made and how well we,

as members of parliament, have or have not fulfilled those promises over the years.
November 11 should not be considered a holiday, Mr. Speaker. It is a day when we should remember the sacrifice that was made by the young people of Canada from 1914 to 1918, the young people of the generation who made the sacrifice from 1939 to 1945 and, later, the conflict in Korea. The soldiers and servicemen of Canada today are still serving the interests of peace around the world, in many countries. We should remember the sacrifice they are making for us and the reasons why they are willing to make that sacrifice.
Too often, when we watch television today, Mr. Speaker, we see war glamorized. All the uniforms and the movie plots developed around war glamorize it. But war was not like that: for those who served, it was a matter of deprivation and many, many hardships. Those who were able to return gave up much: many paid the supreme sacrifice and did not return.
This is the sixtieth anniversary of that war to end all wars, and it behooves all of us to indicate to young people that the sacrifice that was made, was made to keep Canada a free country; that they made that sacrifice, and they made it freely. They made it in the knowledge that it would be a sacrifice that would not have to be made by people who followed. Our young people should know that, because our veterans will not have paid the price in vain if we are able to ensure that there are no more wars and the problems of the world are settled in a more satisfactory way.
I am pleased that the minister has seen fit to honour 100 of those veterans of the First World War. They are getting older, and they will not be with us very long. I join with the opposition member who indicated that we have an obligation to those who did return, and I congratulate the minister for what he has done in the past. As our veterans of the Second World War and the Korean war reach the age where assistance is necessary, we in Canada have an obligation to repay them. We are not repaying them entirely. We should be repaying them with the idea that they fought in three major wars to make this a free country, a united country. Unless we keep faith with them, we will not be assured of the success of the endeavour which they voluntarily and so expensively undertook on behalf of our nation.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Eudore Allard (Rimouski):: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to take part in this tribute. I wish to emphasize, like the hon. minister and my colleagues before me, the human contribution, the sacrifice of these men whose courage stood up even in the face of death itself. It is fortunate that we set aside a day to pay tribute to those who died but also to those who remain and bear the consequences of war. Among them are many handicapped who are a living proof of the atrocities of war. This day gives us a special opportunity, to us who have

November 10, 1978

known war, to repeat to the younger generations that others have made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure their future. I am proud of the special attention that the House of Commons has always bestowed on veterans and their plight. It is my hope that through the coming years we will be able to improve their fate and their condition. Mr. Speaker, as we remember on this day the sacrifices demanded by war, let us all be ever more thankful to God for the gift of peace.


MANPOWER
Mr. Adrien Lambert (Bellechasse):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43, I request the unanimous consent of the House to present a motion dealing with a very important and urgent matter.
As some of Canada Works projects are having problems as a result of the regulations of the Quebec Construction Office as it is abnormal that in a single country one government should spend money to create jobs while another government applies rules the nature of which tend to paralyse the work, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Abitibi (Mr. Laprise):
That this House recommend to the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Cullen) that he meet the Quebec labour minister to look into this serious problem and come to an agreement so that Canada Works projects can be carried out without further trouble.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


GOVERNMENT ADMINISTRATION
Mr. G. W. Baldwin (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I have a motion under Standing Order 43, without any preamble. If permission is given, the motion would be as follows:
This House, alarmed that the extraordinary use of regulatory powers is becoming oppressive and stifling to individual incentive and business development, a view implicitly shared by the First ministers, as expressed in their communique last February, and concerned that there is no adequate government action to deal with this danger, and that the unanimous recommendations made by the Standing Joint Committee on Regulations and Other Statutory Instruments have been largely ignored, proposes that parliament act immediately to deal with the danger of this continued despotism by the executive and the bureaucracy in using such authority and to provide greater safeguards for scrutiny to be made of requests for regulatory powers before such powers are granted.


Mr. Speaker:: Such a motion could be presented for debate at this time, pursuant to Standing Order 43, only with unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


URBAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Dean Whiteway (Selkirk):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the fact that most major trust companies yesterday increased their mortgage interest rates to 11'A per cent, and realizing the dramatic increase in AHOP defaults, currently four times greater than conventional mortgage defaults, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Ottawa-Carleton (Mrs. Pigott):
That the Minister of State for Urban Affairs make a statement on motions today outlining what specific measures the government intends to take to avoid the certain disaster for Canadian AHOP families as a result of the high interest rate caused by the failures of this government.


Mr. Speaker:: Such a motion could be presented for debate at this time only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Gus MacFarlane (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, to move a motion of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the fact that citizens who wish to exchange their bonds for the new issue are being told that they must present a social security number, and in view of the fact that when they make application at their local UIC office they are told that the process may take more than three weeks and, therefore, pass the deadline for the purchase of new bonds, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Vaudreuil (Mr. Herbert):
That the Minister of Employment and Immigration instruct his offices to issue at the counter temporary numbers for these Canadians.

November 10, 1978
Oral Questions


Mr. Speaker:: The presentation of this motion for debate at this time, pursuant to Standing Order 43, can only be done with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Transport, the Prime Minister and the President of the Treasury Board, I will direct my question to the Minister of Finance: it has to do with the government allowing Air Canada to spend up to $28.4 million to purchase Nordair.
Can the minister now inform the House where the $28.4 million purchase price that the government is contemplating will come from?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I cannot answer precisely the question as asked by the hon. member. I will take note of it and transmit it to the Minister of Transport.


Jack Burnett Murta: Mr. Speaker, the minister is, after all, Minister of Finance and I would hope he would have some idea about this transaction and some of the particulars in terms of what has just taken place. I have to direct my supplementary to the Minister of Finance. 1 hope he can give me a better answer than his previous one.
The transaction has been profitable for the Nordair shareholders, but questionable for the Canadian people. There are still a number of questions to be answered. One has to do with the $1 million allocation for what is termed out-of-pocket expenses in connection with this whole deal. Can the minister give a more precise answer as to what this $1 million covers? Legal fees are expensive, but surely not that expensive on this kind of transaction.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I am aware of the transaction, Mr. Speaker. We approved it in cabinet, knowing that it was the best decision that could be made in the interest of the Canadian public. As to particulars about lawyer's fees, and so on, I am not knowledgeable about that aspect. I will ask the Minister of Transport to reply to the hon. member.


Jack Burnett Murta: Perhaps the Minister of Finance or the Deputy Prime Minister could answer this question: when the government finds a buyer for Nordair, what guarantee has the taxpayer that the full investment of $28.4 million will be recovered?
[ Translation]


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, of course we will take all the necessary means to ensure that our investment is profitable. 1 think that Air Canada's takeover of Nordair at this time is a very fortunate move and we do not intend to lose out in the transaction a year from now when we decide to return this enterprise to the private sector.


Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: The Minister of Finance indicated he attended the cabinet session when the government was giving consideration to getting into this merchandising, so to speak, of used airlines. Would he tell us how they arrived at their valuation of approximately $12 to $13 per share for Nordair, bearing in mind that only last year the stock sold for $2.10? How did they arrive at that evaluation, which would indicate they paid, in the aggregate, over $20 million more than the stock sold for last year?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: I have just explained that I am not the one who made the transaction for the government. I said I approved the terms and conditions. This information has been known to the public for a week, yet no questions were directed to the Minister of Transport on this aspect. The file is in the hands of the Minister of Transport, and I will ask him for particulars. I am amazed that the hon. gentleman did not address his question to the Minister of Transport when he was in the House.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Perhaps I could address my next question to the Deputy Prime Minister and President of Privy Council. In view of the apparent lack of knowledge displayed by the Minister of Finance with respect to the true nature of this Nordair deal, will the hon. gentleman ask parliament to make a reference to the appropriate committee of this House so that all details, including the shareholders involved, the method of evaluation used, and the excessive resulting payment may be reviewed by that committee?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and President of Privy Council):: The hon. member will recall that on Wednesday of this week the House of Commons itself supported the takeover of Nordair, and that the motion put forward by the official opposition which condemned the takeover was defeated.
I do not see the value at this point of making a reference to the standing committee, but I can advise the hon. member that if he places on the order paper these detailed questions regarding financial transactions, I will make sure that answers are given forthwith.
November 10, 1978


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: I do not have to remind the hon. House leader that the vote only carried in this chamber when the government brought in its socialist partners on my left-


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: -to sustain its further intervention by the state into the private sector. When this deal is completed with Nordair, how many Crown corporations or state enterprises will we then have in Canada, give or take, say, ten?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, I will not answer that question because I do not carry these facts in my head.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I will not go any further except to say that 1 do not carry those numbers in my head. If the hon. member wants to put that question on the order paper, we will try to answer it. However, I will comment on the observation the hon. member made about socialist partners. That motion of the official opposition would have been defeated in any event, regardless of the support we received from the New Democratic Party, which on this occasion showed unusual and rare good sense in supporting the government.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance. Current reports show that profits of the largest corporations in Canada increased, on average, by 25 per cent to 30 per cent in the first nine months of this year compared with last year.
Will the minister inform the House whether his department is undertaking an investigation into these spectacular profit increases and their harmful inflationary consequences related to recent price increases?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, there has, indeed, been some amelioration in the profit picture for corporations. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think corporations need to make profits in order to reinvest. We should see that as an improvement in the Canadian economy. The profits of corporations which are still under AIB guidelines will, of course, be investigated to determine whether the guidelines are being breached. But 1 want to say to the hon. member that when we talk about corporate profits, we have to keep the base in mind. Sometimes an increase of 30 per cent from a very low base does not amount to very much money. The same base is not used when we talk about salaries which increase from year to year.
Oral Questions


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, is the minister aware that, while workers are being asked by the government to limit their requests for wage increases to only 6 per cent, banks and trust companies in the first nine months of this year reported profit increases of 25 per cent to 30 per cent? Incidentally, those increases have taken place in each of the last four or five years.
Will the minister urge these financial institutions to rescind their latest increases in mortgage rates for homes, which are causing tremendous burdens for prospective home owners?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, the policy of the government is to let market forces determine the level of interest rates on mortgages, and so on; as everyone knows interest rates have been rising in Canada and, because of competition on the market, interest rates on mortgages have been rising more slowly than other interest rates within the Canadian economic system.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, is the minister aware that the large newsprint firms of this country have increased their Canadian prices while experiencing tremendous profit increases, such as 179 per cent for Abitibi Paper and 40 per cent for Crown Zellerbach? If so, will he urge those companies to rescind their recent price increases, which just contribute to cost of living pressures in this country?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, we have put an end to controls and the hon. member and other members of his party have regularly made long speeches in the House against the control program we had set up in Canada from October, 1975, and today he comes and asks me to set new controls. I am not prepared to do it.


MANPOWER
Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: My question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration.
It relates to the motion I introduced earlier about the difficulties which certain sponsors of Canada Works projects experience because provincial government inspectors are visiting sites-and I have here the complaint of a mayor who is carrying out a contract for his municipality under Canada Works. On the one hand people want to work, and on the other there are inspectors going around sites so they will not work, and I find that abnormal. So I would like to ask the minister if he is aware of that, if many cases were brought to his attention, and if so, does the minister intend to have talks with the Quebec labour minister with a view to coming to an

November 10, 1978
Oral Questions
agreement on that question so the work can be carried out normally as submitted by project sponsors?


Hon. Bud Cullen (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time I have heard about that problem. I thank the hon. member for his interest in this matter and I will call Mr. Pierre-Marc Johnson if possible to find out about that.


Joseph Adrien Henri Lambert: Mr. Speaker, since this issue is very important, could the minister settle once and for all not only this issue but all others, and ensure that the standards and the criteria are amended so that we can truly live what was said this afternoon and live in harmony in Canada. This is what I wish. Will the minister agree to come to a definite agreement on this matter?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, we in the House of Commons know that the hon. member is a good federalist and that we must find the means to bring about the harmony that he referred to. I shall call immediately the Quebec labour minister about this matter and other questions.


SOCIAL INSURANCE
Mr. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon-Biggar):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that we now have the support of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations, I would like to direct a question to the Minister of Employment and Immigration respecting social insurance numbers.
The minister is aware that we have a minimum of 1,381 presently listed information data banks in the federal government. Many of them are in such disparate agencies as the Department of External Affairs and the Canadian Saltfish Corporation. The prime identifier is the social insurance number.
I would like to ask the minister what specific controls he plans to introduce to guard against the interconnection of computers by means of social insurance numbers, which poses a threat to individual privacy.


Miss Begin:: What about your pay cheque?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, it is very difficult to determine just where the opposition stands on this matter. When we bring in legislation which gives access to these banks by individuals so they know exactly what information the government has, hon. members opposite say that is what they want, but in the next breath they suggest we are being too open. In 99 per cent of the cases, the use of the social insurance number is advantageous to the individual, who can receive cheques, refunds from

the Department of Finance, social insurance benefits and benefits from a myriad of other programs which are in place.
In deference to the hon. member, I too am concerned about data banks. We list them. We indicate what is in those data banks. In cases where ministers have responsibilities for one thing or another-the security of the country or the protection of the reputation of individuals-we want to see to it that everyone does not have access to certain information. We are moving into the computer age. There is a concern which is shared by my colleague, the Solicitor General, and we are looking into this matter to see what can be done to build in as much protection as possible so that individual rights will not be infringed.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, we are talking about preventing the kind of data traffic which is taking place, involving unscrupulous computer manipulators who are misusing this kind of information, as well as potential misuse. Quite apart from the fact that the minister now appears to have endorsed the idea of extending the use of social insurance numbers throughout government agencies-and he appears not to be concerned-what is his attitude with respect to putting curbs on private use of this government-issued number?
Specifically, does he intend either to make a strong statement in this House or to bring forward legislation or guidelines to restrict the use of this number outside government, which is getting to be more and more a factor in terms of getting service at banks and other private establishments?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is misinterpreting what I said. I said that the government does not encourage the use of social insurance numbers as identifiers outside federal government agencies. That particular number is given to an individual for his or her convenience. Whether or not it is used is a determination to be made by the individual who has the social insurance number. I indicated three areas where there is legislative authority requiring that an individual provide the social insurance number. In other areas, this number might be asked for, but there is no requirement on the part of the individual to give it.


USE OF SOCIAL INSURANCE NUMBER IN PURCHASE OF CANADA SAVINGS BONDS
Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of Finance. Given the fact that a member of the government, a parliamentary secretary, thought this matter important enough to try to obtain consent under Standing Order 43-which was denied by the government-with respect to the use of SIN in the purchase of Canada Savings Bonds, and the problem this is causing in the already stormy passage of the government's present issue of Canada Savings Bonds, would the Minister of Finance, to facilitate this matter, withdraw the provision making it mandatory to produce SIN for the current issue, until the matter has been resolved with respect to Canada Savings Bonds transactions?
November 10, 1978


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: No, Mr. Speaker, that is the law and I do not intend to change it.


USE OF SOCIAL INSURANCE NUMBER-REQUESTED COMMITTEE STUDY
Mr. Jim Fleming (York West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is on the same subject matter and I should like to direct it to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Considering the wide public concern and some misunderstanding about the use of social insurance numbers, and some opposition questions, as we have heard today, which I think have unduly alarmed many Canadians, will the minister recommend to the government House leader that this subject be referred to the appropriate standing committee?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Trouble in the ranks. That makes two.


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, that is probably one of the better suggestions we have had from the House-


An hon. Member:: Follow it up, then.


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: -and probably that is why it comes from the government side.


An hon. Member:: You have not answered the question.


MOVEMENT TO EXPORT POSITIONS
Mr. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Minister of Agriculture, in the absence of the minister in charge of the Wheat Board.
An official of the Canadian Wheat Board has stated that 2.3 million tonnes of grain sales have been deferred this year, which will mean, ultimately, a loss of income to the farmers of something in the order of $350 million. He stated, as well, that four million tonnes of additional export sales could have been realized in the last crop year if we had had sufficient transportation capacity, which amounts to a loss of something in the order of $500 million.
Since these losses can be laid at the door of the government, may I ask the minister, in his over-all capacity of minister looking after the welfare of farmers, what action he is taking to ensure that these deferrals will become future sales, and what action he is taking to ensure that there will be no more deferrals of grain sales during this crop year? Has he had any discussions with the minister in charge of the Wheat Board and other ministers to ensure that we will not continually lose these potential sales?
Oral Questions


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, the speech which the hon. member made was somewhat difficult to follow. As to the figures he used, and the suggestions and accusations he made about the loss of sales, I will have to check them to make doubly sure he is right. But his accusations are the type of accusations one would make if one said, for instance, that had it not rained this year, the grain would have been of a higher grade and we would have had so many million dollars more for it. So many of these things are acts of God, such as stopped shipments of grain which do not get to the port.
This has been one of our greatest years in the history of grain exports, in the most difficult of conditions. All I can say is, yes, we do have a close rapport among the people concerned, such as, for instance, the grain stabilization people, people who work in my department and the minister in charge of the Wheat Board. We are watching the situation closely, and I think we can be proud of what they have done this year. It is easy to make these sweeping accusations.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, my so-called accusations come directly from the lips of Canadian Wheat Board spokesmen. I should like to ask the minister a further question. Having regard to the fact that the capacity of our handling system has not increased since 1973, in spite of the 1974 election promises, and given the fact that the Canadian Wheat Board has predicted that Canada's export potential by 1985 would reach 31.5 tons-that is roughly an increase of 50 per cent over the exports we had last year-that means that the shipping capacity must increase by 50 per cent and by 70 per cent on the west coast, and having regard to the fact that most of the increase in those shipments will occur on the west coast, does the government have an over-all plan, or is the government discussing such a plan to meet the potential targets for 1985?


