1980-05-30

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Madam Speaker, i rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
In light of the fact that the Small Loans Act requires any lending institution which charges in excess of 12 per cent per year to be licensed by the federal government, and in light of the fact that such a regulation no longer makes it financially profitable for credit unions to lend small amounts of money, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Western Arctic (Mr. Nickerson):
That the minister in charge of consumer and corporate affairs be required to introduce a bill before the end of the current session to amend the Small Loans Act so that the mandatory 1 2 per cent ceiling is no longer effective, thus making it possible for credit unions and other similar lending establishments to serve the people that they were primarily intended to serve-the small borrowers.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, 1 rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. This week Canadian National Railways has laid off one-half of its rail car repairmen on Prince Edward Island, with only 14 days' notice to the men involved, despite the fact that most of these men have given over 30 years of dedicated service to their employer. Four of them have given 140 years combined service. Given that those lay-offs constitute a most serious further downgrading of the
railway on Prince Edward Island, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Malpeque (Mr. Gass):
That this House condemn Canadian National Railways for its heartless treatment of rail car repairmen on Prince Edward Island; and, further, that this House urge CN to reverse its lay-off decision so that P.E.I. rail cars can continue to be maintained and repaired on Prince Edward Island rather than in another jurisdiction.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.

[DOT] mo


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
In view of the deplorable housing situation on Indian reserves all across Canada and the dissension this causes within Indian bands, and in view of the fact that Indian women on the Tobique reserve in New Brunswick are occupying the band council office in yet another attempt to receive adequate housing, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis):
That the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development look into this explosive situation and take action immediately to help the band council resolve this long-standing injustice against Indian women in New Brunswick.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANCER-CAUSING DRUGS IN CURED MEATS-CALL FOR BAN-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, I rise to move a motion under Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.

May 30, 1980
In view of the fact that a recent study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that nitrates and nitrites when consumed can cause cancer, and in view of the fact that these drugs are still being used extensively in Canada in processing cured meats such as bacon, ham, weiners, etc., which when consumed form nitrosomines, a well-known cancer-causing agent, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg-Assiniboine (Mr. McKenzie):
That the Department of National Health and Welfare take immediate steps to completely ban the use of nitrites and nitrates in food curing and processing, which will speed up the development of alternative methods of curing meat not harmful to the human body.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANADA PENSION PLAN
Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Madam Speaker, 1 rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43. This is especially appropriate in view of the receipt yesterday of the report on the International Year of the Child.
Whereas the government presently adjusts old age pensions four times a year to allow for increases in the cost of living, but payments to widows and dependent children under Canada Pension Plan legislation are only adjusted once a year, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Cambridge (Mr. Speyer):
That the federal government end discrimination against Canadian widows and dependent children receiving payments under Canada Pension Plan legislation and immediately begin to adjust these payments four times a year rather than once a year.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF THE CHILD
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43.
In view of the fact that the Canadian Commission for the International Year of the Child has just presented to Parliament its excellent report, "For Canada's Children: National
Agenda for Action", and in view of the fact that the 50 members of the commission, from all parts of Canada, contributed much time and hard work on a voluntary basis on behalf of Canada's children, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Louis-Hebert (Mr. Dawson) and, I hope, supported by all members of the House:
That this House express its appreciation to the Canadian Commission for the International Year of the Child for the outstanding work done by the commission in particular in establishing the report "The National Agenda for Action for Canada's Children."


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Madam Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Madam Speaker, I hope my motion under Standing Order 43 will secure the required unanimous consent of this House, because it deals with a matter of immediate, pressing and national concern and importance.
Because Canadian government annuities have been bearing interest at only 7 per cent since 1975, when a promise was made to review that interest rate, and with the interest rate now standing at over 11 per cent, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Carleton-Charlotte (Mr. McCain):
That this House require the government to live up to the undertaking given in February, 1976, by the then minister responsible for the annuity program, Mr. Robert Andras, to the effect that "both the increase in the rate of interest and the percentage increase in the annuity (at maturity) will be subject to periodic review" and, in addition, that the government be required to take appropriate steps so that adjustments may be made from time to time to keep the interest rate on government annuities more closely aligned to interest rates in the marketplace.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
May 30, 1980



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Bill Jarvis (Perth):: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. He will recall that on May 15, in a speech, he indicated government involvement to fulfil the very obvious need for refineries in Ontario and in Quebec to instal facilities to assist in heavy oil upgrading to maximize, of course, the productivity of the crude oil they process. One of the refineries he mentioned specifically in that speech was the Ultramar Golden Eagle refinery at Quebec City. I wonder if the minister could advise the House today if this upgrading at this particular refinery includes government assistance such as grants, loans and tax benefits.
Specifically, because he indicated in the speech greater access by that refinery to Canadian crude, can the minister confirm that he proposes to allocate Ultramar an additional 50,000 barrels a day, or some such approximate amount, of Canadian crude which would be diverted from the Montreal area refineries, which refineries receive this crude through the Sarnia-Montreal pipeline?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, there is no intention to provide for grants or subsidies for this particular conversion at the Ultramar refinery. However, in order to achieve the purpose we are trying to achieve, of upgrading the treatment of oil at that particular refinery, we are working on an arrangement whereby greater access to Canadian domestic oil will be provided to the Ultramar refinery. Obviously, this will imply reallocation between the various other refineries at the present time. That is in the works and I expect that it will be worked out very shortly.


