1978-12-05

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Right Hon. J. G. Diefenbaker (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. 1 move:
That the government immediately make a declaration that it does not view with approval the purchase by the Wheat Board of thousands of freight cars, the responsibility for which should rest on the railway companies, as the cost thereof will ultimately reduce the returns that the farmers will be entitled to and thereby unjustly penalize the farm producers.


Mr. Speaker:: Presentation of such a motion for debate at this time can be done only with unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


LOTO CANADA
Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43.
In view of the shocking reports on national television that Loto Canada may end up with bills of up to $37 million because of, in the words of our national television network, "a gamble that did not pay off', and in view of the fact that the minister was urged by the provinces and by members of the House of Commons as far back as early June not to proceed with this gamble, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay):
That the minister make an immediate statement on motions setting out in complete detail the background of this fiasco, the reasons which motivated her, and a complete picture of the losses involved to the Canadian taxpayers so that members of the House of Commons can better understand the enormity of the blunder and ascertain, by questions after her statement, ways to prevent her from doing it again, assuming she remains in her portfolio until the spring.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for the introduction of such a motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CALL FOR INVESTIGATION BY AUDITOR GENERAL-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa-Whitby):: Mr. Speaker, I hope there will be a more responsive reaction to my Standing Order 43 motion on the same subject.
In view of last night's news report which presented a horror story of waste, incompetence and mismanagement related to Loto Canada, involving the possible waste of some $37 million of the taxpayers' money, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):
That this House calls upon the Auditor General of Canada to undertake immediately a specific investigation of Loto Canada and, if these reports are confirmed, that the minister responsible for Loto Canada hand in her running shoes and resign.


Mr. Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for the introduction of such a motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


RESTRAINT ON SPENDING OF LOTO CANADA-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Otto Jelinek (High Park-Humber Valley):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on the same grave and serious matter, under Standing Order 43, dealing with the government's mismanagement of Loto Canada with respect to an apparent $37 million blunder with the on-again, off-again Loto Select computer system.
In view of the government's commitment to restraint, and keeping in mind the millions of dollars wasted which could have been allocated to research and development and other casualties of this government's priorities for restraint, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday):
That the Prime Minister make a meaningful commitment to saving taxpayers' money by moving to restrain his Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport), hereby to be known as the $37 million woman.
80067-4 2

December 5, 1978
[ Translation]


FINANCE
Mr. Armand Caouette (Villeneuve):: Mr. Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, I wish to raise a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
On November 16 last the Minister of Finance (Mr. Chretien) suggested in his budget a reduction of the federal tax from 12 per cent to 9 per cent. That reduction does not apply to everybody since automobile dealers who have cars in stock or in transit will not benefit from it. That kind of step would surely help small businessmen and give some cash to consumers, and it would be appropriate for the government once for all to take its responsibilities. 1 move, seconded by the hon. member for Richmond (Mr. Beaudoin):
That this House urge the Minister of Finance to introduce a bill providing for a reduction of the federal tax on cars in stock or in transit to do justice to automobile dealers.


Mr. Speaker:: Presentation of such a motion for debate pursuant to Standing Order 43 can be done only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 43, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to move a motion on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
In view of the urgent necessity of setting up a national marketing board for broilers, the fact that the Department of Agriculture obtained long ago the provinces' agreement to this project, as well as the warranted concern which is rising among producers about the postponed announcement by the ministry of the setting up of this board, I move, seconded by the hon. member for St. Boniface (Mr. Hare):
That the House unanimously urge the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) to announce before the adjournment of the current session the setting up of the
national marketing board for broilers and that April I. 1978. be considered as the final date for the calculation of the import base.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
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ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
The current issue of Critical List Magazine outlines growing evidence that the quality of water for human consumption in our country is deteriorating to the point where scientists are concerned about the danger of water as a transmitter of major contaminants. It is increasingly evident that bacteria, viruses, chemicals and metals in our water supply constitute a basic health hazard. Since this issue affects all Canadians and is one over which we, as consumers, have little individual control, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles):
That this House instruct the Minister of State (Environment) to resume federal funding of water quality research in Canada.


Mr. Speaker:: Presentation of such a motion for debate at this time would require the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, pursuant to Standing Order 43, on a motion of urgent and pressing necessity arising out of the weekend musings of the Leader of the Official Opposition (Mr. Clark).
I move, seconded by the hon. member for Kent-Essex (Mr. Daudlin):
That this House directs that the proposed Tory San Clemente on the Athabasca River consist entirely of a fleet of $100,000 motor homes to be paid for by the Alberta Heritage Trust Fund.
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U412) ENERGY KITIMAT OIL PIPELINE PROPOSAL-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Stuart Leggatt (New Westminster):: Mr. Speaker, in view of the report today that the Kitimat pipeline proposal is "still alive and well", in view of United States legislation which sets December 9, 1978, as the deadline for proposals, and in view of the meeting of the Kitimat consortium with the cabinet of the British Columbia government in October this
December 5, 1978

year to seek approval of this project, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Cape Breton-East Richmond (Mr. Hogan):
That this government, on motions today, reaffirms its position that the Kitimat oil pipeline proposal is dead.


Mr. Speaker:: Presentation of such a motion for debate would require unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


FRESHWATER FISH MARKETING CORPORATION
Mr. Jack Hare (St. Boniface):: Mr. Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.
The Freshwater Fish Marketing Corporation was originally set up to market fish from inland waters. Currently, the FFMC is also in the business of selling supplies such as nets, fuel, clothing, etc., at cost to fishermen from whom they purchase fish. In view of the fact that private companies are involved in selling supplies to fishermen, this action of the corporation is an intervention by the government into the private sector and is contrary to the marketing objectives of the FFMC.
I move, seconded by the hon. member for Selkirk (Mr. Whiteway):
That the government take steps immediately to discontinue sales of supplies to freshwater fishermen.


Mr. Speaker:: Introduction of such a motion for debate at this time, pursuant to Standing Order 43, can be done only with unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. It is based on the labour force survey for last month which showed 850,000 Canadians unemployed, an increase of 50,000 and the startling and alarming increase in the number of young people unem-
Oral Questions
ployed in this country, officially standing at 14.5 per cent. It seems that the only growth factor in this economy is unemployment.
I ask the minister what steps the government intends to take to offset this very serious trend in the growth of youth unemployment and the lack of jobs generally, given the restrictive measures of his budget and the restrictive measures of the bank rate which is slowing growth in this country.


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, this month there is a slight increase in unemployment. It is 8.3 per cent, which is in fact one-tenth of a point less than it was a year ago. During the year we have created 371,000 new jobs. Of course, it is always a problem: unemployment is too high in Canada, but the capacity of the Canadian economy to create new jobs is unprecedented.


EMPLOYMENT
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could put a question to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Given the fact that the employment growth was 370,000, while the growth in the labour force was 380,000 which means a lag of 10,000 jobs-which is a very serious trend, and notwithstanding what the Minister of Finance had to say, what recommendations is the Minister of Employment and Immigration prepared to make to his colleagues in government, given the very serious situation in this country today where there are only 46,000 jobs and 850,000 Canadians looking for them?


Hon. Bud Cullen (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, it is not what recommendations I will make, but what recommendations have already been made and accepted whereby we are pumping something like S50 million into the job experience training program and expect to create jobs for about 58,000 young people over this winter. Through the job creation program I announced in September, $250 million has been made available which will impact on youth and youth unemployment. There is the co-operative education program, in concert with the provinces, and the year-round youth corps program. All of these programs are in place to meet a very important need.
I think the hon. member neglected one statistic, namely, the employment to population ratio, which is now 57.6 per cent for the second consecutive month. I think that is a better measure of the strength of the economy than the histrionics of the hon. member.


James Aloysius McGrath: The young people of this country, especially, want jobs, not the minister's programmed, empty rhetoric. In light of the importance of the labour force survey, not only in measuring the impact of the disastrous policies of this government on the economy but in terms of the minister's responsibil-
80067-42'A

December 5, 1978
Oral Questions
ity as minister of immigration and his responsibility for manpower training, I ask him if the government intends to do away with the job vacancy survey as of the end of this year, as they have planned, even though it will probably be more embarrassing to the government as we get into next year. If he intends to do away with it, can he tell the House what he intends to replace it with and will these new figures be made available every month?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, if we had all the money in the world we could probably meet all the requests and suggestions of members of the opposition. We just do not have that kind of money available.
I am as concerned as the hon. member about the level of unemployment. I have indicated a whole series of programs that we have in place to deal with this particular problem, with very heavy emphasis on the youth component of the unemployment figures. 1 think that is a legitimate response from the government. The fact that 370,000 more people are working this year than last year, that 2.3 million more people are working today than were working ten years ago, is some indication of a move in the right direction.


Mr. Clark:: Desperation.


INQUIRY AS TO SUCCESS OF JOB CREATION PROGRAMS
Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. The minister is always very keen to speak about his training and job-creation programs. Last September, he announced the implementation of several job-creation programs. However, Statistics Canada declared this morning that 265,000 persons had been looking for a job for more than 14 weeks, including 107,000 unemployed people between 15 and 24. Given the circumstances, I would like to ask the minister if he would be in a position to prove the efficiency of his programs that have been implemented for three months and should help improve the situation. Instead of that Statistics Canada announced this morning that the unemployment rate was rising sharply. Also, I would like to point out that the Minister of Finance proved in his budget that he will be unable-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Roch La Salle: The minister of Finance has proved that he will be unable to meet the demand. Under the circumstances, to guard against a situation which seems not only alarming but dangerous, will the minister introduce programs other than those which have until now proved totally inefficient?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Mr. Speaker, inevitably hon. members opposite say,

notwithstanding what the Minister of Finance has said, but we cannot be notwithstanding in this respect. The Minister of Finance has indicated that 370,000 more people are working this year than last. That is a record rate of creation of jobs in this country. I think to ignore the employment to population ratio of 57.6 per cent does a disservice and a discredit to the kind of statistics the hon. member is quoting. Every three months in Canada, 1.4 million jobs change hands, so there is hope for the people notwithstanding what the opposition would have us believe.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Roch La Salle: Mr. Speaker, I can understand the minister pointing out that more people are entering the labour market in large numbers but to my mind the government should have foreseen that. My question is directed to the Minister of Finance. I shall not speak of my riding but of the Saguenay-Lac Saint-Jean, Gaspe and Abitibi regions where the level of unemployment has hovered between 16 per cent and 18 per cent. Seeing those programs were a complete fiasco and taking into account the new super-department, does the Minister of Finance now intend to ask the minister responsible for economic development to create programs that could meet the needs of such vital sectors of the Quebec economy as 1 mentioned a while ago: does the Minister of Finance intend to ask help from his new boss?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, 1 brought down a budget a month ago the main thrust of which encouraged investments in Canada, because the demand in many sectors is increasing. Take, for instance, the use of the capacity for production of Canada which now stands at 87 per cent, that is much higher than the average over the last 15 years. We provided for special stimulants to slow growth areas, accelerated rates of investment credits, higher credit rates to research and development. We feel that because of the much improved competitive situation of Canada, the economy in the private sector will pick up. And we do not believe that injecting new government funds at this point would solve the problem, all the more so that every time we speak of spending money, the opposition complains about our having deficits that are much too high.
December 5, 1978


LOTO CANADA
John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Speaker, it is strange to hear the Conservatives huff and puff when they see the consequences of the government implementing their own economic policy.


Mr. Woolliams:: Keep it clean.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles Joseph Clark: Get your target straight, Ed.


John Edward Broadbent: I would like to ask the Prime Minister, given the report last night that Loto Canada has conceivably wasted up to some $37 million of taxpayers' money through a series of mismanagement decisions, was the government aware that people were actually being hired and expensive equipment was being put into place by Loto Canada precisely at the time the federal minister was negotiating with the provinces alternative arrangements for lotteries in this country?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know to what report the hon. member refers, but I will gladly take notice of the question.
[DOT] (M22)


John Edward Broadbent: For the Prime Minister's information, there was a report on the news last night to the effect that there has been substantial waste. The Prime Minister can shrug his shoulders; however, most Canadians are concerned about a $37 million waste even if he is not. The allegations made in the news report were extremely serious if they turn out to be accurate.
Will the Prime Minister take to the Auditor General a specific request from the government that he investigate these allegations of serious waste in the operations of Loto Canada?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, if I was shrugging my shoulders, it was only because of the fact the hon. member referred to a newscast as the source of his allegations. I said I had not heard it. I am not aware of it. I will try and get a report on that newscast and see if it is more accurate than another one of last night.


John Edward Broadbent: I hope the Prime Minister is informed about something. 1 will go to the minister directly responsible. Can the minister inform the House whether she has had a chance to investigate the allegations that were made in the newscast last night? If not, does she intend to do so? Specifically, will she recommend that the Auditor General, as an impartial servant of this House, investigate these serious allegations?


Hon. Iona Campagnolo (Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport)):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that the hon. gentleman finally got around to asking me the question.
Oral Questions


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Iona Campagnolo: I think the CBC has taken stories from a possibly disgruntled ex-employee and given them the virtue of fact. There is no fact to this $37 million figure. I have to refute my value to this House, but far from being a $37 million woman at the moment, I am only an $800,000 woman. So we put a price on it. In this connection I would like to give some detail, if I may, because the figures given were totally incorrect.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, they cannot bear to hear the facts: I will wait until they are ready.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Leonel Beaudoin (Richmond):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Richmond.


Léonel Beaudoin: My question has to do with the motion moved in the last few days by my colleague the hon. member for Bellechasse, asking the Minister of Agriculture to establish without delay, considering the approval of the provinces, a poultry marketing board. Can the Minister of Agriculture tell us whether he considered that matter and, if so, when he will take action?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Mr. Speaker, I have looked into the matter. The answer is "Soon."


REQUESTED BAN ON IMPORTATION OF CUT-UP POULTRY FROM UNITED STATES
Léonel Beaudoin: I would like to direct a supplementary to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Considering that some producers complain about the fact that poultry from the United States enters the country as we find it in our supermarkets, unidentified, in quarters or cut-up, can the minister tell us whether he is aware of that situation and whether he will inquire or take steps to end it.


Hon. Jack H. Horner (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I do not know whether poultry is

December 5, 1978
Oral Questions
coming into Canada that is listed as anything other than poultry. 1 will certainly look into the question raised by the hon. member and report to him directly.


LOTO CANADA
Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, 1 should like to put a question to the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport). I regret her histrionics of a few minutes ago, saying she would have to wait to answer questions, when she has an opportunity on the motion under Standing Order 43 to make a statement.
In view of the fact that the CBC has recognized what the opposition has been talking about since last June regarding Loto Canada, and in view of the fact that the president of Loto Canada made a statement on June 26 that the contract with General Instruments had been "carefully and prudently managed", can the minister tell the House whether the story appearing in last night's national news entitled "A gamble that didn't pay off' is true and, if it will not cost up to $37 million, what figure does the hon. lady estimate it will cost? The figure I gave in the debate on October 25, as reported at page 469 of Hansard, was between $23 million and $28 million.


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I have informed the hon. member for Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton on a number of occasions that when the contracts were terminated I would consider tabling a full disclosure of those terminations in the House. I do think some of the principles behind this issue should be made known to the House. The federal and provincial governments together now have a gross intake of close to $900 million a year from lotteries. Of that amount, only $200 million a year is assigned to Loto Canada; the rest remains with the provinces. We have given $100 million per year by transferring the $1 lottery to the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.
As to the hon. member's question with respect to the CBC report, that is completely erroneous. I was asked what the termination cost would be. I can tell the hon. member only one part of the termination cost, because the assignment of the contract is not completed. In the area of software and attendant equipment, we originally expected the cost to be $14 million. The resolved cost will be between $2 million and $3 million, of which Ontario and Quebec will pay $1 million.
As to the other contracts, as I have said in the House repeatedly, I will consider tabling the data as soon as I have it. I do not have it at this time because it is not completed. As for the hon. gentleman's statement of June 26, I have here his notes of that day: he asked that the House instruct the Crown corporation, Loto Canada, to withdraw from any agreement

with General Instruments Canada. I would say we have fulfilled his request.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul Wyatt Dick: It would have been pleasant, Mr. Speaker, if this had been done at the time and saved the $23 million to $28 million they will end up losing on this deal. However, this has cost the Canadian taxpayer a great deal of money.
In view of the fact that at the meeting with the provincial ministers in Toronto at the end of September or early October, at which the minister responsible for Loto Canada was accompanied by the Minister of Justice, who was then minister in charge of federal-provincial relations, she stated she was using this only as a bargaining tool to preserve a portion of the lottery business for the government, I wonder whether the Prime Minister would consider that a person who only uses as a bargaining tool some $23 million to $28 million should be considered as a person who should be replaced as a minister, one who shows such inept and wasteful habits, poor management ability-


An hon. Member:: Shameful.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, I have a further supplementary-


Some hon. Members:: Sit down.


Mr. Speaker:: I am sure the hon. member realizes the argumentative nature of his question. The hon. member for Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Privilege, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Wellington-Grey-Duff-erin-Waterloo.


COMPENSATION PAID TO CORPORATION EMPLOYEES LAID OFF
Mr. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker, I also have a question for the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) arising out of the CBC report last night.
The minister will be aware that the CBC reported that several dozen employees of Loto Select were fired after the decision was made to terminate the program, many of whom were hired only days or weeks before the decision was made. One man allegedly has been given some $10,000 under a termination agreement, despite the fact that he never even showed up for work.
Can the minister indicate how much money will be paid in compensation to employees who were laid off after the plan collapsed, and can she indicate how many employees are involved in this?
December 5, 1978


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, there are 71 such employees, 49 of whom have already found alternate employment or taken their severance pay. As the House knows, we felt that these people should be treated humanely because some of them had come from other jobs.
This is another matter in which the opposition wants to have it both ways. I clearly recall hon. members opposite on many occasions saying that there were no jobs at all for Canada in this Loto Canada promotion.
With regard to the reference made earlier by the other hon. gentleman, I want it to be clearly-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. If I cannot permit the question,
I cannot permit the answer.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, in the minister's speech she neglected to tell the House what the cost would be for paying benefits to people who were laid off. The CBC report also stated that over $300,000 worth of fittings and furniture are mothballed in Loto Select's Vancouver headquarters, which are leased at the present time at a cost of $160,000 a year for five years.
Can the minister tell the House how much has been committed for the leasing and furnishing of unused facilities in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, and how much of this cost can be recovered?


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, the leases were set out originally at $1 million, and the amount we feel we necessarily will have to pay is $185,000. We will be vacating the Vancouver office in 90 days. Two lessees that we think are very suitable are looking at the property and at some of the fixtures now.


INVOLVEMENT OF TREASURY BOARD-NEGOTIATIONS WITH PROVINCES
Mr. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask a question of the President of the Treasury Board with respect to this matter. Can he shed any light on the rationale of Treasury Board approving this rather substantial negotiating ploy for the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) without tenders, since it obviously was not to help Canadian business or to promote a depressed area of the country, as is the case with other undertakings?
Can the President of the Treasury Board tell us if he now knows on what basis this rather foolish transaction or ploy was permitted?


Hon. Judd Buchanan (President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, it is my understanding that Treasury Board was not involved in this. Loto Canada acted as a Crown agency and did so on its own behalf.
Oral Questions


ROLE OF PROVINCES UNDER AGREEMENT
Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, 1 am sure the President of the Treasury Board is very happy that he can give the answer today that Treasury Board was not involved.
Perhaps I can ask the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) to give us a little more information about the role of the provinces, which protested so bitterly when these negotiations were going on over what the Financial Times of Canada called a hushed-up, rushed-up deal. Can the minister tell us exactly what benefit or equity she expects from the provinces to help her extricate herself from this situation?


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I do not think there is any question of the provinces helping me to extricate myself from this particular proposal, since it is an agreement between both provinces and the federal government. This is the cost to rationalize the lottery market in this country. It is a fraction of the cost which was mentioned by the CBC, which it conjured up from its own facts: the CBC did not bother to come to Loto Canada to get any facts.
As an aside, the CTV began this story three weeks ago and the CBC has just started on it. The federal government lottery and the lotteries of Ontario and Quebec are working together and, depending on the buy-out cost, that will be how much will be shared by the provinces. I have already told hon. members that in one section of the phase-out there is a $1 million input from the provinces. In the other, I cannot give the details. It is not that I do not want to tell the House; it is that I cannot without pushing up the price. If hon. members opposite think they are performing a favour by doing this-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Oxford.


INVOLVEMENT OF DEPARTMENT OF INDUSTRY, TRADE AND COMMERCE
Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, and it is with respect to the Loto Select debacle. Prior to the signing of the agreement with Genera! Instruments Corporation, was the minister or his department consulted by any of his cabinet colleagues or their officials regarding the letting of a contract, without bids, to an American firm when it was known that no part of the work would go to Canadians, and when 14 Canadian firms were capable of bidding; and, if so, did he agree?


John (Jack) Henry Horner: Mr. Speaker, actually the Crown corporation acted without the advice of the government, but I would be glad to take a look at this matter.

December 5, 1978
Oral Questions


INVOLVEMENT OF MINISTRY OF STATE FOR FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS
Bruce Halliday: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations.
With respect to the ill-fated Loto Select scheme envisaged by the government last spring, can the minister indicate whether his predecessor and his departmental officials were in agreement with the Minister of State and the government forging ahead for their own glory and self-aggrandizement without consulting the provinces prior to negotiating a contract with General Instruments Corporation, in view of the fact that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce in June, 1976-now the Secretary of State for External Affairs-said in committee: "We could decide to carry on or withdraw completely if there is an understanding between the provincial governments and the federal government."?


Hon. John M. Reid (Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations):: Mr. Speaker-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Mercer Reid: I want to thank hon. members for their expression of confidence. I say to the hon. member that I do not know the answer to his question, but I will make inquiries.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Ralph E. Goodale (Assiniboia):: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. In view of the representations which I, and no doubt other members, have received with respect to Canadians presently in Iran, and in view of proposals which the Secretary of State for External Affairs apparently now has under consideration to assist citizens of Canada who may be in some difficulty in the tragic events now unfolding in Iran, can the Prime Minister indicate more specifically what contingency plans are being prepared to ensure the safety of Canadians caught in this conflict and, particularly, what steps their relatives and friends in Canada should take to ascertain their whereabouts and their circumstances?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I am informed by the Secretary of State for External Affairs that he is preparing such contingency plans, but that at the time being there is no cause for alarm. The embassy is in touch with the some 1,200 Canadians who are in Iran. About one-third of them are in Tehran. The others are either on the Caspian or in the south where there is no immediate danger. Because of the fact that the embassy does know their whereabouts, we are convinced that the government will be able to

act, if action is necessary. However, at the present time there is no cause for alarm.


FINANCE
Mr. Max Saltsman (Waterloo-Cambridge):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my question to the Minister of Finance: it is in connection with the worsening unemployment figures which were released today.
Since the minister does not seem to have any concrete proposals to put forward to reduce the level of unemployment in Canada, and since unemployment in the Ottawa-Hull area has increased almost 30 per cent in one month as a result of government cutbacks, would the government reconsider its policy and put off the cutbacks in order to ensure that we do not reach double-digit unemployment in the winter months?
[ Translation]


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, in our budget policy last month we announced that we were hoping for economic recovery through higher investments in Canada and that, to our mind, was the best policy to adopt at this time. I think that because of a major improvement in our competitive position on world markets, our economy should pick up in the next few months. As for our cutbacks, that policy was announced last August. We thought it was essential to lessen the government deficit, and in so doing we have tried to minimize staff cuts. That, of course, may be too much for the hon. member, but it is still four times less than what the Progressive Conservative party proposes at this time.


Max Saltsman: Mr. Speaker, it is quite clear that whatever the intentions of the government were, its policies are not working, unemployment is increasing and it looks as if it will continue to increase. Just to give the minister another figure from the labour force statistics which were released today- rather startling statistics-the service sector lost 22,000 jobs in November.
As this is unquestionably a result of the reduction in consumer spending, at the very least will the government reconsider its position to withdraw the $250 million in purchasing power from the economy in the first months of 1979 as a result of the reduction in family allowance payments from $28 to $20? Will the government at least defer that proposal in order to ensure purchasing power is maintained at a high level?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, parliament was called upon last night to vote on that proposition. Almost every member of the House voted in favour of the bill. A clause was proposed by the
December 5, 1978

New Democratic Party and three members voted in favour of it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


REASON FOR INCREASE IN WHOLESALE PRICE INDEX-VALUE OF CANADIAN DOLLAR
Mr. Sinclair Stevens (York-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance: it deals with the wholesale price index.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: The three good guys voted in favour of the clause the minister referred to.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: 1 will wait until the Liberals and their socialist cousins calm down.
Today, the wholesale price index indicated that in October prices rose 2.1 per cent, or at the rate of 25 per cent per year. Would the minister explain to the House why this rapid increase should be occurring? Would he agree that this is another example of the disastrous effects on prices of the cheap dollar encouraged by the minister?