Eugene Whelan: The hon. member said that these words came from a Wheat Board spokesman. All I can say is, I am sure he is aware of the report put out by the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta pools, which shows that if the facilities were used to their utmost, every grain that is exported out of this country could be exported out of the west coast ports; that is, if the facilities that are there at present were used. They are not being used to the fullest, and we are concerned about that because we want them to be used to the fullest.
We are working on new programs-I am sure the hon. member is aware of that-to try to use to the utmost the railway facilities that are there. I am sure the hon. member is also aware of the statement made the other day about the use of hopper cars, and so on: that if there were a quicker turn-around, we could handle the grain that is produced with the facilities we have, and in a more efficient manner.

November 10, 1978
Oral Questions TRANSPORT


SHIPPING OF CARGO TO FROBISHER BAY, N.W.T.
Mr. Wally Firth (Northwest Territories):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, and of the Minister of Transport, may I direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister.
The leader of my party and I have tried, on two previous occasions, to receive an assurance from the government that the freight which failed to reach Frobisher Bay, in the Northwest Territories, as a result of the aborted sea lift will be flown to Frobisher Bay at no extra cost to the people of that community. So far the government has not given us that assurance. I should like to ask the Deputy Prime Minister if he would make a commitment to the House and to the people of Frobisher Bay to have the entire cargo flown to Frobisher Bay without delay and, above all, without forcing the people of Frobisher Bay to pick up the bill for this operation.


Mr. Hugh A. Anderson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Mr. Speaker, attempts are being made to have a responsible shipping company make the arrangements for the airlift. However, as expressed in the message to the leader of the NDP yesterday, the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development would have the freight moved to the north at its own expense initially if the first arrangement could not be made.
Perhaps I could point out at the same time that yesterday a reference was made to the note having been supplied by an official of the department. I must correct that by saying that it was supplied by myself.


USE OF DND AIRCRAFT TO MOVE CARGO TO FROBISHER BAY, N.W.T.
Walter (Wally) Firth: Mr. Speaker, that was not a really satisfactory answer, especially for the people of Frobisher Bay.
May I direct my question to the Deputy Prime Minister this time, in the absence of the Minister of National Defence? I believe the military have many Hercules aircraft throughout the world: they have 20 or more of them. Can the Deputy Prime Minister assure the House that the military will be involved in assisting the people of Frobisher Bay by airlifting the cargo in Hercules aircraft? I am sure this could be done very rapidly.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of National Defence, I will take the hon. member's representations as notice and convey them immediately to the minister and to his department so that they can be considered.


INQUIRY WHETHER GOVERNMENT INTENDS TO IMPROVE LANDING STRIP IN MADAWASKA REGION
Mr. Eymard Corbin (Madawaska-Victoria):: I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport.
I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could assure me, on behalf of the minister and the department, that before they invest millions of dollars in a fourth runway at Malton airport in Ontario, they will first fill the basic and vital needs of areas such as mine, for instance, which do not even have proper runway facilities, so that recognized air carriers such as EPA could land the aircraft for which they are already licensed by the Canadian Transport Commission?


Mr. Charles Lapointe (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, the minister stated in this House earlier this week there was no policy change concerning the fourth runway at Toronto's Malton Airport, which means that for the moment we are opposed to such expansion of the airport.
As far as development is concerned, I feel the representations made by the hon. member for Madawaska-Victoria are extremely important and legitimate because, while we desire that Canada's large cities such as Toronto have the best possible level of service, we must also of course consider areas such as St. Leonard in northern New Brunswick and others in every Canadian province, where the development of airport facilities is needed for economic development.


FINANCE
Mr. John C. Crosbie (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. I would first like to congratulate him for being here in the House of Commons-I know this is a busy period -when 20 of his colleagues are away. He is one of 14 who are here.


Some hon. Members:: Question.


John Carnell Crosbie: My question is this: yesterday at the finance committee-


An hon. Member:: Where is your leader?


John Carnell Crosbie: Listen to them bray over there, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday at the finance committee, in answer to a question as to where the authority would come from to cover the present Canada Savings Bonds issue, the parliamentary secretary to the minister said there would be between $3 billion and $4

November 10, 1978

billion of the current Canada Savings Bonds issue authorized by Bill C-7.
My question, therefore, to the minister is this: is it the position that unless Bill C-7 is passed by parliament, there cannot be completed the current sale of Canada Savings Bonds which is to total, in gross, from $6 billion to $8 billion; that these bonds cannot be sold and the transaction consummated unless Bill C-7 is passed? Is that the reason the minister agreed to drop his abominable $10 billion additional imposition of authority for next year?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: No, Mr. Speaker, we are not afraid that the Canada Savings Bonds issue will not be pursued. There is no problem. We have enough borrowing authority to go through with the campaign. We hope this bill will be passed as quickly as possible, as we need the authority to carry on for the rest of the year after that campaign.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out to the minister that on October 19, as reported in Hansard, the minister said:
The bill now before you requests supplementary borrowing authority of $7 billion to cover the balance of the domestic debt program for the current fiscal year, including a new series of Canada Savings Bonds-
The corollary from that is that you cannot sell Canada Savings Bonds without Bill C-7 being passed. My question to the minister, again, is this: is the government engaged in misrepresentation to the Canadian public in attempting to sell this issue amounting to $6 billion to $8 billion, when it has not yet got the legal authority or authorization from this parliament to do so? What I ask in that connection is, where is the planning function of the Department of Finance, if this is the way the minister runs his department, and the government?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, we have plenty of borrowing authority to carry on with the Canada Savings Bonds campaign, and I think it is irresponsible of the hon. member to try to create a false impression.


REPEAL OF PUBLIC UTILITIES INCOME TAX TRANSFER ACT
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. On Wednesday, in reply to a question by the hon. member for Edmonton West, the minister said he would be discussing with cabinet the question of repealing the Public Utilities Income Tax Transfer Act and would be in a position to give his answer by the end of the week.
Can the minister give the House the good news that the government has decided not to proceed with this repeal?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I am not in a position to give any information at this time.
Oral Questions SMALL BUSINESS


DEBATE ON HARMFUL EFFECTS OF OVER-USE OF REGULATORY PROCESS
Gerald William Baldwin: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of State (Small Business), who has the special responsibility of trying to prevent the extinction of small businesses under this government.
Having in mind the dangers posed, as he is well aware, by the over-use of the regulatory process in relation not only to small business but to all business, will he discuss with his colleagues some method by which this House in particular, and parliament in general, can examine the extent to which regulatory powers are to be used, and the purpose for which they are sought, before the legislation is actually passed, rather than having to deal with this matter after the event?


Hon. A. C. Abbott (Minister of State (Small Business)):: Mr. Speaker, I hardly think the question the hon. member asks about the over-all problem of de-regulation is one he should particularly ask of me. We have certainly gone a long way in establishing the office to control paperwork. I think that, while the hon. member may chuckle, this process is achieving real results. I am sure he should be addressing his question on the over-all matter of de-regulation to someone other than me.


Gerald William Baldwin: I was not chuckling, Mr. Speaker, really; I was crying. I will address my supplementary question to the government House leader. He is as aware as I am that this is a problem which has been dealt with to some extent by the Standing Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments. However, it only deals with these matters after the event.
Would the minister consider seriously whether there is some machinery by which, at the time legislation is being discussed, there could be reference to a committee for consideration of the purposes for which regulatory powers are sought, and what use will be made of them afterwards? I think this has been done in other jurisdictions, and I would ask the minister to give it some thought.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, I will accept the hon. member's invitation. I believe he is aware that in the normal consideration of the legislative process, beginning within the cabinet committee system, there is consideration given to the use of regulations under any proposed bill. We attempt very frequently to reduce the use of regulations, an obligation which we both share. Of course, his committee does it after the fact.


Gerald William Baldwin: In post-mortem.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: It is also possible for members of the House of Commons, in the standing committees, when bills are before them, to scrutinize very carefully the use of regulations and the regulatory authority, to see whether they can be reduced in any way.

November 10, 1978
Oral Questions
I believe both in the standing committees of the House and in the other place probably more could be done to draw to the attention of ministers and the government where, in the view of members, the regulatory authority may have been overextended and may be reduced by amendment.


LOTO CANADA
Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport). In view of the fact that presently under negotiation is the completion of the $23 million contract between Loto Canada and General Instruments Corporation, and in view of the fact that over and above the $23 million originally committed there is a commitment of $2 million for communication lines, $300,000 for consultation fees, and the expenditure of a lot of money which cannot be recovered in respect of leasehold improvements, is it correct to say that the government is presently also paying off 50 computer technicians and terminal operators who will not be required for their jobs, giving them six months with full pay and not using any of their services whatsoever?


Hon. Iona Campagnolo (Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport)):: Mr. Speaker, that is a very long and involved question, and you will understand that certain parts of it, I believe, should be answered on the order paper. However, on the matter of the termination of employees, we have taken a responsible course of action, one which I think is justifiable in view of the circumstances. Indeed they are receiving the six months' separation allowance.


Paul Wyatt Dick: That is very generous, since they have not worked as yet. I am wondering whether the minister would table the agreement which Loto Canada made with General Instruments, and would she also table the agreement which Loto Canada made, on behalf of the Government of Canada, with the provinces which got the provinces out of the $10-and-above games and the federal government out of the $9-and-below games? Would she table those two documents, please?


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I would be pleased to table the document concerning the agreement with the provinces; but as to the General Instruments contract, I think that it would be more appropriate to consider tabling it when the final resolution of that contract is reached.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Bill Clarke (Vancouver Quadra):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Employment and Immigration; it concerns a problem which is causing great difficulty and embarrassment to many employers trying to fill job vacancies.
I am sure the minister is familiar with certain public bodies, such as the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia, and Malaspina College, which have been looking for top executives, the fact that the problem is also affecting couples looking for household help. The problem occurs when selection is made and then the minister's department says that an inadequate search has been made in Canada. How are employers to know what is an adequate search if the minister will not see that the criteria are made public?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, that information is available to all employers. Dealing with the Malaspina College situation in particular, the individual responsible for hiring in that institution came to Ottawa and received all of the information that is required and that could have been secured from our office in British Columbia. It is not information that is hard to find.


EMPLOYMENT OF NON-CANADIANS
Mr. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. With regard to hiring persons who are not Canadian citizens, I asked the minister yesterday whether he was aware that the Department of National Defence was hiring medical doctors and marine engineers recruited in the United Kingdom and are not making these jobs available to Canadians first. Will the minister now fulfil his undertaking of yesterday and report to the House what is happening with respect to these hiring practices?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, a portion of the hon. member's preamble is in error, because the Department of National Defence conducted an extensive search into securing medical practitioners; in fact, that need is met by Canadian universities.
In so far as marine engineers are concerned, not only did the Department of National Defence conduct a strong recruiting campaign right across the country, working in conjunction with my department and the universities, but they found there is no institution which graduates marine engineers who meet the standards of the Department of National Defence. They must be trained after they graduate from college in the course of their military training to meet the capabilities of the marine engineer.
Because of the increase in shipbuilding activity, both in the private sector and in DND, these marine engineers are in great demand. Many of them leave the Canadian forces and move into the private sector, and on that basis we have agreed to

November 10,1978

allow recruiting for that position by people other than Canadian citizens because it is, in fact, in the national interest.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, while the minister has partially answered my question, he still has not answered one portion, namely, that there are many graduate engineers who lack experience but who have the paper qualifications to take these jobs. Can the minister tell this House if the department has adopted a policy that it is easier to buy expertise than to train Canadians?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: That is not so, Mr. Speaker. Unless the hon. member is talking about conscription, it is voluntary as to whether an individual joins the Canadian forces, and if those with those talents and skills see fit not to join, there is no way in which they can be conscripted.


FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS NEWSPAPER REPORT ON ALLEGATIONS OF LIBERAL CANDIDATE
Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (York South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations. I refer to an article which appeared in yesterday's Globe and Mail concerning allegations by a Liberal candidate in the Ottawa area that, rather than show passionate interest in their country's future, too many Canadians are either bored with the issue of unity or hostile toward Quebec, and that Liberal party officials are trying to shut her up. Would the minister please inform the House if these allegations are true?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations):: Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party of Canada is well recognized as being a party of freedom, and that includes freedom of speech. I do not think there is any substance to this particular report.
On the first point, the question certainly deserves serious consideration and a serious answer. Contrary to many allegations, Canadians have shown a lot of interest and concern about their country and its future. The best evidence of this has been the great interest shown by the Canadian public at large in the publications the government has put out, especially in connection with the constitutional review and the white paper on the constitution. Over 80 per cent of the close to 700,000 documents that were made available to the public through the post offices in the country during the course of the summer have been picked up by the public.


HEALTH AND WELFARE
Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare: it concerns the tremendous cut by her department in
Oral Questions
family planning allocations. The current budget shows a 50 per cent cut in family planning allocations, from $2.1 million down to $1.1 million.
In the last year legal abortions increased by S'/2 per cent. In view of the representations the minister has received from the Family Planning Association of Canada, members of parliament and citizens across the country, will the minister now give reconsideration to this subject and will she restore at least the amount of last year's budget to the family planning associations of all kinds in Canada, so that they can try to do something about preventing pregnancy?
[ Translation]
Hod. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare): Mr. Speaker, 1 deeply regret that cuts became neessary to improve our economic situation in Canada. That being so there has been a very small number of cuts, which I deplore in the Department of National Health and Welfare. I had to take $1 million from the annual budget of all family planning services. It must be recognized that this service was in addition to federal-provincial agreements under which considerable amounts are given to the provinces to cover 50 per cent of the cost of family planning services for needy people. I cannot find anywhere an equivalent amount. All programs have been slightly reduced but we shall continue to offer services. In any event, as concerns national family planning agencies, in future local services should be more and more the responsibility of communities, groups and provincial governments that have already money for that purpose.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations: it arises from his representation that his party is a party that favours freedom and freedom of speech.
I refer the minister to section 31 of the referendum bill that is his responsibility, which prohibits certain classes of public servants from participating in any plebiscite or referendum; and, moreover, for the first time in Canadian history, by order in council.
Does the minister think that that is an appropriate way to deal with the matter of freedom of speech about which he has just spoken? If he does think it is appropriate that this should happen and public servants cannot express themselves like other Canadians with respect to the future of the country, would he indicate clearly and unequivocally to the House, before this bill is brought forward, that he will pull that odious section out of it?

November 10, 1978
Privilege-Mr. Landers


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I am surprised that a man with legal training, as is the hon. member, would so misinterpret that particular provision. I would remind him that in the referendum bill we have tried to follow the provisions which are provided under the Canada Elections Act at the present time, provisions endorsed by all parties in this House.
The referendum bill will come before this House and there will be an opportunity to debate it. If hon. members from all sides have constructive proposals to make on how to improve the bill, then, of course, the government will show a reasonable approach and will take into account all views from all sides, as it has done with all bills brought before this House.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, under the Canada Elections Act and the Public Service Employment Act, public servants have a right to vote and to elect members to this parliament. Is there any justification whatsoever, in the minister's mind, for limiting the right of public servants to vote on a question affecting their country?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, there is certainly no justification whatever for limiting the right to vote of public servants in any referendum, any more than in an election.


Walter David Baker: Then take it out.