William Herbert Jarvis: Madam Speaker, when the minister refers to "other refineries", my information was that it was the Montreal area. The minister may wish to confirm that. What concerns me-and the minister will recall, because many of his colleagues raised it last year-is that it was Ultramar which cut off so many Quebec and Ontario independents. There was one in my own riding as well, so it was not a problem unique to Quebec.
However, would such diversion not be against the advice of department officials, who were informed of numerous accusations made against Ultramar to the effect that Ultramar shorted its Quebec City refinery by selling about 50,000 barrels a day on the spot market in order to secure higher profits? There are those accusations on the one hand, and on the other hand there is the vulnerability of the small Canadian independents in both Quebec and Ontario who rely very heavily on that refinery and were cut off arbitrarily.
Oral Questions
That company does not enjoy the best reputation in the industry, and 1 am wondering what we are doing to ensure that the situation will be improved by that particular refinery


Marc Lalonde: I am indeed quite pleased to see that my colleague is raising that very important question and I can assure him that it is one to which we attach much importance. I already had the opportunity to meet with the independent dealers of Ontario and Quebec and we discussed the matter. 1 also had the opportunity to meet with some representatives of Ultramar and to point out our dissatisfaction about the situation in recent years. The developments to which we are now referring should boost the production of that refinery and make it available to independent dealers. We intend to follow the matter closely and see that independent dealers are truly protected so that there will be no discrimination against them compared with the dealers related to the multinationals. The Ultramar project should increase the heating oil and gas available while the Petro-Canada project to build a large upgrading refinery in eastern Montreal should also encourage in the years to come an increase in gas and other petroleum products available to the independents. We keep this question constantly in mind while we are working out the developments that have been announced.


William Herbert Jarvis: I have a final supplementary question, Madam Speaker. I hope the minister will go beyond expressing dissatisfaction, because he is in a very excellent bargaining position. In that regard, my final supplementary deals with the government's pledge to Canadianize the industry.
As the minister knows, Ultramar is 100 per cent foreign owned. He indicated in a speech that he had secured certain undertakings from Ultramar, although not respecting Canadian ownership. Given the minister's excellent bargaining position, given the pledge with respect to the Canadianization program, what undertakings, if any, is he seeking from Ultramar with respect to the Canadianization of its Canadian subsidiary?


Marc Lalonde: I am very pleased that the hon. member recognizes the excellent work done by the government.


William Herbert Jarvis: 1 did not say that.


Mr. Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Don't read too much into that, Marc.


Marc Lalonde: 1 am glad he recognizes the excellent work already done by the government in this field. On the question of Canadianization, 1 want to say that 1 think we should approach this as a broad issue, rather than on a single refinery basis.


An hon. Member:: You have to start somewhere.

May 30, 1980
Oral Questions


Marc Lalonde: The government is at present working on such a broad approach. Some steps have already been taken such as, for instance, the announcement yesterday by Alberta Gas and Petro-Canada that they will build, together, the first totally Canadian-owned major tar sands plant. This is a major development in the field of mega projects owned and operated by Canadians.
So far as ownership in the area of refineries, or in the industry generally, is concerned, this is a matter upon which we are working at present. I think it should be presented as a whole package, rather than being approached on the one-by-one basis as at present.


ULTRAMAR REFINERY-TRANSFER OF CANADIAN EMPLOYEES
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: I have a supplementary question to the same minister, Madam Speaker. In a speech on May 15 in Montreal, the minister indicated he had an understanding from Ultramar to complete this upgrading facility on condition that the federal government would direct to it Canadian crews from other Montreal refiners.
However, as the minister should be aware, under the 1979 agreement with FIRA, related to Ultramar's purchase of Canadian Fuel Marketers, Ultramar is required to build an upgrading facility. My question to the minister is very simple: why is he now bribing Ultramar to do what it is already required to do under the FIRA agreement?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, it is certainly not a question of bribing anybody, and Ultramar in particular. It is a question of reducing our dependence on imported oil, increasing the higher processing, the upgrading of oil through our refineries in Canada. This is going to be achieved, and the net result will mean, I hope, reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
I think this is a very welcome development in terms of the refineries in Sarnia, in terms of the refineries in eastern Montreal and what Ultramar will do at the present time.


Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, the minister has not answered the question as to why he is penalizing the Montreal refiners to benefit this Quebec City refiner; why he is allocating profit among companies.
As the minister is aware, refineries in Atlantic Canada are suffering just as serious a problem with excessive residuals. Indeed, the Gulf refinery in Point Tupper will be shut down for three months, laying off workers in Cape Breton, as a result of the same problem.
Why has the minister chosen through direct government largesse to assist this company, which apparently is no more worthy than any other company, and in some people's eyes is considerably less worthy than other companies? Why is he not giving Atlantic Canada refiners the same kind of assistance, since their problem is, if anything, more serious?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, at the present time the question is to try to do upgrading at refineries which have the volume and can do that upgrading on an economic basis. This seems to be the case. If the Gulf refinery thinks they can still do it on an economic basis without having to call upon the government for subsidies of various kinds, then we will be very happy to look at it.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Finance. The motion which brought down the previous Conservative government and was supported by those who make up the present government called specifically for economic stimulus.
Considering that the governor of the Bank of Canada once again yesterday, but this time publicly and totally, repudiated precisely this policy, I should like to ask the Minister of Finance if he will now call for the resignation of the governor of the Bank of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, I have not read the remarks of the governor of the Bank of Canada in detail, whom I understand appeared before the Senate banking committee yesterday. I would doubt whether anything in his speech would induce me to take the reckless and irresponsible course of action suggested by the hon. Leader of the New Democratic Party.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, I doubt that anything would cause the present Minister of Finance to do anything.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: I should like to ask the Prime Minister how his government can keep in office a man so insensitive and so biased as the governor of the Bank of Canada who says that we, as a country, should "hold firm" in fiscal policy at a time when the economy is operating at only 85 per cent capacity, when more than one million Canadians are out of work and the depression both in this country and in the United States is getting worse every day.
In short, how can he keep in office a man who publicly repudiates his own government's policy and harms seriously the economy of Canada?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I take strong exception to the statements made by the Leader of the New Democratic
May 30, 1980

Party. Compared to the policies advocated by the hon. member and those advocated by the governor of the Bank of Canada, the governor of the Bank of Canada is a public benefactor in comparison with the Leader of the New Democratic Party, who not so long ago asked the House of Commons through a motion to direct the governor of the bank to decrease interest rates by at least 2 per cent. Since that time, interest rates have decreased by more than 2 per cent. If we had followed the hon. member's course of action, the economy would be subjected to greater rates than we have at the present time.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, I point out to the minister that calling for a drop in the interest rates in fact precedes what was actually done. I do not know how the minister can object to that. Considering that he and his party supported the motion that brought down the Conservative government in December-


An hon. Member:: So did you.


John Edward Broadbent: -on the grounds of policies that we still maintain, is he now repudiating his own government's policy when they were in opposition?


An hon. Member:: They didn't have a policy.


John Edward Broadbent: Or is he now taking on that great 1920s disease known as "Boueyitis", which means that we can expect continuous unemployment throughout the rest of this decade in this country?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: No, Madam Speaker, I have not repudiated any policies that the Liberal party advocated while in opposition. I would say to the Leader of the New Democratic Party that he is not contributing to public debate or economic understanding in this country by personalizing the debate in the way he has done today.


John Edward Broadbent: It is policy.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I certainly believe that the governor of the Bank of Canada has followed a responsible monetary policy that has resulted in a very significant drop in interest rates without bringing about the inflationary consequences that the hon. member-


John Edward Broadbent: You are following the American rate, and you know it.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: -was advocating just a few weeks ago. 1 say, Madam Speaker, thank God there is a force in the country that is preventing the hon. gentleman's ideas from being implemented.


Walter David Baker: You just destroyed the coalition.
Oral Questions ENERGY


EXPORT TAX ON NATURAL GAS
Hon. John A. Fraser (Vancouver South):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. On May 13, the B.C. energy minister said that the federal minister of energy would not give an assurance that an export tax on natural gas would not be imposed on British Columbia gas exports.
During the election campaign, on February 13 Mr. Gordon Gibson, a three-time federal Liberal candidate, former Liberal MLA, past member of the Prime Minister's staff and past leader of the Liberal party in B.C., said:
An export tax on natural gas was considered by the government in 1974 and abandoned after representations from the producing provinces. It has not been considered since, and does not form a part of the energy policy of the Liberal party. That is the stand of B.C. Liberals. It is also the stand of party energy spokesman Marc Lalonde and he confirmed that Monday.
Would the minister clarify the misunderstanding he left in British Columbia, and confirm that this Liberal government will not put an export tax on British Columbia gas?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I have had meetings with the minister of energy for British Columbia. We have considered many alternatives. The question of an export tax on gas is obviously one of the various alternatives being considered. The hon. member will have to wait for the conclusion of our negotiations and discussions before he can reach any conclusion as to what will, or will not, come into effect.


John Allen Fraser: A supplementary question, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Finance just said that he was not going to repudiate any Liberal promises made while in opposition. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources seems quite prepared to do so. 1 find the minister's answer is a waffle and his answer is disgusting because it borders on dishonesty.
Would the minister come clean and confirm the election undertaking of the Liberal party, because he is making a liar out of Mr. Gibson, if not himself.


Marc Lalonde: If the hon. member wants to look at the energy policy, or stand, of the Liberal party during the election, I suggest he should look at the official policy statements of the party. They are there for everybody to read and see. They were announced by the Prime Minister, by the leader of the Liberal party, during the election and I suggest the hon. member refer to them. We will stand by the policy statements that we enunciated during the campaign.