Hon. Jean Chr6tien (Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, we receive the total picture every month when the consumer price index is produced in order to reveal the real reason for it. In the last three months, inflation in Canada increased at the rate of 1.1 per cent, which was the lowest three-month period of inflation we have known for many years.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Mr. Speaker, again my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. So far this month the government has lost $200 million in attempting to defend the dollar, on top of the $500 million which was lost last month.
Would the Minister of Finance indicate if the chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs was stating government policy at the Skyline hotel when he was reported as calling for the pegging of the dollar at approximately today's value?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Mr. Speaker, I cannot accept the figures given by the hon. member concerning what happened to the reserve this month. It is not known. It will be known by the public at the end of the month. It is not very useful to throw around figures like that just to create more speculation concerning the dollar.
In terms of the policy of the government, the hon. member made a speech at noon. He is entitled to his opinion. The policy of the government is a floating currency and we have no intention of pegging the Canadian dollar.
Oral Questions STATUS OF WOMEN


REPORT OF ADVISORY COUNCIL CONCERNING ADVANCEMENT IN PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. David MacDonald (Egmont):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Justice in his capacity as the minister responsible for the status of women. The minister may recall that last Monday I asked him about the unusual procedure of the advisory council in sending to the Public Service Commission its annual assessment on the progression of women in the public service. The minister saw no problem with that if it only dealt with statistics.
Has he determined whether this further delay has resulted in any amendments to that report? How much longer will the report be delayed before it is made public in parliament and to the people of the country?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Justice):: Mr. Speaker, last week 1 told the hon. member that the advisory council was an autonomous agency and that I did not intend to interfere with its operations. I do not intend to start interfering this week any more than I intended to last week. However, I would be very happy to relay to the council the question raised by the hon. member. I am sure the council will be quite pleased to communicate directly with the hon. member if there is anything to communicate.
As far as the report itself is concerned, as I have said, I do not have any information. I do not intend to interfere with the operations of the council. The hon. member would be the first one to blame me if I were to attempt that. I will relay the question, and if I receive an answer I will be very happy to pass it on to the hon. member.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: Mr. Speaker, while the minister is making that inquiry and keeping his pristine purity respecting the operations of the advisory council, perhaps he could also investigate why a further report which was produced some time ago, entitled "Problems of Immigrant Women in the Canadian Labour Force", was referred to the Department of Employment and Immigration for its assessment and criticism, instead of being published in the normal manner? Why, in particular, did an official of the department recommend a deletion from that report with specific reference to the new Immigration Act because of its critical nature toward the department?
Has the minister had discussions about what seems to be a new operating procedure respecting the advisory council, taking what were formerly independent reports, without the consent or the knowledge of the authors, and referring them to the appropriate departments and commissions for some possible amendment or censorship before they are finally published?


Marc Lalonde: Mr. Speaker, I find the allegation of the hon. member rather preposterous, to say the least. I am not aware of this other case. Again, I do not intend to ask the council why they are doing it, and I certainly will not ask them to stop

December 5, 1978
Oral Questions
doing it. The only explanation 1 can find is that the council wants to act in a very knowledgeable and competent manner.
Rather than doing as hon. members of the opposition do so often, I want to be sure their facts are correct before broadcasting various things publicly. I cannot but applaud the sense of responsibility and objectivity on the part of an advisory council which operates independently of the government. 1 see nothing wrong with that, and I am amazed the hon. member should scandalize himself about this.


BILINGUALISM
Hon. James Richardson (Winnipeg South):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. In view of widespread reports that the task force on Canadian unity has concluded that the government's policy on national bilingualism is divisive and unworkable, will the Prime Minister now agree to delay the rewriting and redrafting of the constitutional amendment bill, former Bill C-60, at least until the Pepin-Robarts task force has reported to the public and to the government?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, the so-called reports are unfounded rumours. One of the co-chairmen of the task force said that he could not comment in any way on it and that the report would speak for itself. We are happy with that situation. We are confident the report, on the contrary, will be favourable to the government: I have no guarantee of that, of course. But I believe it is irresponsible journalism to take a rumour such as that, which has no foundation, and give it the prominence it has been given.
As far as the government is concerned, linguistic equality in Canada is the basis of unity in this country. We have fought three elections on it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is a policy which had the support of every party in the House. It would be very surprising if a task force were to go against the policy accepted by all parties in the House.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: What about Horner?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Unless the Tories are telling us now that they do not support this policy, in which case we are prepared to fight a fourth election on it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Paproski:: We should like to.


Mr. Lawrence:: We will do everything to get you to the polls.


James Armstrong Richardson: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister seems to say that he does not have the evidence, and that these reports are unfounded. I have in my office the evidence that I am talking about.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Question.


James Armstrong Richardson: I receive in my office 400 or 500 letters a day, from all provinces of Canada, which indicate-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I must ask the hon. member to put his supplementary question.


James Armstrong Richardson: In brief, my question is: in light of this evidence, will the Prime Minister listen to the Canadian public? Will he modify and reconsider his plans to entrench language rights and his concept of language equality into the Constitution of Canada?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I repeat, I know and admit that a certain number of Canadians do not favour this policy, and I believe the hon. member is one of them. I can only say that it was our policy in 1968, 1972 and 1974, and it will be our policy in the next election. I do not think any party will fight against the concept of linguistic equality in Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Steve Eugene Paproski: What about Horner?


Mr. Hees:: Jack says he is going to.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. F. A. Philbrook (Halton):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State (Environment) concerning the problem of phosphorus waste pollution in the Great Lakes and the production of excess algae and plant growth.
Last week the technical adviser for the Ontario environment ministry, Mr. William Steggles, stated, "some states and U.S. cities continue to pollute the lakes because no legislation controlling phosphorus levels has been passed, particularly two or three big, populous states-Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois-while apparently controls are being applied well on the Canadian side."
Will the minister take any measures to persuade our American neighbours to institute much more effective controls for this problem?


Hon. Len Marchand (Minister of State (Environment)):: Mr. Speaker, since the signing of the Great Lakes water quality agreement, 99 per cent of the population on the
December 5, 1978

Canadian side of the Great Lakes has been serviced by adequate sewage treatment facilities. On the American side of the Great Lakes, 65 per cent of the population is now serviced by adequate sewage treatment facilities, compared to 5 per cent when the agreement first began. So real strides are being made in this area.
Under the 1978 agreement, new final deadlines have been set by which industrial and municipal pollution control programs are to be completed and operating by December 31, 1982, and December 31, 1983, respectively. We expect to make great strides in all aspects of pollution control in the Great Lakes under this new agreement.


POST OFFICE
Hon. W. G. Dinsdale (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker my question is for the Postmaster General. I presume that the Postmaster General is aware of the growing tension in major plants across the country in the wake of the recent work stoppage.
In view of this situation, would the minister inform the House as to the action he is taking to ensure that there will be no interruption of mail service during the Christmas season by either illegal strikes or work slow-downs?


Hon. J. Gilles Lamontagne (Postmaster General):: Mr. Speaker, many media reports have indicated that we are taking our responsibility seriously. Disciplinary action has been taken against the workers who acted illegally or defied parliament. Had we not taken this action, I think it would have indicated complicity on our part to such actions. Everything is being done to see that the workers are treated justly and fairly. We are concerned that things be done fairly, particularly for those workers who abided by the law.
I can assure the hon. member that if there is an illegal strike during the Christmas season, we will take appropriate action to prevent it.


Walter Gilbert Dinsdale: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's comments. Could the minister tell the House if he is aware of the particular circumstances, and whether they are indicative of the situation in other plants across the country, in the Calgary post office in which, once again, management has restricted access to the cafeteria for workers who are on weekend and late shifts? If this is the case, would the minister instruct managers in other post offices across the country not to engage in this sort of unnecessary confrontation?


Mr. Lamontagne:: Mr. Speaker, if a position such as the hon. member has described has been taken, it is for good reason. I am not aware of this decision because it is made at the local level.
Oral Questions
Coming back to the danger of a strike during Christmas, I read an article in a newspaper this morning about a possible wildcat postal strike threatened by CUPW and just below the article was another one headed "Jobless rate up slightly." 1 am sure there are many people who are not employed and who would be glad to take the place of postal workers who do not wish to work.


LOTO CANADA
Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, 1 have a question for the "minister of fitness and amateur purchasing". The minister has said frequently that she will not tell the Canadian people or this parliament the full cost of this transaction until it is completed. Would she give us some idea when she expects the transaction to be completed?


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I do not admit to any amateur purchasing. It was done in conference with the provinces which the hon. Leader of the Opposition has been proposing take over the lottery. I expect the contract to be terminated within two or three months.
I mentioned today two separate items. One is the General Instruments contract-that is, the automated equipment-for which Loto Canada will be reimbursed a portion by Ontario and Quebec when it is completed. Part two, which I have already mentioned in the House today, concerns the peripheral equipment respecting which the provinces are providing $1 million of what we expect to be somewhere between $2 million and $3 million in pay-out costs.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a question to the Prime Minister. He will know that since there has been federal-provincial co-operation forced upon the government in this matter, the price attached by the provinces-I gather, agreed to by the federal government-for disposal of these assets is about half of the $23 million that the federal government in fact paid.
In the interests of having the Canadian public and parliament know about the quality of the decisions that went on within this Crown corporation-ministers have been very careful to blame Crown corporations and avoid responsibility themselves-and in order to ensure that this kind of waste of money does not occur again, would the Prime Minister be prepared to refer this matter to the appropriate committee of this House and allow a committee of parliament to begin work, this week, in examining what went on and what went wrong in this waste of millions of dollars on behalf of Canadian taxpayers either by the minister or by the Crown corporation?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I do not admit the premises of the question or even the way the question is posed. The Leader of the Opposition suggests that

December 5, 1978
Oral Questions
there is a waste of money. The minister has told us that when the contracts are completed, she will table them if they are requested. Then the question can be debated.
In the meantime, I would remind the Leader of the Opposition that he and his party are the ones who wanted to give all the product of the lottery to the provinces; they did not want the federal government to keep anything. Now, as a result of the negotiations by the minister there is an equitable division, one which is accepted by the provinces-which hon. members opposite continue to scoff at-and which will permit the federal government to gain something substantial from the $900 million which is the annual product of the lottery. I understand that the opposition is not interested in having the central government preserve any of its attributes, but that is not the view of this government.


Charles Joseph Clark: Mr. Speaker, it becomes more and more evident that the Prime Minister does not, in fact, know the facts in this situation. I am sure that he will want to brief himself and that after briefing himself he will agree that there has been a considerable waste of Canadian taxpayers' money the details of which should be known to this House.
I would ask the Prime Minister to acquaint himself with all the facts in this transaction, assuming the minister will tell him, then come back to the House of Commons tomorrow and tell us the minimum loss which will be sustained by the people and the treasury of Canada, and that he then make a decision to refer the subject matter involved here-this wastage of millions of dollars-to the appropriate standing committee of this House.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Mr. Speaker, I repeat, when the contracts are completed, 1 would certainly be willing to look at the exact figures; but as of now 1 think that I can answer the question asked by the Leader of the Opposition, based on the minister's answer.
If the minister says that out of the $900 million, which is the total product of the lotteries to the Canadian provinces and federal government, $200 million of that comes to us, we are $200 million ahead of the position which was suggested by the Leader of the Opposition.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


CONSUMER AFFAIRS
Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Mr. Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. I am sure he is aware that most of the service stations in our country are now in the process of replacing leaded, super or premium gasoline with super, unleaded gasoline, which will affect approximately 5 per cent of Canadian car owners. That is approximately 500,000 cars.
[Mr. Trudeau.)
The problem is that there has been virtually no warning. There was something of a conspiracy of silence by the gas companies, the car companies and the government that this was about to take place. Can the minister confirm that new cars are still being sold which require leaded gasoline, and can he tell us whether fuel will be available for the lifetime of such vehicles?


Hon. Warren Allmand (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, my preliminary information is that cars are still being sold which require that type of gasoline, but that has been changed for the latter part of this year and next year. There will be a greater demand, especially in Quebec where these complaints came from, for leaded gasoline for high-test type vehicles. We expect a change to take place, and I will be watching the situation closely and will get more information.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: A supplementary question, Mr. Speaker. Can the minister assure us that adequate gasoline will be available for people whose cars require leaded fuel? Can he also tell us whether he has checked into the possibility of there being misleading advertising by Imperial Oil and other companies who have said that people who use leaded gasoline should switch to unleaded gasoline? I think he knows the dangers this might pose to some engines. Has he checked to see whether this is misleading advertising and, if he has, what action does he plan to take?


William Warren Allmand: Mr. Speaker, in the first place, we would recommend to the oil companies that they let consumers know where they can find leaded gasoline for high-test vehicles, just as they let people know where they can find diesel fuel.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: How?


William Warren Allmand: They can put out a list of stations which supply that kind of fuel. They do it already for diesel. I will look into the other matter to see whether there is any false advertising involved.


PRIVILEGE
Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, it is with some reluctance that I rise to bring up what I feel is a question of privilege.
Today I was ruled out of order for allegedly asking a question which was argumentative or political in nature. 1 know, of course, that we would not want to have any questions which are argumentative or political in nature in this political debating chamber. The fact is, however, that the question which I put had a part which was directly on point, and is on point, regarding the matter we have been dealing with today



December 5, 1978

and what has been revealed about it, that is, that there has been waste of money, that there has been poor manageability and ineptitude in carrying out something they should not have got into last June, and on which 1 have a motion to put-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member does not need to argue that point. The first part of his question was perfectly in order, but the last part was argumentative in nature. He must surely recognize that. If he suggests that we should permit argumentative questions he is asking me to go against the precedents of the House. Surely he could not argue at this point that his question was not argumentative in nature in light of the language he used at the end of it.
The first part of his question was perfectly in order. I have to exercise my discretion in respect of questions and supple-mentaries, however, on the basis of precedents. He finished his question with a clearly argumentative aspect. 1 have no choice. That is a discretion that 1 have to exercise and, having exercised it, it seems to me the matter is finalized.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, perhaps 1 could continue for a brief moment. Of course, the last part of my question is something which we have heard before, and I suspect that we will hear it again. 1 was asking the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) if he would dismiss a minister who showed wasteful tendencies, inability and ineptitude in managing his department. I think that fully 50 per cent or maybe 100 per cent of the questions asked in this House have some political colouring or some argumentative character. Be that as it may, however, I would like to move at this time, on my question of privilege:
That the matter of questions or answers being argumentative or political in nature be referred to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections in order that new guidelines of clearness in questioning and answering can be decided upon as argumentative political questions and answers should be forbidden in this political debating chamber.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I do not know why the hon. member insists upon using the word "political". I never said anything about the political nature of his question, and I have never ruled a question out of order on the grounds of it being political. Never! I do not know why he uses that argument. It has no bearing on the situation that we face.
The hon. member spoiled a perfectly good question on a very important subject by an argumentative conclusion. If I am to be consistent with him as 1 have been with his colleagues, 1 could not permit his question. Order, please.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre) on a point of order.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Mr. Speaker, privilege-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.


Paul Wyatt Dick: Privilege-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton (Mr. Dick) has been heard on his question
Privilege-Mr. Oberle
of privilege and I have indicated to him that it is not a question of privilege. 1 am sure I have not said anything to him that was not in keeping with the practices of the House. He has had his day in court to raise his question of privilege and has not been successful. I should like to move on to another member. The hon. member for Calgary Centre.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order with respect to an item in the supplementary estimates of which I gave Your Honour notice and about which I have communicated with the hon. member for Winnipeg-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre) might wait until we call orders of the day, which is supply today, in order that I may take this in accordance with practices which I have indicated to the House and which he is now following very carefully.


PRIVILEGE
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to raise a question of privilege in regard to questions put to the Minister of State (Fitness and Amateur Sport) (Mrs. Campagnolo) and particularly her answer to my leader toward the end of the question period. She left the impression that purchases of Loto Canada gadgetery were only made after consultations with the provinces. I am sure Your Honour would want to give the minister the opportunity to correct her statement as it is clearly misleading. Consultations were not held with the provinces before the decision was made to extend the service of Loto Canada, but consultations with the provinces resulted in the cancellation of the contracts.


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I shall have to refer to Hansard to see the exact words, but I think it should be placed on the record that the abandonment of the Loto Canada game is consistent with Loto Canada's marketing philosophy.
The game was introduced in the first place to give balance and stability to a one-product line. We had a one-product line and we needed to have more strength in order to meet the head on competition coming from the provinces on a continuing basis. In those circumstances the one-product line was simply too fragile. That decision was made by the Crown corporation, and 1 believe it is one that is often taken in the market place. When you are dealing with a Crown corporation you are

December 5, 1978
Privilege-Mr. Oberle
dealing with a business, and these kinds of affairs take place in business all the time.
When we had the agreement with the provinces some six months later, and when we had secured the federal-provincial memorandum of agreement on October 5, it was based on market sharing of the revenue which was originally planned.
In order to define this question properly for the hon. member opposite, I would tell him that when we went to the federal-provincial conference in Regina we offered the provinces a 50-50 share of the federal portion of the revenue of Loto Canada. Subsequently, when we came to an agreement with the provinces on October 5, we felt that we no longer had the previous highly competitive situation, that the market situation has changed markedly, and that exclusive access to the $10 and up section of the market would give Loto Canada reasonable scope to develop products which would continue to yield roughly the same current revenues.
What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that originally, in June of the previous year, we faced heavy competition with the provinces and we determined to go ahead with the $1 lottery. Subsequently, when we came to an agreement, we determined that we did not need the $1 lottery because the competitive issue was being resolved. We therefore moved into the $10 and up sector, where we remain.
I will be placing legislation before the House some time next spring so that we will continue to have the $10 lottery. Many of these facts may be clarified at that time.
One point I should like to add, Mr. Speaker, is that when I mentioned $800,000 today, that is close to the amount of money that I know has been settled. It is for three areas, that is, for the-


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please. I think we have gone a little far afield from the original point, which was whether there was an agreement with the provinces and the circumstances. The hon. member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay).


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, if I may take the time of the House for just a moment, since there has been some background given about policy in this matter, about the federal government and the provinces vis-a-vis the lottery, I want to put on the record that in 1973 Mr. C. M. Drury, then president of the treasury board, as quoted in the Financial Times, as he moved to set up the lottery to help finance the Olympic Games, said:
The federal government is not in the least interested in operating a national lottery.
I think that ought to be brought to the attention of hon. members as part of the background of this whole affair.


Mr. Speaker:: The hon. member for Prince George-Peace River (Mr. Oberle) has raised what I think hon. members will realize is a disagreement. On the basis of the remarks made I do not see that there is more than that. However, if there is, upon examining the record I will return to it tomorrow. My

impression is that the matter is a disagreement and not a procedural question.


MR. CAOUETTE (VILLENEUVE)-REQUEST FOR CORRECTION IN HANSARD
Armand Caouette: Mr. Speaker, my question of privilege relates to a question I asked the Minister of Employment and Immigration yesterday afternoon, December 4, 1978. The second line of my supplementary question, which appears on page 1736 of Hansard reads, and I quote:
I am very happy with the answer of the minister-
It should read:
I am very unhappy with the answer of the minister's-
Since the minister says that the three Yugoslavian immigrants are now working illegally in the Val-d'Or area, I must say that this is absolutely false because those three immigrants obtained a permit from the immigration department in Canada to work in that area.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Alexander:: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) directed a question to the government House leader regarding Bill C-12. I understand that tomorrow, as he stated, we will be dealing with the order in council concerning the new Ministry of State. The government House leader said he would let us know if there was anything different in mind, because we would like to know where Bill C-12 is in terms of second reading debate. Further, could he indicate to the House, because there is some rumour that perhaps bills that may becoming out of committee stage will be dealt with in terms of precedence prior to Bill C-12, which is the indexation bill. Could the government House leader just set us straight? There are a number of us who would like to know what has happened to Bill C-12 and whether there is any bill that would take precedence over that particular bill.


Mr. MacEachen:: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member invites me to set him straight. That would require more time than I have in this brief moment.
Tomorrow it is the intention to call the resolution establishing the new President of the Board of Economic Development Ministers. Then I think it fair to tell my hon. friend that on Friday, because of the absence of the Prime Minister and of the President of the Board of Economic Development Ministers, I would not return to that resolution but would probably call Bill C-12 on Friday. I hope that it will be possible for hon. members to deal with that bill expeditiously and send it to committee, with the intention of having the committee study
December 5, 1978

completed and the bill given third reading before we rise for the Christmas adjournment.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to know that the government House leader is now prepared to give us some direction. But let me tell him this: do not start dictating terms to us. After all, Mr. Speaker, on March 9 there was a statement made with respect to indexation. I do not know whether the President of Privy Council is aware of that, so if there is any food dragging I blame the government side. It is not fair to indicate that we should rush ahead with this particular bill, because as the government House leader is very much aware, we have to hear from-


An hon. Member:: Order.


Lincoln MacCauley Alexander: Order? I think we are getting the game plan here. We have to hear from the Public Service Alliance, PIPS, members of Tomenson-Alexander, and from those who were involved with the air traffic controllers, the servicemen, and the RCMP.


Mr. Speaker:: Order, please.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: for leave to introduce Bill C-446, respecting political partisanship.


Some hon. Members:: Explain.


Stuart Malcolm Leggatt: Mr. Speaker, the purpose of this private members' bill is to amend two acts, the Human Rights Act and the Public Service Employment Act. At the present time some 500,000 public servants in Canada are denied the right to participate in the political process as a direct result of section 32(1) of that latter act. The effect of my bill would be to amend those clauses to deny only the deputy heads the right to participate in this process, and to allow those generally employed by the civil service to participate, as we all have a right to do.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the first time and ordered to be printed.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Order Paper Questions
Mr. Yvon Pinard (Parliamentary Secretary to President of Privy Council):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 21, 28, 33, 148, 150, 198, 210, 230, 250 and 480.


Mr. Cossitt: During the Prime Minister's visit to British Columbia in the First quarter of 1978, did he make the statement "Do you think we are out to screw the Canadian People?" or anything similar and, if so (a) what is a full explanation of what the Prime Minister meant by this remark (b) is the Prime Minister prepared to immediately produce evidence to parliament showing that he is not out to "screw" the Canadian people?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No. (a) and
(b)	Not applicable.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Is the government aware that residents in the area of Brockville, Ontario, living on the banks of the St. Lawrence River, are again expressing concern over the matter of ships, particularly ocean-going vessels, exceeding speed limits set for the area and causing property damage and, if so, will steps be taken by the government to make such vessels conform to the law and, if so (a) what are they
(b)	what methods of enforcement will be used and who will be in charge?
2.	What are the speed limits for the area from Johnstown, Ontario to the end of the Brockville Narrows?
3.	How many ships in each of the past two years have been (a) warned (b) charged (c) fined and, in each case, what was the name of the vessel, the country of origin and the penalty applied?


Hon. Otto E. Lang (Minister of Transport):: The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority advises as follows:
1.	The St. Lawrence Seaway Authority has received two complaints about alleged speeding in the Brockville area. These are the first complaints in the last two years.
(a)	Since 1970, the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority has established vessel speed limits in various sections of the St. Lawrence River including the Brockville area. Speed enforcement is carried out on a spot check basis, very similar to the approach used by law enforcement officers on the highway. Vessels' speeds are checked by means of a radar unit.
(b)	Speed limits are enforced by the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority in the section from Lake St. Louis to Brockville, as well as in the Thousand Islands area from 15 observation sites. The specific sites at Brockville are: McDonald Point, Hillcrest Point and Brockville Dock. For actual observations, a system of rotating shifts is used so as to have 24-hour per day coverage. Enforcement is not limited to week days; weekends are included as well. Masters of vessels who are found to exceed the speed limits are contacted by radio and instructed to reduce speed immediately. In addition they are charged with a violation. In general, a speeding violation is assessed $200 per knot over the limit. On August 17 the authority issued a Seaway notice drawing attention to this problem and

December 5, 1978
Order Paper Questions
requesting masters to maintain uniform speeds through the area until well clear of it.
2.	Speed limits from Johnstown, Ontario, to the end of the Brockville Narrows: 13 knots (15 mph).
3.	Ships warned in Brockville area:
Name	Date	Country of Origin	PenaltyNorthern Venture	May 18	Canada	Letter of reprimandNordic	May 26	Germany	"White Rover	May 28	Monrovia (Liberia)	"Stinnes Zephir	June 2	Asia	"Ross Sea	June 2	Norway	"Kathleen	June 8	Monrovia (Liberia)	"Canadian Mariner	June 17	Canada	"Santa Katarina	July 7	Asia	Ralph Misener	July 7	Canada	"Richelieu	July 8	Canada	Lake Winnipeg	July 30	Canada	Efploia	Aug. 10	Greece	"Olympic Progress	Sept. 3	Monrovia (Liberia)	"Shelter Bay	Sept. 8	Canada	Auriga	Sept. 8	Italy	Sir Denys Lawson	Sept. 8	Canada	U.S.C.G. Westwind	Sept. 21	U.S.A.	Tadoussac	Oct. 26	Canada	"1977 Name	Date	Country of Origin	PenaltyPenerf	June 21	France	Letter of reprimandJ.N. McWatters	Aug. 15	Canada	"Apollon Greece	Aug. 15	Greece	"Enders M. Voorkees	Oct. 10	U.S.A.	"A.S. Glossbrenner	Oct. 12	Canada	"(b) and (c) Ships charged and fined	in Brockville area:	1976 Name	Date	Country of Origin	PenaltyCanadoc	May 4	Canada	$300Kaptai	May 14	Pakistan	500Mont Louis	May 26	France	600Silver Isle	May 27	Canada	300Senneville	June 15	Canada	200Nafri	June 15	Monrovia (Liberia)	300Carol Lake	June 17	Canada	600Georgian Bay	Aug. 31	Canada	300
nil


[Stage Direction]
Question No. 33-Mr. Orlikow:
Mr. Pierre Bussieres (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Atomic Energy Control Board reports as follows:
1.
(a)	Nil
(b) Name of	Description of	Value ofContractor	Contract	ContractBureau of Management Consulting,	Department of Supply and Services,	Ottawa,
Ontario.
To study the organization and $18,500 administration of the Atomic Energy Control Board in order to prepare it for the passing of Bili C-14, Nuclear Control & Administration Act.
2.	See 1 (a) and (b) above.


Mr. Forrestall: 1.	What is the present balance of the Maritime Pollution Claims Fund?
2.	Since September 1, 1976, what amount of interest has been credited to the Fund?
3.	What has been the rate of interest paid?
4.	Since establishment of the Fund, what is the total amount of payments made to claimants?
5.	What are the total administrative and other miscellaneous costs to date?
6.	Who is the present Administrator of the Fund and what is his/her annual salary?
7.	Does the Administrator hold any other positions or responsibilities and, if so, what are they?