Marc Lalonde: If the hon. member does interpret the legislation in such a way, 1 am saying he has interpreted it in the wrong way. If it needs to be further clarified and guaranteed, obviously, it will be; but I am telling the hon. member that I am convinced that again he is raising a phony question and misreading the bill.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I have received notice from the hon. member for Saint John-Lancaster (Mr. Landers) of a question of privilege, pursuant to Standing Order 17(2), which follows on attempts yesterday by the hon. member for Mada-waska-Victoria (Mr. Corbin) and the hon. member for North-umberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) to give notice of a question of privilege with reference to certain remarks made by the hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) on Wednesday afternoon during the debate on transportation policy.
Obviously I have to follow the same ruling I made in respect to those notices yesterday, that a reading of Standing Order 17(2) tells me that questions of privilege, or points of order, arising out of remarks made during debate have to be raised during the course of that day, or as has always been our practice in interpreting the standing order, to indicate that an hon. member may require an opportunity to verify the record and determine the nature of the comments, that he ought to

have another day in which to do that. However, notice which comes to the Chair after that day is not really proper notice within the terms of Standing Order 17(2).
I want to say, however, that the three hon. members from New Brunswick have given me notice of an intention to raise this question of privilege. Although 1 have to say that procedurally I cannot entertain that, all three notices pertain to the following remarks made by the hon. Leader of the Opposition on Wednesday afternoon, and are contained in Hansard at page 928, as follows:
Mr. Speaker, I must say that that question is in the character of the attempts to sow fear and indeed sow confusion and almost hatred among Canadians which has become so marked among members of the other side-
[ Translation]
-in both official languages, and perhaps particularly members from New Brunswick who speak from time to time in this House.
Again I say I am procedurally without jurisdiction in this matter because the time has gone by.
I simply want to ask the Leader of the Opposition to reflect on those remarks, and particularly to examine the pages of Hansard with respect to a similar occurrence involving the Minister of Transport (Mr. Lang) just a few months ago when remarks were made of a similar nature. The Minister of Transport at that time indicated he had made those remarks not concerning members of the House of Commons but, in fact, concerning people outside the House of Commons. After considering the arguments it was my disposition of the matter that the Minister of Transport owed it to the House to be absolutely certain that those remarks were not directed toward any member of the House of Commons.
I cannot require that of the hon. Leader of the Opposition in this particular case because, procedurally, I am without that authority. I simply invite the hon. Leader of the Opposition to examine his remarks in the light of that very clear precedent. In any event, if he wishes to take no action, which he is perfectly free to do, I invite him simply to reflect on that choice and the propriety of the language he used last Wednesday.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I intend to bring this matter to the attention of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark). I think I must say, with great respect, however, that this matter could have waited until the Leader of the Opposition was in the House today, or whenever he is in the House, so that he could have the opportunity of answering.
The situation in which we find ourselves as a result of your intervention in this matter, in the absence of the Leader of the Opposition, is that these remarks and your disapprobation of these remarks, stay on the record. They will be the subject of public comment over the three or four days of the weekend without the Leader of the Opposition having the opportunity to raise a defence.
I say that with respect, but I think it is most unfair of you to the Leader of the Opposition.
November 10, 1978


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. It seems to me that, first of all, the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) is out of order.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Speaker:: In any case, the first two attempts made to raise any reference to the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition were made yesterday, and I set them aside. I surely would have to believe that the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton would have been on notice, if they had any intervention to make at that time. All I said to the hon. Leader of the Opposition today, or to his House leader, was that I compared this with an earlier occurrence. I indicated that the Leader of the Opposition was not required to do anything, that if he wished to do so he was perfectly free to do so, but procedurally he was not required to do so.
I deeply resent the last remark of the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton that anything I have done is in any way unfair to anyone. I simply pointed out that the hon. member may reflect on those remarks, and that he is perfectly free to do nothing if he wishes, because that is his right.
I deeply resent the remark that that is in any way unfair to any member of the House of Commons. I think 1 had been very careful to treat the Leader of the Opposition, in the circumstances, with great generosity.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I would not want you to leave the chamber today having any resentment toward me for any remark that I made in this House of Commons, and so I would withdraw it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter David Baker: I say that without
equivocation.
My recollection is that the Leader of the Opposition was not in his place. I am sure he will address himself to the remarks that were made and perhaps deal with the precedent you have mentioned which concerned the Minister of Transport.
I want to explain to you, as a member of this House who holds you in considerable respect, that the Leader of the Opposition is not one to show intolerance, and has not shown intolerance. The Leader of the Opposition in many ways is an example to many members of this House of Commons on tolerance.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Where is he?
Privilege-Mr. Landers


Walter David Baker: I am satisfied that he will indicate that, as he has indicated it on other occasions.
I want to say to you sir, that I have tried to conduct myself in this House in a responsible way, and I hope you will agree that is the case. I would not want those words to remain. I intend to protect my leader and to stand by my leader on every occasion, but I do not intend to do that by way of disorder, and therefore I withdraw the remarks.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I wanted to make it perfectly clear in what I was saying, for the benefit of the record, that this was the third attempt by members on the government side to raise issue with the remarks made on Wednesday afternoon. 1 have indicated that the manner in which it has been done is not procedurally correct.
I have examined the language used by the Leader of the Opposition on Wednesday afternoon, which is the subject of the complaint. I have not found, and I do not think it is procedurally appropriate for me now to find, that this language was necessarily unparliamentary. I simply made an observation upon which I know the Leader of the Opposition will reflect. I can confirm quite emphatically that his conduct in the House has always been exemplary. In the time that he has been Leader of the Opposition I have never found him to strain the patience of the Chair. On this particular occasion the remark was in response to a question in the middle of a speech. It was not a planned remark and it was, I presume, in response to heckling of some sort which does not show on the record of Hansard.
I simply said I have examined the language. I could not resist the comparison with an earlier occasion. I am simply inviting the hon. Leader of the Opposition to take the opportunity to compare his language with that used on a previous occasion which was the subject of a complaint, and take whatever action he sees fit, which in the circumstances I say may be no action at all. In any case, I simply wanted to bring it to his attention.
If I was in any way condemning him in the language that I used, I want to withdraw from that position because I was not making a final judgment on it at all. On some occasions, several occasions in the past, I have simply said to members when they have made a remark in the heat of debate that they might want to reflect on the use of that language. That is an indication that it may be something close to unparliamentary language which they would want to avoid in the future. It may also be language which they would want to explain to the House and, perhaps, withdraw. I do not know. In any case, I am simply saying that out of caution, as we always attempt to exercise ourselves on the side of decorum in the House of Commons. All I am suggesting is that the Leader of the Opposition would want to examine those words and, perhaps the next time he is in the House, make some comment on them.

November 10, 1978
Privilege-Mr. Francis


MR. FRANCIS-CANADIAN PRESS REPORT ON AUDITOR GENERAL'S ANNUAL REPORT
Mr. Lloyd Francis (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege arising out of a Canadian Press report concerning the timing of the Auditor General's report. The Canadian Press report, which was carried in the Gazette and the Toronto Globe and Mail, suggests that the Auditor General deferred the tabling of his report from November 21 to November 23 because of pressure from government members. In fact the press report goes on to say, quoting the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers):
-It is clear the government does not want any criticism of its finances to come to light during the budget debate.
There can be no greater distortion of the facts.
The Auditor General announced that in view of the importance of his report, on the one hundredth anniversary of his office, and in his opinion the most important report to proceed from the office in its entire period of existence, it would be subject to special provisions. Hon. members of this House are invited to attend the lock-up session starting at ten in the morning. The committee will sit at 3.30 in the afternoon of the day of tabling.
As a member of the committee and vice-chairman, senior from this side of the House-I am quoting now from the transcript of the committee-I said:
Mr. Chairman, could I interrupt to make an observation . . . This may be relevant to the Auditor General. The Minister of Finance has announced a budget on November 16. The budget debate will be in its third day, the day we will be tabling the public accounts. I wonder if this will in any way affect the timing of the tabling of the Auditor General's report.
The Auditor General went on to say:
-I always feel that when the report is ready it is my duty to deliver it to the Speaker. As to whether that will be an appropriate day for the arrangements that you have asked at the previous meeting I would leave that entirely to the committee. In other words, if you were to advise me that would not be an appropriate day for the committee, who obviously have an interest in this matter, to carry out the arrangements that were described by you the other day then I would certainly like to reconsider the date that I would submit it.
It is an affront to the Auditor General to suggest pressure in any way. Those of us who know the man, know very well that he would never be influenced by pressure from members on any side of the House.
It was clear to those of us who are members of the committee that there is a considerable overlap between the membership of the public accounts committee and those who hope to participate in the budget debate. Frankly, we could not see how we could guess the kind of attendance at the lock-up and the participation at the committee session that was planned for 3.30 that afternoon at a time when there was priority given in the House to the budget. We simply called that to the Auditor General's attention.
The matter was referred to the steering committee and was considered later. I am sure reference to the chairman of the committee, the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), would amply confirm these facts. The committee asked the

Auditor General if he would be prepared to advance the date of this tabling to November 14. After reflection, he felt that he was not in a position to do so. It was then unanimously agreed at the steering committee, at which the hon. member for Red Deer was present, that a more appropriate day might be Thursday, November 23. The Auditor General, after conferring with his staff, decided that he would perhaps make that recommendation and, sir, it comes into your hands when he lays his report before you.
I want to repeat that the only consideration was the convenience of the members of the House in order that the very important report of the Auditor General could receive the attention that it deserves from members on both sides of the House. There was never at any time any suggestion of political motivation or any pressure put on the Auditor General, who is a man, very much his own man.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the question of privilege raised by the hon. member on the government side. Unfortunately I was not at the steering committee meeting to which the hon. member has referred, but I would point out to Your Honour that the steering committee meetings are generally looked on as confidential matter. But certainly the hon. members on our side most directly responsible for this, the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) and the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers), gave me an entirely different version of what had happened at that meeting. I would ask Your Honour, before you consider this matter any further, that you at least wait for the return of those members in order to hear their side of what actually transpired with regard to this unfortunate postponement of the Auditor General's report to this House.


Mr. Thomas H. Lefebvre (Parliamentary Secretary to President of Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, I was present at the meeting of the Public Accounts Committee when this subject came up for discussion. I would like to read, for the record, my intervention as given by the official transcript of that committee meeting:


Thomas Lefebvre: Mr. Chairman, could I make a comment on this?


The Chairman:: Yes, Mr. Lefebvre.


Thomas Lefebvre: There is no doubt with the budget being announced Thursday evening on November 16 we all know as parliamentarians the first three or four days of the budget debate are probably among the most important, with votes on the second and fourth days, et cetera.
At this point, Mr. Speaker, I made a slight error when I added these words:
Parliament will sit longer hours. The lock-up day will take place on a day where maybe the House will be sitting starting in the morning.
I was getting mixed up with the budget debate and I realize that now. I continued:
I am not trying to even suggest to the Auditor General when he should table his report. That is not the purpose of my intervention. It is just that I would hope that it would be on a day when all parliamentarians who wish to can attend your briefing, sir. I would agree with Mr. Francis, I would hope you consult with the Chairman and between you perhaps come to-if it remains November 21 that is up to you but perhaps the Chairman and Mr. Macdonell could meet on this and inform the committee at our next meeting.
November 10, 1978


Mr. Macdonell:: Could I offer a suggestion please Mr. Chairman? Again, I am a servant of parliament. I am in the hands of your committee and I will certainly do my best to defer to your wishes. There is nothing very particularly sacred about the tabling date so far as our office is concerned. We just feel that it is our responsibility to deliver it when it is ready. Would it be possible, sir, for a short meeting of the steering committee this morning at which we could discuss alternative dates with you? Would that be possible, say at 11.45 a.m-


Gérald Laniel: Having looked at the subject matter of the agenda this morning I do not know if there will be any time for a steering committee meeting following this meeting. There could be. We could meet at lunch or you and I can get together as has been suggested.


Thomas Lefebvre: How about just the Chairman and the Vice Chairman getting together with the Auditor General and inform the committee?


Mr.   Chairman@: All right. That is perhaps the easiest way to do it.


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Okay.
It seems obvious from this transcript that the article referred to by the vice chairman of the committee, my colleague, that this write-up in the Globe and Mail, is completely erroneous. Anyone who is a member of the public accounts committee or takes any interest at all in the office of the Auditor General knows that the Auditor General is a completely independent person. He is an officer of parliament and not of the government. Anyone who thinks he can put pressure on the Auditor General certainly does not know what the hell he is talking about.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I think probably we have gone fairly far on this matter, which is essentially a grievance by members of the House of Commons about an erroneous press report. We have always taken some caution to make sure that members who find that any incident in the House has been erroneously reported, either about a member or matters of the House generally, have an opportunity to say so. In the circumstances, that seems to have been amply done.
I do not know that the Auditor General needs any more defence in respect of this. In any case I am not sure there is any question of privilege involved. The matter has been contributed to on both sides. I note the hon. member for York-Simcoe (Mr. Stevens) made an intervention which indicated that the two active members of his party who are involved in the arrangement of business for that committee are not here at this time, that is to say, the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) and the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers). If, when they return to the House, they have any contributions to make to this, I will be only too glad to hear them in the interest of fairness. But I think, so far as the matter has gone this morning, it really ought not to go any further at this time.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Mike Landers (Saint John-Lancaster):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I wish to point out to Your Honour that my respect for the Chair is monumental, but I find myself
Point of Order-Mr. Landers
suffering from a degree of confusion. The first time I learned of the remarks of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) was at approximately 2.50 p.m. on November 9, 1978. I sent your office notice by hand at approximately 5.10 p.m. the same day.
In my four years of service in this House of Commons, I have only raised one question of privilege. On that occasion Your Honour ruled that notice given at the first available opportunity was suitable to satisfy the rules. The time lapse on the previous occasion was considerably longer than the time lapse in this particular case. I therefore wonder if Your Honour can help me clear up my confusion.


Mr. Speaker:: I will be glad to do so. I attempted to do that yesterday for the benefit of the two other members who endeavoured to give notice. Both members endeavoured to give notice to me yesterday during yesterday's sitting of an event that took place in a previous sitting.
Standing Order 17(2) will indicate that notice must be given one hour before the sitting in which it is intended to raise the question. I have always tried to intrepret that order generously in order to accommodate members where reference is made, for example, to a particular member when at the time the reference is made he is away from Ottawa, and upon his return to Ottawa takes up the matter at the first available opportunity.
I would only reasonably interpret that rule to mean that questions of privilege which arise as a result of remarks which are part of the record, and part of the debating record here, must either be raised during the sitting in which they are put forth on the record or, according to Standing Order 17(2), raised in the following sitting, provided, of course, that notice is given to the Chair within the terms of Standing Order 17(2). That means the Chair receives notice of the intention to raise the question of privilege one hour before the sitting on the following day. That has always been extended to members.
In this particular case, I received two notices of an intention to raise this question yesterday, which I would have permitted except that the notices were not received in time. The hon. member for Saint John-Lancaster (Mr. Landers) gave me notice today of his intention to raise this question which arose out of Wednesday's proceeding. I therefore find that that notice is too late.
Granted, as I said today, I was taking a strict line in respect to the interpretation of that, but I think I have to do that. That is the explanation the hon. member was seeking.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
[Stage Direction]
November 10, 1978
Order Paper Questions
Mr. Yvon Pinard (Parliamentary Secretary to President of Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: 204, 266 and 282.
Mr. Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Jones: 1.	Was there a Canadian delegation sent to the recent World Festival of Youth and Students which was held in Cuba? What were the criteria used in chosing the Canadian delegation to this conference? Who were the delegates chosen from Canada and what are their ages and addresses? Do any of these individuals represent a particular organization, association or institution and if so, what are they for each individual?
2.	What was the objective of the recently held World Festival of Youth and Students? Will Canada be participating in future Festivals of this kind and if so, will there be equal representation from all parts of Canada?
3.	Were there any federal, provincial or local grants given to any individuals who attended this Festival and if so, how much were they, where were they from and to whom were they given?
4.	Is the government aware of an article which appeared in the newspaper L'Evangeline on August 19, 1978 concerning Acadians at the World Festival?
5.	Was this Festival held in Cuba organized by the Communist Party? Were the ideologies of the Communist Party presented at this Festival?


Mr. Louis Duclos (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: 1. The recent 11th World Festival of Youth and Students was non-governmental in character; the Government of Canada was not involved in the selection of delegates and the Canadians who attended did not represent Canada in any official sense.
2.	See 1 above.
3.	The Government of Canada did not provide grants or subsidize in any way the attendance of Canadians at this festival.
4.	Yes.
5.	See 1 above.


Mr. Epp: From June 1, 1974 to date, what lawyers in the Constituency of Provencher were given work by the Department of the Secretary of State and what amount was each paid per year?


Mr. Claude-Andre Lachance (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice):: In so far as the legal agents of the Minister of Justice are concerned: None.


Mr. Jones: 1.	What language is used as a greeting for incoming telephone calls at the Canadian Embassy in Melbourne, Australia?
2.	Are efforts made at each Canadian Embassy around the world to answer incoming telephone calls with the language of the country in which the Embassy is located or are the "official" languages of Canada used regardless of the native language?
3.	Are employees of the Embassy chosen with the language requirements of the country in mind? Are services offered at each Embassy in the native language of that country?


Louis Duclos: 1. At the Canadian Consulate General in Melbourne, Australia, incoming telephone callers are greeted in both official languages of Canada as follows: "Bonjour, Canadian Consulate General".
2.	The telephonists/receptionists employed at Canadian posts abroad are generally speaking citizens or residents of the host country as one of the major prerequisites for the position is knowledge of the local language(s). On receiving incoming calls, the receptionist initially communicates with the caller in both official languages of Canada and thereafter responds in the language used by the caller to the greatest extent possible and practical.
3.	The selection of personnel for posts abroad is based on operational needs, one of which is linguistic capability. If needed, language courses are offered to personnel to ensure provision of services in the language of the host country.


Mr. Speaker:: The questions enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Thursday, November 9, consideration of the motion of Mr. Cullen that Bill C-14, to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration.
Mr. John Rodriguez (Nickel Belt):: Mr. Speaker, last evening in the second reading debate on Bill C-14 I made a few opening remarks. I think it is wise to go back and capsulize some of the points I was making.
First, I said that the problem in Canada is not fiddling with the Unemployment Insurance Act, trying to tighten it up. The problem is not people, but rather jobs. I said last evening that the government, through Bill C-14, has chosen to scapegoat the unemployed, that since it is bereft of any solution to the unemployment problem, the next best thing is to pick on the victims of unemployment. In other words, the government is making the unemployed the scapegoat for its inadequacies with regard to planning the economy so that it may grow and stimulate the creation of jobs necessary for those who want to work.