Walter David Baker: You just destroyed Gibson.


Mr. Nielsen:: So Gibson is the liar?

May 30, 1980
Oral Questions


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr. Chris Speyer (Cambridge):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Solicitor General. As the minister knows, Sergeant A1 Godin, a 20-year veteran of the RCMP and a member of the security service, has been charged under the code of offences in the RCMP Act with respect to certain allegations of smoking marijuana, based on the allegations of another member of the force. He requested the right to counsel at his trial, and has been denied that by the force.
Will the minister assure the House that minimum standards of justice, such as the right to retain counsel, will be accorded to Sergeant Godin in circumstances where his reputation, his livelihood and his future are in peril?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General):: Madam Speaker, as I understand the situation, we are not dealing with a trial but with an internal discipline proceeding of the RCMP. I agree with the hon. member that the present procedure is unfair. I want to point out that its unfairness was noted by the Marin commission in 1976, when it made recommendations for change.
These recommendations are the subject of legislation which is under consideration by the government and which was referred to in the throne speech. It is a high priority of the government that it should be brought forward. When it is brought forward, I hope it will receive rapid consideration and approval by this House, so that the RCMP will have at least as fair a system, if not more fair, than that which applies to other police forces in Canada.


Chris Speyer: A supplementary question. Will the hon. minister agree with me that under the code of offences in the RCMP Act there is nothing to prohibit him from having the right to counsel now? Will he recommend to the commissioner of the RCMP that this man, whose livelihood and future are in jeopardy, be able to retain counsel to dispute the allegations made against him? Will the minister make that recommendation?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Madam Speaker, I am looking into the matter.
I undertake to speak to the commissioner about it and to take whatever action is appropriate.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. Yesterday, in reply to a question from this side of the House, the Prime Minister indicated that Indian and Inuit people would be fully consulted during the constitutional conferences or prior to any change in the constitution that may affect them.
I should like to ask the Prime Minister if his definition of "consultation" is the one that his government used when employing the force majeure clause under the Syncrude agreement, which was a telephone call to the minister of energy in Alberta an hour before the announcement, or to the partners of the Syncrude agreement who read it in the newspaper, or is it duly defined consultation in the context of telling members from the west, in the throne speech, that he would be consulting them on things pertinent to the west?
I receive once in a while, and I have been twinned but I have not had the privilege of meeting my twin. Is that the kind of consultation? Would the Prime Minister please define it? I would really like to know.


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, I am not sure if we heard an argument or a representation; but if it was the latter, I would indicate to the hon. member that I will be meeting with his leader, the right hon. Leader of the Opposition, on Wednesday to discuss constitutional subjects. Perhaps the hon. member could make his precise claims known to me through his leader.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. It concerns the announced lay-off yesterday of some 5,000 Canadian Massey-Ferguson workers in the city of Brantford, and also in Toronto. The plant is shutting down for three months-August, September and October.
Could the minister tell this House if he has had any indication whether this is a short-term problem due to high interest rates and prairie drought, or is the beginning of a recession in the farm implement industry?


Hon. Herb Gray (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Madam Speaker, I have asked my officials to get me a full report on this very serious situation. I understand that Massey-Ferguson has reported to the press that sales of tractors in the industry as a whole in the United States have been down some 40 per cent, and combines down some 45 per cent. This has been reflected in their decision.
I understand that of the three-month period, the first month, August, is the normal shutdown period. Obviously, the decline in sales has led to this decision which is very seriously affecting large numbers of Massey-Ferguson workers both in Canada and in the United States. I will report as quickly as possible to my hon. friend on the results of the investigation I have asked my officials to undertake.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Madam Speaker, while the minister is going to undertake what he has just promised, I would also like to


WORKERS LAID OFF AT MASSEY-FERGUSON PLANTS-REASON THEREFOR
[Stage Direction]
May 30, 1980
[Stage Direction]
ask if he would inquire whether the company deliberately chose September and October to reduce inventory, due to the fact that the union and the company are currently in negotiations, with the current contract expiring, mysteriously enough, on September 1 ?
Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: 1 will ask that the report cover that area as well. Madam Speaker.


BANK ACT
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock-North Delta):: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, to whom 1 have given notice. I would like to refer the minister to a letter dated March 21 which he received in his office from an Ottawa constituent. This constituent seems to have been the victim of fraud by the Bank of Montreal located at 1247 Wellington Street, Ottawa.
Since the Inspector General of Banks, according to the Bank Act, is empowered to investigate banks only for solvency, and not for suspicion of fraud, and is required to refer suspicions of fraud to the minister, why did the minister in a case of suspicion of fraud over which the Inspector General has no control or authority refer the matter to the Inspector General of Banks?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I realize that the hon. member is interested in this particular case and I thank him for having brought it to my attention.
I have asked the Inspector General of Banks to provide me with all the possible information. When that comes forward, I will consider it and be in touch with the hon. member.