Otto Emil Lang: 1. $48,998,810.93.	
2. $7,251,213.67.	
3. Rates of interest paid-	
October 1-December 31, 1976	8.50 per cent
January 1-March 31, 1977	7.625 per cent
April 1-June 30, 1977	7.875 per cent
July 1-September 30, 1977	7.75 per cent
October 1-December 31, 1977	7.875 per cent
January 1-March 31, 1978	8.00 per cent
April 1-June 30, 1978	8.625 per cent
July 1-September 30, 1978	8.875 per cent
4.	$645.90.
5.	$84,748.31.
6.	Mr. Kenneth Joseph Burbridge whose salary range is $10,000-12,500.
7.	The Administrator does not hold any other positions.
1.	For the fiscal year 1976-77, what contracts for professional services were let for studies, surveys and analyses into (a) present or future policies, programmes or information analysis and their efficiency and effectiveness (b) the examination of the administration or internal operation of the Atomic Energy Control Board?
2.	How much was committed on each contract and to whom?
[Mr. Lang.)


Mr. Forrestall: With regard to non-Canadian registered vessels operating in Canadian waters north of the 60th parallel, how does the government ensure that such vessels meet safety and environmental standards?
December 5, 1978


Otto Emil Lang: Non-Canadian registered ships operating in any of the 16 shipping safety control zones into which the waters of the Canadian Arctic are divided pursuant to the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act are required to comply with the arctic shipping pollution prevention regulations and the arctic waters pollution prevention regulations made pursuant to that act. The former contains detailed provisions with respect to the construction, equipment, manning and navigation. To show compliance a steamship inspector may issue an arctic waters pollution prevention certificate; however, the certificate may be issued by an exclusive surveyor to a classification society if the ship is in non-Canadian waters before entry into the Arctic. A pollution prevention officer may board any ship to ensure compliance while it is in any zone. Ships report to the Arctic Canada traffic system (NORDREG Canada) which is based at Frobisher Bay. This system is at present voluntary but serious consideration is being given to make reporting compulsory.
The Arctic waters pollution prevention regulations stipulate the maximum liability of all ships entering the Arctic. In cases where a ship will be carrying more than 2,000 tons of oil, evidence of financial responsibility must be sent to the Department of Transport prior to the proposed voyage in Arctic waters, so that third party claims for clean-up costs or damage may be met.
B.C.-AIRCRAFT /HELICOPTERS


Mr. Friesen: 1.	How many aircraft/helicopters in the Province of British Columbia are (a) owned and operated (b) leased and (i) for whom are they leased (ii) from whom are they leased and at what cost, by the Flight Services Division of DOT?
2.	(a) What are the base locations of each Flight Services Division in the Province (b) how many aircraft/helicopters are located at each (c) how many personnel does each have?
3.	Is there a central repair base in British Columbia for such aircraft/helicopters?
4.	(a) How many planes/helicopters are stationed in Prince Rupert, British Columbia (b) what is a description of them and what are their capabilities?
5.	(a) How many times in (i) 1970 (ii) 1971 (iii) 1972 (iv) 1973 (v) 1974 (vi) 1975 (vii) 1976 (viii) 1977 was each helicopter, normally operating out of Prince Rupert, out of service for overhauling (b) in each case, how long was it out of service?
6.	(a) What is the average length of service in the air before overhauls are completed on each type of aircraft/helicopter at Prince Rupert (b) what is the recommended time for overhaul outlined by the manufacturer of each type?
7.	Does the Canadian Coast Guard use Flight Services Division transport and, if so (a) how often (b) for what purpose (c) is it under a lease or a loan contract?
8.	How many hours of overtime was logged by (a) permanent staff (b) contract personnel, in the position of (i) maintenance (ii) engineering (iii) pilots (iv) managers in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 on the Prince Rupert Base?
9.	What was the cost of overtime payments for each position, category and for each year listed in Part 8?
10.	What amount was paid to cover claims for meals for flight crews and passengers flying out of the Prince Rupert Base in (a) 1973 (b) 1974 (c) 1975 (d) 1976 (e) 1977?
11.	Does the Flight Services Division operate any Sikorski 61 Helicopters out of its Prince Rupert operation and, if so (a) how many (b) what was the date of purchase/lease in each case (c) how many times since the date of purchase/lease have they been overhauled or have received major alterations up to December 1977 and what was the (i) date of each inspection/overhaul (ii) number of hours
Order Paper Questions
in the air of each helicopter prior to each service (iii) duration on each occasion that the aircraft was out of use due to servicing (iv) cost of each overhaul up to December 1977?
12.	Did any overhaul charges on Sikorski equipment at Prince Rupert exceed $5,000 and, if so, on how many occasions and for what reason?
13.	Was all of the work, alterations, maintenance, etc., on the equipment mentioned in Part 12, carried out in the Province of British Columbia and, if not
(a)	how many times was it done outside the Province (b) for what reason (c) where was it done in each case (d) what was the cost of ferrying the aircraft back and forth and the cost for the use of the crew (e) how long did it take to ferry the aircraft outside the province, in each case?
14.	(a) Who has the contract to overhaul the equipment mentioned in Part 12
(b)	does the contract holder, in turn, contract out any of the work and, if so, to whom and for what service?
15.	(a) How many qualified helicopter maintenance engineers are employed by the Flight Services Division in British Columbia and where are they located (b) does each operation have certified engineers for maintenance purposes and, if not (i) for what reason (ii) which cases have been without this facility, either temporarily or on a permanent basis, in 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977?
16.	In each of British Columbia's Flight Services Division operations, how many times in (a) 1973 (b) 1974 (c) 1975 (d) 1976 (e) 1977, was there a change in the Chief Manager position and, in each case, for what reason?
17.	(a) How many pilots were employed in the Prince Rupert station in (i) 1973 (ii) 1974 (iii) 1975 (iv) 1976 (v) 1977 (b) how many resigned, were transferred or left for other reasons?
18.	What is the pilot/engineer ratio in the province at each of the Flight Services Division operations?
19.	Is each pilot fully qualified to operate the Sikorski helicopter equipment to the fullest extent of its capabilities, from the date of purchase of the equipment or after any major alteration of the equipment located at Prince Rupert and, if not, how many are (a) qualified (b) not qualified?
20.	What is the primary role of the Sikorski equipment?
21.	Was such equipment used by Cabinet Ministers while travelling in British Columbia in 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977 and, if so (a) on how many occasions (b) what was the duration of each flight (c) who was the minister (d) what was the reason for each flight (e) where did each flight (i) originate (ii) terminate (0 was any other means of transportation available (g) what are the names of all the passengers in addition to the minister, in each case?


Otto Emil Lang: 1-(a) 11.
(b) None.
(i) and (ii) Not applicable.
2.
Vancouver
(b)	Aircraft/
Helicopters	5
(c) Personnel	9
3.	No.
4.	(a) 1 helicopter.
(b) The Sikorski S61N is capable of carrying 5,000 lbs. of cargo or up to 26 passengers. Maximum endurance is four hours.
5.	(a) and (b) No records prior to 1973. Since 1973, see Part 11 below.
6.	(a) The S61N equalized inspection and maintenance program consists of scheduled inspections based on 1200 hours of service. The major inspection program requires that the helicopter be overhauled after each 9000 hours of service. How-
(a) Bases
Prince Rupert	Victoria
1	5
11	16

December 5, 1978
Order Paper Questions
ever, due to operational conditions and experience, it may be necessary to overhaul the helicopter before 9000 hours.
(b)	9000 hours.
7.	Yes.
(a) and (b) As often as required by the Canadian Coast Guard for transportation and icebreaker duties.
(c)	No.
Maintenance &	1975	1976	19778. (a) (i) and (ii)	Engineering	1455	1127	729(iii)	Pilots	487	471	268(iv) (b) Nil.	Managers	186	132	69Records are not available prior to 1975	1975	1976	1977Maintenance &	9. (a) (i) and (ii)	Engineering	17,167	15,077	9,439(in)	Pilots	8,838	8,564	5,090(iv)	Managers	3,404	2,780	1,560(b) Nil	
Records are not available prior to 1975
10. (a) No records
(b)	$2,398.60
(c)	$3,196.90
(d)	$3,537.90
(e)	$3,119.75
Claims are for flight crew only. The cost for passenger meals is not available.
11. Yes
(a)	One
(b)	Purchased December 1972
(c)	Three times as below
Inspection/	(i)	(ii)	(Hi) Time Out	(iv) Approximate CostAlteration	Date	Aircraft	of	for eachCarried Out	Completed	Hours	Service	Inspection/Alteration1200 Hr Insp	Dec. 10, 1974	1189	8 weeks	Labour and Components-$47,0001200 Hr Insp	Jun. 21, 1976	2383	3 weeks	Labour and Components-$7,100Prototype/ Avionic	Dec. 01, 1976	2617	9 weeks	Labour, Fuel and Equipment-$71,000
Installation
12.	See Part 11 (c. iv).
13.	No.
(a) Once-Prototype avionics installation referred to in Part 11 (c) above.
(b)	The required avionics test equipment and expertise in avionics engineering, inspection and installation was not available at Prince Rupert for the prototype installation.
(c)	Flight service branch overhaul base at Ottawa.
(d)	Cost of ferrying-$3,600. Crew travel costs approximately $2,627.
(e)	18 days-an estimated eight days longer than anticipated due to unfavourable weather conditions encountered en route.
14.	(a) Pratt & Whitney and Sikorski Aircraft Ltd. for major components and General Electric for engine overhauls.
(b) No.
15.	(a) 14-Prince Rupert, Victoria and Vancouver.
(b) Yes. (i) Not applicable.
(ii) None.
16. Base	Times	Reason(a)	Vancouver Prince Rupert	Nil 1	TransferredVictoria	1	Loss of License(b)	Vancouver	Nil	Prince Rupert Victoria	1 Nil	Resigned(c)	Vancouver	Nil	Prince Rupert	Nil	Victoria	Nil	(d)	Vancouver	1	Organizational ChangePrince Rupert Victoria	1 Nil	Transferred(e)	Vancouver Prince Rupert	Nil 1	Senior Helicopter PilotVictoria	Nil	requested to return to pilot duties only.17. (a) (i) 5 (b)	(i)	1(ii) 6	(ii)	3(iii) 4	(iii)	Nil(iv) 6	(iv)	2(v) 5	(v)	Nil18. Prince Rupert 5/5.	
Victoria 7/7.
Vancouver 6 engineers. Pilots are CAls or PMs who are primarily assigned to regulatory and inspection duties.
19.	No.
(a)	4.
(b)	1.

December 5, 1978

20.	The primary role of the Sikorski helicopter is to transport staff, equipment and materials for the maintenance of lighthouses and marine navigational aids.
21.	Records not available prior to 1976.
1976-	yes.
1977-	no.
(a) 4.
(b)
Duration
(c)
Minister
(e) (i) Originate
20 min 40 min
04 hrs, 30 min 01 hrs, 15 min
Hon. E. Whelan Hon. E. Whelan Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau
Hon. O. E. Lang
Prince Rupert Seal Cove
Prince Rupert Prince Rupert
(e) (ii) Terminate
Seal Cove Prince Rupert
Prince Rupert Seal Cove
(d), (0 and (g)-see reply to Question No. 2881, page 8266 of Hansard
for October 17, 1977.


Mr. Jones: 1.	Have there been any appointments made to the Board of Directors of VIA Rail since June 1, 1978 and if so, who were they?
2.	What qualifications do each of these appointees have for their respective positions? What will be the salary of each appointee?
3.	Do any of these individuals sit on any other Board of Directors of any other companies and if so, delineate each.
4.	Do any of the appointees have shares in VIA Rail Canada, CN Rail or CP Rail and if so, list how many shares and their value for each appointee. Do any of the appointees have shares in any other companies and if so, list how many, what company, and their value for each appointee.


Otto Emil Lang: VIA Rail Canada Inc. advises as follows: 1. No appointments have been made to the Board of Directors of VIA Rail since June 1, 1978.
2, 3 and 4. Not applicable.


Mr. Mazankowski: Does Transport Canada's Aviation Safety Inspection Division Report No. 70102 concerning the Beechcraft B55 (Baron) air crash near Barrie, Ontario on September 7, 1977, state that all tall structures, similar to the CKVR television antenna of the Barrie crash, erected after August 1977 are to have white flashing strobe lights and, if so, what action has the government taken, or will take, to update the lighting on towers constructed before 1977?


Otto Emil Lang: Transport Canada's Aviation Safety Investigation Division Report No. 70102 concerning Beechcraft B55 (Baron) air crash near Barrie, Ontario on September 7, 1977 does not state that all tall structures, similar to the CKVR television antenna at Barrie erected after August, 1977, are to have white flashing strobe lights. It simply paraphrases statements made in Trans-
Order Paper Questions
port Canada Publication TP 382, Recommended Standards for Marking Obstructions.


Mr. Epp: From June 1, 1974 to date, what lawyers in the Constituency of Provencher were given work by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources 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. McKinnon: What were the names and addresses of all lawyers and law firms in the Constituency of Victoria who performed services for the National Energy Board during 1977 and, in each case, what was the total amount paid?


Pierre Bussières: National Energy Board reports as follows: None.
* *
*


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, would you be so kind as to call starred questions Nos. 69 and 352?


Mr. Jones: 1.	In regard to the Railine Relocation Study for Moncton, New Brunswick, were alternate proposals for relocation routes considered and, if so, what are the details of each proposal, including cost, name of landowner, for each respective parcel of land involved and the total land acquisition costs for each proposed relocation site?
2.	(a) Which route was chosen (b) on what basis was it chosen (c) what are the names of the landowners involved and the estimated value of each parcel of land?
3.	Were any of the lands acquired or to be acquired owned by Members of the Moncton City Council, Members of the Legislature of New Brunswick, public servants, any company, corporation, firm or partnership with which such persons are or were directly or indirectly related, involved or associated and, if so, what are the details and particulars of such relationships, associations or involvements?


Mr. Charles Lapointe (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, because of the length of the answer to starred question No. 69, I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to have the answer printed in Hansard as if it had been read.


Mr. Speaker:: Agreed?

December 5, 1978
Point of Order-Mr. Andre


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[Editor's Note: The aforementioned answer reads as follows.]
The Canadian Transport Commission advises as follows:
There have been two such studies; one completed; one still in progress.
The first study, completed in 1974-75. was funded by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion and the New Brunswick Department of Economic Growth. Its report focussed attention on three routes that can be conveniently described as:
-the Riverside route on the north bank of the Petitcodiac River;
-the Trans-Canada north route;
-the Trans-Canada south route.
This initial study took place contemporaneously with the passing of the Railway Relocation & Crossing Act, in May, 1974. This act requires that certain transportation plans, urban development plans and financial plans be prepared by a municipality in support of any application for relocation of a railway line or facility. The original study, although of value for planning purposes, did not meet all the requirements of the new act. Therefore, the city of Moncton applied for a grant under part I of the Railway Relocation & Crossing Act, for the purpose of carrying out another railway relocation study which, this second time, would have terms of reference in harmony with the new legislation. The application was granted in September, 1977, and the study is in progress. As yet, we do not have a date for the report of this study.
The further details asked by the questioner in the latter half of paragraph 1 and in paragraphs 2 and 3 are not relevant since the study is still in progress and such questions are premature.


Mr. Muir: Was an application made to the government by Federal Commerce and Navigation Limited, Montreal, for a subsidy to transport goods to Newfoundland and, if so (a) what was the date of the application (b) what was the amount per ton of the subsidy (c) what was the total amount of the subsidy (d) for what period of time was the subsidy negotiated?


Charles Lapointe: In so far as Transport Canada is concerned, no such application has been received.


Mr. Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



POINT OF ORDER


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order respecting an item in the supplementary estimates, in accordance with procedures that have been agreed to previously. I have given notice to the Chair as well as
(Mr. Speaker.]
to the House leader of the New Democratic Party and the government House leader.
My point of order is with respect to vote 30a in the External Affairs Department under the Canadian International Development Agency. It is a $1 item, something about which we have had a great deal of discussion in the past. My concern in regard to this $1 item is highlighted by the last phrase in that particular vote which authorizes to pay:
-amounts in the currency or unit of account indicated, notwithstanding that the total of such payments may exceed the equivalent in Canadian dollars estimated as of October, 1977,-
That amount is $667 million some. But this vote 30(a) is for $1, and one can see by that phrase this $1 vote grants authority to the government to exceed the amount appropriated by the main estimates of $667 million in the spring, and to exceed it by an unknown amount. One could surmise the intent of this $1 vote is that C1DA, probably for reasons of the devaluation of the Canadian dollar, has exceeded the amount appropriated for it in Bill C-61 this spring and requires additional funding.
We have established procedures and practices for handling a circumstance where spending authority has been exceeded.
If there had been anticipation of that, a contingency fund could have been appropriated, or alternatively, through supplementary estimates specific amounts could be appropriated to cover the fact that sometimes spending exceeds original estimates. In this case, for reasons that I am not clear, the government chose not to appropriate the extra amount that CIDA needs, but rather has taken the route of this $1 item to grant CIDA an unlimited authority to spend, subject to Treasury Board approval. Basically they are asking parliament to grant CIDA unlimited authority.
This is contrary to our procedures. The procedure for raising money for government operations utilizes the estimates where full disclosure as to the details and the amounts of government spending is supposed to be declared, followed by an appropriation act which appropriates a specific amount requested by Her Majesty to fulfil the responsibilities that she has. As Your Honour has ruled in the past, an appropriation act should not be used to accomplish, for example, some other legislative purpose. I submit that it should also not be used to grant open-ended authority to spend which, in a sense, is related to legislation.
If $1 votes can be used to grant open-ended authority to spend, we can easily extrapolate to a situation where the whole procedure becomes rather farcical. Rather than lay out in detail the specific amounts that are required, the government need only put down a $1 item and use that authority to spend whatever it wants to spend. That is certainly contrary to our practices and, I might add, contrary to the very strong opinion of the Auditor General in terms of the purposes of the estimates and the intent they are supposed to achieve.
If CIDA requires more funds, and we are not aware if it does or not, the procedure for the government to follow is to
December 5, 1978

request by way of supplementary estimates B, C, D or E, authority to appropriate additional funds to cover those. It is inappropriate, and I submit out of order, to ask parliament for authority to spend whatever it chooses. The government should not ask parliament for open-ended authority to spend for CIDA or any other department. It is on that basis I raise this point of order.
I have been unable to establish any precedents, in the sense that it has never occurred. 1 have done a fair amount of research. We have never had a situation where parliament has been asked to grant an open-ended authority to government by way of estimates and appropriations acts. It is certainly my understanding and I think that of everybody else, that an appropriation act should ask for a specific amount of money. It should not be open-ended. Vote 30a of the supplementary estimates of External Affairs asks for an open-ended authority to spend. I submit that should be ruled out of order.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, on the question raised by the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre), 1 would like to assure him that there is no effort to seek open-ended authority, nor will the approval of this $1 item in the supplementary estimates provide any such open-ended authority. If my hon. friend will refer to the wording of supplementary estimates vote 30a, he will find it is precisely the same wording that is to be found in vote 30 in the main estimates. It is precisely the same amount of money that is provided in the main estimates.
There is a $1 item. In fact the estimate is increased from $667,049,909 to $667,049,910. The global amount is not increased. The ability of CIDA to spend a global amount is not increased. The $1 item provides within that global amount authority to make the expenditures that are listed in the explanation of requirement below vote 30a.
If the hon. member will look at the main estimates he will find there is a grant provided in the main estimates to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. This particular $1 vote will provide an increased grant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the amount of $750,000, but within the global amount that is contained in votes 30 and 30a.
The purpose of the $1 item is to seek the authority of parliament to make these grants to various international organizations within the global amount that is sought in the main estimates, and that is carried forward in the global amount plus $1 in the supplementary estimates.
1 do not believe that in any way the wording of the vote which the hon. member quoted leads to an open-ended authority. He dealt in particular with the phrase, and I quote:
-notwithstanding that the total of such payments may exceed the equivalent in Canadian dollars estimates as of October, 1977-
That is precisely the same authority that is in the main estimates. The authority sought in that expression is to convert into other currencies, with the fluctuations in the Canadian dollar. I believe that the spending authority globally is not
Point of Order-Mr. Andre
increased. What the $1 item does is authorize within the global amount these items that are listed. I hope it will be possible for the House to deal with these commendable items in the supplementary estimates.


Mr. Stanley Knowles (Winnipeg North Centre):: Mr. Speaker, before the minister sits down I wonder if he would answer a question. Is he telling us that in no case will the amount spent under this item, including the supplementary, exceed $667,049,910?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Yes, Mr. Speaker, that is what I am saying.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Will the minister then explain what is meant by the phrase in either the main estimate or the supplementary estimate "notwithstanding that the total of such payments may exceed the equivalent in Canadian dollars." Does that total of such payments mean the total of all payments, which is what I thought it meant, or does it mean the total of certain payments inside the conglomeration?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: It means the payments within the conglomeration. As I understand it, if we made a commitment with respect to a particular program in an underdeveloped country, we would be able to implement that commitment regardless of the change in the currency in which the commitment was made.


Stanley Howard Knowles: As Your Honour will realize, I am not arguing. I am trying to get this clear. Is it in effect the right to transfer some of the money from one item for which it was estimated to another item as long as it is inside the total figure? To put my over-all question again, how does the minister square the statement, whether in the main item or in the supplementary item, that there is to be no more spent than the total that has been indicated two or three times, with the statement "notwithstanding that the total of such payments may exceed the equivalent in Canadian dollars" by that much money?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, I am puzzled over the very wording that the hon. member has raised for the second time. In the very short time I have had available to study the matter, and to get information, I find that expression is merely a device that has been used in the main estimates, I understand, for a long time in order to permit the government to make arrangements in foreign currencies.


Mr. Speaker:: I think perhaps this matter ought to stand over. The difficulty the Chair has is that, on the face of it, it would appear that no greater authority is being sought by the $1 item than was in fact contained in the main estimates, and that no new legislative authority is being sought by the $1 item. Therefore, in accordance with the precedents in which 1 have interfered with $1 items in the past, I would say I would not interfere with this one, because it is the proper use of a $1 item to signal the reallocation of funds that are already authorized under the estimates.

December 5, 1978
Parliament
Up to that point 1 would be prepared to accept it. However, I think we ought to satisfy ourselves currently on the meaning of the phrase about whether or not a payment under this particular authorization, either in the main estimate or the supplementary estimate, can in fact exceed the amount. That is the language which seems to trouble everybody at this point. Perhaps we might set this over until tomorrow for further clarification.
The complaint of the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre) is that the item contains an open-ended power. If the meaning of the words in the item is not to confer an open-ended power, there is evidently no problem. The minister has said that is not the intention. As long as we can clarify this, I think the matter can be closed very quickly tomorrow.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Speaker:: Hon. members will note that not later than 9.45 o'clock p.m. every question necessary to dispose of the proceedings shall be put forthwith, in accordance with Standing Order 58(9).


Mr. Erik Nielsen (Yukon) moved:: That this House lacks confidence in a government which for more than 15 years has deliberately and steadily undermined the fundamental function of the House of Commons and its standing committees by imposing rules and procedures of this House and its standing committees calculated and designed to stifle or eliminate parliamentary examination and control of public expenditures resulting in the steady destruction of the parliamentary process, and which has refused to undertake a serious review of House procedures or consider the numerous worth-while proposals for reform.
He said: Mr. Speaker, while you were reading the motion the parliamentary secretary interrupted and suggested you dispense with it. 1 am sure they would like to dispense totally with the opposition. It would save them a lot of trouble. We are a nuisance over on this side. They have done that in Ghana. The government there decided that the opposition was a little too vigorous, too assertive, too inquiring, so they abolished the opposition. I am sure that would be a delightful solution to all the government's critics.
This subject matter deals with the complete runaway of expenditures and the complete lack of control parliament has over those expenditures. If the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of Privy Council (Mr. Pinard) would speak up, I will gladly entertain his questions as I go along.


Yvon Pinard: 1 will be speaking later. Please stay.


Erik Nielsen: I will stay, though I doubt very much if I will learn much.
The Auditor General's Report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1976, has this to say, at page 9, paragraph 2.1.
I am deeply concerned that parliament and indeed the government has lost or is close to losing effective control of the public purse. I expressed that concern a year ago in my annual report.
At page 111, paragraph 2.8, he says:
Control over public funds would appear to have been deteriorating for at least the last 15 years.
Whatever else the Auditor General has to say in his various reports over the years, the ultimate responsibility for the gross negligence and mismanagement of this country's financial affairs must lie with the ministers on the treasury benches, one of whom we are fortunate to have with us today.


An hon. Member:: Two!