November 10, 1978

The other point, which is quite important, is that the government has ignored its own studies and statistics compiled by departments of government. For example, I quoted from the latest statement by the Economic Council of Canada to the effect that the problem is not unemployment insurance, but in effect the whole question of employment and what the government ought to do is busy itself with re-energizing the economy of Canada.
I also pointed out that Statistics Canada informs us that on a day to day basis there are only about 40,000 jobs. That includes full-time, part-time, and casual jobs. The latest figure of the number of persons unemployed, on a seasonally adjusted basis, was 901,000 people seeking work in this country.
I want to refer to the Manpower office in Toronto. In yesterday's Toronto Star there was an article written by Carola Vyhnak entitled "Job-hunting Help? It's Off The Wall". It points out that as at the end of September, 1978, there were 12,298 vacancies listed with the metro area Manpower office. At the same time there were 110,281 jobless clients registered with that office. Therefore, even in an area where there is a much greater chance of getting employment, the number of people seeking work through the minister's office exceeds five to one the number of vacancies available.
The last statement of the article is rather interesting. I quote:
Recently a pizza parlour put in an order at one office for 145 positions. More than 1,000 applied.
That is the story across the country. There are too few jobs available for those who are seeking employment.
What does the minister do in Bill C-14 of which he is so proud he trumpets it in the House of Commons? He says this bill will remove 250,000 people from the unemployment insurance rolls. Where will they go? They will go onto the welfare rolls of the provinces and municipalities. Bill C-14 does not deal with the problem, only the symptom.
As I was pointing out last night, this bill was designed on the philosophy held by too many people that when a crime is committed the victim is to blame. One might call it the rape victim syndrome. You blame the victim for the predicament in which she finds herself.
This is a vicious bill, because not only does it discriminate against the unemployed generally but it specifically picks out women from among the unemployed. As I pointed out last night, women are usually the last to be hired and the first to be fired, so the amendments dealing with re-entry into the work force and the repeating of claims within a year can only make it even more difficult for women, who already find they are discriminated against when it comes to securing and retaining employment. It is all part of the scapegoat process.
The government was telling us last year that the reason the program was in trouble was because too many women and
Unemployment Insurance
young people were collecting benefits. This measure is the fulfilment of a search for scapegoats which has been taking place in the last couple of years. If the minister would examine the facts he would see that the relationship between women as workers and women as recipients of unemployment insurance has been declining since 1972.
I turn, now, to consider another group which is being "scapegoated" in this bill. I refer to the youth group. The government is asserting that young people have only a marginal attachment to the work force and that they are abusing the unemployment insurance program. In many respects young people are in the same situation as that in which women find themselves. In other words, they are among the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Since they are just entering the work force they have little seniority and are extremely vulnerable to lay-offs. For example, I know that when Inco cut down its labour force those with less than two years' experience were all laid off.
Thousands of young people who enter the work force every year have very limited work force experience. Many of them find it very hard to get work at all. Yet in spite of the difficulties they face, these young people are actually under represented on the unemployment insurance rolls. This is an interesting point. Young people make up 43.2 per cent of the unemployed, yet they account for only 18 per cent of unemployment insurance claimants.
If ministers looked at their own statistics they would find that young people are not out to rip off the unemployment insurance program. If they looked at their own Statistics Canada figures they would find that young people leave their jobs at the same rate as older workers. Roughly one half of both groups left their previous employment because they were laid off. These people need the same protection as older workers and ought not to be discriminated against.
The changes in unemployment insurance legislation over the last few years, particularly the amendments before us, are going to hurt students. In the past, a student who found work for one summer would have been eligible to draw on unemployment insurance the following summer while looking for permanent or temporary work. That is no longer the case. From now on students who graduate, or who must look for work in the summer, will be left to rely completely on their own resources. As we know, in an economy beset by such high unemployment, those resources today are pretty slim. With only one permanent job for every 20 people seeking it, the graduate will face the same problem as other workers, except that he will be unable to draw from the unemployment insurance fund into which he had paid the previous summer. The person who wants to go back to school will also face problems. There are few enough summer jobs available, yet at the same time the government is cutting back on funding to post secondary education.
Even in the face of its own evidence, the government is trying to convince us that young people and women are cheats and leeches on society. In an endeavour to avoid being blamed for the lack of jobs in the economy, ministers are trying to

November 10, 1978
Unemployment Insurance
convince us that young people really do not want to work. My party, Mr. Speaker, prefers to believe the findings of the study published in 1975 for the Department of Manpower and Immigration, "Canadian Work Values, Findings of a Work Ethic Survey and Job Satisfaction Survey". This study found that Canadians have a very strong motivation to work and that young people and women have exactly the same attitudes as older people and men. These people want to work, and the government, which in the past has followed a policy of creating unemployment, in denying them the opportunity. Now an attempt is being made to deny them even minimum protection under the unemployment insurance program.
I have already mentioned the position of women and young people. The bill before us also discriminates against those whose attachment to the work force is marginal. In times of high unemployment, trades people such as carpenters, electricians, and plumbers, are very susceptible to changes in the unemployment insurance program. The changes contemplated by the government will act as a disincentive. Suppose, for example, that a carpenter in the Ottawa area has the prospect of a job which will last only four or five weeks. These amendments might very well constitute a disincentive to taking a job which might only last for a short period.
There is also in the bill a provision which would discriminate against persons who are not in long-term jobs. For example, there is a requirement which says that in the case of part time work it will be necessary to be employed 20 hours a week to be considered as "attached" to the work force. Formerly the requirement was for a minimum earning capacity of $48 a week.
In an area like the one I represent, which at the moment is experiencing 11.2 per cent unemployment-that is the official figure; it is up to the figure experienced in the Atlantic region-women and young people who may have been selling on a part-time basis, working in a store, are now not even able to get two days of work. This is because the depression in the economic conditions in the area is resulting in retail sales cuts. Employers will have to cut back work formerly available to these people. Many are greatly concerned about the new requirement which will call for 20 hours of work a week. They will not be able to get that number of hours of employment in order to qualify.
The new provisions also discriminate against those in the work force who are in seasonal types of occupation. As well as being unfair to the people with marginal attachment to the work force, women and youth, they are also unfair and discriminatory to some of the regions in Canada. When the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Cullen) first announced the changes, he was flailing around looking for some popular policies to follow this fall. His first announcements suggested that the amendment dealing with repeaters would affect all provinces, not just those with below 11.5 per cent of unemployment. That kind of amendment would have disqualified most of Newfoundland's fishermen and would have cost the Newfoundland economy $11 million. Now the legislation is before us we see the government has changed its

mind on that. It will exempt areas with devastating unemployment as opposed to areas with just plain awful unemployment.
What was the rationale for suggesting the 11.5 per cent figure? Any area with 11.5 per cent unemployment or more will be exempt from the provisions regarding repeating claims. What is the difference between 11.5 per cent and 11.2 per cent? I suggest that an area like the Sudbury basin which has 11.2 per cent unemployment is just as hard hit as an area which has 11.5 per cent unemployment. The region I represent will be discriminated against, and the effects of unemployment will be just as devastating as it will be in regions which are arbitrarily exempted.
I am sure the government would like us to believe that it made this decision out of concern for people in high unemployment areas, but I do not see how it can claim that. I think the by-elections which were coming up were good reasons. The minister did not consult the provinces regarding effects. He did not consult the trade union movement or representatives of labour. There were no consultations whatsoever. At the beginning of September the minister made a knee-jerk statement, but he had to backtrack.
Last night in the House he told us that he had been advised by Liberal backbenchers, but the fact is that his bureaucrats proposed this program. The minister announced it without proper consultation. There was a knee-jerk reaction to the announcement of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) that there would be cutbacks, but it was not properly thought out. Now the minister is backtracking, and I think that the reality of a certain by-election is one of the major reasons for his backtracking.
The fishermen in Atlantic Canada were petitioning. They were all up in arms. There were over 20,000 of them, and the government could not resist that kind of pressure. It seems to me that this is not a very well thought out program. Atlantic Canada will not get off scot-free with respect to the effects of these amendments, because cutting back insured benefits from 66% per cent to 60 per cent will cost the Newfoundland economy $18 million. Newfoundland has the highest unemployment rate in the country. I cannot understand why the federal government would remove that amount of money from an economy which needs every penny it can get. Areas with high unemployment and people who find it difficult to find work will be hardest hit by this bill, but so will other areas.
The chairman of metro Toronto has said that the cutbacks will cost the metro Toronto welfare scheme an additional $10 million. If $10 million more is spent on welfare in metro Toronto, that money has to be taken from other programs which may have a higher priority with the local people. The metro chairman said that the changes would put another 2,500 people on the welfare rolls in metro Toronto, which would eat into other programs. It is clear that these changes in the Unemployment Insurance Act have nothing to do with the economy but everything to do with the government's trying to win back popularity. The government thinks there is a right-
November 10, 1978

wing mood in this country. It is trying to ride that right-wing mood by bringing in this kind of retrogressive legislation rather than coming to grips with the serious economic problems we have.
The solution is to order the economy in such a way as to create the jobs needed by those who are looking for work. The government is playing the old shell game. The 250,000 people affected by this measure will not disappear. The facts we have put on the record indicate that 250,000 people may not qualify for benefits as a result of the changes the minister has brought forward, but that does not mean they will not have the same economic needs they had when they were on unemployment insurance.
They will find themselves going on welfare rolls, or they will steal. In my area there is a study under way which indicates that there is a distinct correlation between crime and high unemployment. The crime rate clearly increases with the unemployment rate, so this is not just an economic problem. That is what this government would have us believe. It is also a very serious social problem with which the government refuses to come to grips.
The Social Planning Council of metro Toronto conducted a study entitled "The problem is jobs, not people". The government uses its energy dealing with the unemployed. It seems to have a titanic philosophy: women and children first. The government seems to be applying that philosophy to the Unemployment Insurance Act. Why does it not use its energy to come to grips with some real problems? Just yesterday in the Toronto Star an article written by Richard Gwyn appeared under the headline "Foreign Firms Blamed for Loss of 200,000 Jobs in Canada." Richard Gwyn wrote:
Foreign-owned branch plants have cost Canada up to 200,000 jobs, a just-published Science Council study states.
The government's own agency, the Science Council of Canada, under Dr. Shepherd, has pointed out that foreign ownership has cost us 200,000 jobs since 1972. That is a problem on which the government ought to expend its energy. It should be dealing with the effects of foreign ownership on the Canadian economy vis-a-vis jobs. Why does the government not use its energy to come to grips with the problems caused by multinational mining corporations in Canada?
Last fall International Nickel laid off 2,600 people in the Sudbury Basin. This government could only wring its hands. It said it could not interfere, that it did not know what to do and that there was no solution but to put these people on unemployment insurance. The government should be coming to grips with the problem of the exploitation of non-renewable resources in Canada. Why is the government not doing so? The government seems to be tying up the House of Commons and the energies of the Department of Employment and Immigration by fiddling with the Unemployment Insurance Act. It is trying to give the impression to the Canadian public-


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


John R. Rodriguez: Who said no?


Ursula Appolloni: Mr. Speaker, may I call it one o'clock?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Turner):: It being one o'clock p.m., I do now leave the chair until 2 p.m.
At one o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
Ursula Appolloni: Mr. Speaker, I think if anyone is seriously looking to see the difference between Liberal and Conservative philosophies, this present debate is an excellent example of the difference between us. I have been reading the debate in Hansard of yesterday, and I believe some of the statements by the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Clarke) were absolutely punitive. If that is the idea behind unemployment insurance, then it is wrong.
The unemployment insurance system is not a punitive system; it is a system which is supposed to help those people who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs. It is a program of temporary assistance until such time as they do find other jobs appropriate to their talents, and certainly with sufficient money to cover their basic and just needs.
What has happened in this regard? I suggest that by innuendo and insinuation on the part of members of the official opposition, helped unfortunately by many members of the media, there has been such a hate campaign conducted against recipients of unemployment insurance that genuine recipients of benefits are now in a corner, almost afraid to admit that they receive benefits. To disparage an entire community of people for the sake of a few abusers is, to me, unethical and dishonest.
Let me refer to some of the points raised so far in the debate. I start by referring to one statement that I consider as being almost cause for a question of privilege. 1 quote a statement by the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra last night as reported at page 987 of Hansard. He stated:
We are straightforward people on this side of the House-
To imply that the only straightforward people in this House sit on that side is absolutely and grossly unfair and untrue. I can assure that hon. member, and any other members who share his views, that there is no monopoly held by any party in this House in respect of being straightforward.

November 10, 1978
Unemployment Insurance
The hon. member also seemed to imply that the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Cullen) wanted to save money, but for what purpose he was not sure. I can tell the hon. member, because the minister made it very clear in his statement last night when he said that the savings are to be applied to other more productive programs. This is a most valid point, and one which warrants support of this House in respect of this program. What the government is trying to do is weed out the abusers who, I repeat, are in the minority, and put the money that is saved to much more constructive use, particularly in the creation of jobs.
There is another point I would very much like to underline, and here again I am referring to what was more or less an innuendo, but extremely dangerous and insidious. To quote again from that hon. member of the Tory party:
This year across Canada there were 150,000 unemployment insurance cheques that were not picked up at special distribution centres during the postal strike. Of course, the government has explanations for this.
Of course the government has explanations for that, Mr. Speaker, yet by innuendo the hon. member is impugning the integrity of thousands of innocent beneficiaries of the unemployment insurance scheme who, for one reason or other, mostly legitimate, I am pretty sure, could not pick up their unemployment insurance cheques during the postal strike. Let me give you an example. It could very well be that many of those cheques were in respect of maternity benefits. I can guarantee that if you are expecting a baby within a few weeks you are not going to run around Toronto trying to pick up your cheque. You just simply cannot do that. That is impossible.
Some of these cheques could have been for sickness claims, and some of them may have been, as the minister replied in answer to a question in the House, payable to people who had already found other jobs. They would be entitled to the cheques, but now could they leave their new jobs to go down and pick them up?
This is the kind of insinuation which, unfortunately, has been spread throughout Canada, and this has caused, yes, invited, hatred and distrust.
If there is one thing that Liberal philosophy supports it is the absolute and vital necessity for a sufficient amount of mutual trust between human beings. I am very proud of the fact that the Liberal government first asks questions, finds out the facts and, if necessary, will punish. To punish the innocent before questions have even been asked is totally unfair and disparaging. These are the kind of attacks which, unfortunately, have led what is essentially a good system into tremendous disrepute. This has caused real beneficiaries of the system to be almost ashamed to admit they are collecting unemployment insurance to which, by the way, they are entitled. The abusers are few and, through good controls, they will be caught. As a result of provisions in this bill many of them will be caught, but perhaps not all.
No one, least of all the minister, is going to pretend that the system is perfect. If it were not so good there would not be so many people trying to abuse it in the first place. There are

some abusers because of human nature. We must admit there are some abusers and we have to do our best to get at them, but in getting at them we must do our best not to hurt the innocent.
There was another point in the hon. member's speech which I am sure the youth of Canada will be interested to study. I refer to the hon. member's statement that there is now a generation of Canadians who have no incentive to work. That is a shameful statement and implies that the youth of Canada does not want to work and has no incentive. That is absolutely shameful and is an attack which should not be allowed to continue.
Let me quote yet another statement. He said that there are "any number of employers . . . having great difficulty in finding workers to fill the jobs". First, I would like to know to what kind of jobs the hon. member has reference. I myself was very recently at an employment centre in Toronto and asked if there were any vacancies there. I was told there were, and I asked what type. I was informed that most were very menial jobs. Unfortunately on that particular day the people looking for jobs were people with high qualifications.
What are we trying to do, and what is the Tory philosophy in that kind of situation? Are we, on the one hand, to encourage our children to stay at school acquiring increasingly higher education, and then when they have made the sacrifice of years at school, are we asking them to accept jobs as dishwashers? Is that all the hope we are offering the youth of Canada?


An hon. Member:: There is nothing wrong with washing dishes.


Ursula Appolloni: There is nothing wrong with washing dishes, but I think we should be honest in all our policies. We have no right to encourage the children of Canada to stay in school to become overqualified and to give them unrealistic expectations. It is our duty as a society to provide jobs which will in some ways satisfy those children. We cannot expect them, after they have spent all those years obtaining an education, particularly a higher education, to take on jobs as dishwashers. It is absolutely wrong. As I said, my understanding of the situation in Toronto is that there were vacancies and jobs to be filled, but they were of a more menial type such as dishwashers, or short order cooks.
I wish that the opposition would clarify their position. An hon. member on the opposition side has suggested that the aim of Liberal government policy is to have more and more state intervention. On the one hand we are accused of having more and more state intervention, and on the other hand we are accused by the same party of not doing enough to create employment. They cannot have it both ways. I myself lean toward free enterprise, but I realize that there are times, particularly in a mixed economy such as ours, when the government must intervene. I do not say that it should be done in every instance, but if the private sector is not taking up the slack then government must step in.
November 10, 1978