Benno Friesen: Madam Speaker, I guess the buck is going the circular route. I ask the minister whether he will now get in touch with the commercial crime section of the RCMP, asking them to conduct an investigation of this matter.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, if that course of action is indicated when I have more facts I will consider it, but I think it may be a bit premature at the present time to launch a criminal investigation.


PROTECTIVE STAFF-WEARING OF SERVICE RIBBONS ON SUMMER UNIFORMS
Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Veterans Affairs. It is in respect of veterans serving on the security staff of the House of Commons who also served with pride in the armed forces.
Oral Questions
These veterans have been directed not to wear their service ribbons on their summer uniforms. I would ask the minister whether he is aware of that. If so, is this a recommendation of his department? Will he look into the matter?


Hon. Daniel J. MacDonald (Minister of Veterans Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I will certainly look into the matter. I am not really conscious of this, but it is not a recommendation of my department.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Madam Speaker, I should like to follow up briefly on a question asked by the hon. member for Cambridge of the Solicitor General, whose answer reassured me.
I would like to ask him to be a bit more forthcoming and to tell the House when he proposes to do something more tangible to bring into effect the legislation to which he earlier referred. I want to ask him to repeat his commitment to do something to solve the long-standing grievances of several RCMP officers whose names he is well aware of-McCleery, Brunet, Danch, and people of this type-and also to report briefly whether he has looked into the situation whereby many members feel uneasy about the fact that they appear to be under pressure simply by being associated with a lawfully constituted association of the RCMP?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Each of the cases, Madam Speaker, to which the hon. member refers is different, and I would deal with any one if the hon. member wanted to ask a specific question about it. Generally, the legislation is not yet completely drafted. The opposition, when it was in government, was working on it. I am working on it much more quickly and I hope I will be able to bring it forward, at least for first reading, before the break for the summer.


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Peter Ittinuar (Nunatsiaq):: Madam Speaker, my question is to the right hon. Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has consistently refused to make clear his intentions on native people and the constitution, and he has directly refused the participation of elected members of the Yukon and Northwest Territorial governments in constitutional discussions.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister to clarify what his real intentions are regarding natives and the constitution, and to ask him to reverse his decision of yesterday which denies elected representatives of northern peoples' participation in the June 9 talks, so that northern Canadians are accorded the

May 30, 1980
Oral Questions
same status and respect as Canadians living in the ten provinces.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, with regard to the role to be played by the native peoples and their leaders, 1 made a lengthy statement about three weeks ago at a meeting with those leaders and 1 would be happy to send a copy of it to the hon. member. I summed up the essence of it yesterday when 1 said they would be involved in discussions on any aspect of the constitution which directly affected them.
In so far as the Yukon and the Territories are concerned, Madam Speaker, 1 have not invented or created their status. They do not have the status of provinces. Under the constitution and under the constitutional conventions, the participation of the Territories is not needed for constitutional change, much as their advice has been, and will be, sought. That may be different if in days to come they achieve the status of provinces. But for the time being I repeat that the constitution and constitutional conventions do not provide room for the Territories as such to be negotiators on constitutional change, no more than they provide room, for instance, for the elected representatives of municipal governments who are legitimately representing the interests of the municipalities in which they are elected. They have no locus standi, in the legal sense, in constitutional discussions. That is the situation as the constitution states it, Madam Speaker.


Peter Ittinuar: My supplementary question is to the Prime Minister, Madam Speaker. We make a modern and reasonable request and we get praetorian justice and anachronism. Perhaps in his esoteric plans for artificial insemination of the country, the Prime Minister can reveal just what his plans are for political and constitutional development of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, that is an entirely different subject. There have been various reports, and a very recent one by Mr. Drury, on that subject. The government intends to deal with it and bring the House into the discussion on how it should be dealt with. But the hon. member knows that there are some people who feel that the Territories should be given provincial status, and some who feel that they should not. That is a matter for discussion here, not for discussion in the presence of the premiers at a constitutional conference.


PARTICIPATION OF REPRESENTATIVES OF YUKON AND NORTHWEST TERRITORIES IN CONSTITUTIONAL DISCUSSIONS
Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Prime Minister. I am sure the people in both territories will resent their equation to municipalities in talks as important as those that are going to be conducted after June 9.
While the Prime Minister is, in a very dry way, absolutely correct in saying there is no need for participation under an act
passed in 1867, in this day and age, in the 1980s, will he agree to put the proposal to the provincial premiers on June 9 that some form of input by the elected representatives of the two territories be accepted? 1 think he will find a good number of the provincial premiers very responsive to the suggestion that the government leader of the Yukon, for instance, and an elected member from the Northwest Territories have some kind of direct input to the discussions after June 9.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, 1 can understand the member of Parliament for Yukon making that representation, but I can assure him that equally valid and strong representations have been made at various times by mayors and reeves for their participation in constitutional discussions.


An hon. Member:: They are represented by their provincial governments.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am surprised at the groaning coming from the Conservative side.