Erik Nielsen: They, and only they, are responsible, and they are to blame for embarking on a deliberate course of action which has resulted in so weakening the effectiveness of the parliamentary process as to render this place useless. I see another minister down the way. I am sorry I overlooked him, but the rate of change in the last ten years has been one and a half new ministers a month.
The same thing that has happened with respect to the effectiveness of this chamber has happened in the committees. I have been saying this, now, for some years. These changes have not happened overnight. They began with the Liberal government of the late Lester Pearson. A special committee was set up in March of 1964. It presented some 20 reports, the procedural aspects of which resulted in new provisional standing orders in 1965. One of the most important of these was that for the first time a limitation was placed on the proceedings dealing with financial resolutions. They were restricted to debate for one sitting day only and speeches were limited to 20 minutes, a far cry from the days when the opposition, then led by the late Mr. Pearson, held up estimates in the committee of the whole for 49 days.
Rule changes now began to appear which severely limited time for the discussion of supply. These were all provisional orders to be enforced to the end of the following session. At the time, of course, it was a minority government situation-there was no way those provisional orders would have been adopted had the government tried to force them.
Just before the election of 1968, which for the first time in a number of years returned a majority government, the one we are stuck with now, another series of reports was presented by the committee containing recommendations for changes in the rules which, for the most part, were imposed upon the House by this government with its comfortable majority. Procedure on supply was drastically changed. The year was now divided into three parts and the opposition was confined to a limited number of so-called allotted, or supply days, in each part. At the end of each of these three parts of the year, any supply business before the House must be voted upon-the guillotine.
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Thus the standing committees which, by the change in the rules, now have all the estimates sent directly to them, are operating with a gun to their heads.
One of the more interesting provisions in these changes was that the operation of the standing committees, particularly in so far as the new procedures for examining estimates was concerned, was to be reviewed after they had dealt with the estimates for a time. That review has never taken place and under this government it is not likely to take place because it is far too inconvenient for the government in that it suffers no embarrassment simply because the opposition members on the committees examining the estimates are muzzled in their efforts to conduct a meaningful inquiry. 1 will come back to this in a moment.
We have, then, in this historical development, a situation where the new Liberal majority, by design, completely abolished the committee of supply. Along with that they abolished the right of the opposition to debate motions "that the Speaker leave the chair for consideration of supply." With their majority, they regiment the opposition to a restricted procedure of allotted or supply days. We must give notice of those motions, and only some of them may have a non-confidence motion attached to them.
I might digress here for a moment. They further weakened Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition by giving the right to other political parties to move motions of non-confidence, which is not in the parliamentary tradition. And, over all, there was the application of rigid time limits on debate. These developments, coupled with the abolition of appeals from Speakers' rulings, set the stage for the gradual but inevitable deterioration of the parliamentary process in controlling the public purse. The opposition is now in a straitjacket where its effectiveness in examining supply is simply non-existent.
That is what the Auditor General means when he says he is deeply concerned that parliament has lost, or is close to losing, effective control of the public purse. That is what he means when he says that control over public funds has been deteriorating for 15 years. These changes to our rules and procedures have, for all practical purposes, robbed us of the ability, procedurally, to reduce estimates. No wonder the Auditor General is deeply concerned. The control of the executive is now absolute. But then the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has always thought parliament to be a nuisance and that, when they leave the Hill, its members to be nobodies. The government has absolute control over time.


Mr. MacDonald (Cardigan):: Tut, tut, tut!


Erik Nielsen: The Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. MacDonald) says "tut, tut, tut," but I am sure he does not doubt the accuracy of these quotations. 1 just happen to have one with me here. I will just refresh his memory.
On July 25, 1969, the Prime Minister said:
1 think we should encourage members of the opposition to leave. Every time they do, the IQ of this House rises considerably.
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That is the general attitude opposite. "Get rid of the opposition. We do not need it. It is just a nuisance." The government wants to have full control so that it can travel along untrammelled in the expenditure of taxpayers' dollars.
The Prime Minister said:
-they are no longer honourable members-they are just nobodies, Mr. Speaker.
The government decides when we in the opposition will be permitted allotted days. The government really has been magnanimous in allowing six non-confidence motions in a year. In my view, the very life of this institution is threatened by that kind of attitude.
I said I would get back to the committees. What a farce they are in examining estimates! Any time the government members wish to do so-which is most of the time-they can stonewall in the committees. They are complete masters on those committees because of the government's majority.
The practice in standing committees has developed to the point where ministers-and, I am sorry to say, in many cases their officials-deliberately frame lengthy answers to questions put to them. This tactic, of course, consumes the time allotted to a member in a committee.
A question may take ten or 20 seconds to ask, and the answer of the minister takes the remainder of the five minutes allotted to a member. The chairman informs that member that his time has expired because the minister or his official has consumed the member's time in answering questions. The result is that we are stonewalled. No real examination of estimates is possible. No real explanations for expenditures are given. This single tactic of the government has done more to destroy any hope of success of standing committees in the examination of estimates than any other single factor. I am strongly suspicious that the chairmen of these committees actually go to clinics or meetings at which they are all instructed on how to handle themselves and us in the opposition in the conduct of committee affairs.
There are other factors which have contributed to the destruction of the committee system, which I say is now a farce. All committees are simply places where members can be kept occupied. Government members can be kept busy and out of the hair of ministers. With one or two exceptions, most government members do not even realize what has been done in this process of destruction. They are not able to compare the system with the system as it operated prior to 1963 or 1965 because they were not here then. They have nothing with which to compare the present system.
Prior to the changes, members were not cut off by committee chairmen-who are backed up by the government majority, which is the situation in all standing committees-because their five minutes had expired. A questioner was allowed to continue his or her line of questioning and thus was able to extract the necessary answers to his questions on the estimates. Now, as soon as government members sense that a line of questioning is getting close to embarrassing the government, the stonewalling begins, aided and abetted by chairmen who

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are, for the most part, highly partisan and just as eager to protect the backside of the government as any other government member.
For the most part these chairmen are absolute martinets in their conduct of committee affairs. There is one notable exception. I hasten to make it, and I recommend strongly to all committee chairmen, all of whom are government members, that they would do well to model their conduct as chairmen of committees after that of the hon. member for Windsor-Walk-erville (Mr. MacGuigan), who chairs the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs. The tactic of the government is to control embarrassing committee disclosures by having its committee chairmen rule with iron fists.
The Auditor General has observed the lack of any effective examination of estimates by committees in several ways. I am not alone in these views. I will put on the record just a few of the observations of the Auditor General. At page 12, paragraph 2.18 of his report of March 31, 1977, he said there was no visible action to date on recommendation that the form of the estimates be revamped so information they contain would be more meaningful and useful to parliament and would be the cornerstone for a fully effective government expenditure control system.
At page 105, paragraph 6.1 of his report of March 31, 1978, the Auditor General stressed the need to improve financial information parliament receives by improving quality of information in public accounts and estimates.
At page 105, paragraph 6.3 of his report of March 31, 1978, the Auditor General said that the information parliament receives on actual expenditures must be improved: public accounts mirror the estimates, providing little additional information.
At page 106, paragraph 6.9 of his report of March 31, 1978, the Auditor General said there was a need for improved accountability. More effective monitoring of government departments by parliament would involve: greater disclosure to parliament by department of objectives; greater emphasis on realiability of information in estimates and public accounts; identification by Comptroller General of information to be provided and action to ensure its integrity and comparability; greater clarity re nature of expenditure appropriations are intended to cover.
The reports of the Auditor General are full of observations like these. At page 108, paragraph 6.18 of his March 31, 1978 report, the Auditor General said that the 1969 implementation of 15 standing committees created the need for significantly better information, which was not recognized.
With respect to expenditures, what a sad history of broken promises and deception! The Prime Minister thinks that the opposition is a nuisance. In answering a question on May 8, 1969, as recorded in Hansard at pages, 8465 and 8466, the Prime Minister said:
Apart from the continuing steps we have taken to curtail expenditure... we on this side hope that in the budgetary debate, which I take it will take place in a few weeks time,... when we announce to the country our further expenditure cuts-
Does that sound familiar? Further expenditure cuts?
-we will have the support not only of the opposition but also of the various sectors of the community. There will be a need for the government to introduce some very severe expenditure cuts which will hurt different vested interests in the country.
In the year in which the Prime Minister said that, 1969, total expenditures were $13 billion. Now total expenditures are over $52 billion. On February 18, 1970, as recorded at page 3728 of Hansard, the Prime Minister said:
I need not enlarge now on our determination to restrain federal expenditure, on which our intentions were put to the House when the estimates were tabled last week.
In that year, 1970, expenditures rose by another $2 billion, to $15 billion. Now', eight years later, expenditures are $52 billion.
On December 10, 1975-we are now getting more up to date-as recorded at page 9889 of Hansard the Prime Minister said:
It is certain that in the meantime the government is very anxious to draw inspiration from the Auditor General's report and make sure that the government does improve the efficiency of its accounting procedures.
By the time the Prime Minister said that, expenditures had risen to $34 billion. They are now, only three years later, over $52 billion. On March 22, 1976, as recorded at page 11991 of Hansard, the Prime Minister said:
-the President of the Treasury Board announced two or three months ago that the federal government would seriously try to cut its expenditures, and so we have reduced the rate of growth of the Department of Public Works and of several other departments. We have also put an end to some voluntary assistance programs, like LIP.
We might add FLIP, LEAP and a few others. He continued:
We have reduced expenditures.
When he made that statement in 1976, total expenditures had risen to $41 billion, and two short years later, they are over $52 billion. It is little wonder that we and the people of Canada are rather sceptical of recently announced, so-called cuts in expenditures by the Prime Minister, and the setting up of a super ministry to co-ordinate programs of the brain children of the government which are running away with the tax dollars of Canadians.
At one time this House and its committees were a very real challenge, but no longer, not since the Liberals took office in 1963, and particularly not since the Prime Minister assumed power in 1968. At that time he immediately set about the erosion of the parliamentary process so that this place and its committees would not be a nuisance to him.


An hon. Member:: A one-party democracy.


Erik Nielsen: Right on. His idea of leadership is a cabinet of puppets, manipulated by him as the master puppeteer, all the strings being pulled by him. His idea is not acceptable. Eric Kierans found that out early, in 1971. He was the first to leave, and has since been followed by a long train of those who could stomach no more of it. In his decade of power, no less
[Mr. Nielsen.)
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than 33 of his ministers have left or were booted out. In the same period, he has had a total of 64 ministers, and has changed ministers no less than 134 times. The life of the newly-appointed minister from Kenora-Rainy River may well be a very short one, terminating even before the next election.


John Mercer Reid: Oh, oh!


Mr. Dawson:: Do not believe him.


Erik Nielsen: I wish him well. That averages out to 1.5 ministers per month over the period of office of the Prime Minister.
This chamber has even been rigged so that opposition is less effective. Members are turned on or off by electronic technicians up there-no offence to them-who take their cue from the Speaker. That is not my conception of free speech. That is not my conception of what this place is supposed to be all about. That is not the way it used to be here. That is the main reason for the rowdiness in this place now. We have to shout to be heard, because we cannot be heard unless the technicians turn us on.


John Mercer Reid: Do you have to be turned on by somebody?


Erik Nielsen: The new minister is interjecting, but I cannot hear him from here. But he was not here before. He does not understand how this place functioned before.


Dennis Dawson: Indeed he was here before.


Erik Nielsen: There were no restrictions on freedom of speech in this place before.


John Mercer Reid: I have been here for 14 years.


Erik Nielsen: He was not here before the changes were made. I am speaking of the period when microphones were hanging from the ceiling, and a whole line of them had to be turned on in order to convey the sound. There was a free exchange then. Members did not have to shout to be heard. The debates were lively; there were great debates in the House. They were not controlled by the simple turn of an electronic knob up there. As a result, I say there was more freedom of speech, more lively debate, and members were attracted to the chamber to hear those debates. Now, apart from the first hour of each day, we are lucky if we have a quorum at any given time in this chamber. Looking around now, there is a bare quorum.


Dennis Dawson: There are 39.


Erik Nielsen: Yes, a bare quorum; 39 out of 282, is it?


Dennis Dawson: It is 264.


Erik Nielsen: Approximately 264-282 the next time. Even if that is the conception of how this chamber should operate, held by members opposite, certainly it is not mine. This new system is much more conducive to the puppet syndrome of the Prime Minister.
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These subtle changes have altered entirely the character and function of this place. The people of Canada are the real losers, because it is in this chamber where their freedoms ultimately will survive or perish. The restrictions and limitations on us as members-particularly opposition members because theirs is the watchdog role-which have been gradually but inexorably imposed under this government, already have deeply eroded the freedoms of Canadians who elected us to come here to do a job. We are being prevented from doing that job by an autocratic Prime Minister who is interested in power only for the sake of power, and by a weak-kneed bunch of puppets on the treasury benches, each of whom has only one thought at the beginning of each day: "My survival as a minister will depend today on how well I respond to the puppet master's string-pulling."


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Mercer Reid: Mr. Speaker, when I read the motion for the first time yesterday, I was surprised at it because whoever drafted it obviously knows nothing of the procedural history of this place for the last two years. When I saw that it was the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) who was responsible for it, then it was clear how it had been drafted in such a way. The hon. member shows no knowledge of what has gone on in the last two and a half years in procedural terms in this parliament.


Dennis Dawson: He is never here.


John Mercer Reid: I am prepared to give him a short lesson in parliamentary procedural history over the last two years. But first I should like to look at the terms of the motion because it is one of the most totally misleading and nonsensical pieces of work which we have seen from the opposition for a long time.
In the dying days of this particular parliament I would have thought the Conservative party would have the nerve to put forward some of their policy proposals for debate. I would have expected them to put forward a motion to debate the status of Petro-Canada. I would have expected a motion to debate their mortgage proposals, to take money from the poor and give it to the rich.


David Samuel Horne MacDonald: That has been decided by Toronto.


John Mercer Reid: What do we receive instead? As most hon. members realize, procedure is one of the most interesting things in the House of Commons. I have never turned down an opportunity to debate procedure before, but it seems to me that this is not an appropriate time to do so. I gather the Conservative party is finding the flak a little tough as they make proposals and find them batted down.
There are a number of untruths in this particular motion. First of all, when we look at the committee system, it should be clear that there are problems with that system. Those problems apply both to members on this side and those on the other side. 1 should like to refer to two examples which disturb me and, I believe, the government. The first example is the
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fact that there was $125 million in supplementary estimates before the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications. That committee has not yet met.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Shame! It is because of Otto Lang.


John Mercer Reid: Last Thursday the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates attempted to meet to consider over $56 million in Treasury Board supplementary estimates. But they could not meet. Why could they not meet? It was because there was not one member of the opposition party present to fill their places.


Steve Eugene Paproski: It was because there was a snowstorm.


John Mercer Reid: Then, how did members on this side manage to get there?


Steve Eugene Paproski: They must have slept there all night.


John Mercer Reid: Not all members go home for supper at night.
The point I should like to make is that there are problems with the estimates procedure, but the problems do not necessarily emanate from the front benches of either side of this House. A lot of problems emanate from the back benches on both sides of this House. It is something which the government and opposition parties must look after, for this is not something which was imposed upon backbenchers by the government. It is something which has developed over a period of time. We should pay more attention to these things, rather than blabber on about useless motions such as the one before us today.
I am concerned about the manner in which we have proceeded with our procedural debates. The hon. member for Yukon made a totally absurd statement when he said that there has been no review of procedural changes. This is an absolute falsehood. Anybody who has been around the House of Commons for the last two and one half years and who has paid attention to what has been going on in the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, who has taken the trouble to pull out those volumes and to read them, would know what absolute bafflegab that is.
I have in my hand the proceedings of those committees. 1 had the honour to be the chairman of the subcommittee on the use of time. The hon. member for Edmonton West (Mr. Lambert) was the chairman of the subcommittee on committees, and my parliamentary secretary, the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. MacFarlane), was the chairman of the subcommittee on private members' hour. We met for a period of one year. We went to England to study their system, we had hearings, and we even met when the House was not sitting, in order to consider the reports which were worked on by these bodies.
It was no surprise to me that the members in the Conservative party, members who have paid a great deal of attention to this kind of problem, such as the hon. member for Edmonton

West, the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker), the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath)-none of whom are in the House at the present time-had the common sense and courtesy not to sign such a ridiculous motion.
I would like to deal with some of the charges made by the hon. member for Yukon. I am concerned about the way in which he has distorted the historical facts. I think it is clear that these reforms, when they began, did not immediately appear out of the blue. The process started with Mr. Pearson's government in 1963. It was started in 1963 because the Conservative backbenchers, under the leadership of the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), were totally dissatisfied with the way in which parliament was carried on and with their particular role, and so were members on this side. When the latter became the government they decided to do something about it.
A series of committees was set up and a series of experiments was carried out, culminating in the changes of 1968 to 1969. How are those changes accepted? They were accepted unanimously, without a dissenting vote, and there was not even an "on division." Those rules were not rammed down the throats of the opposition. For those members who may not wish to accept that statement at face value, I would advise them to look at the Debates and Journals of the House of Commons for December 20, 1968. They were adopted without opposition. I will not bore the House by repeating the substance of those rules, but perhaps I should remind hon. members of the result of those rules with respect to supply.
The several standing committees in the House now spend over 500 hours a year studying main and supplementary estimates, more than twice as long as was spent under the old rules in the committee of suppy on the floor of the House. That time, even though it is not spent as well as I would like to see, is surely spent far more effectively than it was on the floor of the House. If anybody doubts that, all they need do is to go back and take a look at the debates in the good old days and contrast them with even the worst committee hearings to find that there is more substance in committees today than there was in committees of the whole in the good old days.
There has been a significant improvement. It has opened up changes which allow hon. members to be more effective, and furthermore it has given them opportunities to get away from the leader syndrome which this House has always had, and has given ordinary members on both sides a greater role to play. I think we should be grateful for that.
Nobody claims that the system is perfect. Certainly I am one of those who claims that the system is in dire need of a good shakeup. As a result, after the 1974 election, the then president of the privy council and House leader, Mitchell Sharp, took on the chairmanship of the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization. We undertook a number of experiments, co-operatively, with members opposite, to find out how we could change the rules to make the situation more equitable and meet some of the criticisms that had been launched by members opposite. The most important of these was to permit members opposite to call for examination select-
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ed items in the estimates to the committee of the whole-in other words, to go back to the good old days and to permit a vote on those items, to withdraw those items from the committee of supply and to bring them to the floor of the House of Commons and, if necessary, to have a vote.
By this experimental return to a part of the old procedures, we hoped to create a better focus on the business of supply and to give members a wider forum in which to bring forward to the House those items which they found to be wrong and about which they were concerned in the estimates.
I want to congratulate the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre), who did exactly that today. I think that it is an appropriate use of the standing committee and an appropriate use of the way in which the system ought to operate.
To return to the experiment, it was first tried in October, 1974, and was extended to the end of the second session of this parliament in 1976. The experiment was not continued because of the reluctance of hon. members opposite. There are still some bugs in the supply system, but to suggest that it is less effective than the old one is to ignore the facts.
I was not here at the time the hon. member for Yukon came into the House of Commons in 1957, but I have been here since 1963, and 1 am aware of how the good old days were and how the good old system operated. Having been here and having had an opportunity to absorb the old system, there was as much frustration to the other side then as there is today. I suspect that the frustration has nothing to do with what system we use to handle supply, but rather with the fact there are some members on this side of the House and some members on that side of the House, and by their performance today it is clear that the members opposite will stay opposite.


Steve Eugene Paproski: That is what you think.


John Mercer Reid: The present system provides an orderly timetable for consideration of supply, and gives ample time. However, members must prepare and organize themselves. If they go to committees unprepared, they will come away with nothing. If they do not go to committees, they will get nothing. It seems to me that they should not complain about the system under those terms. What I think we really have to deal with is the question of attitude that members bring to this place and to their work.
I am not sympathetic to members who complain that they cannot prepare themselves adequately because of the lack of staff or facilities. I would like to run through a few changes that have taken place since I came here in 1963. Nobody would call me an old man, and that illustrates the great step forward in staff and facilities that have been provided by the Liberal governments since 1963. The list I am about to give is by no means exhaustive. I first came to Ottawa in 1963 as an assistant to a minister. I was elected to the House two years after that. In those days two members shared an office, with one telephone. They had one secretary, who had a separate office, and a pool.
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Stanley Howard Knowles: A typewriter in a pool, not an office.


John Mercer Reid: The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre is quite right when he says it was one typewriter for two girls.
In those days members had to pay for their long distance telephone calls, they had no weekly air tickets, they had no free passes home as they have today, the Library of Parliament had not yet begun to develop a research facility, and there was no money for caucus research, and no money for leaders' research staff. That was the good old days, and if members opposite want to go back to them, maybe we should give them some consideration. It seems to me that they would find it an extremely embarrassing situation to be in because they would not be able to carry on their functions as well as they are able to carry them on today.


Miss Begin:: Total darkness.


John Mercer Reid: The minister says total darkness. Perhaps there is a faint moon in the sky as a result of these improvements.
Today most members have two offices in Ottawa staffed by three aides. Under new regulations which have just come down from the committee on members' services and approved by the Committee of Internal Economy, they can now begin to hire research staff, and members now have control over their staff in terms of what functions they will perform. Members now have a fixed budget, which was the idea that some of us were talking about back in 1966.
The library provides, in my judgment, very good to excellent research material. The caucus research offices provide very good material from a partisan point of view. If we add to this the vastly improved transportation, communication, and constituency facilities-all provided by Liberal governments over the past 15 years-there is little excuse for members to be unable to attend meetings unprepared. It is again a question of attitude. Providing vehicles for scrutinizing government extends well beyond supply procedures.
As I said earlier in response to a point made by the hon. member for Yukon, hon. members rediscover the Auditor General's report once a year, when it comes down. Hon. members realize of course, that it was the present government that introduced the Auditor General Act which greatly increased that official's powers. We also introduced the act dealing with the Comptroller General in order to bring more scrutiny to government activities.
These things have been done basically because the government despairs of the ability of hon. members opposite to take a significant interest in controlling the purse strings. What we have done in effect is opt for a bureaucratic solution to what should really have been part of the political process.
I regret that the government has taken this particular route, but under the circumstances I see no other choice. Hon. members opposite and hon. members on this side, I think have
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not paid as much attention as they ought to the question of government spending and the allocation of resources.
The other thing that I should point out is that a very important part of the function of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts is its ability to control its own reference at the beginning of the session. It is one of the few committees which has the staff and which is able to probe the spending of the government. It can go to work at the beginning of the session. In my judgment, it was this government that opened those windows for members of parliament.
Let us remember as well that it was this government that made the first provision for parliament to scrutinize the exercise of delegated legislative authority. We brought forward the Statutory Instruments Act, created the Joint Committee on Regulations and other Statutory Instruments, and gave it authority to engage the professional staff needed to perform its important duties. This government opened those windows.
When we speak of opening windows let us speak about the greatest window opening this government has undertaken, the radio and television broadcasting of proceedings in this chamber.
For years legislative bodies toyed with the idea of broadcasting their proceedings. Most shied away from it, after considerable study. This House, at the government's request, permitted radio and television broadcasting of its proceedings on the same basis as the written Hansard. Of all possible parliamentary reforms, this certainly must be construed as the most far-reaching. It is one thing for us to meet in public and publish a printed record, but it was a different thing when we opened the House of Commons to the television cameras and to radio. Our constituents can hear us, and we know that they watch.
I want to return now to my opening remarks on the operations of the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, Mr. Speaker. It is my recollection that the first question I asked in this House after my election, was whether we could have a procedure and organization committee made up of members with less than five years' service.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You got over that.


John Mercer Reid: I am now in the embarrassing position, as the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) points out, of having been in the House for 13 years and on those committees for 13 years, and finally of having ascended to the exalted status of chairman. I therefore want to speak with some warmth of the work done by that committee under the chairmanship of the Hon. Mitchell Sharp in the last two years.
The committee spent a great deal of its time and effort trying to come to grips with some of the points raised by the hon. member for Yukon. A series of subcommittee reports have been published in the proceedings of that committee of September 27, 1976. These are available, and if members read them they will find a large number of problems dealt with in detail.
I think I should give particular credit to hon. members opposite who worked hard on that committee. The hon. member for Edmonton West was chairman of the subcommittee on committees. The hon. member for St. John's East and I were participants in the work of the subcommittee on the use of time, the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre was an ex officio member of all our committees, and the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. MacFarlone) was chairman of the subcommittee on private members' hour.
We produced three reports, but I think we made a fundamental mistake because we took them back to our caucuses. At that point the subcommittee reports disappeared and nothing happened. I believe that members on the backbenches became very nervous when they saw the reforms on which the committee had worked. The reforms were far-reaching. They dealt with a matter that the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has promoted for a number of years, that is, a regular schedule for the House so that hon. members would work a certain length of time here, and have a certain amount of time in their constituencies. We dealt with the question of finding out the legislative burden that the government wanted to put through and of giving some guarantees to the government that, if we took extra time to work in our constituencies, the legislative program would be dealt with in full. There was a whole series of reforms along these lines that would have gone a long way toward achieving the point that the hon. member for Yukon was trying to make.
I want to point out again, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. member for Yukon was not a member of that committee and, from the content of his speech, it is apparent that the did not read the reports and certainly did not read the record of debates of that committee. I think it is a tragedy that he made the speech he did without reviewing the basic material readily available to him and to the research group of his caucus.
I want to make a number of suggestions in the closing moments of my remarks, Mr. Speaker. Specifically I want to deal with the use of time. We do not use our time very well in the House of Commons, and I do not think we use it very well in committees either. The hon. member for Yukon complained about the ten-minute rule in committee-


Erik Nielsen: The five-minute rule.


John Mercer Reid: The five-minute rule is not in the Standing Orders but is a rule which members imposed upon themselves.


Erik Nielsen: By a government majority.