The Liberal government has taken some very constructive steps in this regard. As an example I cite in particular a report by the second tier committee on policies to improve Canadian competitiveness. This committee was a tremendous breakthrough inasmuch as it was made up of members from the Canadian Labour Congress, representatives of private industry, and officials from the provincial and federal governments. The objective of this conference was not to listen to empty rhetoric, but to examine the whole economic situation of Canada and explore how the situation of job creation could be improved. The report, under the heading "Manpower and Labour Relations", at page 14 reads:
Manpower policy should be, in the view of the committee, a full employment policy. It should be a policy that endeavours not only to ensure industry with a labour force necessary to meet its needs but also aims at providing the individual Canadian worker with the opportunities to improve his or her level of skill, encourages mobility, and enables the individual to have a more fulfilling and satisfying work experience.
It would be interesting to contrast that quote with some of the statements to which I have referred, in the speech made last night.
Having said that, I would like to state to the House, and to the minister who is present in the House, some of my own reservations. I feel that the bill is an honest attempt to stop the few abuses made against the program. However, I have some reservations with regard to the section dealing with training allowances. The minister in his speech said, as reported at page 984 of Hansard:
The basic allowance provided to such people is only intended to offset additional costs, such as transportation, incurred in training.
The people in my constituency who most benefit from the manpower training program are the families with one parent, in most cases women. It is usually mothers who have been abandoned by their husbands and who are usually unskilled, scared, and on welfare. This training allowance enables them to upgrade their skills or to learn new ones. They need this help because if we do not get these people off welfare the person or persons who suffer in the end are the children. By cutting down the basic training allowance we are, ipso facto, denying these mothers the right to training programs under manpower. I still have to be convinced, and I am open to discussion, on how we can avoid cutting out these mothers from the training allowance programs and at the same time cut down their allowance. Welfare simply covers their nutritional needs, their rent, and the needs of the children, but it does not cover, for example, baby sitting, which these women would require if they were to attend a training program. These women need help. Their situation can best be described by an old Persian proverb, "Give a man fish and you feed him for a day, but teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."
I am pleased to see that the minister has made reference to on-the-job training programs for youth. The reports which come from my own riding say that the on-the-job programs are the best thing this department has introduced. They are well received by employers and employees. I doubt, however, that the on-the-job program will be of much benefit to lone parents. If she had a proper job, and I am thinking particularly of
Unemployment Insurance
women again, she would not need training and she would not need an allowance. The point is that these mothers need training in order to get jobs.
The on-the-job training program is directed primarily to youth, male or female. I was glad to see that the minister emphasized the fact that these training programs will be open to women, especially in sectors where they have been under represented in the past. It is a step in the right direction. I am not convinced though that by cutting back on the basic training allowance for women that we are doing them a service. In a year or so, I believe that we will be regretting this decision, but, as I said, I am open to discussion and, no doubt, I will hear more on the subject when we reach the committee stage on this bill.
I should like to refer again to the remarks made by the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra last night when he was referring to people who leave their jobs. He said that an additional problem is the precipitous increase in labour turnover. That is also a matter of great concern to us and one that, I think, needs to be discussed outside the parameters of this bill.
Of course it is very unnerving, unsettling, and uneconomic for the country to have people leave their jobs with great frequency. With this bill the government does not intend to tell people they must stay in a job where the working conditions are appalling or where their abilities are not being recognized. It is not the government's policy to impose that on any person who has a grievance in his job and, therefore, must move. What the government is saying in this bill is that if you really have to change jobs because you cannot find your niche, you are free to do so, but not at the expense of other taxpayers who may be gritting their teeth and staying in their jobs a lot longer.
I think this is typical of the Liberal approach being taken in this bill. The idea is to cut out the obvious abusers, not to put money into the state coffers as such but to devote that money to a much more constructive program such as job creation which, I believe, should be the top priority of all of us.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important bill, probably one of the most important bills to come before the House in this session. It is a difficult bill, and I understand the difficulties of the minister and maybe even sympathize with them. I can practically tell him the kinds of problems he is having in his caucus are not dissimilar to the kinds of problems I am having in my caucus, because that is a fact of life in the country. It is a fact of life that was rather dramatically addressed by the hon. member for Rosedale (Mr. Crombie) in his speech when he quoted Disraeli's eloquent description of the two nations-the nation of the haves and the nation of have-nots.
That dichotomy is a fact of Canadian life. It is a more important fact of Canadian life than any other aspect of our national problems, whether national unity, constitutional prob-
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November 10, 1978
lems, linguistic problems, or any other. Until we solve the problem of economic disparity we are not going to have a united country. We cannot have unity when we have widespread disparity.
I just heard my friend, the hon. member for Welland (Mr. Railton), make a remark, Mr. Speaker. I am glad to see he is in the House today. He is a good friend of mine. I have great respect for him. I hope he is going to participate in this debate, because one of the concerns about this growing problem of nations of haves and of have-nots is that it is no longer a regional problem; it is a problem in the big cities as well as the small cities and in the Atlantic provinces.
It is interesting that the constituency of the hon. member for Welland is in the Saint Catharines-Niagara area, which has the third highest rate of urban unemployment in the country. That is the area that we in the Atlantic provinces look upon as the banana belt of the country. In the pretty, seemingly prosperous cities of Saint Catharines, Welland, Thorold and Niagara Falls, you would wonder why unemployed could be such a problem as to represent the third highest rate of urban unemployment in the country at over 11 per cent. I know the hon. member for Welland is just as concerned about that as I am.


Mr. Railton:: That was one year ago; It is not the same now.


James Aloysius McGrath: I listened very carefully to the minister's speech. I have to tell him I was disappointed-disappointed because he showed an insensitivity to the subject that is out of character with the minister or my perception of him. He is not a heartless person; he is a compassionate man. In delivering that cold, sterile speech, prepared for him by faceless bureaucrats who really do not have a feel for the subject, he was demonstrating a rather uncharacteristic insensitivity to a subject that touches directly the lives of so many people.
I was surprised at the brevity of the speech. I would have expected he would go into it in more depth and greater detail to lay the problem properly before the House and set the stage for the debate, but he did not. A few things he said rather surprised me. For example, in the context of justifying the changes in the present unemployment insurance bill, he said he was doing so in order that unemployment insurance will not become a way of life. It is not with any sense of pride that I state to this House that l come from a part of the country where, through economic circumstances in many instances, unemployment insurance has in fact become a way of life. It is an economic fact to be reckoned with in the Atlantic provinces, that visible have-not part of the nation.
It is a way of life in the Atlantic provinces, especially Newfoundland, because unemployment has become a way of life in those provinces. It is ten years since the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) campaigned in the Atlantic provinces for the election in 1968, and promised to end all this disparity of high unemployment and low incomes. He was going to end it by bringing in a Marshall aid type plan for the Atlantic provinces. We all know what the Marshall plan did for war-torn Europe. As a result of the Marshall plan, today the Deutschmark is the

strongest currency in the world. Europe is prospering with an employment rate that is the envy of Canada. The economic growth rate is the envy of Canada. That is what the Marshall plan did for Europe. We see what United States aid did for war torn Japan. The Japanese yen is now one of the two strongest currencies in the world. Their economy is the envy of the world.
That is what we were promised in the Atlantic provinces in 1968-a Marshall plan type of aid to end the traditional curse of regional disparity which we inherited in 1949 and, which our neighbours in the Atlantic provinces have had to live with for considerably longer. That promise was as rhetorical and empty in terms of its sincerity and intent as the same promise made by the same Prime Minister in the same election campaign with respect to a just society.
The result is that over the last ten years-I can only take ten years because it coincides with the administration of the right hon. Prime Minister-we have had a pattern of rising unemployment in these four provinces. Where there is no permanent employment all anyone can expect is to get a seasonal job in the fishing industry or the forestry industry in the maritime provinces or, perhaps, farming, or the tourist industry. That is the best you can expect. Or, you can look to what I look upon and what many people see as a glorified form of federal welfare, and that is the Canada Works program. That is all there is. There is nothing else to turn to except unemployment. And now the minister wants to take that away. He wants to take that away from our economy without adequate planning and without adequate regard for the consequences of what he is doing.
As for consultation, Mr. Speaker, this is a word this government has thrown out. There was no consultation on this bill, neither was there any consultation on the family allowance bill. One can ask: why should the federal government consult on an area of federal jurisdiction? The answer is: for the simple reason the transfer payments in these social programs are vitally and crucially important to the economy of the four Atlantic provinces. There are the consequences of cutting back on unemployment insurance without consultation. A province may have a debt somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion and half a million people. It has to go to the money markets of the world every now and then to borrow money to service the debt to keep the current account going. The consequences are horrendous. It means the people who are deprived of this unemployment insurance will have to fall back on provincial welfare. Surely with that kind of a result one would expect that there would be some kind of gradual process in order to ease the economic impact on provinces, such as Newfoundland. Unemployment insurance is a very important part of the economic fabric in that part of the country.
The minister talked about using a scalpel instead of an axe. I think it is probably easier to use an axe without anaesthetic than it is a scalpel, because at least an axe implies a sudden quick cut, a sudden jolt, whereas the scalpel is a precise
November 10, 1978

instrument that has to find its way in a precise fashion. In order to use the instrument, first of all, one has to anaesthetize the patient. What the minister is doing in the Atlantic provinces and parts of Quebec is applying a scalpel without the benefit of anaesthetic. The result is going to be painful, very painful.
It is a paradox of our nation that I, as a member of this House, representing the oldest settled part of this nation, should speak in these terms. We are not a have-not province, just as the Atlantic provinces are not a have-not region. How can a province that has the greatest potential in terms of hydroelectric resources, both developed and undeveloped, be a have-not province in this energy starved world? How can a province that counts within its territorial jurisdiction 67 per cent of the 200-mile economic zone of Canada's east coast, containing within it the most prolific fund of fishery in the world-how can that province be a have-not province in this protein starved world of ours?
How can a province that has underground vast exploited and unexploited mineral resources-to name a few; iron ore, copper, lead, zinc and-be a have-not province? Half of the iron ore produced in this country is produced in the province of Newfoundland. How can that be classified as a have-not province? How can a province be a have-not province with the tremendous timber resources that the province of Newfoundland and Labrador has, undeveloped, waiting to be exploited? How can it be a have-not province? There is something basically out-of-whack. There is something wrong when that kind of a treasure house of unexploited wealth cannot provide an adequate income for a half a million people. It is crazy. It is insane.
I went to Iceland one time. Here is a country which is not dissimilar to Newfoundland in terms of its climate, in terms of the economic factors that are at play there. Iceland has half the population that we have in Newfoundland. They do not have the mineral resources that we have, apart from thermal resources which they use for hot houses and so on, but that is not a big factor. Iceland does not have the energy resources, apart from what they can generate from the natural steam that is in the ground. They do not have the timber resources. All they have is the same fishing industry selling in the same market, with the same products that we have. And yet with that as an economic base they have achieved a higher standard of living than Canada has. Iceland has practically zero unemployment. They do not worry about inflation because a lot of their inflation is imported. But they have virtually zero unemployment. Their fishermen are the elite of the system. They are the elite of the nation. They are rewarded with an income commensurate with that of the mandarins in the public service of Iceland.
Icelanders come to Newfoundland and look at us and what we have, the climate we have which is so similar to theirs. It would surprise hon. members to know that sheep can graze in the eastern part of Newfoundland all year round, and yet we do not have a woollen industry, like they have in Iceland. Icelandic woollens fetch the highest price in world markets.
Unemployment Insurance
Some day, Mr. Speaker, in the not too distant future I will not have to stand in this House-and I hope to be here-and complain about the Government of Canada cutting back on unemployment insurance benefits because it will be almost as academic as it is for some of my colleagues in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
It was not very long ago that Alberta was a have-not province and the nation had to come to the rescue of Alberta. Now they have oil and they are well away. So the minister comes to us and applies the scalpel and he applies it without the benefit of an anaesthetic because to us unemployment has come to be an unfortunate way of life.
Let us take a look at the facts-first of all, long-term unemployment in the Atlantic provinces. The figures I am using are from the minister's own source of statistics, Stats-Can. Newfoundland has, as of the last figures released, 34,000 people unemployed. These are official seasonally adjusted rates, so this figure will be considerably higher than that and I will explain why in a moment. Officially Newfoundland has 13,000 people who have been unemployed for three months or more. This represents 45 per cent of those people looking for work. I can take hon. members to parts of my province where the people have been unemployed for years, apart from the couple of months' work they can get from Canada Works or the couple of months' work they can get in a fish plant or what have you. That long-term unemployment situation stands out like a sore thumb in the Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia has 12,000 people unemployed for 3 months of longer, representing 38 per cent of those looking for work. In New Brunswick the figure is 12,000 which represents 41 per cent of those looking for work. Now we come to the province of Quebec where there are 104,000 unemployed, representing 41 per cent of the people looking for work. Long-term unemployment because of the mismanagement, the gross mismanagement of the economy by this government, has become a fact of life, and hence unemployment insurance has unfortunately become a way of life.
I wish that the minister, in keeping with the compassion that I know he has, had hesitated before bringing in this bill. I do not believe a bill like this should be introduced during a period of high unemployment. At least it should not apply to an area where unemployment is chronic and long term in nature.
The hon. member for York-South (Mrs. Appolloni) talked about abusers. There are abusers. There are too many people abusing the system. That is because the system has been badly managed. However, for the one person in six who abuses unemployment insurance, why make the other five suffer by tightening it up? That is exactly what is happening.
We have no time for abusers. Neither do we have any time for those who work the system and quit their jobs, come back on unemployment insurance, and it becomes a cycle. I have no sympathy for that kind of person. Anybody who has a job, all things being equal, should be penalized severely if he quits that
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November 10, 1978
Unemployment Insurance
job. Most of the people whom I represent would certainly subscribe to that view.
There are a number of things about this bill I would like to mention. I would first like to express my surprise with regard to the Stella Bliss case. We have this bill before us with no intention to amend it to reflect the decision of the Supreme Court, the views of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and, indeed, the views of the minister, because he said in his speech last night they intended to take this into account at a later date.
I remind the minister of this because I do not like what is implied in this bill with regard to women. It is not only the Stella Bliss case, but the implication of taking women out of the Outreach program. I will deal with that in a moment. However, getting back to the Stella Bliss case, the Commissioner for Human Rights on November 2 commended the minister. He said:
It is the hope of this commission that your recommendations to cabinet will result in amending legislation being presented to parliament as part of the bill encompassing the changes which you announced on Septemer 1-
If section 46 were amended so that the question of a woman's availability and capability for work were not unilaterally and arbitrarily determined without consideration of her particular circumstances, but was established according to the individual case, section 46 would then become consistent with the principles already accepted in the 1975 amendment to section 30.
Why does the legislation not reflect that fact? We are obviously passing a bill that is not consistent with the Canadian Human Rights Bill. Any woman in Canada will be able to challenge this bill and challenge it successfully. Obviously we are being asked to pass bad law.
Why does the minister tell the House that he intends to amend the bill when it gets into committee? Failure to do so is not good enough. He expects us to give speedy passage to this legslation, yet he just gives us a passing undertaking that this fact with regard to the rights of women, pregnancy and their entitlement to unemployment insurance benefits, is something that the minister intends to correct at a later date. We will have more to say about that when this bill goes to committee.
With regard to the Outreach program, this defies logic. I have yet to see or hear a rational explanation as to why, in this period of unprecedented high unemployment, women are taken out of the Outreach program. A large part of the unemployment in this country is chronic. A large number of the people affected by this chronic unemployment happen to be women, as well as young people, women in particular.
In periods of high unemployment it is always women who suffer most as the natural tendency is to give the job to the man because he is the provider. I suppose that is understandable in a way, but the facts of life are changing. In fact, they have changed. Women, both married and single, are now a part of the work force. Both spouses now work, a situation brought on by inflation, not by choice but out of economic necessity.
We have the situation of the single parent family, a growing part of the Canadian social fabric. There are more and more single parent families in this country, either by choice or

circumstances, by divorce or what have you. Obviously these women have to work. They have no choice.
I believe I have accounted for two thirds of the women in the work force. That leaves one-third who must work in order to provide for themselves. They are as much if not even more affected by chronically high unemployment as their male fellow citizens. However, for reasons which defy logic, the minister decided as an economic move to take women out of the Outreach program.


John R. Rodriguez: Scapegoats.


James Aloysius McGrath: They are being used as scapegoats. Maybe he did so because women are vocal and this will draw attention to the fact the government is doing something in the area of restraint. That seems to be the strategy of the government in its restraint program, to cut back in visible, highly vocal areas because it will draw attention to its plans to cut back on government spending.
If you happen to be on Bell Island, Newfoundland, where the mines have been closed for the past 11 years, and you are a woman, jobs are just as difficult and as remote to you as if you were a man. You are going to need the same training and guidance to get into the work force as a man who has been unemployed for the same period of time.
That could apply in any situation across the country. Therefore, I hope the government will reconsider its decision with regard to the Outreach program. I could quote from the memorandum, but I will not do that. I think I have made my point. I suspect we will hear more about that before this bill receives final approval in the House. There are several major proposals in this bill. I would like to dwell on them in detail. I have already alluded to a proposal that bothered me. It is causing a great deal of concern to anyone who comes from the Atlantic provinces.
I am sorry there are not more members here who represent the Atlantic provinces. Where is the hon. member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador (Mr. Rompkey) who is so vocal and threatened to revolt within the Liberal caucus unless the minister changed his original proposals? Where are his colleagues, the hon. member for Gander-Twillingate (Mr. Baker), and the hon. member for Bonavista-Trinity-Concep-tion (Mr. Rooney)? Where are the members from northern New Brunswick where the problem is chronic? Why are they not in the House today?
I respect the fact that this is Friday and tomorrow is a national day of remembrance. A lot of members had to go to their constituencies to participate in Remembrance Day services. However, I must question their sense of priority. They would be doing more honour to the dead of this country of two world wars if they were here addressing the economic disparities of this nation rather than travelling to some symbolic gesture at a provincial cenotaph in this country. I believe that to be a fact. My responsibility is to be here addressing this bill so that veterans, ex-servicemen, their sons and daughters, will have half the chance at equality of opportunity their neighbours have in other parts of this country.
November 10, 1978