An hon. Member:: That is not the same thing.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Of course it is not the same thing, Madam Speaker, and that is the point I am attempting to make.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, we have the roaring Fraser over there making more noise than the river that bears his name.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am telling the member from the Yukon that municipalities, in terms of numbers represent many more people than live in the Yukon and the Territories combined, yet they are not sitting down at the constitutional table with us. Perhaps they should, and perhaps the constitution should be written differently. But for the time being 1 am respecting the letter of the constitution and the spirit of it.


CUSTOMS AND EXCISE
Mr. John McDermid (Brampton-Georgetown):: Madam Speaker, I am tempted to ask the Minister of Transport a question today, but 1 will let him catch his breath from yesterday. I will direct my question to the Minister of Finance.
1 previously asked the minister's colleague, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, about duty remission on sail boats over 25 feet. As the Minister of Finance, you have the
May 30, 1980

power to grant that duty remission, and I understand representation has been made to you in that regard. Could you give us the status of that decision, when it might be received, and what is happening in that regard on duty remission?
[ Translation]


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of State (Finance):: Madam Speaker, we have had a close look at the request for the duty remission mentioned by the hon. member which we must take into account in the study of the over-all stituation in the Canadian industry. We will be making recommendations in the near future and our decisions will take into consideration the interests of the Canadian industry and other businesses involved in that sector.


THE CONSTITUTION
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Leader of the Opposition):: Madam Speaker, 1 have a supplementary to the question asked by my colleague, the hon. member for Yukon. The Prime Minister did not answer that part of the question which asked if the Prime Minister would propose to the provincial premiers on June 9 that an arrangement be found so that elected representatives of the Council for the Yukon could participate directly in constitutional discussions. Are we to interpret from the Prime Minister's failure to reply to that part of the question that he refuses to make such a proposal?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Madam Speaker.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I am interested in the lengthening list of matters that appear to be closed for constitutional discussion. The Prime Minister, not long ago in this House, indicated that everything was negotiable except one or two basic principles, which he had stated. He is now indicating that he is not prepared to negotiate and not prepared to consider the participation of elected members of the Yukon and the Northwest Territories councils at subsequent constitutional talks. He has, in the course of recent days, indicated other matters which he is reconsidering are negotiable.
Would the Prime Minister, prior to June 9, indicate to the House of Commons exactly what is the list now of non-negotiable matters in his mind as we go into the June 9 meeting?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I suspect the question is somewhat argumentative. I have made my position clear, that apart from the basic form of federalism and the basic rights of Canadians, everything is negotiable. But 1 have not said that it would be negotiated on June 9.
Oral Questions FORESTRY


UNEMPLOYMENT IN FOREST AND LOGGING INDUSTRIES- PLANS TO PROVIDE EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance regarding the very serious situation in the forest and logging industries in the country.
Statistics Canada recently informed the House that the unemployment rate for men and women presently working in the forest and logging industries is now at 40 per cent, which represents a 300 per cent increase in the last six months. I would ask the Minister of Finance whether he and his government take this crisis seriously. Also, would the minister indicate to us what plans he and his government have to get these men and women back to work?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the condition of the particular industry to which my hon. friend refers is obviously the result of a number of other factors that are operating in the economies of both the United States and Canada.
When the government reaches decisions affecting this particular industry, 1 will make sure that the House is informed.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, I find it unacceptable that the Minister of Finance would suggest that 40 per cent unemployment in an industry which stretches from coast to coast-it is not only focused in central Canada-is experiencing such devastating conditions and he is not prepared to indicate clearly to this House what he and his government plans to do about it. Is the minister saying that he is not planning to say anything at this point in time, in terms of alleviating this crisis?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, 1 believe the hon. member has misunderstood my response.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: We understand very well.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: 1 told the hon. member that when any decisions are taken relating to this industry, the House would be informed first.


COMMUNICATIONS
Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, 1 have a question for the Minister of Communications. Earlier this week, in Vancouver, the chairman of the CRTC indicated in a speech before the Canadian Cable Television Association that the government intends to lay charges against the owners of unlicensed earth stations receiving satellite signals.

May 30, 1980
Oral Questions
Can the minister indicate what the involvement of the Department of Communications has been in this incident, and can he indicate whether it is the policy of the government to lay charges against Canadians living in remote areas of the country who have banded together to put up earth stations because they are unable to receive a variety of Canadian signals off air?


Hon. Francis Fox (Secretary of State and Minister of Communications):: Madam Speaker, I would like to inform the hon. member that there are two parts to the policy being pursued by the government in this respect. The first part is to try to reach the root of the problem and to have a variety of television programs available to residents of remote or nonmetropolitan communities in Canada.
However, at the same time we have responsibility to enforce the law. We expect that the solution to the first part of the problem-extension of services to northern communities-will result from the present hearings of the CRTC on this very subject: we expect to have a report from the CRTC around June 15.
In the meantime, there are instances in the country where some unlicensed operations are interfering with licensed cable operations. The CRTC and the Department of Communications are watching and following the situation closely. At the request of the CRTC, we have started an investigation to make evidence available toward the prosecution of some of these cases.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, in a published report by the Canadian Press, the CRTC estimates that there are currently some 700 unlicensed earth stations in Canada. May I ask the minister, in how many instances does he expect prosecutions to be launched? In particular, is the government considering launching prosecutions against the Manitoba Telephone System, the provincially-owned company which is currently distributing American satellite signals without a federal licence?