John Mercer Reid: It is a rule imposed by members themselves at the request of members opposite. There is a great desire on the part of members on all sides of the House to see themselves as equal, and therefore they proceeded to make sure they had equal access to the floor of the committee. Hon. members have big egos, Mr. Speaker, but some members will have to decide to give way to other members of their party. It is clear that with the five-minute rule there cannot be an efficient, functioning committee. That means that backbenchers who make

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up the committee system will have to make some difficult decisions. Again, it is a question of attitude.
I have been in this House almost as long as the hon. member for Yukon, Mr. Speaker, and can recall when the House of Commons used to keep more regular hours. I can also recall when parliament basically sat part-time. A session began in February, we took a break for Easter, and returned until June. If the House sat in the autumn, that was an unusual event.
In recent years we have gone to the opposite extreme. In over 13 years in the House I have seen us adjourn for the summer on the planned date only three times-in 1967, 1971, and 1978. The leader of the House held the same post on those three occasions, but I have to temper my congratulations to him. I recall that he also held that position in 1971 when the Christmas adjournment began on New Year's Eve and there was no Easter adjournment.
If parliament is to be a year-round institution, then its members will have to organize their lives in a reasonable manner. In my judgment, this means that we will have to adopt regular sitting periods that would be extended only in cases of genuine emergency.
Let us look at the implications of this. It would put the government of the day, of whatever party, in a most awkward position. The present rules would give it no guarantee that it would be able to have a decision on its legislative program. We cannot establish a system where, on the other hand, however, the government would be able to ram a huge legislative program through without parliament giving it the proper attention. That would be unwise, and I certainly would not recommend it to the House.
In the last 15 years, experience has shown that between 50 and 70 bills must be passed and are passed each year. As a veteran member, and a minister with perhaps what is a small and controllable department, I believe that proper planning and control, from cabinet level down through the public service, could easily reduce this number to 40 or 50 bills per year. I would remind the House that the government has shown some signs of improving this in the last few years.
If a legislative program of a reasonable size is to be dealt with in a limited period of time, then planning is obviously required on both sides of the House. After all, we are all human, and if we do not have incentives to make us plan, then obviously we will not do it.
I should like to propose some things that we might consider. First of all, the rules regarding management of the time of the House should require the government to produce the great bulk of its legislative program early in the debate on the Address in Reply to the Speech from the Throne. This would enable the opposition to evaluate the bills and establish its position. This, it seems to me, would be a considerable reform. I am not talking about a list of bills-I mean the actual legislation as drafted.
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Second, representatives of all parties should be able to discuss the amount of time needed for measures and agree on packaging groups of bills, or batching, if you will. We could put them into categories, for instance, major, minor, controversial, and dull, for consideration within set period of time at specified stages.
Third, some device for the government to proceed unilaterally in cases where agreement is impossible must be retained. However, my judgment, and the recommendation made by our committee on the use of time, was to head toward the British system of giving the Speaker greater authority in accepting or rejecting unilateral time limitation proposals. I am prepared to admit that we may have to seek another way because of the nature of this particular House.
Finally, I would not apply the packaging proposals to the third reading stage of major bills. It seems to me that in cases of great controversy, at the final stage the government should be willing, ready and able to take its responsibilities fully and openly. Old-fashioned closure would be the only medicine in these cases, and the government would have to take that decision along with the kudos and the problems that that brings.
The motion before us today is really an admission of failure on the part of the hon. member for Yukon who had not done his homework, had not read his debates, had not read his committee reports, and had not participated in the committee reports. The opposition is saying, through the hon. member for Yukon, that we cannot do our job, that it is the system that is to blame. Quite frankly, if I had been a minister of longer standing than I am now, I think the government could say that too from time to time. I am prepared to say that the truth lies somewhere in between. It is neither black nor white; it is probably gray. After 13 years of being enmeshed in the committee system as it has developed, I am not prepared to say it is perfect. As one of the participants in the design of some of these aspects of it, I find there is a great deal that ought to be changed, but a lot of that could be changed by the members themselves if they wish to change.
However, what I do insist upon is that we deal with the question of attitude of hon. members. There is no shortage of good ideas for reform in this place, but what there is, Mr. Speaker, is a shortage of determination on the other side to grasp the opportunities that are available to them.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, before I deal with the motion put forward by the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) and perhaps for a moment or two with his speech, I should like to say a few words to the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations (Mr. Reid), who has just addressed the House for the first time in that capacity. I suppose it is significant in some way that a member from Manitoba should follow right after we have heard a

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speech given by the minister who is sometimes referred to as the minister from Manitoba.


John Mercer Reid: I will look after you, Stanley.


Stanley Howard Knowles: That is not my identification of the minister, but it is something to be enjoyed in any case. I offer him my congratulations on his elevation to the cabinet after these 13 years, and I wish him well in the important job that has been assigned to him.
Eiaving said a nice word or two to the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River, I should like to correct one impression that he gave when he talked about the package of rules that was adopted in 1968 and 1969. He went on at great length and used his finest oratory to stress the point that the package that was passed in December, 1968, was passed without a dissenting vote. May I remind him, sir, that there was a lot in that package that was very objectionable and very offensive. It was because the government withdrew portions of what had been put before the House in 1968 that the House accepted the rest of it without a dissenting vote. But one has to look at the package as a whole.
The portion that was withdrawn in December, 1968, came back in June of 1969, I believe, in the form of rules 75A, 75B and 75C, and one of those summers that my friend did not like staying here was that summer of 1969 when that remaining part of the 1968 package was debated and put through under closure. So I say to my hon. friend, do not give us the impression that the package offered in 1968 was that happily received. Part, as I say, had to be put under the closure rule which the Tories brought in back in 1913. One of the troubles around this place is that too often the Liberals take their cue from the Tories, and that was one of the times when they used that old Tory closure rule.
Having said that about the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations, may I say a word about the motion and the speech made on it by the mover. I am not particularly happy with the wording of the motion. There are some things in it with which I could argue. But the heart of the motion is a complaint that this government has done nothing to cope with one particular problem, namely, the control by parliament of the finances of the government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: That point has to be underlined and agreed with, and we certainly do agree. It is because the motion makes that criticism of the government and calls for a vote of non-confidence in the government over that point that we shall be voting for this motion when the vote is called at 9.45 tonight. As I say, some parts of the motion do not interest me that much and I can leave them for another occasion. I can also say that I do not agree with all of the things which the hon. member for Yukon has said in his speech. In particular, I find it difficult to go along with his notion that the good old days were so wonderful and it is only the Liberals that have done damage to this institution. I want to say, and perhaps I shall come to this in a little more detail

in a moment or two, that I think it is a better place today than it was in the so-called good old days.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Stanley Howard Knowles: My two friends who have spoken ahead of me have vied with each other as to which one of them was in a position to talk about the good old days. But they are only talking of 13, 15 or 20 years of being around here. I first visited this place as a teen-age student, 54 years ago and first came here as a member 36 years ago.


John Mercer Reid: I bow to you, sir.


Stanley Howard Knowles: So I do know a bit about the good old days. Mind you, I am going to divide what I have to say about the good old days into two parts. I am going to assert that things are better now than they were then, but there is one respect in which they were better many years ago. Perhaps I might indicate some of the things I think have made this place a better institution than it used to be.
My friend from Yukon told the hon. member across the way that he did not remember the days before the microphones hung from the ceiling. He said in those days there was more freedom of debate. Well, I can go back to the days when there were no microphones at all in this place.


John Edward Broadbent: There were no lights.


John Mercer Reid: Those are the good old days 1 want to go back to.


Stanley Howard Knowles: You had to be
heard by the sound of your own voice. Many members tried it once and did not try again. I notice now that if the electricity goes off this place comes to a standstill.
When I first came here, I sat in the back row. There was no electronic equipment of any kind. I had to be heard by the sound of my own voice. It was nicer for some of us. In our party we all seemed to have good voices. At least we had lots of nerve, or whatever it took, and we were all participants. However, the two old parties seemed to have 25 or 50 milquetoasts. They would make one speech in the session and find it so difficult to be heard that they gave up. That was fine for us.
We did not get caught in these quotas as to time. We were able to make all the speeches we wanted to make. But I think this is a better parliament because there is more participation. It is better not just because of television but because of the microphones that were brought in here. That innovation made more of a change in parliament than anything I have seen since I have been here, even more than television. Once the microphones were brought in, they produced an equality in terms of being heard. From that day on, the participation by all members has increased greatly. In that sense, it is a better place than it used to be.
In terms of the rules, we have made a number of changes which make this a better place. I like what we did with regard
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to statements by ministers which we used to call statements on motions. That is not the correct term now. It is statements on statements.
In the old days, every time a minister made a statement there had to be an argument as to whether anybody had a right to reply and, if so, how many. There were no questions. We resolved that. We provided, by rule, that when a minister makes a statement one spokesman from each party can reply and there can be a question period. It may have reduced the number of statements that are made, but the handling of those statements is much better under the present rule than it was under the old.
The institution of "the late show" was beneficial to the operation of this place. Under the old system, members got put down when their questions were out of order. They had to wait for months for some grievance spot to raise something. With the institution of "the late show," if a member is not satisfied with an answer in the question period, it is possible to get on one of nine spots during the week after ten o'clock. I have noticed in changes in the rules that have been made since "the late show" was introduced that it has not been abolished. I think the Chair likes it as well. Mr. Speaker knows that if he puts a member down, that member has a right to get on "the late show".
We have improved our handling of legislation by the method of sending bills, with the exception of tax bills, to a standing committee, then establishing as we did the report stage. Back in the so-called good old days, all bills were dealt with here in committee of the whole. On occasion we would send a bill to a committee. If we did that, when it came back to committee of the whole, we went over it again. Usually members on the standing committee learned something about the bill while it was in progress. When it came back to committee of the whole, they could talk longer than if it had not been to the standing committee. I can give you chapter and verse. It happened quite often.
We now send bills to a standing committee, but we have the report stage here. At the report stage we do not have every clause called as we did in the old committee of the whole set-up. Instead members have to put down their amendments to specific clauses in the bill. In other words, the rights of hon. members who are not on the standing committee are reserved. They can deal with the parts of the bill they are concerned with here on the floor of the House.
In many of these respects, this place has improved. The introduction of television and radio broadcasting of the proceedings of this House is good. We get a lot of complaints. One of the biggest complaints last year was that people did not like the desk thumping. The Tories have tried to correct that by applauding, using their hands. We will have to wait a while to see what the Gallup poll says as to which people like, thumping desks or clapping hands.
The odd thing is that even though people criticize parliament from what they see over television, they seem to want more of it. The broadcasting people tell us there is more and more demand for the question period and other parts of this
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show to appear over television. I am told it even upstages some of the soap operas during the day. That did not happen in the good old days. I think this is good.
I could go on. I welcome the points that the hon. member across the way made about the opportunities of the facilities that are made available to members to do their job. When I came here, we were given a railway pass which we could use as often as we wanted. We still get it. We got our berth and meals, our expenses for making trips home by train. How often? Twice a year. Now we get 52 air trips a year. Don't tell me about the good old days.


John Edward Broadbent: They were the good old days.


Stanley Howard Knowles: In one sense they were. We were not expected to be travelling all over the country all the time.
The free printing, the free telephone, constituency offices, and all the other things that members have had provided to them in order to do their job are a hundredfold better than they were in the so-called good old days.
I must not spend all my time in this way. As I say, in most instances, it is a better parliament now than it was 36 years ago. I look forward to its being a still better parliament in 36 years from now for any of us who may still be here. There is one respect, and I come to this because it is at the heart of this motion, in which I think we did do a better job, not in what my two predecessors referred to as the olden days, but in the olden days to me, back in the forties and fifties. That is with regard to estimates.
Those were the days when all estimates were dealt with in committee of supply. There were no time limits. We used to have long debates, even to get the Speaker out of the chair to get into committee of supply. Those were grievance occasions. However, every estimate had to be dealt with in committee of supply.
Some members who go back a few years may recall an interim period when we dealt with estimates here. However, there was a time limit. The result was a minister stood or sat over there and heard his estimates discussed. He did not worry about them. He knew they went to the bottom of the list and, when the last day came, they were called without further discussion.
Back in the old days when the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) sat in the gallery and watched the show, young boy that he was in those days, there was no time limit. Members could deal with estimates as they wanted. Sometimes when you got to a time when it looked as though they were going to go through and you started to slide down the estimates, and calling them one by one and passing them, all of a sudden John Blackmore would get up and we would spend a couple more hours on them. Maybe the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre would do the same. The result was we could hold ministers at bay, saying they could not get their estimates until they gave us some satisfaction on some point. I think it was better.

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Some members may ask why we changed it. We changed it because we had to do so. The amount of money that parliament had to deal with had multiplied manyfold. The amount of things in which parliament got involved was extended considerably, everything in the social security field, the science field, and international affairs.
There are all kinds of things that parliament is in today that we did not have in the old days. If I may speak from my own experience as one interested in a field all members know about, there was no Department of National Health and Welfare. Before the days of my good friend across the way, and thank God we have it and have her-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Stanley Howard Knowles: That was just to embarrass her. In those days, old age pensions were an item in the estimates of the Minister of Finance. When did we get to that item? Usually in the last two or three days of the session.
There were no family allowances. Earlier than that, there was no unemployment insurance, no guaranteed supplement, no Canada Pension Plan, and no health estimates of any kind. The point I am making is that things which are now the responsibility of a very large department, the Department of National Health and Welfare, just weren't there.
Because the number of things we were involved in became so extensive, we reached the point at which we realized we could not go on giving unlimited time to every item in the book. So parliament experimented. For a while we experimented with the idea of a certain number of days, something in the order of 30 or 35 days. Well, that seemed sensible. It was not many fewer days than we had been taking previously. But once we had started it we found it didn't work because the minister would sit there and let his estimates be discussed for a day or two days at the most, and that would be all. He didn't have to satisfy anybody. He knew that on the thirty-fifth day or whenever it was, his estimates would be called and would be passed. So that did not suit.
There was also a period when we had a committee on estimates. We tried that for two or three sessions. It didn't work very well either. In 1968 we came up with this idea of sending the estimates each to an appropriate committee and getting them off the floor of the House altogether. 1 do not think it is working. My friend across the way doesn't defend it either. We just haven't found a solution to the problem of parliamentary control over the spending of moneys in this place. I think we have to stay with it until we do, and I think it is perfectly proper that the House should vote non-confidence in the government for not having come up with a solution to this problem. Don't tell me it was in the package that was produced a year or so ago, because it wasn't.
I do not presume, after all this, to say I have the answer, but I know there are some things that should happen. The estimates should be given to us in much greater detail. The block global figures we get do not mean a thing to us. In those good

old days there was more detail. You could find the matter you wanted to talk about by going through the book. The book was a lot thinner then than it is now, but there was a lot more in it.
The other thing we should try, bearing in mind that even in this modern age there are still only 12 months in a year and that there is not time to deal with everything in detail, is a selective arrangement whereby in each year during which parliament sits we could deal with four or five departments only. The government should not know in advance what those departments are; it should be the right of the opposition each year to say which departments will be called. And if we had to reduce the number from five to four, to three or what have you, so that we can deal with those departments on the floor of the House, without time limit, I would say we should make that decision. The part of the old system which did work was that the House could hold the minister at bay until he either corrected an estimate, dropped it, or gave a satisfactory answer.
I think the reason the Auditor General is in a position to say the kind of things he said in his recent report is because the way we handle our estimates today is really a farce. I have said this in the context of having been frank enough to say that I think many of our rules have been improved. But on this score we are so far from reality that we might almost as well drop the consideration of estimates altogether.
It is on that basis my colleagues and I are prepared to vote for this motion, as an expression of non-confidence in the government for not having found a way to cope with the estimates. I do not want to be viewed as one who is criticizing what has been done without having an alternative to offer. 1 would be happy to listen to other suggestions, but most of those who have thought about this subject think more or less along this line-I believe the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations does. As a matter of fact, he may have been cribbing a bit from some of my ideas when he proposed the same general approach to legislation.
I have suggested many times that the government should be required at the start of a session to list all the bills it proposes to bring in, that there should be a conference among the representatives of the parties, that the bills should be categorized as important, semi-important, unimportant or unnecessary, or dull, as the minister called them. Then we should reach agreement as to time limit on the bills that are unimportant and so on.
I see that you are looking at me, Mr. Speaker. Would you pardon me for a moment. I had forgotten we were limited to 20 minutes; I was thinking of 30. I shall wind up right away.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Stanley Howard Knowles: It is strange around here, the things to which you can get agreement.


An hon. Member:: Turn off the lights and mikes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: If the mikes are turned off, Mr. Speaker, I still know how to speak up. I think
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things that are important and serious should be debated without time limit, but the unimportant should be got through, and in the same vein I come back to estimates and say we should find a means whereby we deal each year with three or four or five departments picked by the opposition, and give them the works.
I must sit down, Mr. Speaker. I should just like to say that, important as I believe procedure to be, it is not the whole problem around here. A large part of the problem has to do with attitudes, with confrontation; another problem is lack of substance in the legislation the government brings forward. We could have the best rules in the world, but with a government which will not cope with unemployment or inflation, well, where are you? Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me this extra minute or two.
[ Translation]


Mr.   C.-A. Gauthier@Roberval: Mr. Speaker, I would like to say a few words on this motion. My remarks will be brief because the cold I caught prevents me from speaking for too long.
At the outset, I wish to congratulate the Progressive Conservative party for having moved this motion, not because I support it in every respect but because it gives us an occasion to address ourselves to certain issues and draw the government's attention to some questions which are of an immediate interest to us. Of course, the motion blames the government for having "undermined the fundamental function of the House of Commons and its standing committees by imposing changes in the rules and procedures of this House and its standing committees calculated and designed to stifle or eliminate parliamentary examination and control of public expenditures resulting in the steady destruction of the parliamentary process." Naturally, like any motion, it is put in a rather strong way, but it gives us an opportunity to deal with matters which we cannot consider in other circumstances. It goes without saying that it is difficult for this government as it was for any previous government to give satisfaction to everybody, politically speaking. We must realize that ours are political formations which are generally more concerned with making political gains than with administering the country properly. I feel this is the first area for which we can heap reproaches on one another, and that we should make a concerted effort to think more of the people we are here to serve, rather than of those who are likely to cast their votes in our favour.
I should like to deal first with the inadequate time planning and distribution in the House. The government seems to operate in a haphazard way, especially in the planning of the legislation which is to come before the House. As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) remarked a while ago, it would be very useful-I do not think I am asking for the impossible-if at an early stage of a new session we could obtain the list of the main bills, leaving out all
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secondary bills, in their order of introduction in the House, which would make it possible for us to really get ready to debate them. I suggest that this would reduce time spent in discussions. What procedure are we using today? Early in the session, the government appears to be somewhat at a loss as to the bills it wants to introduce. For the first months that went on to such an extent that some days, quite frankly, the government would find it impossible to keep hon. members, busy so unpredictable was the businss of the House, not only for this year but I am referring to the 16 years I have been here. So much so that the government would be embarrassed after we had discussed a bill so rapidly that they had nothing left for us to do the day after.
1 think that with perfect planning for every day of the session, those minor, unimportant bills-since among the 30 to 40 bills we might pass during a session there are always 20 to 25 which are rather unimportant and that is why we call them minor-could be deferred till the end of the session. But it is the contrary that happens. Indeed it is at the beginning of the session that all those minor bills are put before us whereas major pieces of legislation are reserved for later on, those precisely we would like to discuss a little longer. But no, they are introduced when we are in a hurry, ten days before the end of the session and particularly before holiday breaks. Yes, just before holidays they would push four, five or six bills and sometimes even some which had never been presented during the session.
They would be presented to us four or five days before the end of the session and we had to adopt them unless we wanted to be deprived of vacations. We were like schoolchildren threatened by the teacher to forgo holidays if they did not do their homework. Well, I think this is not a very serious attitude for any government. The government should think more, give more precise direction to its efforts and be convinced that it is dealing with mature people who come here to do their work, but who must do it as well and as fast as possible in order to give more time to their riding. This question has been raised on numerous occasions. In the 16 years I have sat here, Mr. Speaker, I think we never had enough time to work in our constituency. At Christmas and Easter, we only have a few days-barely enough to get things going-and then we have to get back here. Moreover, summer periods have often been shortened. I have always maintained in this House that an hon. member should at least spend three months in his riding because his work in this regard is not only here but also in his riding. He must meet his constituents to explain to them the government policy.
When the House sits 11 months out of the year, how can one be expected to spend two or three months in his riding? That point should be studied and improvements should be made. Here is the second point, namely the way in which the government introduces bills, and here I am thinking of omnibus bills. One never heard of omnibus bills when I first
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came here. They came along with the election of the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). What is an omnibus bill? Everyone knows it is a bill which deals with a little of just about everything, in which abortion, firearms and hanging can all be mixed up. I say that type of bill should never have existed. It is used to force the opposition into passing bills, parts of which it objects to, but which it cannot refuse to pass because in so doing it would also deny passage of provisions it agrees with. Those are premeditated bills, but they are unfair to the people in the sense that when abortion is being discussed, abortion alone should be dealt with; when firearms are being discussed, they alone should be the topic of discussion. Let us vote on firearms, let us discuss firearms, but let us not mix firearms with abortion. Come on! They do not concern the same type of guns at all! That is why I say a clear distinction must be made between topics, each one of which should be dealt with in a separate bill. That question has often been brought up in the House, but nothing ever changed, and with every new session, we are being faced with new omnibus bills. Packages are made which contain things we do not want; but we have to accept the works, if we want to pass what we agree with in the package. I think it is unfair both for hon. members and the people.
I should like to bring up a third topic. I said I would be brief but I should like to say one word about the sittings of the standing committees. For a long time now, requests have been made-and for a while I believe those requests were met-to the effect that standing committees never sit during the sittings of the House for the simple reason that, in the case of a party like ours, with only eight members, when two are sick, of the six left, if three or four standing committees meet while the House sits, no one is left to attend the sitting of the House. We have to stay here. The others are in committee. I find it unfair. The major parties can manage all right, but a small party cannot, Mr. Speaker. Even in the major parties, some members would like to sit on committees, or at least listen to the discussions, but they cannot go. If these committees sat when the House is not sitting, everything would be fine. That went on for a few years, but we have gone back to our old habits, and it is still with us today that habit of sitting at the same time as the House. The number of sittings is also stepped up, probably because the fewer members there are, the quicker it goes. I do not know, but if those standing committees are unwanted, why are they not simply abolished. 1 find that standing committees are a good thing. That is where we can seriously study the legislation, ask the questions we want, but at least give us the chance to attend the discussions.
Finally, there is the matter of uncontrolled expenditures. I sit on the public accounts committee and I have heard some pretty good ones on that topic. And this has been going on for years, it did not start this year. Some people feel that what is going on there this year is scandalous. I have been seeing things like that for 16 years. The government seems to remain

speechless, unconcerned in front of this. At first, they listen to the criticisms made by the Auditor General, then they lose interest. I would even go further, when the Auditor General does too much, they replace him.
It seems to me that since we do have an Auditor General, we should listen to the advice he gives to the government. Officers can make mistakes, that is understandable, but errors costing $1 billion, Sl'/2 billion or $2 billion must be looked into. Take this year, for example, they are introducing budget after budget, however budgets are becoming a practical joke. They present a budget for $47 billion with a $14 billion deficit, then they borrow $17 billion: $7 billion to reimburse old debts and $10 billion to pay for what is coming. What? We do not know. It becomes a childish game. I think we shall have to take action to try to improve our control over the expenditures of the country if we cannot stop that flow of expenditures, unauthorized expenditures, expenditures which are such that even people in the department have the surprise of their lives. Even the minister in his own department had the surprise of his life. We should ask the House to try to do something, not simply receive the report of the Auditor General and criticize it. We are there in committee, and we criticize the report of the Auditor General; we do not listen to the Auditor General's criticism, we do not take any action afterwards. I am sure that no action will be taken afterwards. If it goes on like that, it is useless for the Auditor General to come and table his report. It is useless to try to examine new methods to control expenditures.
Finally, it is said that in the past the Speaker's decisions used to be appealed. Today no appeal can be lodged. They say that it is an amendment. There has been a development, since we are no longer in a position to appeal. It is unfortunate, but I think that no appeal against the ruling of the Speaker should be allowed, because some time ago, when appeals against the rulings of the Speaker were authorized, I do not know how many useless votes were taken to harass the Speaker. I think the Speaker's task is difficult enough as it is. I think it was advisable to pass that regulation. We must acknowledge it and as long as we have some means to observe the proprieties it will be a good thing, because the people are watching us in the House and we hear criticisms every day. Do you know the people feel that the most striking feature of the House is the decorum. Well, I wish to keep that image before the public, that image of respectability given by the members who appear as responsible individuals who, in the interest of the people, want regulations to act freely as true administrators.