The 20-week provision is something the minister is going to have to reconsider. If not, I suspect he is going to have more problems in his caucus. There is no possible way that we can countenance this provision in the bill whereby the entry or re-entry of a claimant will require 20 weeks of contributions. By definition, that eliminates the seasonal worker, whether it happens to be someone employed in the tourist industry in Prince Edward Island, the fishing industry on the north coast of Newfoundland, or in the farm industry of the maritime provinces. So I would say to the minister that he must be prepared to consider amendments in this area.
The last time changes were before the House the minister was very wise and quick to accept suggestions we made with respect to qualifying periods. There was a regional factor built in to the qualifying period so that people in Newfoundland, say, would not have to work as long to qualify for benefits as would those in Calgary, Alberta. The same factor should be brought to bear in connection with the 20-week provision, even more so now because of the economic impact it will have on the Atlantic provinces. Most of the seasonal fish plants operate for about three months. That is about the length of the tourist industry. That is about the length of time that people can find jobs in various sectors on the fishing industry, the lobster and that kind of fishery. To be realistic, one must think in terms of anywhere between ten and 14 weeks' employment in that industry in the Atlantic provinces if the bill is not to be discriminatory. In its present form, Mr. Speaker, the bill is discriminatory to the Atlantic provinces.
The second proposal I wish to turn to has to do with the variable factor wherein we talk about 11.5 per cent as a triggering mechanism for this bill. That figure of 11.5 per cent is high. But high as it is, it means that the bill will still have application to the province of Newfoundland where unemployment is officially hovering around 16.8 per cent. Indeed, if we could get down to 11.5 per cent unemployment we would feel we were getting close to full employment. That is how bad our economic situation is at the present time. As I see it, 11.5 per cent would apply to the province of Newfoundland, the Cape Breton part of the province of Nova Scotia and probably to the northern part of the province of New Brunswick. So the minister will need to re-examine that part of the bill because it does not take into account the facts as I have tried to put them before the House with respect to the Atlantic provinces.
We intend, Mr. Speaker, to move amendments in this area. My colleague the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Clarke), who made such a great and comprehensive speech last night, referred in passing, I think, to these amendments. The present provision is an empty one, sir, and implies that there is something acceptable about the kind of situation about which I have just commented.
The proposal to lower the benefit rate to 60 per cent as a work incentive is, to me, of questionable value in terms of its potential impact. Again, if you take the case of the unemployed family head who needs to feed, house and clothe a
Unemployment Insurance
family, it is just as strong an incentive to seek work actively at the present time as would be the case if the benefit were lower. Lowering the benefit to 60 per cent of the present amount will not provide any greater incentive to work. All it will do is impose an additional hardship on heads of families who are forced to live on unemployment insurance in this period of inflation. This is a factor which I think should be taken into account, on a regional basis if you like.
With respect to the fifth proposal in the bill before us-that with regard to placing a ceiling on income-I do not think anyone will quarrel with this. People who imply that the large number of unemployment insurance recipients are lazy and do not want to work are blind to the facts. If you happen to be a fisherman on the coast of British Columbia or a fisherman owning a long liner in Atlantic Canada earning $20,000, $40,000 or $50,000 a year, then obviously you do not need unemployment insurance and you should not get it. To that extent I think the minister is taking a step in the right direction to eliminate what is, in some cases, an abuse of the system. I heartily endorse and support that move.
We shall also be questioning the minister, Mr. Speaker, on why he did not move to extend the disqualification period for job quitters. I have already referred to that but it seems to me that here is an area in which the minister could really bring in meaningful reform by increasing the penalty to job quitters. Currently the period stands at six weeks, and I could see the minister doubling that to 12 weeks unless the circumstances were such that the person quitting the job had no other choice open to him.
I believe that the Economic Council of Canada said it all in its 1976 publication "People and Jobs". It dealt at some length with unemployment insurance, as the minister well knows, and I quote one part of that report:
It would, of course, be possible to try to eliminate abuses by cutting certain categories of claimants or the duration of benefits, or by extending the period of work before claimants become eligible for benefits. But such recommendations could prove harmful to persons most exposed to periodic and genuinely involuntary unemployment-
That is precisely what the minister is doing in the bill we are considering here. He is penalizing people in the Atlantic provinces, parts of Quebec and in other parts of the country, but especially in these five eastern provinces which through no fault of their own, because of the economic situation, because of economic mismanagement, are exposed to periodic and genuinely involuntary unemployment. Sir, in regions of high unemployment this bill will represent a substantial burden on people who are unemployed through no fault of their own.
We are not talking about unskilled people who are always the hardest hit. We are not necessarily talking about women, who are often the hardest hit, and young people who are also hardest hit. We are talking about every sector of our society in this era of critically high unemployment-school teachers, university graduates. Let us consider the tragic case of a young person who works his way through college or university, at considerable hardship to himself and his family. He graduates and becomes an engineer, a school teacher or a lawyer. He is very proud of his accomplishment. He goes out into his society

November 10, 1978
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;|M
Unemployment Insurance
and says: "Here I am. I have this skill. I have applied myself. I have put much into this because I want to make a contribution. Give me a chance to contribute. I am ready". But the country is not ready for him. What does he do? Where does he go?


John R. Rodriguez: Welfare.


James Aloysius McGrath: This young person suddenly has to come to grips with the trauma of unemployment.


An hon. Member:: He could go to Edmonton.


James Aloysius McGrath: People do not want to go to Edmonton any more. They do not want to take that road. That is typical. People are coming out of university, and they resent the fact that people in this part of the country say that they should go to Upper Canada or Alberta. Why can there not be jobs for people in their home towns and provinces?
People want to work in their home towns and provinces because they want to hold on to the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. They want to contribute to their home cultures and be part of them. People believe that they have the right to stay, and that is a factor in this ongoing unemployment situation which the minister and the government ignore. They ignore it at their peril because there is unrest among educated and articulate young unemployed people in this country. That unrest is manifesting itself in organizations such as the Organization of the Unemployed. The minister will be hearing more about that. Hopefully we will be hearing from that organization as this bill gets into committee, and we will have more to say at that time.


Mr. Nystrom:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


Mr. Paproski:: Never mind.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I wonder if my friend, the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), could answer one short question?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: He could answer a question only with unanimous consent because his time has expired. Is there consent to allow one question?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Steve Eugene Paproski: No.


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I sincerely regret that unanimous consent was not given to the hon. member to ask his question because what we just heard was very thought-provoking and obviously carefully researched. The hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) was obviously sincere. I think the question of the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom) would also be sincere and that the hon. member for St. John's East would be happy to respond.


James Aloysius McGrath: I would be happy to respond, with the consent of the House.


Mr. Dawson:: Tell that to your whip.


James Aloysius McGrath: I cannot speak for my whip, just as you cannot speak for yours.


Steve Eugene Paproski: I said no, Mr. Speaker.


John R. Rodriguez: Mr. Speaker, we listened to a very eloquent and thought-provoking speech by the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), and we were all hoping to find out how he would vote at second reading of this bill.


James Aloysius McGrath: May I respond to that point of order, with the unanimous consent of the House?


Steve Eugene Paproski: No.


Dennis Dawson: Now we know who is boss.


James Aloysius McGrath: I can respond in a word, if there is consent. It is our intention to vote for this bill at second reading because we are anxious to get it into committee. That in no way implies that we are supporting the principle of the bill. We want to get this bill to committee because we are going to move amendments, and we want to see just exactly what the government intends to do with this measure.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Question.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I think we should allow the hon. member who is seeking the floor to begin his remarks.


Mr. Roger Young (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, I am slightly bemused, as I suppose all my colleagues on this side of the House are, that the Tory members opposite cannot agree amongst themselves as to whether they should answer questions. They cannot quite agree as to what their policy is. The hon. member for Edmonton Centre (Mr. Paproski) refused his own colleague permission to answer.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Did you hear the answer?


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: The Tories are scared.


Roger Carl Young: I would like for a few moments to participate in this debate to make some comments on the substance of the bill. Basically we are discussing unemployment and unemployment insurance, and in a sense also attempts to get people back to work in meaningful jobs. Before I touch specifically on the points contained in the bill, I would like to make a short rejoinder to the hon. member who has just finished speaking, the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), because he did mention the Niagara peninsula, and I represent part of that area.
In his remarks the hon. member seemed to blame all our economic and unemployment problems on what he called mismanagement on the part of the present government. 1 take

November 10, 1978

strong issue with that. I would like to point out some of the causes of unemployment in this country. It is true that in the Niagara peninsula we have more unemployment than we would like to have. I believe at the present time our rate of unemployment is slightly above the national average. That is not entirely unexpected because much of the work in the Niagara area is seasonal. Our tourist season is 90 or 100 days long, and that is equivalent to the fruit growing season. We do have short-term employment in that area, and there are few alternative jobs for people who work in the tourist and fruitgrowing industries during the off season.
The hon. member for St. John's East says that unemployment is caused by government mismanagement. Let me tell him what causes unemployment in an area like the one 1 represent. On balance the rate of unemployment in my area at the present time is about 10 per cent, but in the town of Fort Erie the rate of unemployment in the last couple of years has been 18 per cent, 20 per cent or 21 per cent.
This problem has been far from anything over which the government has had a great deal of control. In the town of Fort Erie in the last four years unemployment has been caused by events which have taken place in four major industries. I can name the industries. The first one was a battery manufacturing plant where there was a labour dispute and 110 people became unemployed. That had nothing to do with government management or mismanagement.
The second largest lay-off in that town occurred at Horton CBI Limited. That company manufactured steel plate pressure vessels. The reason for the lay-off at that factory was the cancellation of the company's building contracts by Ontario Hydro. That company held contracts to build steel pressure vessels for nuclear-generating stations which Ontario Hydro decided not to move ahead with. A couple of hundred people lost their jobs with the overnight cancellation of those contracts.
The third industry involved was the Ontario Jockey Club. Because of the turn down in the American economy the Ontario Jockey Club decided to take racing dates from its Fort Erie racetrack to its Toronto racetrack. This decision was a necessity and it was the result of the good management sense of the club. I cannot blame the club for this. I discussed this matter with the president and the chairman of the board, but because people in Buffalo, New York were suffering 18 per cent and 20 per cent unemployment, there just were not enough two-dollar betters coming across the Peace Bridge and putting down money to keep that track viable in terms of the racing industry. Racing dates were shifted to Toronto.
Four or five years ago in the town of Fort Erie a company called Fleet Industries employed 750 employees. Two years ago it employed about 350, approximately a 50 per cent manpower reduction. That occurred not because of anything the government did and in spite of anything the government could do to prevent it. It occurred simply because of a turndown in the aircraft industry which started to take place in the United States following the four-fold increase in oil and fuel prices levied by the OPEC nations in the early 1970s. When
Unemployment Insurance
the cost of aircraft fuel went up, the cost of air travel went up. When the cost of air travel went up, along with it went the cost of buying and flying planes, and it became a little less interesting for people to have to spend large sums to do some travelling around the world. The tourist and aircraft industries suffered and the airlines bought fewer and fewer planes. That resulted in people being laid off in aircraft factories.
These are four very poignant examples of how unemployment occurs in a riding. None of those was, as my friend the hon. member for St. John's East would say, government mismanagement. It was not government mismanagement at all; it was due to a downturn in the aircraft industry, a labour-management dispute at a battery factory, a change of racing dates by a company which wanted to keep up its corporate production, a change in racing dates by the Ontario Jockey Club, and also the cancellation by the provincial Conservative government through Ontario Hydro of its contracts to build nuclear generating stations and the pressure vessels that were involved in that construction. That is what caused unemployment in that community.
I hear some strange comments from the other side. A couple of days ago I heard the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) blaming this government for its involvement in the aircraft industry and its intervention in airline policies. I have pointed out to you, Mr. Speaker, what happened in terms of unemployment in an aircraft parts manufacturing company in my riding-50 per cent of the staff were laid off.
Now let me tell hon. members the success side of the story, the upturn. Two years ago, because that company was the successful bidder through Lockheed Corporation for contracts to build a long-range patrol aircraft-in my riding we are building the nose cone and flight deck for those planes-and because that company is successful and works hard, its labour force is good and it has had for a long time many experienced people, and because this government had a policy of producing in Canada as many of the parts of those long-range patrol aircraft as possible, that company survives and is doing as well today as it ever did before 1958 when the administration of a former leader of the government who now sits across the floor, namely the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefen-baker) and his cabinet at that time, decided to scrap a plane we all know as the Avro Arrow, and thus just about decimated the Canadian aircraft industry.
Never in the history of this country and never in the history of my riding has this plant in my riding been doing so well except for the years before 1958. We had 350 people employed there two years ago, and by 1980 we expect 1,000 people to be employed in that factory, more than they have ever had. That is due to government support for industry and jobs in this country and good management on the part of this government.


Mr. McKinnon:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I know the hon. member well and I know he would not want to misinform the country, but on two occasions he has mentioned

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Unemployment Insurance
that the LRPA program was to the benefit of industry in this country. He should say of central Canada-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please.


Roger Carl Young: Mr. Speaker, you have implied that that was a matter of debate and not a point of order, but I will answer the hon. gentleman anyway for the sake of the record. There are offset contracts, about which he knows very well, some of which apply in the aircraft industry and some of which apply outside the aircraft industry. They apply all across the country and benefit employment throughout the country.
What I find strange also are the comments I heard from the Leader of the Opposition some time ago and also last year when he set about every day roundly criticizing the Export Development Corporation for its assistance to industry in this country. He wanted us to cut down the Export Development Corporation, dismantle it, chop its budget here and there. I invited him to go down and give the speech he gave in the House to my constituents. I would love to have him go down there because I would like to campaign against a man giving those kinds of speeches. If it had not been for EDC, I would not have a plant in my riding today which employs over 200 people and is selling $85 million worth of heavy construction equipment to the Russians.


An hon. Member:: Patronage.


Roger Carl Young: It is not patronage, as the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Clarke) said, not patronage at all. That company bid with the Russians for the supply of heavy moving equipment, 200 and 300-ton capacity heavy-duty vehicles. Because EDC guarantees the sales to the Russians, this company could count on being paid and could count on being able to pay its workers. They have built a new factory, a whole new production line, and they are selling $85 million worth of trucks and looking forward to selling another $30 million or $40 million worth of trucks, which will mean increased employment. I suggest that that is the result of government good management and good support mechanisms on this side of the House.
The point of the debate and the point of this bill could be summed up by saying that undoubtedly there is a continuous need to revise and to re-examine systems and programs-


Gerald William Baldwin: And governments.


Roger Carl Young: -no matter what the government. In the case of unemployment insurance, we have a program which was meant to be a temporary income support for people between jobs, not an alternative to employment itself. I do not think anybody wants to contemplate a system of unemployment insurance as the only alternative to employment. I think we can contemplate quite happily a system of income maintenance for people who are between jobs and progressing in their career development. However, through pressures, the system has become stretched and distorted, and some of that distortion has come about through abuse of the system. I do not think anyone would deny that there has been some abuse. The

question with which all of us have to grapple is how much abuse there is and how many of the problems we face are there because of a distorting or stretching of the use of the programs in the system.
The problem is that it is not just the employees who stretch the unemployment insurance system. Some employers, through the terms of the work arrangements they have with their employees with their semi-lay-off type provisions, have also stretched that system. At times there has been complicity between the employers and employees which has made it very difficult for government to grapple with in terms of a fair and honest administration of this system. I know that sometimes in my riding, where there is a number of seasonal workers, especially in tourism and the fruit farming industry, there are methods whereby an employer, through a small agreement with an employee, will agree to continue employing him on a part-time basis with some little task from week to week, enough to make sure that the partially laid off employee is still collecting some unemployment insurance and not costing the employer too much but costing the government-a fine balance to pick up the chips and to keep them both in a state of semi-operation. I know that that happens.
I suppose that in many cases these people cannot be blamed for stretching the system. The problem we have in an area such as mine is that many of the people who have taken up seasonal work which is there have really done so honestly believing that they would probably have available to them three to four months' work. They know that that is the way life is on the peninsula. If they are not year-round employees in a factory, there is work on the fruit farms, in motels, hotels and dining rooms in the summer time when the majority of our tourists are there. Not many people honestly expect, because of our climate and the seasonal nature of those industries, that that work will of necessity carry on during the winter period and during the shoulder seasons of early spring and late fall. If you approached them and asked them to tell you honestly, when they took the seasonal jobs, did they expect year-round type of employment, I am sure they would say no. If you approached them again and asked, on the basis that we consider unemployment insurance to be a temporary or stopgap measure between jobs, and their expecting when they took seasonal employment to be laid off and that it would be seven or eight months until they got back on seasonal employment, whether they felt they should be entitled to collect unemployment insurance over that seven or eight-month period, I am sure you would again find that they would say no. Many of these people who honestly look at the situation and consider the costs to themselves as taxpayers and to the country agree it places a very heavy burden on the system to continue to pay these benefits. I am sure many of them agree that this is not totally "honest", and that there is some doubt as to whether we can continue to bear these costs.
Some of these people no doubt find it very necessary to have this income. In some cases it is a meagre income which they receive from seasonal jobs, but in other cases the income is
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very good. Tips to waiters and waitresses can be pretty good these days if they work hard. A number of jobs in the tourist service industry pay fairly well. Many of these people would say in all honesty that they have had a pretty good job, that they only expected it to be seasonal to begin with, and that they really do not demand or press too much for unemployment insurance in the winter, particularly when the cost to everyone as taxpayers is pointed out to them.
We must look at the system, assess it and revise it if necessary. We must do as much as we can to remove the disincentives to work. We must always leave the incentives in place so that people will feel they should have or should be looking for jobs and should be prepared to work. That is the only psychologically healthy way to go through life.
The government's programs in terms of job experience training, employment tax credits and small business tax incentives are all important things with which we must grapple.
Let me close by saying that we have fallen short in this country in terms of apprenticeship training. There is no greater lack in our system of programs in this country than apprenticeship training. We should be training people to fill skilled occupational positions which will continue on into the future. There is no doubt that the kings and queens of this country in the future will be those people who have good, solid, skilled occupational trades which they can carry with them. These skills are portable and can be taken anywhere in the country on a moment's notice to those areas where jobs are waiting. The shame of it all today is that we have thousands of skilled jobs in this country begging for someone to fill them, while at the same time we have thousands of unskilled employees looking for almost non-existent jobs.
This situation is a very important topic of discussions that have been taking place in this country, such as at the federal-provincial conference last week. Under our constitution, education and that kind of training falls squarely on the shoulders of the provinces. These training programs have not been forthcoming. It is only recently that we have begun to really look at this issue of apprenticeship training.
If I may just make one last rejoinder to my colleagues opposite in the Conservative party, if the hon. lady and hon. members over there are so proud of their provincial Conservative premiers and governments, they should be out there elbowing those governments into action, stirring them up so they will bring forward some of these apprenticeship training programs that are so necessary. That is probably one of the best services they could perform for this country. They should get together with some of their provincial Conservative colleagues, stir them up and get them at the job of providing skilled labourers to fill the skilled job vacancies we have in this country.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, I wish to make about a two-minute contribution to this debate, mainly because I would like to ask the hon. member a question; but if I did so, that would be ruled as debate.
Unemployment Insurance
Let me point out that during the debate on long-range patrol aircraft, provinces such as British Columbia were promised several percentage points of the offset work. The quarterly report, as the hon. parliamentary secretary well knows, given to me by the directorate of the Department of Supply and Services, courtesy of the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce, shows the breakdown in respect of offset work plus parts work for the long-range patrol aircraft contract that has now passed the $400 million mark and is nearly half way through. It shows that British Columbia, with 10 per cent of the population and with an industrial capacity to match, has in total received one-third of 1 per cent of the offset and parts work.
I can well understand the hon. member, living as he does in the golden horseshoe, being very happy about the LRPA contract, with the province of Ontario receiving 50 per cent, Quebec receiving 40 per cent and the other provinces splitting up the remaining 10 per cent. We are not as satisfied, and we are not as complacent about the situation as the hon. member, and rightly so. We believe some of this work should be going to provinces such as Newfoundland, which has received nothing under this contract. I feel the parliamentary secretary is in error in trying to pretend that this whole situation is great for the country as a whole. It is great for Ontario and Quebec. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.