An hon. Member:: A Conservative businessman is doing it.


Francis Fox: Madam Speaker, this is the first time I have heard of the figure 700. The figure I have heard up to now within my department is something closer to 70, with a possibility of it being as extensive as 200.
As far as the Manitoba Telephone System is concerned, I sent a telegram last week to the minister responsible, Mr. Enns, requesting him to obey Canadian broadcasting legislation.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Hon. Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Secretary of State for External
Affairs. As the minister is aware, the top career post in the foreign service is that of ambassador to Washington.
Would the minister assure the House that any new appointment to this position will be drawn from the public service, that is, a career foreign service officer, as has been the case with all governments since World War II.


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, the government does not have under consideration any new appointment to Washington at this time.


Daniel Joseph MacDonald: Madam Speaker, I am sure the minister is as aware as I am that there is considerable discussion going on about this particular appointment. He is also well aware, I am sure, of the very low state of morale among the Foreign Service Officers' Association-


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is getting better now.


Daniel Joseph MacDonald: -because of his hasty implementation of the Steers report. Would the minister assure us that he will not further aggravate that state of morale by the appointment to the top career post of a person from outside the ranks of the public service?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, there is a tradition in this matter in which the opposition has had a part. But I want to say that we have complete confidence in our present ambassador in Washington.


An hon. Member:: Jean Wadds will love that one.


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, there were a number of questions raised in the House yesterday and on previous days to which I would like to give answers. Would that be acceptable?


Some hon. Members:: Order.


Madam Speaker:: I am afraid the hon. minister will have to wait until some further questions are put to him.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, under Standing Order 41(2), I should like to table, in both official languages, the report entitled "Pour les enfants du Canada, Programme national d'action", "For Canada's Children, National Agenda for Action".
May 30, 1980


TABLING OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN CANADA AND MEXICO ON INDUSTRIAL ENERGY CO-OPERATION
Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, 1 would like to table in both official languages the agreement between the Government of Canada and the government of Mexico on industrial energy co-operation signed on May 27 of this year.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. Robert Daudlin (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Treasury Board):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 126, 187, 277, 291, 359, 637 and 826.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	Do any provisions of the Official Secrets Act differ with present government policy and, if so, what are they?
2.	Does the government intend to amend the act and (a) if so, on what date will such amendments be introduced (b) if not, for what reason?


Mr. W. Kenneth Robinson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Social Development):: The government does intend to review the Official Secrets Act. Until that review is complete, it would be premature to speculate as to the timing or nature of any amendments that may be proposed. In this regard, the recommendations of the McDonald commission will have to be taken into account.


Mr. Herbert: 1.	For each fiscal year (a) 1977 (b) 1978, what was the total revenue and net earnings or deficits for the Canadian Commercial Corporation?
2.	For each year, what was the total (a) of direct or indirect subsidies or other benefits conferred by the government on the corporation (b) of loans, advances or guarantees extended by the government to the corporation (c) investment by the government in the corporation both before and after any write-off?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of State (Trade)):: In so far as
the Canadian Commercial Corporation is concerned:
Total revenue Net earnings Deficit


[Stage Direction]
Nil
[Stage Direction]
$276,118,333 $ 1,116,757 Nil
Order Paper Questions
2. (a)	Parliamentary Appropriations:	1977	1978Administrative costs	$6,259,453	$7,271,889Contract losses reimbursed	$1,983,201	$3,000,000(b)	1977	1978Loans for the Consolidated Revenue Fund as at March 31	$5,800,000	$3,300,000Advances from the Consolidated Revenue Fund as at March 31	$10,000,000	$10,000,000
(c) There was no investment by the government in the corporation either before or after any write off.
Mr. Herbert: In each of the past five years, what amount was transferred to the National Museums purchase account?


Mr. Peter Stollery (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and Minister of Communications):: I am informed by the National Museums as follows:
Fical Year
1975-	76
1976-	77
1977-	78
1978-	79
1979-	80
Amount


Mr. Herbert: 1.	(a) What was the amount paid by the government for the purchase of Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. (b) in what form was the payment made and to whom?
2.	Was there any outstanding indebtedness at the time of purchase and, if so, what was it?
3.	What was the authorized (a) share (b) issued capital of the company at the time of purchase?


Mr. Robert Bockstael (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Transport Canada advises as follows:
1.	(a) Northern Transportation Co. Ltd. was a wholly-owned subsidiary company of Eldorado Gold Mines Ltd. and was shown as an investment on the balance sheet of that company at $152,000 when in 1944 the Eldorado Gold Mines was expropriated by the federal government. See also answer to question 290 answered May 26, 1980.
(b) See (a) above.
1590

May 30, 1980
Order Paper Questions
2.	It is not possible to establish any indebtedness due to the manner in which NTCL was acquired.
3.	(a) Authorized share capital of Northern Transportation Company Ltd., as of 1944 was 2,500 shares of $100 each.
(b) Issued share capital at the time of purchase was 1,520 shares of $ 100 each.