Mr. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Mr. Speaker, I listened with attention to the mover of the motion, the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen), and the reply of the hon. Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations (Mr. Reid). I must say that nothing indicates the problem facing parliament and
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Canadians today more than the motion of my colleague, which perhaps can be termed a brutal motion, and nothing illustrates one of the attitudinal causes of the problem we are struggling with today more than the reply of the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations. I hope the view he has through his rose-coloured glasses of this problem works with the extreme responsibility recently given to him by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau).
The minister mentioned that the government had taken very positive steps toward correcting the situation faced by Canadian taxpayers today, through the introduction of the Auditor General Act and the introduction of legislation to establish the office of Comptroller General. If it were not for one of the most political apolitical Auditors General we have ever had, with his tremendous abilities to identify issues, and to visualize and put in place corrective measures, I doubt very much if the Auditor General Act would be in place today.
A key complaint which the Auditor General has had since he took office is the fact that there was not a chief financial officer in charge of systems and control. It was his persistence which forced the government to bring in legislation establishing the office of Comptroller General. It would be most unfair of me not to recognize the debt all of us owe the former president of the Treasury Board for his effort on behalf of Canadian taxpayers in getting that chief financial officer into place. I respect the efforts he put forth.
Turning to the remarks of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), there was nothing as nostalgic as his remarks. The mover of the motion has been here 21 years, and he spoke of the old days. The Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations has been here approximately 13 years, and the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has been here for 36 years. Now the House will hear from a member who has been here only 4.5 years.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Ronald Huntington: It might be of some good to understand why I am here. I am from the small business community, and I am here because I was outraged at the lack of care and attention given the tax resource, to which I was making a donation, by the federal government.
As mentioned by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, the issue is parliamentary control over the tax resource. Parliament has lost control over the tax resource. The remarks of the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations in no way hide that basic issue.
I should like to refer to a statement contained in section 1.29 of the 1978 Auditor General report where it is asked why serious managerial weaknesses continue to persist, even after years of conscientious effort to overcome them. That is an indictment of the system, and very little can be said in defence of it. That is the challenge which faces all members sitting in the chamber today. Approximately $50 million is being spent on internal audits within the system, and we are getting absolutely nowhere. Internal audits have had no status and have not had access to senior managers or deputy ministers of
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departments. This was pointed out in 1975, and it was agreed to by Treasury Board and the government at that time. Again the 1978 Auditor General report indicated that nothing has happened in this essential element of management within the system.
Over the past 15 years since the Glassco commission, government expenditures have risen from $7.3 billion to $42.8 billion, which is an increase of 487 per cent on an adjusted basis. In 1962 the Glassco report made two important and key recommendations. First, it recommended a decentralization to departments of responsibility for financial management and control. The second recommendation was putting in place a counterbalancing of controls in the Treasury Board. This was recommended also in the 1975 and 1976 reports of the Auditor General. The latter recommendation of the Glassco commission was never implemented. In fairness, as the 1978 Auditor General report pointed out, even if a Treasury Board counterbalance of controls had been implemented, it is somewhat doubtful that better organization and procedures would have been able to cope adequately with the rapid rise in the level of government expenditures.
Section 1.29 of the Auditor General's report, to which I have already referred, draws to our attention the continuing problem which we face, but nothing seems to be happening in spite of the best efforts we can put forward. I need not remind hon. members that the Auditor General is an office of parliament. Attitudes of senior departmental officials have not been conducive to wise and prudent use of taxpayers' money.
The following are some quotes from the 1978 Auditor General's report:
Departments generally assume that it is their money ... A set of values has been developed where the emphasis is on conceiving and developing new programs... Management of human and financial resources has been significantly less important to them-
As value for money considerations in management faded, personal accountability for the Canadian taxpayers' dollar seemed to expire. As a result we now have an attitude where nobody within the system seems to care about the net waste of resources.
Here is another quotation from the Auditor General's report:
During the period of rapid expansion in the government, it appears that the public purse was gradually deemed virtually bottomless and that access to it was not unduly restricted for the ingenious.
That is a terrible indictment of the system. The system puts more emphasis on developing policy initiatives and new programs than on the principles of well established practices of economic efficiency and effectual resource management. That is what the report is saying and why the need was created. Thanks to the former president of the Treasury Board the position of Comptroller General has been established, whereby we can perhaps bring about some corrective measures to a very seriously ill system.
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During these 15 years the government has become the principal supplier of a growing number of services such as health care, education, and pensions. I believe the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has mentioned this. It has assumed major responsibilities in the area of direct income transfer payments. In addition, we have found this government increasingly intruding into the private sector, with more and more of the means of producing goods and services being controlled by the state. This expansion of programs and services has caused a massive increase in public sector expenditure.
During this period of rapid expansion and development of new programs, the federal government has failed to implement acceptable standards of control and accountability within the system. Taxpayers in the private sector, who are accountable at all times to the tax collector, quite naturally assumed that some degree of accountability would exist over the tax spenders. In the thirtieth parliament the examination of the Auditor General's report by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts has shown that the financial management and control of the tax resource by the federal government, its departments, agencies and Crown corporations, has been significantly below acceptable standards of quality and effectiveness.
In addition of the failure of the government to implement the second key recommendation of the Glassco commission, other fundamental causes for the present conditions can be identified. The cash base method of appropriating funds and accounting for them has encouraged a degree of gamesmanship to develop within the system which works against good resource management and accountability. One merely has to work diligently on the committees to watch the gamesmanship that is exercised against the members of this House. An increasing reliance on post audit procedures for control and performance measurement has emerged and can be largely attributed to parliament's failure to put in place a system of satisfactory examination of the estimates and a meaningful control over supply votes. A further condition which can be identified is that the isolated work experience of the public servants has separated its processes and values from those found in the private sector.
One might ask how does one get their arms around $50 billion, or how does one tackle this huge problem? I think that within the answer to the question lies the challenge of the public accounts committee. In the thirtieth parliament the public accounts committee has gained a grasp of the problem and is in the process of adjusting its approach to meet the challenge ahead. The public accounts committee is doing a moderately good job with regard to the Auditor General's report, but it has failed completely in its responsibility to undertake proper examination of the public accounts of Canada. Unfortunately, it has neither the time nor the staff to meet this mandate.
It is essential to the parliamentary system that the performance of the Auditor General be continuously appraised by the public accounts committee. It is also essential that government departments, agencies and Crown corporations, continue to
(Mr. Huntington.]
have the public accounts committee forum in which they either defend their positions, gain publicity for their needs, or report that corrective measures are in place. Only with this type of public examination can the faults within the system be corrected and the interests of the already overburdened taxpayer be protected.
In his 1978 annual report at paragraph 1.43, the Auditor General describes three of the important pillars supporting economical, efficient and effective management. These are essential to the process ahead of us, and I would recommend that all hon. members read that section. It is the foundation upon which progress from this point on has to be made. Unfortunately time does not allow me to expand on that particular section of the report.
As we mature from the horror-story approach to assuring the implementation of the three pillars in section 1.43 of the Auditor General's report, I would like to say a few words on the challenge facing the public accounts committee. Members who have examined the last four reports of the committee should be aware of the challenge facing the committee of the change that is taking place and the quality of their work. The government-wide issue approach of the Auditor General demands a new approach and a new quality of performance, or we risk losing all potential benefits from the tremendous energy and talent that is behind the Auditor General's report. Parliament must examine, must understand the issues, and must create a pressure cooker for those elements in the system that resist coming to heel and being accountable.
The public accounts committee is the only window through which parliament can examine the economic, the efficiency, and the systems ability to deliver effectiveness. Within this area, the public accounts committee will have its hands full on government-wide issues alone. There is a new standard demanded of its members, who even now must attend briefing sessions before going to the meetings. The detailed examination of departments, agencies and Crown corporations, and the cyclical comprehensive audits that are ahead, will have to be undertaken by other committees of the House.
There is just no time for the public accounts committee to handle that aspect of the Auditor General's report. It will require a new type of research which, I believe, will have to be provided by a fortified research arm of the public accounts committee, and as we come to it, by the research arm which will study the estimates. A new strong committee, similar and parallel to the public accounts committee, will be necessary to study the pre-expenditure end of the continuum.
With pressure of examination on at the beginning of the spending process and with the pressure of a strong, well-armed post expenditure audit committee, at the end, I believe that the attitudes, behaviour and the management within the system can be turned around. I have been honoured to be sitting as the chairman of the public accounts committee through the third session of this thirtieth parliament, and now into the fourth session. I have become sensitive to some of the weaknesses which exist within that committee. It is an essential arm of this body and is needed to bring about some of the changes
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in attitudes and accountability which we face. We have to face the fact that the committee is controlled by the government, with membership based on the seats held by parties in the House of Commons. There are 11 government members, seven members of the official opposition, one member of the New Democratic party, and one member of the Social Credit party.
The steering committee has become a very important arm in the effective operation of the main committee as it deals with planning, study, and report writing.
The committee has a tremendous load with which to cope. It handles the Auditor General's report and has only been able to get to the public accounts of Canada on one occasion. It has to fight for its blocs within the bloc system of this House. That is an annoyance that the committee could do without, particularly when dealing with matters of the magnitude outlined in the 1978 report.
There are ways in which the committee should be strengthened, and I hope I will have time to put some suggestions on the record, Mr. Speaker.
A permanent research staff should be assigned to this committee under the direction of the chairman, free and clear of redirection by the director of research of the Library of Parliament. Recently I was trying to get research material ready for a meeting and found that our staff had been given assignments by the Library of Parliament. This was unknown to me when I was trying to get ready for the meeting.
Professional people should be assigned to the committee from time to time from the Auditor General's office on the basis of need. I think this is essential if we are to handle the subject in which the committee is now involved.
The committee should have a budget to cover investigational needs which occur from time to time. I offer the example of the AECL report and the committee's inability to complete its investigation into that important matter.
The official opposition should assign a research officer to serve the specific needs of members of the opposition who really carry the initiative within the committee.
Members of the public accounts committee have a tremendous burden of low-profile work. This causes some attendance problems and these must be dealt with. A high degree of dedication is required of the members who serve on that committee. I think we should find ways of improving the prestige of those hard-working members either through more public exposure, television coverage of the proceedings, or pay for the work.
The alternative would be for members to sit as a jury and allow experts, such as counsel and other highly qualified people, to examine the professional witnesses from the various departments who appear at the committee. Members of the jury should have the right to ask supplementary questions posed by counsel.
There are basically two approaches, Mr. Speaker. First, increase the research facilities for members participating in
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the committee and give them the incentive to serve, or second, put in place highly professional counsel to handle the detailed subject matter and allow hon. members to sit as a jury responsible for writing or approving the report prepared by staff.
I have said before, in the presence of the Auditor General, the Comptroller General, and to the Niagara Institute, that if we cannot turn around this "don't give a damn" attitude to the nation's tax resource, and impose accountability on the system, then 1 believe this form of government will become unstuck. This is too great a threat to our freedom for us to allow it to happen. That is why I implore parliament to make an all-out effort to strengthen the resources of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and put in place a committee equally well-armed to examine the expenditure part of the process.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, I should like to pay tribute to my colleagues who have worked so many hours in the performance of their duties on the steering committee. The hon. member for Ottawa West (Mr. Francis) has been a stalwart member from the government side, the hon. member for Pontiac (Mr. Lefebvre) has been a very strong member, the hon. member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson) brought her abilities, and there were my colleagues, the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Clarke) and the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers). I think the House should note the long hours of work they contributed to that committee.


Mr. Thomas H. Lefebvre (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to take part in this debate on the motion of the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen), I appreciate that the order of speaking gives me the opportunity to follow the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), who has been a very credible chairman of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Thomas Lefebvre: I agree with a lot of the things he said. I believe that this debate has taken a vein which is rather surprising. Members who have spoken have avoided going after or for scare headlines. We all know the importance of this motion, and we must congratulate the hon. member for Yukon for bringing it to the attention of parliament. I shall limit my remarks to those aspects of the motion which relate to parliamentary examination and control of public expenditures.
There is no doubt that we, as parliamentarians, have a duty to examine the expenditures of the federal government on behalf of our constituents, but we sometimes question how a private member can accomplish this awesome task. Some of the members who have already spoken have touched on the points that 1 shall address, but 1 believe they are worth repeating.
In the time that I have been a member of this House-that is not 54 years as indicated by a member of the NDP but a mere 13 years-there is no doubt that major changes have occurred in government expenditures, legislation and programs. An even heavier burden has been placed on members of

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the House, as a result. The duties of a member are becoming more complicated all the time. Priorities must be set on the matters to be dealt with within the time available in order for a member to participate fully. It must be remembered that a member also has to be available within his constituency.
Even though members now have a minimum of three assistants in their parliamentary office and one in the constituency, I have yet to meet a member who feels there is more time available now than there was 13 years ago when I came here and had only one assistant. In the parliament before that there was just one assistant for each two members of parliament. I have not yet encountered anyone with a solution to this problem.
The hon. member for Capilano has recognized that this government has brought in many new programs and budgets which enable us to have more help in all aspects of our work, including committees. All parties now have their own research staff. Perhaps better use could be made of these very highly qualified people. The government has also brought in legislation giving new and wider powers to the Auditor General to pursue subjects which he thinks important to parliament, and to bring them to the attention of parliament. An increased budget enables the Auditor General to hire additional competent and qualified personnel, as well as consultants on a contract basis.
On more than one occasion the Auditor General has stated that the changes introduced by this government have put this country in the forefront of the western world in many fields. Legislation introduced by this government established for the first time the office of Comptroller General. A very highly qualified person was appointed to the position, one who was successful in the private sector and who has been universally accepted. His presence has already been felt, and major reorganizations are taking place within departments and agencies of government. Plans are under way to have staff available in each department to act in a similar capacity. Senior financial officials within each agency or department will report directly to him on problems which arise because accounting principles have not been adhered to faithfully.
How has the Auditor General reacted to these changes? I would like to refer to his statement to the public accounts committee the day he tabled his latest report, November 23, 1978, where at page 3 he speaks about comprehensive audits comprising items 1 to 5, being financial controls, reporting, attesting and authority, management controls and EDP controls. At page 4 he says:
Comprehensive auditing does not imply five different audits, each dealing with one of the components reflected in the FRAME concept. To be effective there can be only one audit of each entity. Although the criteria established for each component must be different, a uniform and integrated approach to audit planning, execution and reporting is necessary.
Comprehensive audits for governments and other publicly funded organizations should possess certain characteristics. They should be: Constructive- Reporting findings both negative (with recommendations to remedy deficiencies) and positive (where the situation so warrants).

Co-ordinated-dovetailed with the work of internal audit groups and other external auditors where reliance on their work is relevant and warranted.
His report goes on to say:
The new comprehensive audit approach has been adopted for the 1978 Annual Report-the Centennial Report of the Audit Office. Five years have been devoted to its development. Several government-wide special studies (Financial Management and Control Study... Computer and Information Systems Evaluation ... Study of Procedures in Cost Effectiveness (SPICE)-
SPICE is a word that all of us will be familiar with within the next few months, if we are not already. The Auditor General goes on to say concerning SPICE:
-have contributed significantly to its concept and to its underlining methodology. More-much more-needs to be done. But a good start has been made to produce a manual of comprehensive auditing procedures for the use of our professional staff and to develop an advanced course of instruction for all levels of professional practitioners.
I have quoted the words of the Auditor General because I think it is important in the debate today to demonstrate that there are some positive developments and that the horror stories make up a very small part of his book. It is important that we take a higher plane than that and I am happy that most speakers who have entered this debate so far have done this.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to read a few passages from the evidence given by the Auditor General of Canada at the November 23 sitting of the public accounts committee. Here are a few paragraphs taken from issue no. 5 on page 5.13:


Thomas Lefebvre: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is directed to Mr. Macdonnell. On page 6 of your statement to the committee, second paragraph, you say:
In my view, this new approach to auditing, especially the value-for-money component, has great significance for the taxpayers and their representatives in parliament.
You are referring there to the SPICE study.
The study is very complex. I suppose we will be holding numerous meetings simply to examine the effects of your SPICE study. For our information, could you tell us if you obtained the co-operation of Treasury Board and of all the other departments involved in this study? Did they all offer their help and co-operation for this study which you call the most important in the history of your office?


Mr. Macdonell:: Mr. Chairman, I should say immediately that we have had great co-operation with Treasury Board because, of course, they participated in drafting this legislation for our new Auditor General Act. Once the departments overcame their initial shock at our new mandate we had wonderful co-operation.


Thomas Lefebvre: So you did not meet up with any departments who resisted after the initial shock, as you call it?


James MacKerras Macdonnell: In some departments, Mr. Chairman, initial shock did persist for a short period but eventually we managed to overcome it.


Thomas Lefebvre: Okay, fine. I understand also that Treasury Board officers regularly study with you and within the government departments which have been involved in the SPICE study. Have they made the results of its work available to you? Is there some communication between your office and Treasury Board on this particular subject?


James MacKerras Macdonnell: Mr. Chairman, very close co-operation from day one. In July 1976 I met with the then secretary of the Treasury Board in his office when I had been informed that the government would indeed be bringing down
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legislation that fall, and we discussed the beginning of this study. From that day right up to today, we worked closely with Mr. Tim Reid, a deputy secretary and assistant secretary of the Treasury Board who is responsible for this and who is in the audience. We have worked closely with them in every possible way.
We subscribe-and so does the Treasury Board secretariat-to the comment made in the Wilson committee report and that is that the Treasury Board and we are natural allies. I am not referring as much there, although it is true, to the ministers as I am talking about the secretariat, and now, of course, to the office of the Comptroller General. We have a cordial although not cosy relationship in trying to get better Financial administration. So we have received excellent co-operation.
Mr. Speaker, I believe it is important to note that the Auditor General of Canada said so many times. I would also like, Mr. Speaker, to read a few quotes-

I would also like to take a brief moment to mention the Auditor General's remarks concerning a possible improvement in the financial information that parliament receives. I refer specifically to chapter 6 of his 1978 report, and in particular paragraphs 6.29 and 6.30 at page 111, which I think point out a fundamental and complicated problem which parliamentarians will have to study once and for all and make up their minds as to priorities. At paragraph 6.29 the Auditor General says:
One or several volumes? Changes have progressively increased the size of the blue book as the Treasury Board has added to the information previously provided.
I emphasize the words "added to the information".
Paragraph 6.29 continues:
The 1978-79 estimates has 1,271 pages. If implemented, the suggestions we are advancing will further increase the document's size.
Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker? Paragraph 6.30 states:
This illustrates a basic dilemma confronting modern governments. The size and variety of their activities require presentation in a generalized, summary manner if the information is to be contained in a single volume. Such summary data, however, limit meaningful analysis. The processes, operations and projects being performed must be disclosed, costed and related to the results expected before the data become precise enough to be useful. As a result, there may be a need for the estimates to be split into two components: a volume on governmentwide spending, concentrating on the proposed global amounts and a second volume or volumes on departments and agencies, showing how they plan to manage the funds.
I am sure the public accounts committee will be studying this particular chapter in great detail along with many others.

Mr. Speaker, it is obvious that today members do not lack information but rather the time to examine the information made available to them and the reports delivered to their offices on a daily basis by all departments, agencies and, of course, other media. I am not convinced that one or two additional books or a volume going from 1,271 pages to 2,000 pages are necessarily going to help members. It is rather the decisions that each and every one of us will make to limit himself to one or two subjects and being well prepared in specific areas that are important. I also think that the public accounts committee will deal seriously, as it always does, with
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the last report tabled by the Auditor General, and we hear very different opinions 1 believe from the people around that table and we are going in all likelihood to spend weeks and weeks considering that last report.
I would like to conclude, Mr. Speaker, by quoting the last paragraph of the letter of the Auditor General of Canada contained in his latest report. It is addressed to the former president of Treasury Board, and I believe that too is very important. It reads:
Following the established practice of the past several years and in response to the stated request of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, 1 shall continue to follow closely the various aspects of the programs to implement recommended changes which have been agreed on and will be reporting on their progress in future reports to the Flouse of Commons. In this connection, your letter of October 13 setting out the government's position and plans with regard to the more significant recommendations will be particularly helpful. I appreciate very much your precedent-setting action in making it available to me for inclusion in the Centennial Annual Report of the Auditor General to the House of Commons.

I could go on and read into the record almost every page of the Auditor General's report. However, I conclude now by saying there is no doubt that enough evidence has been put forward today and at other times during the session to show that this government realizes it has a very responsible duty to the taxpayers of Canada. Each one of us should take his responsibility as well.
A lot of the criticism levelled at the government has been from sources that are ill informed. I doubt whether a member of this House, no matter whether he has been here 15 or 54 years, could make a very objective criticism of Treasury Board or the administration of the government accounts without taking a very serious attitude. I suggest that if a member does not have the time to become a full member of the public accounts committee, he should at least take some interest in that committee. I have had a lot of experience with it. There is no other committee that provides the training and experience of that committee.


Mr. Walter Baker (Grenville-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, just a few minutes ago I heard the hon. member for Pontiac (Mr. Lefebvre), say that there is nothing wrong with the government or Treasury Board with respect to the administration of Canada's expenditures.


Thomas Lefebvre: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a question of privilege. That is not true and the hon. member knows it. This debate so far has been on a high level. With the hon. member's intervention, that will now change.


Walter David Baker: I am concerned about what the Auditor General said. He made very clear the lack of expertise as to the government's control over departments and senior management levels and the results that flow therefrom. That is very clear, and it is the whole purpose of having the Auditor General.
The Auditor General should be commended not only for this year's report but for last year's report, which dealt in a new

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way with a change in the system. That is a fact we have to live with in this country. The Auditor General suggested some dramatic changes. If they are to be dealt with in a sane and reasonable way, we have to admit the bottom line, admit that certain things have gone wrong. The government has moved to the right with the Comptroller General.
The Auditor General has increased his prestige by increasing the depth of his report. However, the great gap in all of this is not the work of the Auditor General. It is not the fact that the government has moved off from the bottomless pit attitude of the sixties which grew out of the period of expansion of World War II. What happened is that we have reached the bottom of the pit.
The government has started to cure some things internally. This government will not have much chance to complete that cure. In any event, that is not the whole cure. The former president of the Treasury Board who is in the chamber, knows that. The great gap in the process of turning parliament back to the people and the country in terms of its expenditure process is in this parliament and its procedures. That is where the effort must be made.
I congratulate the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations (Mr. Reid) on his ascendancy to office. I hope his disposition improves as he advances in the ministry in these last days. He talked about where the fault lay for the operation and the failure to amend our rules. The committee last dealt with them in 1976. By the way, the committee has not met since then except to organize itself.
When the minister talked about the failure with regard to that, he forgot to say one thing. It is not just a matter of shortening speeches, although that is part of the difficulty. One of the reasons that the three major reports on reform could not go forward was that the government House leader would not tolerate the idea that the Speaker could intervene with regard to determining the length of debates and whether closure or limitation on the right to speak in the House of Commons would be instituted. That was his position. All parties in the House of Commons had some objections to the package. As a result, this latest opportunity of reform foundered.
I am going to say as a new member of parliament-


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member, but at this point in his speech I have a question. I would like to ask whether he will answer it now or wait until he completes his speech.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I would be happy to answer any question at the end of my speech. The hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) put his finger on the central and focal point of the motion. Its purpose is to express a lack of confidence in this government for its failure to take any leadership with regard to parliamentary reform. The last time that committee sat in any substantive way was in September, 1976, a long time ago. That is when these things were dealt with. We have had two reports from

the Auditor General since that time. The first one alluded to parliamentary reform. The latest one dealt with it directly.
I am quite prepared to experiment. I acknowledge the work of experimenting in the way the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has suggested. I believe the comments with respect to the way in which the old committee of supply functioned are valid. I saw it operate. I would be prepared for us to experiment in a limited way in returning that kind of thing to the House of Commons.
I am not prepared, however, to initiate any procedure which would put in the way of any government an insurmountable roadblock to its doing business. I want to see a balance between the tremendous power of the executive which has grown up over the years, and the right of this body to bring it to account. That is the direction in which parliamentary reform must move. Make no bones about it, I do not believe the stumbling block is the length of speeches made in the House of Commons. I think that in many ways, as the Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations has suggested, it involves the attitude of members on both sides with respect to changes.
The speeches made so far have looked to a certain extent to the past. We should begin to look to the future of this institution. The hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) observed that if this institution does not change, regardless of which party is in office, what we shall see is an ever greater degree of power concentrated in the executive and in the bureaucracy. This concentration of power will be increasingly unchallenged. This is a very unhealthy thing. As the hon. member for Capilano said, the parliamentary system to which we pay lip service will fall into greater disrepute than it does now in terms of its ability to bring the government to account. I believe it is the duty of members on both sides to look at the whole question of the manner in which we deal with the control of government expenditures, the way in which we deal with the estimates.
Committees have their role to play. They should be seeking to determine whether amounts proposed in the estimates are reasonable, that no unacceptable cost escalations are built in, that reasonable planning and foresight have been exercised with regard to every executive decision. That is the role of the committees. It should also be possible to use the estimates to discuss policy objectives. When has that happened in the memory of most members? When has parliament been involved in the development of policy?
Hon. members should be able to match policy instruments with policy intentions. They should be able to ask this question: Is the manner of policy implementation consistent with the objectives of policy? At the present time we cannot do that except in a foreshortened way because of the guillotine. Functions of this sort should stress the importance of members of parliament as spokesmen for the sweating taxpayer who pays the bills and, incidentally, pays us. In this sense we cannot do justice to the Canadian taxpayer. Members of parliament
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should not be regarded as intruders into the bureaucratic process, though I am afraid they are now, to such degree has our system fallen in esteem. Members have a constitutional responsibility which predates and is imposed upon the existence of any bureaucracy. We have tended to forget this.
1 make that observation without disrespect to the public service. There has been a vacuum; we have allowed that vacuum to develop and the public service has naturally moved in. Members of this chamber who do not hold office have a duty to bring those who do hold office in the executive to account.
The Auditor General realizes that the final link in the process of financial review is that which involves responsibility to parliament. He suggests that form of estimates should be improved and that more information should be given. That is a good start, Mr. Speaker, but it might be a false gain. Notwithstanding the staff presently available to members of parliament, or the opportunities afforded by the committee system or the bureaucrats behind that system, devoted as they are, if the parliamentary research system is not augmented, if the committee secretariat system is not augmented, all that information will mean nothing at all.
The Auditor General also suggests that relevant sections of his report should go before standing committees. This is one point of disagreement between myself and the Auditor General; I do not know how the committees could handle estimates, legislation and the audit function as well. The proposal might involve a conflict of interest in any event because most of the members of committees who deal with specific items are particularly interested in them, but I do not think there is any proper audit function done by those who are interested in those programs. That is one disagreement I have with the Auditor General, though I think we are moving in the right direction. We need something new. We want a whole new committee system. My hon. friend for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) suggested we needed a new government-everyone will admit that.
It is now six o'clock and in the few minutes which are left to me after the dinner recess I would like to make a proposal I have put to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization in the hope that it will meet with the approval of members in all quarters and make parliament more relevant and more functional.