Roger Carl Young: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. I recognized the hon. parliamentary secretary a moment ago. He can only be recognized again for the purpose of speaking if there is unanimous consent.


Some hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: There is not unanimous consent.
Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Question.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration.
Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I assume it would be appropriate in the circumstances this afternoon to call it four o'clock and proceed with private members' business. That would certainly be preferable as far as I am concerned.
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The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Does the House agree to call it four o'clock?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Yvon Pinard: We agree entirely with the suggestion of the hon. member, and we are prepared to proceed to a private member's public bill.


PRIVATE MEMBERS' PUBLIC BILLS
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: It being four o'clock, the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper, namely, public bills, notices of motions, private bills.
Order No. 2 in the name of the hon. member for Calgary North (Mr. Woolliams). Shall the order stand?


Yvon Pinard: Is there unanimous consent to proceed with the study of Bill C-206 and to allow all the remaining bills to stand?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Hon. members have heard the request of the hon. parliamentary secretary that all the orders before No. 6 relating to Bill C-206 be stood. Is it agreed?


Steve Eugene Paproski: Yes, Mr. Speaker, we so agree.


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Ursula Appolloni: that Bill C-206, to amend the Criminal Code (hospital orders), be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
She said: It may be useful, Mr. Speaker, to give a brief history on this bill. Approximately one year ago a 67-year-old Toronto man was charged with indecent assault on a three year old girl. As a result of plea bargaining a lesser charge of common assault was accepted, and as the defence lawyer proposed that his client would voluntarily undergo psychiatric treatment, the judge released the offender on probation. For a short while the offender did undergo psychiatric treatment, but

it was for alcoholism, not for sexual deviation. Soon he stopped attending the hospital altogether.
Two months later he repeated his offence, this time on a five year old boy. The police added to the charge of indecent assault a second one of breaking parole. Again the offender was allowed to go free, and after three months he molested a three year old girl. Despite the pleas of the police officer to the presiding judge, the offender was released again. In July of this year he claimed his fourth victim, this time a seven year old girl. Only after this man had assaulted four small children did the judge commit him to the Clarke Institute.
What I have documented are bleak facts which cover the agency of an entire community fearful of the fate of its children, and the extreme frustrations of a police force hampered in its efforts to protect that community by what it perceives to be a loophole in the Criminal Code as it now stands. This bill does not pretend to be a panacea for preventing the evils of sexual abuse, but it is an effort to plug that particular loophole which has caused so much frustration to the police of Toronto and I am sure other communities across Canada.
Following the episode I have just described, 74 parents, teachers and other concerned individuals of York South submitted a petition to the attorney general of Ontario pleading for proper protection for children. I have no idea what the answer was, but I do know that over 500 of my constituents signified their approval of the substance of this bill by writing to the former minister of justice. I am now led to believe that the Toronto chief of police himself not only approves of the principle of this bill, but would be prepared to appear as a witness should it make its way to committee.
In its report of 1969, the Ouimet committee saw the criminal justice system as existing primarily to protect society. I believe that I have fully documented the fact that society was not protected in the case under reference, and I fear there are many other such cases.
I would like to take a look now at the sentencing procedure in this case. The judge was, presumably, reluctant to send the man to jail, well knowing that the imprisoned child molester lives in constant fear of being assaulted or even murdered. Here again the brutal justice meted out to child molesters by their fellow inmates has been well documented. The judge could not commit the man to a psychiatric institution either because the man was not legally insane.
In reply to letters from my constituents, the previous minister of justice mentioned provisions in the Criminal Law Amendment Act allowing offenders to be classified as dangerous offenders in order to be kept in preventive detention. I have two criticisms of this procedure. The first is the lack of treatment programs. It is estimated that approximately 80 per cent of offenders charged with having approached female children are in need of treatment for deviant sexual preferences. The question whether the conventional psychotherapy is effective in dealing with these patients is still open. There are, however, other more psychological therapies that can be taken
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into account, and uncertainty relating to therapeutic effect must not lead to the abandoning of all therapeutic efforts.
My second criticism of the preventive detention procedure concerns the safety of the offender. In fact, in his testimony at the trial of the murderers in the riot at Kingston penitentiary, one of the inmates who had been brutalized told of his fear, saying that "the general thing was my offence for which I was serving a sentence of preventive detention as a dangerous sexual offender." Preventive detention did not save this man from the wrath of his fellow inmates.
It may be useful to cite the definition of dangerous sexual offender. It means a person who, by his conduct in any sexual matter, has shown a failure to control his sexual impulses, and who is likely to cause injury, pain or other evil to any person, through failure in the future to control his sexual impulses.
I need not dwell on the pain, both emotional and physical, suffered by the young victims of sexual molesters, and the incalculable amount of pain and misery caused to society. The effect of sexual abuse on children is still largely and tragically unknown, but at least one group of child psychiatrists in the United States said in 1977 that their experience leads them to suspect that the repercussions of early sexual experiences may be subtle and varied, manifesting themselves immediately after the event or considerably later in life.
My own belief is that the feeling of personal security which has been violently wrested from the child cannot be restored. The problems of dangerous and repetitive sex offenders are not new and are certainly not peculiar to Canada. Mrs. Carole Anne Searle, the criminologist, documented the situation very well in her appearance before the subcommittee on the penitentiary system in Canada on March 11, 1977. Her description of the Fort Steilacoom program is worthy of study. Financial constraints present a serious obstacle to the adoption of this particular method, but surely a similar project could be tried in Canada, perhaps in existing hospitals.
Naturally, the Steilacoom method, or even the one advocated in this bill, would require consultation and the co-operation of all provinces. I am confident that the provinces will agree that the most urgent consideration of penal law must be the assurance of public safety.
I would be remiss if I were to overlook the serious question of the civil rights of the offender who has no obligation to submit to psychiatric examination or treatment. Indeed, the judge must keep the delicate balance between the interests of the offender, however abnormal and dangerous he may be, and the interests and the protection of the public. The civil liberties of an accused could, I submit, be reviewed and perhaps made the subject matter of discussion if this bill is allowed to go to committee.
I believe at this stage we must show concern for the protection of the innocent, especially the young innocent who are the weakest members of our society. Only yesterday this House witnessed a debate on the rights of children. My contention is that the events which provoked this bill are clearly indicative of the dearth of rights allowed children in this country, and if
Criminal Code
we ignore this situation we do so at our peril. Thousands of parents across Canada are pleading for the protection of their children, particularly from men who cannot control their sexual urges.


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I should like to rise to speak briefly in support of the hon. member's bill and to congratulate her on the responsibility and initiative she has shown in bringing it forward. I do so within 24 hours of this House moving on a bill that I had the privilege to sponsor, Bill C-204, respecting a Canadian bill of rights for children. The House was favourably disposed toward that bill, and with its traditional sense of compromise-saving at all times the jealously guarded right of the government to legislate-the House by consent allowed the bill to be withdrawn and the subject matter to go to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
If this bill before us does not meet with the same treatment-and I commend the bill to the House-then I would \ suggest to the hon. member that committee study of Bill C-204 will give her the same opportunity, although not the same exclusivity of the particular area she is addressing by her bill. In any event, Mr. Speaker, it is well that we address ourselves to these more troublesome questions regarding children, the rights of children and the growing incidence of the abuse of children-in this particular case the sexual abuse of children. The bill deals specifically with child molestors.
I recall visiting a maximum security institution, which I will not identify because even prisoners have some rights. It was a famous maximum security institution in this country and I spent a day touring it and speaking with the inmates. I was fascinated to see the "hole," as the isolation cells are called. A number of prisoners were in isolation. One person in particular attracted my attention. He was in semi-isolation but within the isolation area, where he was locked up. A man was sitting there dressed in a blue serge suit, with a tie, a pair of glasses, a bald head, a pair of brown shoes. He could be the next door neighbour, the young fellow up the street, the corner shopkeeper-any number of people, even the fellow you would get to babysit your children. He was in that isolation unit for his own protection because of the law of the prisoners. He was the lowest in the social strata, so low in the eyes of the other inmates that he required special protection to preserve his life. He was a child molestor, apparently an incorrigible child molestor, and had been put away for the rest of his life.
Therein lies the problem, Mr. Speaker. These people cannot be identified. They are ordinary looking people. They are sick but they are ordinary, so ordinary that they can easily merge into society and be the next door neighbour or whoever. That circumstance magnifies the problem the hon. member has so eloquently addressed in her bill.
There is another aspect of the problem that I should like to draw to the attention of the House for a moment. I refer to the social stigma attached to sex oriented crimes or child molestation. They are not all reported. For some strange reason
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families tend to look upon this condition as a source of embarrassment, not in all cases but I suggest in a good many cases. This is especially so with the crime of incest. We do not like to talk about it but it is on the increase. It is on the increase because of the changing society we live in, because of the new sexual mores of society, because of the permissiveness of society and the impact on society of the media, which tends to reflect this permissiveness, which in turn tends to reflect itself in this kind of crime that is not reported.
That in itself draws attention to another interesting facet of our changing society, and that is the traditional extended family which an hon. member from Vancouver referred to yesterday and, which I referred to in a speech on my bill on human rights for children last May. The extended family is no longer a part of our urbanized society. The umbrella protection afforded by the extended family is gone. The child is one of the inocent victims, the first victim of the loss of protection afforded by the extended family. I am in the situation in which most of us grew up, where the grandparents were accessible, uncles and aunts were accessible, the neighbourhood clergyman, whether a priest, a minister or a rabbi, was accessible. Indeed, the corner storekeeper was often a close friend of the family and children could run to him.


Mr. Douglas (Bruce-Grey):: And the policeman.


James Aloysius McGrath: And the policeman, as my hon. friend points out. In our changing society we no longer have the friendly, familiar neighbourhood policeman on the beat. He is gone. He is sitting in some fancy cruiser with a radio telephone. I think that is a sad commentary because the policeman on the beat who became familiar with the neighbourhood was an important element in the protection of children. He knew all the local characters and could identify them. The police were an important element of protection for children. I thank my hon. friend for reminding me of that. But they are gone, Mr. Speaker, and we have not anything to replace them. We have left our children exposed, with no place to seek refuge. In many cases both parents are working so children cannot go to them. It is often six or seven o'clock in the evening before the family gets together as a unit for the one meal of the day that they enjoy together.
There is also the one-parent family, whether the parent happens to be the man or the woman. In most cases it is the woman, and she has to be away from the children in order to provide for them, so again they are left exposed. Then, of course, we have the children in various foster homes or with custodians that I would describe as surrogate parents; in other words, children who are wards of the state in various circumstances.
We have lost sight of the fact that when society changed, the umbrella of protection afforded by the extended family disappeared and we put nothing in its place. As a result we have an increase in the incidence of crimes against children.
I find it alarming to witness the rate of suicide among children, Mr. Speaker. I am sure hon. members would be surprised to know that between 10 per cent and 15 per cent of

all suicides in Canada are of people under 18 years of age. Members would be equally surprised to learn of the number of children who commit suicide, children who have nowhere to go, nowhere to turn. I believe this problem of child molestation, of the child abuser, is a manifestation of this fact. In the society that existed before we got into the urbanization that is now Canada, protection was there in the form of grandparents, uncles and aunts, the neighbourhood storekeeper, the neighbourhood policeman. But all that is gone.
I suggest that we have to take steps to protect children, and perhaps we can address this problem when we get into committee dealing with children's rights. Perhaps if the House is agreeably disposed to this bill we can address this question as a specific part of the over-all problem in the area of children's rights.
I feel like a millionaire, Mr. Speaker. I have no income apart from what I get from the taxpayers of Canada, but I have six children that the good Lord blessed me with. I am rich. My refuge, my oasis, is my children. They give to me as much as or even more than I give to them. I know what they mean to me. I know how I would feel if something were to happen to one of them. Indeed, Mr. Speaker, I was one of 15 children, 14 of whom were beautiful!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James Aloysius McGrath: We grew up in an area where we had the protection of the extended family. This was a time when children were important, child abuse was practically unheard of, and the battered child was practically unheard of. Any battered child could go and complain to his grandfather or the local clergyman.
Then there is the sexually molested child. This problem is not new; it has been with us from time immemorial. The problem is on the increase because of the permissiveness of this modern society of ours and because of the influence the media has in reflecting that permissiveness on children; and thus it influences those who abuse children.
I think it is only right and fitting that the House should address itself to this question. I congratulate the hon. member for bringing her bill forward and I commend it to the House.


Mr. Mark MacGuigan (Windsor-Walkerville):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for York South (Mrs. Appolloni) has put a very important question before us today. It is a question that those of us who were on the subcommittee on penitentiaries a year ago had to give some thought to, although we never had to face the issue directly. Our problem at that time was the penitentiary system. We had to take the sentencing process as given in order to narrow our work into sufficient compass so that we could deal with it. We dealt purely with the penitentiary aspects of the question. I am well aware from that experience how central this issue is to many of the problems we face today in the criminal justice system.
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The solution which the hon. member offers us is a very tempting one, and indeed I am tempted by it. I do have a reservation which I suppose is based more than anything else on the experience in the Soviet Union, where the principal means of dealing with dissenters in society and people engaging in what we might consider to be ordinary political protest is to subject them to psychiatric treatment in so-called hospitals. In our world we cannot neglect that kind of policy. It seems to me that we have to consider this question here in that type of world context. Therefore, there are very real problems in attempting to deal with the very tragic circumstances which the hon. member for York South mentioned through the device of compulsory hospitalization and psychiatric care.
Bill C-206, which has already received first reading, reintroduces with only slight modification the private member's bill, C-444 which was given first reading on April 14, 1978. The explanatory note to this present bill states:
The purpose of this bill is to grant special power to the criminal courts to make "hospital orders", as opposed to imposing the standard terms of imprisonment, where it is obviously appropriate that an offender, deemed to be dangerous by the Criminal Code, should receive medical treatment rather than being simply removed from society and eventually released into the street in a worsened condition.
When the hon. member for York South first introduced her bill on April 14, 1978-I am quoting from her speech at that time because I was not quick enough to write down what she was saying today-she expanded on the purposes and principles which underly this bill, as reported at page 4508 of Hansard:
This bill is premised on the acknowledgment of the fact that because brutal "justice" is frequently meted out by fellow inmates to child molesters, judges hesitate to sentence these offenders to prison terms. By granting special power to the criminal courts to make "hospital orders" as opposed to usual terms of imprisonment, this bill is designed to provide needed medical treatment to offenders suffering from psychopathic disorders and, especially important, to protect the public from the risk of further offences being committed if the offenders are at large.
In summary, the bill appears to have three related but separate purposes. The first is to protect society by ensuring that only medically treated, and presumably cured, dangerous sexual offenders, such as child molesters, are released back into society. Dangerous sexual offenders are now dealt with under the dangerous offenders provisions in part XXI of the Code. The new part XXI which was substituted for the old part with similar numbering in 1977 refers to the "dangerous offender," and replaces the "dangerous sexual offender" and the "habitual criminal". A finding that one is a dangerous offender results in an indeterminate penitentiary sentence.
The second purpose of the bill appears to be to meet the offender's needs, especially the need for treatment and protection from inmate retribution. I might add that those of us who were on that subcommittee for penitentiary reform last year are indeed very conscious of this. Those of us who overlook this-no one in this debate has, but some commentators in our society sometimes do-really overlook a very important aspect of our penitentiary system. While it is true that in the United States people do not usually have to be segregated as such in order to protect them in the same circumstances, one cannot
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really transpose the conditions of one culture, be it an outside culture or a prison culture, to another.
Those who have been guilty of sex offences need protection from other criminals. It is almost as if the other criminals feel a psychological need to look down on someone else; and the people who are looked down upon, above all others in the penitentiary system, are those who have been convicted of sexual offences.
The third purpose of the bill is to overcome a perceived judicial reluctance to sentence dangerous sex offenders to imprisonment under part XXI of the code. The suggestion is that judges will hesitate to impose penitentiary terms because the penitentiary cannot ensure the safety of the offender, and therefore such a sentence is in effect a sentence of harassment, mutilation and perhaps even death. In the case of the Kingston riot, as I recall there were two prisoners murdered at that time and 16 others who were maimed for life. To facilitate more appropriate sentences from the point of view of protection of society and the offender, it is necessary to provide a sentencing alternative such as a hospital order for dangerous sexual offenders.
There is a long history of problems encountered in dealing with abnormal offenders which has been categorized succinctly in the paper entitled "The General Program for the Development of Psychiatric Services in Federal Correctional Services in Canada" published in 1973, at pages 5 to 12. This history is one of the reasons the Ouimet report in 1969 and more recently the Law Reform Commission recommended the implementation of a system of hospital orders as a new sentencing alternative. The documents of the Law Reform Commission which ought to be referred to in this debate are "The Criminal Process and Mental Disorder", which was working paper No. 14 published in 1975, and then based on that the "Report to Parliament on Mental Disorder in the Criminal Process" in 1976, and a related report, "A Report on Dispositions and Sentences in the Criminal Process: Guidelines", in 1976 also.
The hospital order is a mechanism to allow a judge, after imposing a sentence of imprisonment, to order that all or part of that sentence be served in a psychiatric facility. The essential feature of the Law Reform Commission's variety of hospital order is that such an order applies only to a sentence of imprisonment. It can be considered only after such sentence is imposed, and the consent of the offender and of the psychiatric facility are conditions precedent to the making of a hospital order.
I am informed that the Department of Justice has been concerned for some time with the procedures and dispositions for the mentally disabled offender in the criminal justice system. On September 22, 1977, the law reform planning committee of the justice department gave initial approval to a mental disorder project. This project is to study the present management of the mentally disabled offender. The project is also studying official and professional reactions to the law reform commission reports that I have already referred to.