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, when the House rose at six o'clock I had said that we might just talk
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about what is wrong with our system-and indeed there is a great deal wrong with it-but that I had a proposal to put to the House as to how we might begin the process of returning this parliament to the people. I said that, bearing in mind what the leader of my party said when he was made leader in 1976. He said that the people of Canada are interested not only in those things which we are against but also in the things which we intend to propose.
This parliament needs more information with respect to estimates. It needs more time to consider the estimates. We need a completely different approach. Our present process for dealing with expenditures has no focal point or direction. The only acknowledged aim of parliament thus far is to pass each vote in the estimates. Instead of detailed examination and a report, we have a series of disjointed local questions which lead to no conclusion and no recommendations.
Committees studying estimates do not issue reports. It is possible that some members may end up knowing a bit more about departmental policies than they did before, but those members have no impact on departments or on policies. Estimates emerge from this process virtually unchanged, which is the best indication of how behind the times and how irrelevant our process is. I believe we have to reverse this emphasis in our financial procedures. Instead of trying to discuss all the estimates every year, we should work our way through them in a four or five-year cycle. Instead of concentrating on masses of vague generalities, we should investigate in depth specific departments, agencies or functions. Such investigations should not result merely in a decision to pass or not pass estimates. They should result in comprehensive reports comparing agency goals with results, and costs with benefits.
In the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization in 1976 I outlined a plan for a standing committee on policy, expenditure and programs. This proposed committee would have two purposes. First, it would study the over-all pattern of government expenditure, hearing evidence in the process from the Department of Finance, from the Treasury Board and from outside economists. I hope such a study would make it clear where, at any given time, we are heading and on what assumptions about our future economic development our course is being charted by the government of the day. We do not have that opportunity today.
Second, that committee, through subcommittees if necessary, could undertake the kind of long-term intensive study I think we need if we are to represent the people who send us here. If we were to follow the lead of the Senate finance committee, which has undertaken a number of extremely useful studies-most recently on government office accommodation policies-we would do something for the process in this parliament. The only trouble with the present arrangement is that while the Senate has the time and the expertise for this type of work, we in this House of Commons have constitutional responsibility but not the necessary machinery, even though we may have the will to carry out that responsibility.
I would like to conclude with some general observations about government spending. First, if we are to have a tight

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financial system, we must subject the entire process to the closest possible scrutiny by agencies outside the administrative process. Parliament is outside the administrative process. In business, the ultimate consequence of waste and inefficiency is bankruptcy. In government it is just more waste and inefficiency. There are no automatic checks. They must be built in carefully and deliberately. That is the reason I made this suggestion.
Second, there must be a spirit of economy which pervades the approach of everyone connected with government. It is easy to waste $4,000 or $5,000. It is much easier to waste that $4,000 or $5,000 than it is for some taxpayer to earn it.
Finally, here and elsewhere we must develop an awareness of how much government spending and activity is appropriate. We do not have the machinery to examine that conflict. The role of government in our society has been growing steadily for over a century. Serious problems have arisen only in the last two decades. Recently governments have assumed that only they can alleviate inequities of opportunity, redistribute wealth, prime the economy, and offer incentives and direct support for all kinds of ancillary activity; that they can do all of this by not balancing the budget year after year, by rolling up a tidal wave of debt to engulf future generations, and by debasing the currency. We should begin to ask ourselves if that is relevant and proper. I say it is not, and we must examine that in parliament.
Recently governments have attempted to direct a complex modern economy by jettisoning all accepted principles of financial prudence. It will be the job of this parliament, if it does its job, to bring governments back to the lessons of financial prudence.
The basic lesson we have learned from all this is that men are not nearly as smart as they imagine themselves to be, and that much of what has been called planning is simply tragic over-confidence. I do not pin this government with all of the blame. Governments everywhere are to blame. The problem with the process in which Your Honour and I work is that it provides neither the opportunity, machinery nor attitude to say that parliament is the place where governments should be called to account for those things which they do that are good and also those things which are bad, wasteful and irrelevant.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the President of Privy Council on a point of order.


Yvon Pinard: During his speech I interrupted the hon. member on a point of order, asking for leave to put a question, and he suggested I should wait till after his speech. Do I have leave to put that question?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There must be consent not only from the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) but also

from the House, because the hon. member's time has expired. Is there consent for the parliamentary secretary to put a question?


Walter David Baker: Yes, Mr. Speaker. [Translation]


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Yvon Pinard: I thank hon. members and I will be brief. In his speech, the hon. member referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, which in 1976 examined three subcommittee reports. I would like to know whether the hon. member is in a position to indicate at this point that his caucus support the recommendations of each of the subcommittee reports, or whether he is ready to commit his caucus to acceptance of those three subcommittee reports that were tabled before the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization on September 30, 1976?


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I would not be telling tales out of school to say that we did not agree completely with them, but there was substantial agreement with substantial portions of the report.
Speaking for my party, we would be quite prepared to see two things happen respecting the House of Commons: the reconvening of the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization where that matter and others, and particularly the matter I raised, could be considered in depth; and we would be prepared to see the televising of the work of committees so that their work could be enhanced even in the situation in which they find themselves. I would be very pleased if the hon. member would carry that message back to the government House leader.


Mr. Lloyd Francis (Ottawa West):: Mr. Speaker, the motion before us is a non-confidence one condemning the government for imposing changes in the rules and procedure of the House and its standing committees, calculated and designed to stifle or eliminate parliamentary examination and control of public expenditures, etc. In other words, the attack is upon the government through its failure to bring about parliamentary reform for better performance of the committees.
I cannot but observe in the beginning that I would agree with what the House leader of the opposition just said, that the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization would be a most appropriate committee to consider the suggestions made by my colleague on this side of the House. Surely there is no suggestion that the work of that committee, the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, or many other committees, has in any way been impeded by what the government has done.
Tonight I should like to talk simply about the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and its contribution toward the study of public expenditures, and how this has evolved recently
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in the House of Commons. Some hon. members opposite subscribe to what I call the golden age theory-that somewhere back in the distant past there was a time when parliament controlled expenditures, voted in an admirable fashion, rationally allocated resources, and performed the job which somehow has not been performed in a more recent period. I was pleased the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) made it clear that he did not subscribe to that point of view.
When I was first elected to this House in 1963, at which time the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) was here, there was just a dreadful way of dealing with estimates in supply and committee of the whole. The opposition would attack one particular estimate, government members would rally, there would be votes, the majority was called to defend the government's position, and there would not be a dollar or a line changed. Then the decision of the Speaker would be appealed, and it was just an interminable succession of delays. In the end, nothing was changed. It was a desire to get away from that kind of thing which brought about the reference of estimates to the committees and the procedures with which we now deal.
It is interesting to see how other parliaments have dealt with the question of estimates during this period. The parliament of the United Kingdom simply tables the estimates. It does not attempt to deal with them all in a comprehensive, logical manner. By selection, certain departments or ministries appear by rotation on call. But a comprehensive examination, in the sense of looking at the total sum of government expenditures in detail, is not undertaken by that parliament on an annual basis.
In the late 1950s, the government of the day, headed by the right hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Diefenbaker), named the Glassco commission to look into the organizational structure of government activities. The recomendations of the Glassco commission, according to the present Auditor General, have led to a distortion of the pattern of controls. It is only now that this is being corrected.
To summarize very briefly what was recommended by the Glassco commission, it was a philosophy of letting managers manage, giving deputy ministers the responsibility to spend, abolishing a post then known as comptroller general of the treasury, and allowing delegated authority in hiring. This was in the name of decentralized administration which was alleged to be more efficient.
During the late 1960s and the early 1970s, we saw tremendous expansion in government activity and expenditures. The latest report of the Auditor General shows the very great expansion which took place in the federal sphere at the beginning of 1973. In a naive manner, I was prepared to say that might have been due to the minority government which was in power at the time. But within the last week the Standing Committee on Public Accounts has met with the public accounts committee of the province of Ontario on an informal basis, and the auditor general for the province of Ontario assured us that a very similar parallel expansion took place
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with the majority government of the province of Ontario during the same period, with roughly the same consequences.
Now we are dealing with a series of corrections being put in place through the new Auditor General, whom I submit is the most distinguished occupant of that office in its 100-year old history. This is a time when we see a major transition in the scope and function of the Auditor General.
The 1975 report of the Auditor General was a bit of a shocker. He reported that expenditures were out of control. He documented in chapter and verse a familiar liturgy of horror stories, widespread across broad lines. The government reacted to the criticism in two ways: first, by naming a special investigating commission under Mr. Lambert; and, secondly, it accepted the recommendation of the Auditor General than an office called "Comptroller General" be established.
There are a number of differences between the present office of the Comptroller General and the one which previously existed. Perhaps the easiest way to summarize the differences is to say that the present position is a staff position, advisory to the departments. The previous position was a line position with actual direct control over expenditures.
There is now in place in the person of Mr. Rogers a very competent, highly respected man who I am sure will be eminently successful in the performance of his duties.
It is also part of the package to strengthen the internal audit procedures and to have within every government department a comparable position to that of Comptroller General. This is now a process under way.
The control of expenditures itself is only part of the story. The Auditor General and his predecessor had been seeking for some time their own statute which would govern their activities and give them a mandate for a much more broad and fundamental type of examination of expenditures. That mandate took the form of the Auditor General Act which this House was pleased to recommend and pass. Under the Auditor General Act the Auditor General is given much deeper responsibility to look, not just after the event at horror stories, money misspent, resources not properly allocated and waste, but into the fundamental question of value for money spent.
It is interesting that the province of Ontario, when it came to examining the functions of its auditor general, took whole sections out of the federal act and incorporated them word for word in the statute to govern the provincial auditor general of that province.
Now we see in the latest report of the Auditor General a different kind of document, and a challenge to members of this House to participate in the public accounts committee which is chaired by the very distinguished hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) on the other side of the House, who is present this evening.

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An hon. Member:: Flattery will get you everywhere.


Cyril Lloyd Francis: Thank you. I am quite capable of speaking my mind forthrightly whether in complimentary or uncomplimentary terms, as the situation dictates.
To those members of this House who say that the government has stifled committees, that parliament can no longer be meaningful, and that there is no way we can control estimates and the expenditure of $50 billion a year, I say, why do they not just show up occasionally at the public accounts committee and try to do a job? Because that is a committee which is begging for participation from members. Those who say they do not have the opportunity to control expenditures have the obligation to show up and do the day to day, week to week work of a committee that sits many hours a week with a heavy schedule, because it is making an effort to try to understand and control how the money is spent, if that is humanly possible within an elected, democratic, parliamentary institution.
The document which was tabled just a matter of two weeks ago or less is only about one quarter of the document with the traditional horror stories. They are there: the money that was spent on an icebreaker that should not have been spent; the escalation of the costs of a building; and the failure to pursue commitments. All of those stories are still there. In an operation as large as that of the Government of Canada with $50 billion a year in expenditures, there are bound to be some places where things are not well handled, and there are bound to be some mistakes.
However, three-quarters of the Auditor General's report deals with something else. It deals with the attempt to ascertain what is value for money. I think I would summarize the new concept of his role by saying that the Auditor General has become something of a super management consultant. He is concerned with putting the systems in place and seeing that they are put in place, in order that the right information is fed to the managers at the right time and that there is a maximum possibility of making the right decisions.
It is not just a matter of saying the money was spent for a harbour here, a wharf there or a public building somewhere else, but it was misspent. The question is: how do you make sure you are getting value for your money? One thing members on the other side have not complained about is that they have not said there is any effort to stifle the Auditor General; and when one looks at the 1600 per cent increase in his budget in the last three or four years, no one could suggest he has been denied the resources he requested to do the job. He has been given the resources with the unanimous consent of members of this House, who know that an investment in that function is money well spent, a function which we are proud to support.
The Auditor General is going to be caught in the period ahead in a wide-ranging series of investigations. As a member of this House I found it interesting when he told me that the estimates are not in a form in which we can really get much information from them, that he thinks they should be presented in a different way. Then we heard the Treasury Board

response regarding the difficulties in complying with the request. Maybe it can be done and maybe it cannot be done, but it is the members of the committee who listened to the testimony from both sides, the members of the committee who joined in the report of that committee and made recommendations to this House, who act as a guide to the Auditor General in the carrying out of his job.
There was no golden age and there is no golden age in the handling of such immense sums of money. There is, however, a disposition on the part of the government and on the part of all hon. members to make sure we resolve these problems with the very best resources at our disposal.
The Auditor General is making a study of special procedures in cost effectiveness. The acronym is "SPICE". The special procedures in cost effectiveness are the beginning of a series of extensive examinations, of breaking new ground, and there is no doubt that some of the decisions the Auditor General is going to take will really push and stretch his mandate.
In the informal discussions we had with the province of Ontario public accounts committee someone put the problem this way. If someone in the province decided to build a road costing $200,000, the Auditor General would look at the road and say the province got good value for the $200,000 as the road was built to the specifications in the contract and there was full use of resources. Someone then has to ask whether the road should have been built in that place originally. Maybe the road was not built where it should have been built. When you ask that question you are bordering on the limits of the potential responsibility of the government of the day. There will be many instances and situations in which, in search for the procedures and systems to put in place, the Auditor General is bound to push the limits of the mandate given to him under the new legislation.
If hon. members of this House do nothing more than show up on opposition days to lambaste the government for not controlling expenditures, for letting everything get out of hand, and complain that they do not have the chance to do anything, they are ignoring the opportunity to do a job by participating in committees such as the public accounts committee. I do not say that that is the only committee, but it is the one which I personally have followed. Our problem is getting members out to do their jobs.
I cannot support this motion. I have my reasons when I am dissatisfied with various aspects of government policy, and I am sure that hon. members here have no difficulty counting the odd examples; but the current accusation that the government is attempting to stifle the committee system is a very false, shallow and wrong accusation. I will not vote for the motion.


Henry Perrin Beatty: would like to indicate at the outset, Mr. Speaker, that I intend to support this motion when it comes to a vote later this evening. I would like to commend my colleague for Yukon
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(Mr. Nielsen) for moving this motion because I think that in parliament now is the time when we should be turning our attention to how we can ensure that the Canadian taxpayer gets value for his money.
Over the course of the afternoon and the early part of this evening I listened to the various participants in this debate. I was particularly pleased to find that the first speaker for the government side was the new Minister of State for Federal-Provincial Relations (Mr. Reid). He is a minister for whom I have a very high regard and to whom I sent a congratulatory letter at the time of his appointment to cabinet. I indicated that I was pleased to see that a person with his perspective, having sat on the back benches, having been concerned about the role of the backbencher in parliament and ensuring that parliament was functional and doing its job, should be elevated to a post of high responsibility.
I always thought that it was axiomatic that when you raised a person to a high elevation he could see far, that his view would be much better. Instead it now appears that upon the elevation of the hon. member for Kenora-Rainy River to the cabinet his view is obscured in the clouds and he has lost sight of the issues which concerned him when he was down toiling in the vineyards with the rest of us.
In listening to the government speakers today, the general consensus seems to be that really the problems are not that bad and that controls by parliament on the executive are better now than they ever were. Anyone who has spent time in this institution, who has spoken to members of parliament from all sides of the House, however, will be aware of the frustrations, the discontent and the general feeling that this institution is not discharging its responsibility when it comes to ensuring that the taxpayers' money is well spent.
In the six years I have been here I have detected a growing sense of frustration on the part of members of parliament who feel that there must be fundamental changes made in terms of structure and in terms of the attitude of those who determine how we conduct our business in this House. The minister for federal-provincial relations made the point this afternoon that at the time the reforms were brought in in 1968 they were passed by unanimous consent and there was no dissenting voice. I was not here at that time and the minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I am told by my colleagues who were here that they were presented with an ultimatum by the majority government of the day that either we agree to a watered down package or else the government would use their majority to put the whole package through.
I would like to indicate my strong feeling, after six years here, that the rules have not worked well for parliament, that we do not have the information we need to do our jobs, and that the mechanisms are not in place to ensure that the taxpayers of Canada can rest confident that their money is being well spent.
My colleagues who have spoken before me dealt with a number of aspects of this particular problem as, for example, the way in which rule changes have affected parliament's ability to discharge its obligations. My colleague for Grenville-
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Carleton (Mr. Baker) put his case very eloquently, and anyone listening to his presentation would be impressed with the sincerity with which he made his case and the veracity of the arguments he put forth.
My purpose this evening is twofold. 1 want to talk about what the Auditor General had to say about parliament's ability to control expenditures and, secondly, to indicate what some of his investigations have shown in terms of the ability of parliament to keep an eye on how the taxpayers' money is being spent.
Government members have stressed the fact that there is not the former abundance of horror stories in the current Auditor General's report and that he is not illustrating as many individual cases in which there has been striking waste of the taxpayers' money as in previous auditor general reports. The point that these members do not make, and for some reason they overlook it, is that the Auditor General's 1978 report consists of 750 pages of condemnations of systematic problems. The Auditor General has conducted isolated audits on selected parts of government activities and has found in virtually every case that the government's control mechanisms or evaluation procedures have been found wanting. He has sounded the very clear alarm that unless government gains control over expenditures, unless we ensure that those responsible for directing the government today have the mechanisms in place which are necessary to evaluate the way the taxpayers' money is being spent, to determine whether it is being spent wisely and whether programs are being run efficiently and effectively, then the taxpayer should be concerned about how his money is being used by the government.
This report is the one hundredth report by an auditor general. As 1 have said, it contains 750 pages in which the Auditor General chronicles ways in which millions of dollars of the taxpayers' money is being wasted. He mentions individual examples of waste and also, even more importantly, systemic problems where the system conspires towards waste, encourages it and discourages the government from showing due concern in spending the taxpayers' money. He also makes recommendations on how we in parliament and those on the treasury benches can act in an attempt to get control of the public purse.
During my six years here there has been a common thread running through auditor generals' reports, and that is that Canadians have no reason to be confident, with the budget being the size that it is today, that their money is being wisely spent. Since this is the one hundredth Auditor General's report, I thought that it would be interesting to refer to the first auditor general's report which was released to parliament in 1879, and I was able to find a copy of it in the library. I thought it would be useful to see whether or not there was a common thread running from the 1978 report back to the report of 1879, or whether the problems dealt with by that auditor general were very different from the ones the Auditor General faces today. I was intrigued to see at the beginning of the report that there was one problem which seems to be a perpetual one, and that is the debate between the Auditor

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General's department and the government as to what exactly is the role of the Auditor General.
The supporters of the government today argue that this government has been particularly generous with the Auditor General, that they have provided him with the resources that he needs to do his job and that they have provided every assistance necessary to him. All hon. members know that many auditor generals have complained about being hamstrung. It was not because the government volunteered to establish that office or because they thought that it was a great idea that we have an Auditor General today. It was because of public pressure and because feelings in parliament itself ran so high that the government was forced to bow and to make those very fundamental reforms.
I was intrigued to find that in the first auditor general's report in 1879 there was a major debate over whether he should be allowed to report to parliament on whether the government has spent money without authorization. Included in that report is a letter from the then deputy minister of justice with a concurring opinion from the then minister of justice, saying that the auditor general should recognize his role was very limited and that perhaps he did not have authority to look into this aspect. It concludes by saying that he may hitherto have been under the impression that his duties and responsibilities were greater and that he would be glad to find that they were defined within the limits the letter explained. It noted that he would be grateful to discover that the government would not allow him to do the job that he felt he had to do on behalf of parliament.
That auditor general made his response in exactly the same way that successive auditors general have. He said he felt that the auditor general had the responsibility to parliament to point out instances where money was not wisely spent, where it was spent illegally, improperly, or where value was not received. This is a common thread running through 100 years of parliament dealing with the question of how to ensure proper control of expenditures.
There are other areas that are very different in the present report compared with the situation in 1879. Looking over the accounts listed in the first auditor general's report, I was interested to find that he pointed out in one department after another not that more money was spent than had been appropriated, but that departments were handing back money they had not spent. This is very different from the situation today when it appears there is a law to the effect that governments can consume all their revenue. Someone once said that we should all live within our means even if we have to borrow in order to do so. If that is so, the federal government has certainly recognized the truth of that saying.
It is worth noting that in 100 years the federal budget has increased about one thousand times and the intrusion of government into the everyday lives of Canadians has shown a concomitant increase. In Canada today expenditure at all three levels of government comprises about 40 per cent of the

gross national product. The average Canadian finds he has to work from January to mid-May approximately in order to pay the taxes he owes to various levels of government. Only after that is he working to support himself and his family.
If Canadians are to be asked to carry this heavy burden, surely they have the right to expect us as their representatives to do everything we can to make sure that their money is spent wisely. I do not think it is being spent wisely. Every member of parliament and many members of the public are aware of the statement made by the auditor general in 1976 in his annual report. At that time he said:
I am deeply concerned that parliament-and indeed the government-has lost, or is close to losing, effective control of the public purse.
The auditor general was saying that not only we in this chamber but the government-Treasury Board and the treasury benches-had come close to losing control over public expenditures. There can be no more scathing condemnation of the way the system works than for the auditor general, after studying the situation, to say that parliament and the government are no longer in control. The taxpayer has no basis for confidence that his money is being wisely cared for by those who hold public trust.
Members of all parties have detailed their concern for the rules of the House of Commons and its committees which make it difficult for us to ensure that requests for funds by the government and spending by the government are properly scrutinized. Consideration of the estimates by the various standing committees is a mockery. None of us can honestly say that parliament does an adequate job of scrutinizing the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars every year. We know that estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars are often approved by the standing committees without intensive scrutiny. They are approved because of a rule that provides that if they have not been voted on by a certain date they will automatically be reported back to the House as if every single item had been closely checked and approved by the committee. Who can study the way in which parliamentary committees discharge their responsibilities and be confident that parliament is doing its job as guardian of its public purse?
During question period today I tried to get information from the government about the cost of the abortive Lotto Select program. There was a report-


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I want to point out to the hon. member opposite-I know he would not want to put a mistake on the record-while he is addressing himself to tax issues and the spending of tax dollars, that no tax dollars are in any way involved in Loto Select or in Loto Canada.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the Minister's intervention. She is much more forthcoming this evening than in question period. Of course, the minister did not indicate that I had said tax money was spent in the case of Loto Select. One thing that is clear, however, is that Loto Select was a government program run by a Crown corporation. It was a program for which this minister was responsible to parliament.
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Iona Campagnolo: Not a single tax dollar was spent.


Henry Perrin Beatty: The minister says that not a single tax dollar was spent. It is fine if the money of Canadians is squandered by the government so long as it is not raised through the tax system! Mr. Speaker, that is not fine. When a Crown corporation is responsible for spending money, then parliament has a responsibility to make sure the money is handled wisely.


Iona Campagnolo: Mr. Speaker, a point of order. The hon. member opposite is fully aware that all Crown corporations are audited by the Auditor General as a regular course of events, so there is nothing new in what he is saying.


Henry Perrin Beatty: I am delighted to see that the minister accepts my argument, Mr. Speaker. That is the point we were trying to make today during question period. The minister has not been forthcoming with information about how the money is being spent. Whether the money is raised through the tax system or not, Canadians have a right to expect that government organizations will handle it wisely and well. To suggest that because money raised by issuing lottery tickets as opposed to the tax system justifies waste would be ridiculous. I am sure the minister would not attempt to justify it that way either.
The minister says there is no waste. Today during question period she explained-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I do not think we should get into that debate. A motion is in front of us. We are not here to debate what took place in the question period or to examine the estimates of the hon. minister.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Thank you for your intervention, Mr. Speaker.
I should like to explain why I cited that particular example. It was to prove a point that I think runs throughout the Auditor General's report-that parliament does not have proper control over the activities of the government. This is the gist of the motion before the House and this is the argument I was making before the minister interrupted.
The theme that I want to return to is that we are charged with the responsibility to ensure that the money of Canadian taxpayers is property spent, and we have not been discharging this responsibility. Everywhere we turn we find that impediments to the rules or structures, as mentioned in the motion, or intransigence on the part of the government, make it difficult for parliament to do that job.
Since the Auditor General's report was tabled a couple of weeks ago, I have attempted within the confines of the question period to raise questions about its findings. Obviously, this is one of the forums in which parliamentarians can ask questions about how the money is being spent. Anyone who has been present here knows that it has not been a happy experience. Parliament has had a hard time getting information from the government and basic changes will have to be made to ensure that we do get the information we need.
Let us consider what the Auditor General has to say about some of the areas he studied. He selected for a special audit 13 capital works projects, which were worth some $700 million of a total capital works budget of $10 billion. He found that 11 of
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the projects lacked proper control of the way the money was being spent. In instance after instance he found that the taxpayers' money was being spent unwisely and that value for money was not received.
He noted that at the time these 13 capital works projects were approved by parliament their estimated value was going to be $281,600,000, but by the time these 13 projects were finished the cost to the taxpayer was some $699,700,000. The cost had more than doubled. The Auditor General concluded in this part of the study that the absence of appropriate controls calls in question not only the $10 billion capital cost of current projects, but also operating and maintenance commitments that stretch decades into the future.
Surely this is a concern of parliament, and surely we have a responsibility to look into this. Let members on the other side say that the Auditor General was looking specifically for areas and flaws to complain about, but 1 put that question to the Auditor General. He responded that this was not the case. In the areas he audited he was looking at typical projects, not the extraordinary ones. He was not looking for horror stories. He knew that there were areas where he could find stories that would curl the taxpayers' hair, but this is not what he was looking for. He was looking for a selective group of examples which would give him an indication of how the government conducts its business. What did he find? He found in the case of the C. D. Howe building, the glass palace across the way in which the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce is located, that the Canadian taxpayer lost $12 million because of one simple decision. This loss was caused by the government deciding to ask the developer, who built the building, to finance the project instead of the government financing it itself. That is a cost of $12 million at the stroke of a pen. Surely the Auditor General has pointed out something that should be of concern to us.
In another part of his report the Auditor General conducted a study to determine whether the government programs were achieving the purpose for which they were designed. Surely this is a measurement we must make of whether tax money is being well used. The Auditor General in his conclusion of this study said:
A review of 23 programs in 18 departments has disclosed few successful attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of programs. The scope and quality of effectiveness evaluation will have to be increased significantly before management, the government and parliament, each with its respective interests, can be reasonably informed on the achievements of public programs.
It is clear from what the Auditor General pointed out that within the system of spending in Canada there are major flaws, and that major reforms must be made before we can be satisfied that we have done our job.
I see, Mr. Speaker, you are rising to indicate that I have used my allotted 20 minutes. Let me conclude by saying that when we were elected to parliament we were charged with perhaps the most important responsibility that can be given to any citizen of Canada, and that is to act as a proxy on behalf of our constituents to ensure that their interests and the

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national interest are properly served. We have not done that job in parliament in recent years, and unless there are fundamental changes made in the rules of parliament, in the way in which we conduct our activities, I do not think that Canadian taxpayers are being properly served. I hope that members in the House tonight will support the motion that has been moved by my colleague the hon. member for Yukon. I believe it deserves the support of all Canadians.
[ Translation]


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, I was greatly disappointed when I read the motion introduced by the Progressive Conservative party. 1 was disappointed because not only is it patently frivolous, so frivolous it is the perfect example of a motion that could be moved under Standing Order 43, as the Progressive Conservative party usually does between two o'clock and 2.15 every day, not only, as I was saying, because it seems to me to be patently frivolous but I was also disappointed because it mentions three items and all three are erroneous statements.
Mr. Speaker, what we have seen today is a sad exhibition of negativism on the part of the Progressive Conservative party; today is one of 25 days allotted to the opposition parties to raise issues of public interest. These are days allowing opposition parties to discuss, if they so wish, government expenditures, the use of public moneys or any other subject such as unemployment, inflation or the fundamental rights of individuals. I note that today the Progressive Conservative party has chosen to talk about parliamentary procedure and to charge the government with wrongdoing in this regard. All we have heard from opposition members is complaints, all we have heard from speakers of the Progressive Conservative party is references to the Auditor General's report. They are fortunate, Mr. Speaker, those Progressive Conservative members to have the Auditor General on their side, this man who is exemplary in the way he does his work; they would do well to try and emulate him, and to attend more frequently the committee sittings where estimates and supplementary estimates are examined.
Mr. Speaker, the Canadian public would be better served and the government would rejoice if the Progressive Conservative opposition would really exercise its role in this parliament. The point that I am trying to get across tonight it is that the Progressive Conservative party creates problems for itself. It refuses to apply correctly the existing rules to play its role as opposition. I readily recognize and agree that the present rules of procedure leave room for improvement. Mr. Speaker, I am among those who since being elected to the House in 1974 have most vociferously demanded an in-depth parliamentary reform, yet I am still able to recognize what has been done. I can also give credit where credit is due, and 1 can be grateful to those who since 1963-that is in the past 15 years, to the Liberals, because it has been a Liberal government since

then-have made valid changes in our procedure; yet I want to carry that further. But notwithstanding that desired and desirable reform to which I will come back, Mr. Speaker, I think that the present rules could be used by members of the Progressive Conservative party in a much more efficient and much more rational way so that if they truly played their role, if they were truly responsible, they would not have to complain today about a procedure they do not use because they do not know it well or because they do not want to know it.
Mr. Speaker, the motion falsely states that for 15 years this government has been trying to impede parliamentary control over public expenditures. Such a statement is unacceptable when one knows that in 1968 a very serious reform was made in this respect with the unanimous consent of all members of the House. So, Mr. Speaker, I will be referring in my remarks to that reform of 1968 and the one which has occurred since I became a member of parliament in 1974 and which is a major event in the history of this parliament, namely the advent of television to bring parliament closer to the people and, finally, I want to make a few positive suggestions for improving parliamentary procedures to enhance the role of members of parliament, modernize this parliament and make it more efficient.

First I want to look at the innovations of 1968 in the committee system and in supply since these are directly connected to the misrepresentations in the motion before us today.
Prior to the reforms of 1968, when the new rules were adopted unanimously, legislation was not automatically referred to standing committees. Also, the committees did not play a central role in the consideration of estimates. The reforms of 1968 gave the committees a greatly expanded role by providing that all bills, other than appropriation bills and bills based on ways and means motions, are referred to standing committees. Similarly, all estimates are referred to the standing committees.
These changes were brought about for sound reasons which remain valid today. First, the committees generally provide a better forum than the committee of the whole or the old committee of supply for detailed examination of legislation and estimates; the procedures provide for more flexible discussion, witnesses can be heard, and far more time can be taken for discussion. Second, the regular consideration of estimates and the committee stages of bills in committee of the whole House or the committee of supply meant a more superficial treatment of the subject matter because very little time could be made available for each item. Third, committee members can make a more direct and effective contribution to the consideration of legislation and estimates in areas that particularly interest them.
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Mr. Speaker, having said that, it appears obvious to me that if Progressive Conservative members did show up more regularly at committees where detailed examination can be made of the expenditures of the government through its various departments, then their complaints today would not be necessary. Today, we could have talked about unemployment, inflation or positive remedies but we only get destructive criticism.
Mr. Speaker, another major reform in the last 15 years-and we all know about this one because it took place during this parliament-was the introduction of television in the House. That was the result, Mr. Speaker, of a motion introduced in January, 1977, by the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Mac-Eachen) whom I have the honour to serve as parliamentary secretary, and we know how the broadcasting of the debates of the House brought parliament closer to the people of Canada, and that major reform was made by a Liberal government, by this government, Mr. Speaker.
Earlier the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) talked about the broadcasting of the debates of the House. But let me recall his attitude in the debate on the motion to approve broadcasting of the House proceedings.

Broadcasting of the House proceedings is another unquestionable proof of the government's support for the fundamental functions of parliament. Broadcasting has allowed Canadians across the country to see what is being done here on their behalf.
If opposition members want to call this a steady destruction of the parliamentary process, they must at the same time admit a contempt for the Canadian public and a fear of having their ineptitude exposed.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise on a question of privilege. My friend is quoting from someone, but certainly not me. He was about to attribute certain remarks to me. Those were not my remarks. If my friend will recall, it was as a result of an amendment originally placed by me and, firstly, ruled out of order but agreed to by the government House leader at a later stage in the one day debate. The government supported the proposals I put forward and our party supported the proposals the government put forward, and this matter was dealt with.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I think the hon. member has had ample time.


Yvon Pinard: If the hon. member will be patient, I am coming to his remarks. Let me refer hom. members to the speech made by the hon. member for Grenville-Carleton (Mr. Baker) on the motion to approve broadcasting. He said grudgingly:
Indeed, it is difficult to counter the weight of the argument that the people have a right to see and hear what is happening in parliament. But there are some deep reservations felt in this place and elsewhere-
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He then went on to express concern that the cameras would not give an accurate picture of the proceedings, that the public would not be able to understand the rules, that the media would misuse the broadcasting clips, and that anyway the public just would not be interested. He summarized his nervous attitude about the openness of broadcasting in these words:
In short, Mr. Speaker, we must hope that good television and good parliamentary democracy are natural companions. We will have to wait and see, though, because no one in this chamber can predict that.
Deep reservations and deep suspicions. That, Mr. Speaker, is how the hon. member and many of his colleagues felt about bringing parliament closer to the Canadian people.

Mr. Speaker, may I add that this welcomed initiative to further democratize this institution by allowing broadcasting of the House proceedings will lead us to propose new amendments to the rules of procedure which we must follow. Earlier I have had the opportunity to suggest that from the point of view of government spending and budget estimates review, the 1968 reform which had been proposed with unanimous consent-including that of Conservative members-had very much improved the situation and that if these members had been up to their obligations, if they had co-operated and regularly attended committee meetings, they would have had every opportunity to study carefully these expenditures. I can hear the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) who moved the motion-and who is seldom in the House and does not even sit on the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization-I can hear him say that it is not true. He knows very well that last Thursday, the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates had to cancel its meeting because there was not even one Progressive Conservative member to study the estimates. Under the circumstances, I am surprised that it was the hon. member who moved the motion now under consideration because he is well aware that his party was not represented on this committee and that the committee had to cancel its meeting last Thursday evening. I had the honour of appearing before this committee on Friday morning and I was able to provide all the explanations asked by the two Progressive Conservative members who were present about the expenditures of the office of the Privy Council.
I come now to the third point I wanted to make which concerns positive suggestions for changes in the procedure of this House. Mr. Speaker, I would have liked very much to hear something constructive on the part of Progressive Conservative members this evening. For a number of months, the Canadian people have been able to see our proceedings on television. They realize that there are certain anomalies in our rules and they would like to see some improvements made to allow members of parliament to play a more human and more effective role in this institution and be more representative of those that we represent throughout the country.

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Mr. Speaker, the first thing that comes to my mind is the length of the speeches. I am not surprised at the silence of the Progressive Conservative members on this subject because they are the ones who most abuse our present rules, which allow members to speak for 40 minutes on the principle of a bill on second reading. Mr. Speaker, this is totally unacceptable. There are 265 members in the Elouse, and after the next election, there will be more than 284 or 285. What should be considered at the second reading of a bill is the principle of the bill, and the Progressive Conservative members quite often use up 40 minutes each to talk systematically about the principle of the bill so as to delay referral to a committee and prevent the government from proceeding effectively with the implementation of its legislative program for the year. Mr. Speaker, there have been numerous and obvious examples of this in the last few sessions which should urge us to change promptly our procedure for the consideration of bills at the second reading stage. In that respect, Mr. Speaker, without muzzling the opposition, while allowing everyone to express his view freely and democratically since we are discussing only the principle of the bill, I believe it would be perfectly fair and so simple to limit the debate on second reading to a maximum of two or three speakers from each party, whose speeches should not exceed 15 minutes each.
We know that subsequently, in committee, we can hear several witnesses. We also realize that we can amend the bill and that after a comprehensive study in committee, it will come back before the House where we will study it at the report stage and, subsequently, at the third reading stage. During the last sessions and the last years, Mr. Speaker, the Progressive Conservative party has made an unacceptable and abusive use of the standing order which allows a member to take the floor for a maximum of 40 minutes. 1 think that for the sake of common decency and civism we should give to the highest possible number of hon. members the opportunity to express their views and use a much shorter time to comment on bills on second reading.
In that respect, I deplore the attitude of the Progressive Conservative party which has literally wasted the time of parliament and despised this institution.
Another change is also needed, Mr. Speaker, and as it is something constructive, it is not surprising if the Progressive Conservative party avoided saying anything on that subject. We should allow members to have more frequent contacts with their electors and, consequently, to reflect here a more complete picture of the people's need. For a long time, Mr. Speaker, on this side of the House, we have been asking for a more compressed, I do not say reduced, but compressed work week, with the same total number of working hours but compressed into four days to allow members to spend Mondays or Fridays with their constituents.
On various occasions I myself raised the issue in my speeches here. We have asked for the co-operation of all
[Mr. Pinard.J
members in changing to a four-day weekly schedule that would allow every member to go back to his riding, to meet with his constituents and also to have a much more regular family life. This has not yet come about but is nonetheless desirable. I am proposing it once more, most strongly and most respectfully.
Whatever the changes suggested, Mr. Speaker, two principles must be followed. First, truth must be respected. When I read a motion such as the one put forward today by the Progressive Conservative party, I feel it is odious. There is absolutely no truth in the three points made in that motion. It is absolutely not true that for more than 15 years the government has deliberately and steadily undermined the fundamental function of the House of Commons. It is absolutely not true that the government has refused to undertake a serious review of House procedures, and it is absolutely not true that the government has refused to consider the numerous worth-while proposals for reform. In 1976, I was sitting on the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization. I co-operated in the development of the reports submitted by the three subcommittees, and I attended the last meeting of that committee in September, 1976, when the three reports were tabled and it was decided, as appears from the minutes I have here, and I quote:
It was agreed that the revised subcommittee report as printed would be referred to the various caucuses.

Mr. Speaker, when did we hear from the Progressive Conservative caucus, and when did we read their report on the worth-while parliamentary reform proposal the government submitted for study to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization? Never, Mr. Speaker. They prevented-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the hon. member, but his time has expired.


Mr. Andrew Brewin (Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, the essence of the parliamentary system is control by the representatives of the people over the power of the purse so that the policies and activities of the state may be directed.
At the core of the situation we are facing, as was well stated by my hon. friend for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles), is the necessity for a meaningful system of estimates. It applies to all public expenditures and a fortiori to large controllable expenditures including, for reasons I will go into later, military expenditures. The present system is at best meaningless and at worst a farce. It is, I think, a serious danger to our parliamentary system. It is possible to defeat any meaningful control of estimates if those estimates are so vague and general that no individual, whether in committee or in the House, can grasp or deal with them. Parliamentary control, as I have said, is
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essential to our system. But inadequate parliamentary control is a snare and an illusion, and that is what I fear we have at the present moment.
I am not putting blame on any particular party. Many industrial societies are experiencing the same difficulty. We must have estimates with sufficient particulars. If I may borrow some judicial language from Chief Justice Duff and use it in a different context, he said there must be intelligibility of allegation; if people are asking for money from taxpayers they must allege with intelligibility, with understandability, what it is they propose to do with the money.
I want to take as an illustration of this general proposition the discussion of the national defence estimates-I am looking at the 1977-78 estimates. Under the heading "Defence" is contained a large and vague reference on the basis of which we are asked to vote away millions-in fact we get close to billions eventually-for such a thing as air defence forces. The program description is: "The maintenance of air defence military capability to safeguard Canadian sovereignty and independence". And so on. Well, Mr. Speaker, we are all in favour of safeguarding Canadian sovereignty and independence, but when we are asked for substantial sums of money we want to know how the plans proposed will in fact defend our sovereignty and independence, and that is what is lacking at the present time.
We all know there is plenty of discussion going on now about the proposed purchase of 130 to 150 fighter planes at a cost of $2.34 billion in 1977 dollars. It is generally thought that taking into account inflation and the changing value of the Canadian dollar, that sum will probably be inflated to around $4 billion. At this stage, of course, I am not discussing the merits of the proposal. I am asking whether there has been adequate scrutiny, and I say there has not.
We are in danger of being asked at some time in the future to approve this huge expenditure which some of us, including myself, consider to be a waste. It will be a fait accompli. We will not be asked to approve in advance. Estimates which come after the money has been committed and spent do not allow parliament an adequate opportunity to approve or disapprove. Approval after the fact is coerced, especially since there is a parliamentary majority.
There has been no accountability to parliament with respect to this matter. The original announcement-and I intend to go into this-came from the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Danson), and I will just summarize it. It was made on March 18, 1977. The minister said that the cabinet had authorized a commission, which came to be known as the Manson commission, to inquire into which of several purchases of up to over $2 billion should be made. What did the Department of National Defence say? They said that the money had been spent. The Manson commission brought forward a short list, and that is presently being discussed. That has been done only at considerable expense, and naturally so.
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At no time has this item appeared in the estimates. At no time has there been any adequate statement about the strategic thinking behind this, or about its purpose, or about the reality, if any, of a threat. Indeed, General Dextraze, then the chief of staff, referred to the threat of manned bombers as a remote possibility. There were no reasoned, intelligible reports on the matter.
So the matter has gone on. Time and again the minister has said in very general terms that we have to do this because of our obligations to our allies. He never tells us what our obligations are. Most of us who have looked into NORAD and NATO know that there is nothing which calls for us to do this. This is our own choice, but that choice is not being made by the Parliament of Canada. It is not being made for the people of Canada. A choice may be made at some stage in the future, but it will be made by the cabinet.
To bring this matter up to date, I asked my office to phone the Department of National Defence today. My office was told that these expenditures which have been made do not appear to be in any estimate. If they are in any estimate, they are so well buried that no one can find them.
That is the situation we are in. In the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence I tried to get a statement regarding capital expenditures. We were shown a graph covering 1978 to 1993 showing how this $2 billion is proposed to be spent. We were also shown other commitments dealing with such matters as our patrol frigates. We were told that we would have to get capital equipment to police our waters. Parliament has never been given a choice as to which of these two roles is more important.
Other countries have managed to get away from this kind of thing. Just this year, 1978, the Senate of the United States called for amendment of the arms control and disarmament act. This would require certain action on the part of the director of the agency involved. When anybody prepares a legislative or budgetary proposal requiring estimates concerning nuclear weapons to be acquired or requiring any estimates for total programs in excess of $250 million or any annual program costing more than $50 million-since the United States is a much larger country than ours the figures involved would be larger as well-reports must be made and details set out. The director involved must state the impact of proposed requests, and that is part of the law.
I want to read what Senator Clark said in dealing with a proposal for what was known as an enhanced radiation warhead, which is known colloquially by a different name. Senator Clark said this:
-arms impact statement is fully justified, for it demands of the Executive a thoughtful and reasoned analysis of the over-all significance of the weapon under consideration.
Mr. President, the requirements of the law are clear. Before we appropriate money for a system, we must know what that system will do. We must have this impact statement. The lack of this alone, it seems to me, justifies withholding Senate approval at this time.
Mr. President, beyond these procedural questions are fundamental questions involving our commitment and interest in arms limitations-

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The United States is a country which has much wider military obligations than we have, but Congress has striven to acquire some control over this spending. As I have pointed out, we seem to have no control whatsoever in that respect.
What is true with regard to defence is true with regard to many other fields. I want to emphasize that it is true with regard to military matters. I spoke to a well-known Conservative, who shall be nameless, a day or two ago. Since he and other members of the Conservative party had been saying that they want to scrutinize all expenditures with great care and cut out what we do not need, I asked him why he did not look at this program for acquiring fighter aircraft. "Oh," he said, "the military has decided that. I take its advice".
I think the same tendency exists within the government. That is an abdication from the principle of parliamentary authority. The military does not have sole control over matters of this kind. If there is any doubt about that, I would like to read something the Minister of National Defence said when Colonel Painchaud was fired, if that is what happens in the army when one loses his job.


John Edward Broadbent: Sacked.


Francis Andrew Brewin: He was sacked. He was fired. He was the commander of the crack Canadian Airborne Regiment. He dared to criticize the Minister of National Defence, something I do on occasion. The minister at that time said this:
-essential point which we must never, ever forget-that in a democracy it is civilian control of the military.
We owe a lot to the military ... but it is fundamental in our type of society that the policy and direction is in civil hands, those of the elected representatives.
That has been said by many others. It is the basis of our system. Therefore, I say that the general rule which I have propounded of adequate scrutiny applies as much to military matters as it does to anything else.
I will conclude by saying that we are not dealing with an unimportant matter. It is very important. It goes to the root of the parliamentary system of which we are part. I think most of us are proud to be part of it. We want to see this parliament function, and we want to see it exercise the authority given to it by the people and by the Constitution of Canada.
The present manner in which estimates are being handled is a failure. I do not join in any wholesale condemnation of the government. I do not think the present government is much worse or better than others we have had. Parliament should attempt to clarify and strengthen the means of control over public expenditures. That is the essence of this motion, and that is why we support it.


Mr. James Gillies (Don Valley):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am delighted to have an opportunity to rise for a moment or two to speak on the motion before the House. It is one of the most important motions which have been put before the House of Commons in a long, long time. Every member of parliament, if he is serious about this institution and about representing his

constituents, must look at this motion with a gread deal of care.
Canada has a very unique form of government. The British parliamentary system operates without internal checks and balances. The fundamental manner in which the British parliamentary system operates allows the opposition to hold the government in check by not accepting its supply. The only manner in which that can be done effectively is for the opposition to have complete control over the examination of estimates.
For at least a decade, opposition members of parliament have not had such an opportunity. Every single member should know that the reputations of members of parliament and this institution perhaps have never been lower in the estimation of Canadians than it is at the present time.
Why is that true? It is because the government has emasculated a fundamental operation of parliament, that of control of the estimates. When a member of parliament is elected, his constituents think that he will take care of the taxpayers' dollar. We are here in a trustee relationship; we are trustees of taxpayers' money. Any government which refuses to permit members to perform that function attacks the fundamental institution of democracy, not a political party or individuals. Democracy is a very, very fragile form of government. It depends upon the rule of law and respect for our institutions.
In the last 15 years, the government has refused to change and modify the manner in which parliament operates. Its failure to bring in rules respecting estimates has done more to destroy respect for parliament, and therefore democracy, than anything else which has happended since confederation. All we have going for us in this critical period of time is the institution of parliament. Any government that attacks the manner in which we are permitted to operate is affecting the heart and soul of this country.
The motion before us is not a trivial one. Every member of parliament has a responsibility to look at it. He should examine his conscience as to the manner in which he will vote. Over the last decade there has been a decline in the entire institution of parliament. I do not say this entirely pejoratively. If one asks the majority of Canadians today if there is the same high standard of responsibility on the part of ministers of the Crown as traditionally expected in the British parliamentary system, they would say no. If they were asked whether the principle of candid solidarity as the framework in which to operate is working they would say no.
Most Canadians would not know why there is so little respect for this institution, but they know something has gone wrong. Perhaps Canadians think that no one in the House really cares about the manner in which their money is spent, or really protects their money from being wasted. Perhaps they were appalled that estimates in the amount of approximately $48 billion were passed in a half hour or so, yet no one really knows what is contained in the estimates. There is no system in place so that taxpayers will receive anything like a fair break regarding the manner in which their dollars are spent.
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No member who has sat on the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates feels that he could do a decent job. Recently a very distinguished Canadian said, "Do you know what was the most demeaning circumstances I have experienced in my life? It was appearing before a parliamentary committee." I said, "Do you know what is more demeaning? Being a member of the committee".
The manner in which our estimates operate is a disgrace. It is not that members are not trying hard, but the only committee which is working well is the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, because it has the benefit of the staff of the Auditor General. If that had not happended by random, because the Auditor General was looking at the Atomic Energy Commission, we would never have known the scandalous manner in which that Crown corporation was operating.
We ask Canadians to vote, pay their taxes and accept the proposition that $50 billion will be spent. We are asking Canadians to do that, yet we do not have a system to examine how that money is spent. It is disgraceful. Any government which would allow that to happen for 15 years deserves to be thrown out.
I ask hon. members opposite to examine their consciences before saying that they have appeared on a committee on estimates or an expenditure committee and are able to say honestly that they were capable of doing their jobs under the present system. The committee system cannot function adequately until it has staff and is rid of the hangman, guillotine idea. Until we restore the idea that the estimates of some departments should be brought to the floor of the House of Commons, with unlimited time for examination, we will never be able to do what we are supposed to.
Why were we elected? Why are we here? We are reasonably well paid. We are here to perform a legislative function. We are the trustees of Canadians regarding the manner which their dollars are spent. We require reform in the operation of the House of Commons, and a fundamental commencement of that reform must be in the committee system and the examination of estimates. That is why I feel the motion before us is an important one, and that everyone should look at their consciences regarding the manner in which they vote.
The Auditor General reported that the finances of the Government of Canada are out of control. Ordinary people do not realize what is happening in this nation. How could this have happened? Why is there a deficit of approximately $11 billion or $12 billion? If we compare our deficit relating to budgetary expenses to that of the United States, we will find that it is four times higher. Our deficit is so large that the time for economic policy-making is almost gone. How was it possible to be so extravagant and unrealistic as to end up with an $11 billion deficit in the country? Anyone who pretends that the system is operating, and therefore votes against this motion, is blind. The evidence is in front of us. The system is not operating. It is important and necessary that we change it.
The Auditor General said that the financial accounts are out of control. When he appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, he asked a question concerning the
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number of Crown corporations. He asked how many Crown corporations there were. He did not even know how many there were. The Government of Canada does not know how many Crown corporations there are, and does not know what they are.


An hon. Member:: When was the last time you were at the public accounts committee?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James McPhail Gillies: Here we go again.


An hon. Member:: We have to wait for an hour before your members show up.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: Shout, shout; that's all they can do.


James McPhail Gillies: That is a real indication of the capability of those members over there. An hon. member asks how many committees I attend, and how many times 1 am there. Let me tell hon. members why attendance at committees is so poor. If anyone wants to know why committees are attended so poorly, let me tell him it is because committees do not work, because they are no good and because they are ineffective. That is why they are attended so poorly.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


James McPhail Gillies: If committees did what they were supposed to do, people would be there.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James McPhail Gillies: I am interested in saying to those people over there-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


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


James McPhail Gillies: The only thing 1 can say to the members over there is that they will not be there very much longer.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. I would suggest that hon. members extend the usual courtesy to the hon. member who has the floor.


James McPhail Gillies: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to hear this sort of observation, and I say this in all seriousness, because hopefully those people will take the time to look at committees and will decide-


An hon. Member:: Hopefully you will attend the public accounts committee.


James McPhail Gillies: An hon. member says that hopefully I will come to the public accounts committee. Let me tell him that the
;40

December 5, 1978
Parliament
animation of the estimates by the committee is a waste of ne. How can hon. members over there continue to kid emselves when the reputation of parliament is the way it is td when their party is going down the drain? How can they : there and say the Canadian people think this is okay? stitutions are very difficult to reform internally, and certain-difficult to reform with that group over there.
The last point I want to make, and I want to make it very early, is that we are here as trustees of the money of the :ople of Canada. We have a fiduciary obligation which is not :ing fulfilled and which cannot be fulfilled with the rules as ey are and the way that committees operate in Canada. This an indictment of this government over the last 15 years. It is i indictment hon. members over there will have to live with. 5t me tell hon. members again that what we have here is a atter of principle, that when we destroy our institutions, as ey have been trying to do, we are in great trouble.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. It is my ity, pursuant to Standing Order 58(9), to interrupt the oceedings at this time and put the question on the motion, he question is on the motion of the hon. member for Yukon dr. Nielsen). Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the otion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: All those in favour will ease say yea.


Some hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: All those opposed will ease say nay.


Some hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: In my opinion the nays ive it.
And more than five members having risen:


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


Mr. Speaker:: I therefore declare the motion defeated.
It being after ten o'clock, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock in the afternoon.
At 10:15 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, December 6, 1978