November 10, 1978
Criminal Code
The need for law reform in the management of mentally disabled offenders is well documented. The hospital order or hospital permit proposal in a variety of forms and applications has received widespread support. Indeed, a form of hospital order has been operating in England and Scotland for almost two decades.
The subject of mentally abnormal offenders and the U.K. system for managing them was exhaustively studied by the Butler committee in England which reported in 1975. The Butler committee recommended changes which tend to bring the U.K. system closer to what our Canadian Law Reform Commission recommended.
Therefore, the Department of Justice has studied Bill C-206 with a great deal of interest. The ideas and the intent contained therein reflect modern perception and thinking regarding the mentally abnormal offender. However, every policy initiative, and therefore every sentencing alternative, regardless of its own merit must also be considered within the over-all context in which it will operate. In this case, Bill C-206 must be evaluated in relation to both the existing criminal justice system and the mental health system.
The proposal of hospital orders as a sentencing alternative is a matter of considerable continuing priority in the department. Preliminary informal results of departmental work on the subject I understand will be made available, and at some time undoubtedly could be made available to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs if this measure or another one like it were referred to that committee for study.
Hospital orders raise the issue of treating that whole range of people presently not covered by the criminal law, people who fall between those who are normal and those who are insane under section 16 of the Criminal Code or unfit to stand trial. The Law Reform Commission's report dealing with mental disorder in the criminal process uses the phrase "psychiatric disorder that is susceptible to treatment". This phrase could include alcoholics, addicts, and psychopaths, including sociopaths, depending upon the availability of psychiatrists at the local level willing to define such disorders as "susceptible to treatment". The breadth of the definition used will determine what percentage of offenders will be eligible for a hospital order.
It must be noted that Bill C-206 embraces a potentially unlimited range of psychiatric disorders once the finding of "dangerous offender" has been made. The criteria set out are:
(i)	the court is satisfied, in the evidence of two psychiatrists,
(A)	that the offender is suffering from mental illness, psychopathic disorder, subnormality or severe subnormality; and
(B)	that the mental disorder is of a nature or degree that warrants the detention of the offender in a hospital for medical treatment; and
(ii)	the court is of opinion, having regard to all the circumstances, including
the nature of the offence and the character and antecedents of the offender,
and to the other available methods of dealing with him, that the most suitable
method of disposing of the case is by means of an order under this paragraph.
The purpose of hospital orders as a sentencing alternative is a matter of continuing priority for the government. I believe it

would be extremely useful if this matter were given the opportunity of being aired in more detail before the standing committee.
The resulting costs, and the impact upon prison populations, of giving judges the power to order psychiatric treatment could be substantial. At present, when passing sentence judges can only recommend treatment. Such a recommendation is now binding in law upon prison authorities, a most important distinction in their work given the presently inadequate psychiatric facilities, although that certainly is not the factor which should decide whether such legislation is needed.
Bill C-206 empowers the judge, in certain circumstances, to order a dangerous offender to serve all or part of his sentence in a psychiatric facility. Neither an agreement to treatment by the offender nor by the facility are prerequisites. Ordering treatment without requiring the agreement of patient or facility was a feature of the old U.K. hospital order system. This approach was found to be problematical and was therefore amended.
The Ouimet committee studied the concept of hospital orders under the English system almost a decade ago and found that the Canadian reaction across the country was mixed but basically against the English system. The committee concluded, however, that "the Code be amended to authorize the court to issue a 'hospital permit' to allow an offender to benefit at once from treatment in a psychiatric facility". The concept "hospital permit" incorporates the criterion of prior agreement to treatment by both the offender and the facility.
At present, psychiatric facilities are provincial or private. In some provinces they are almost non-existent. Until we consult with the psychiatric community concerned with forensic psychiatry, we cannot be sure that a hospital order will not give the courts the power to force provinces to provide psychiatric facilities they cannot afford.
Additional federal psychiatric facilities as part of the penitentiary system are being built now across Canada. However, they will not be completed until 1981 and we do not yet know, without further consultation, whether these facilities could handle the numbers that a judicial hospital order might produce or whether they could adapt to admitting this type of program.
A hospital order is a sentence of custody. Therefore, should the judge not have the power to specify the terms of that custody-open or secure custody, in-patient or out-patient? But a hospital order is also a sentence of treatment. Therefore, should not the psychiatrist have complete control of the terms of sentence?
The conflict is between security and treatment; psychiatrists want to treat, not to provide custody. In England a court may accompany a hospital order with a restriction order, which prevents the hospital authorities and the review tribunal from discharging, transferring or allowing temporary absences without the prior consent of the secretary of state. Such orders have been severely criticized in England.
November 10, 1978

Without some judicial power to guarantee security, judges will be reluctant to use hospital orders. Such reluctance will mean that hospital orders will not live up to the right to treatment that they are supposed to guarantee. On the other hand, hospital orders containing terms and restrictions, in relation to sentences under two years, will give the judges power to deal with matters presently dealt with by provincial corrections officers.
Bill C-206 in clause 2 decisively shifts the power to control the terms of sentence into the judicial sphere. The amended section 688.2 would provide that no release on parole or temporary absence is possible without a court order. Unfortunately, this does not deal with the fact that courts lose touch with the course of an offender's progress.
Tentative indications from consultations with key officials and professionals indicate that psychiatrists will not accept long-term prisoners for treatment if the completion of treatment means a return to prison which will undo the treatment. In fact, this is one of the problems which the subcommittee observed last year with the federal facility in Matsqui, British Columbia. Prisoners were admitted without consultation with the psychiatric faculty and removed without consultation. Assignments and withdrawals were made purely for disciplinary reasons without consultation with the staff and adequate attention to psychiatric needs. It is the long-term prisoner who is most likely to have the severest psychiatric disorder and the longest record. Therefore, mechanisms guaranteeing input by psychiatrists into the decision-making process with regard to how the remainder of a sentence is to be served after treatment must be developed and some form of sentence shortening must be considered.
The sensitive issue of sentence shortening on successful completion of treatment must be answered. If the psychiatric cause of the crime is removed, should not the sentence be shortened once treatment is successfully completed? Preliminary indications are that the majority of judges do not want to get into sentence supervision.
Psychiatrists are unanimous in the view that no treatment should be ordered without the consent to treat of the psychiatric facility. Psychiatrists and hospital administrators are also unanimous in the view that the treating unit should also be the assessing unit. This will mean that a hospital order would have to be based on the diagnosis of the psychiatric facility which will be doing the treating. The court will not be prevented from hearing the opinion of a psychiatrist in private practice that the offender needs treatment as long as someone else does the treating, but the court would not be able to base a hospital order solely on that opinion. Psychiatrists emphasize the great differences of opinion that exist as to the treatability of various disorders. Therefore it is important that the treating unit also be the assessing unit.
The Law Reform Commission places consent at the very heart of the hospital order proposal. It says that after considering the psychiatric report and the representations of both
Criminal Code
defence counsel and the prosecution, the presiding judge "may, with the consent of the accused and the agreement of the appropriate psychiatric institutions", order that the accused spend part or all of his sentence in a hospital or psychiatric institution.
The matter of consent is argued by the Law Reform Commission as follows:
The most contentious aspect of our proposal is that the offender must consent to the hospital order. This is in contrast to the position taken in two earlier Canadian studies recommending a similar disposition and is also at odds with present practice in England. Nonetheless, we feel such a requirement is essential. Compulsory treatment conflicts with our previously stated sentencing policy that within the context of a just sentence the offender should not only have access to adequate psychiatric treatment but should also have a right to refuse such treatment.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member but the time allotted to him has expired. However, he may continue by unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mark R. MacGuigan: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I shall not take the time of the House much longer but I shall finish, if I may, the quotation I was reading.
We feel that an offender who has been found responsible for his acts and capable of being tried should also be capable of consenting to or refusing medical treatment. His status as a prisoner should not deprive him of the right to make this decision any more than it does his right to decide whether he will have his wisdom teeth pulled.
Here we see the dilemma raised by this bill. On the one hand, there is an interest on the part of society in ensuring that people who have been convicted of criminal conduct of a particularly unpleasant kind and who are likely to repeat their offence should be dealt with by the law; on the other hand, there is the knowledge that merely putting them in prison is not the answer. Sometimes it makes things worse. It exposes offenders to unconscionable treatment from other prisoners, and while they do not deserve much from society, justice demands that all who are in prison should be subject only to the sentences imposed upon them and not to a whole array of other punishments, especially when administered arbitrarily by fellow prisoners.
Then there is the Soviet experience, not a very encouraging one. This is apt to become a large scale way of dealing with people who are not like ourselves. I do not believe that this should hinder or prevent us from dealing with the subject, but it does indicate the need for considerable caution in dealing with it. The English are moving away from their system which, until now, has not required consent. The Law Reform Commission here has recommended that we do require the consent of the inmate.
Thus it is an intricate question, and it seems to me the best way of dealing with it would be to study the subject thoroughly in the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. It is certainly not one we can deal with this afternoon, involving as it does all the considerations I have mentioned in my speech and others which I have not had time to discuss. I hope it will

November 10, 1978
Criminal Code
be possible in the near future to examine the subject thoroughly in public, if possible before a parliamentary committee.


Crawford Douglas: Mr. Speaker, I have not intended to become involved in this debate and I do not intend to take part very often in these discussions during the private members' hour. However, I feel bound to comment on some of the arguments which were put forward by my hon. friend from Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. MacGuigan), a learned member of the legal profession.
I am pleased that this bill has been put forward not by a member of the legal profession but by a concerned mother, a member of this chamber. I am pleased also that the spokesman from the opposition benches is not a member of the legal profession either. I say this because many times when we consider questions which are subject to legal interpretation and documentation we find ourselves moving away from the plain common sense of the issue. The common sense approach to this issue is: what are we as legislators doing to protect our children from the habitual sexual offender, particularly the sexual offender who wants to attack the young?
The hon. member made a good point when he said society itself was responsible in part for an alarming increase in the numbers of habitual sexual offenders. He mentioned that in times gone by the extended family comprised not only relatives, uncles, cousins and so on, but neighbours and friends right up to the policeman on the beat. That kind of society would not accept moral standards which are accepted now. In those days society itself presented opposition to the sexual offender which is not in vogue today.
I want to carry a little further the analogy of the policeman on the beat. If there is anything that policemen in this country view with alarm, it is the increase in sexual attacks on youngsters. I do not believe there is a policeman in this country who does not dread, in the day to day carrying out of his duty, the possibility of being called upon to investigate just such an attack on a youngster as was described by the hon. member who presented this bill. Policemen have an aversion to this type of crime. You can imagine a young policeman with children probably of the same age, six or seven years old, being called upon to investigate this type of offence. In some cases natural revulsion would almost prevent them from carrying out the duties they must perform as policemen in a logical manner.
I also want to discuss for a few moments the effects such cases have on a community, perhaps not on the large urban communities-I am speaking primarily here of small communities in which the residents and citizens are virtually a family in themselves. They see themselves and their neighbours as something of a family relationship, and when a crime takes place such as that described by the hon. member for York South (Mrs. Appolloni), it splits the community much more than it does those in the large urban centres. This is not to say a split does not take place in the large urban centres, but it is of much more concern to the small communities.
The hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville at one point mentioned that if this bill goes through it could result in extremely high costs for the courts and extremely high costs for psychiatric treatment. What price are we going to put on the safety of our children? We cannot put a price on the protection of our children from attacks such as those outlined in this private members' hour.
The hon. member also talked about the agreement of offenders to receive treatment. I simply cannot accept the suggestion that society can honestly say that a perpetrator of such a crime should be allowed to refuse treatment. How can we bring that into contention at this time, whether that treatment be out-patient treatment or treatment in a psychiatric institution? Who should have this responsibility? Should it be the judge who passes sentence or the psychiatrist who gives treatment? The buck has to stop some place. We can argue that this is not the judge's, society's or the psychiatrist's responsibility. That buck has to stop some place, and I suppose it stops here. If we decide that the judge has the responsibility to order treatment, then that responsibility is the judge's; and if he is going to be a judge, he has to accept that responsibility and act accordingly.
We cannot get into an argument about whether it is the judge's responsibility when he passes sentence or the psychiatrist's responsibility when he finishes treating the offender. It might be suggested that the psychiatrist might resent being told that he cannot let an offender go when his treatment is completed, but that is well taken care of in this bill. Proposed section 688.2(3) reads as follows:
The court shall order that an offender detained pursuant to a hospital order be set at large where
(a)	the offender would, but for the hospital order, have been set at large, and
(b)	the court is satisfied, upon the oral evidence of one of the psychiatrists
upon whose evidence the hospital order was based, that the offender, if set at
large, would not pose a serious danger to the public.
I think we also have to look at this matter from the viewpoint of the offender. Often these people know they have problems and desperately seek treatment, psychiatric or otherwise. Whenever an offence such as the one described by the hon. member for York South is committed, the community knows about it. In many cases the families of victims decide that they would prefer not to press charges.
The hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) spoke of cases of incest. Those cases are also known about in communities. I think the protection we provide offenders is important, because if a judicial order provides that an offender shall receive treatment whether he wants it or not, the offender can then return to society after treatment and say: "I have undergone treatment, and according to the experts, the psychiatrists and the psychologists, I am now cured". As the law now stands, after serving sentences offenders must then return to society under the stigma of not having received treatment or recognition by society of the problems they face.
I wholeheartedly support this bill. If it cannot go from there to the committee I hope we can have some assurance from the

November 10, 1978

Department of Justice that within at least a year this matter will be reviewed and that some form of compulsory treatment will be put into the Criminal Code so that people such as the ones we have been talking about can receive the assistance they require.


Claude-André Lachance: Mr. Speaker, debates during the private members' hour are fascinating in that they enable all hon. members to express openly their opinions and their concerns about current issues and to introduce in the House bills which, we must admit, illustrate some very valid concerns. In this regard, I would like to congratulate the hon. member for York South (Mrs. Appolloni) for her initiative in introducing today Bill C-206 on hospital orders.
I was particularly pleased to note today that three of the hon. members who took part in this debate, one from the opposition and two from the government, have no special legal training, and it was very interesting to be able to benefit from their views especially since they can approach this problem from something other than a strictly legal viewpoint because we must recognize that the question of hospital orders involves very serious legal problems. In this regard, I wish to thank the hon. member for Windsor-Walkerville (Mr. MacGuigan) for his extremely well-documented analysis on various problems that the implementation of Bill C-206 or any other similar legislation could cause to the operation of our penal institutions and the good administration of justice if we are not careful to ensure that these measures, that is hospital orders, have been studied in depth.
In this regard, I would like to reassure those who spoke before me, and especially the previous speaker, the hon. member for Bruce-Grey (Mr. Douglas), who asked the Department of Justice for special guarantees, by saying that the Department is paying particular attention to the question
Criminal Code
and that it is deeply concerned about it. I can reassure him on this point because the Department of Justice, following the publication in 1976 of a study of the Law Reform Commission, a report to parliament on mental disorder in the criminal process, established an internal all-level consultation mechanism to assess the impact that the implementation of the Law Reform Commission's recommendations could have on the workings of our institutions. This task force has met with experts in the field of correction, treatment-especially psychiatrists, psychologists, police officers, and consultative bodies-community work or services, and I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that this committee intends to report and-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. The hour provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired.


Mr. Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order simply to ask whether there was not some understanding that the subject matter of this bill would be referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.


Claude-André Lachance: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada on a point of order.


Claude-André Lachance: Mr. Speaker, I believe we will have the opportunity to resume this debate at some later date when the bill reappears on the order paper.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: It being five o'clock, the House stands adjourned until Monday at 2 p.m., pursuant to Standing Order 2(1).
At 4.40 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, November 13, 1978