Mr. Herbert: 1.	As of March 31, 1979 (a) how many persons in the SX classification were employed by the Department of the Environment (b) how many were (i) Francophones (ii) females?
2.	What are the present totals?
3.	Was there a structural change in the Department since March 31, 1979 and, if so, what effect did such a change have on the number of SX's employed?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of State for Science and Technology and Minister of the Environment):: 1.	(a)	77	(b)	(i)	9	(ii)	12.	(a)	64	(b)	(i)	9	(ii)	03.	Impact of structural changesDate	No. of SX's	No. of Francophones	No. of FemalesDOE with Fisheries March 31, 1979	77	9	1DOE without Fisheries April 2, 1979	54	6	0DOE with Parks June 8, 1979	64	9	0


Mr. Howie: How many persons engaged in public relations, publicity or media relations, are employed on staff in the Department of Labour?


Hon. Gerald Regan (Minister of Labour):: Twenty-two.


Mr. Howie: 1.	As of December 1. 1979. how many persons were employed by the Marine Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick?
2.	What is the operating budget of the Station for the current fiscal year?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: 1. One hundred and seventeen employees.
2. The operating budget for the current fiscal year is $2,800,000.


Robert Mose Patrick Daudlin: I ask, Madam Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Speaker:: The questions as enumerated by the parliamentary secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. Members:: Stand.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Bert Hargrave (Medicine Hat) moved:: That this House deeply regrets the government's lack of response in the House of Commons to concern about the disastrous western agricultural drought and the related forest fire emergency and calls on the government to abandon its secretive approach and consult with MPs of all parties in an open and forthright manner.
He said: Madam Speaker, may I say at the outset that I think drought is a most appropriate subject for debate on an opposition day on this Friday afternoon in Ottawa.
Before I get into the main content of my comments about drought, I want to make a brief remark and an obvious one about rain. 1 am referring, of course, to some good rains that began a week ago today in western Canada, mostly in Alberta. 1 would say very briefly that they were heaven sent and very, very welcome. They began last Friday afternoon and it seems that most of the heaviest rains followed along the foothills, along the western side of Alberta. The city of Lethbridge reported a three inch rain and Raymond, in the southwest corner of Alberta, was reported to have had five to six inches of rain, which is a very heavy rain. Incidentally, that rain lasted over a three to four day period.
In the southeast corner, my corner, Medicine Hat, we received a maximum of about one and a half inches. That was spread over about four days. I would say the heavy rains seemed to extend northward in Alberta and covered a good bit of the forest fire area in northern Alberta. Of course, that was a welcome change in the weather pattern. I would say it is not what we call a general rain, but over the weekend there was a series of showers which was very, very beneficial.
In Saskatchewan and Manitoba the situation is not nearly as good. The rainfall is considerably less, beginning right at the Alberta border and working east. Some areas, such as the Swift Current area, received hardly any rain. In Manitoba it is my understanding that the same situation exists, that is, very skimpy rainfalls over most of the province.
In spite of this very welcome rain-actually it is the first since early last fall-and in spite of the CBC's very glib
May 30, 1980

statement on the first day of the rain that the drought was over, 1 would say that the western drought definitely is not over. The considerable and substantial implications and aftermath of this drought are still with us. The western agricultural drought is certainly not over and that is what 1 want to talk about in the remainder of my remarks.
Let us examine this drought, its extent and the implications that flow from it. It begins in the interior of British Columbia and covers all of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. To the south it goes well into the United States, covering all of those border states along our western provinces, including what is known as the American northwest corn belt. Its northern extension in Canada is significantly further north than a drought has ever been known to extend before. 1 am thinking of the 1930s and the drought in 1977. In the north it extends right across the four western provinces as well. The extreme forest fire situation from British Columbia across Canada and well into northern Ontario is, of course, directly related to, and is an extension of, the southern prairie drought.
The current drought began early last fall across the west and it extended right through the winter. Yes, it is possible to have a winter drought; we had one last winter. The snowfall was exceedingly light, not only on the prairies but even across Ontario and into Quebec. In our short grass country, and that is usually the chinook belt, or all across southern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan, our snowfall was almost nil. The little snow moisture that resulted finally in the spring was completely lost by a month of not just warm but hot weather in April, with very strong, hot and dry winds.
Most of these drying winds, and I think this is unique and exceptional, came out of the east and southeast, a direction we usually associate with storms and moisture. It may or may not be significant, but this unusual wind and hot weather pattern did not change until Mount St. Helens blew its top and our traditional southwest Pacific winds returned, complete with the very depressing volcanic ash fallout.
The present drought situation, to date has been much more serious than the one-year drought of 1977 because it is so much broader in its coverage. The final assessment of this drought year will have to wait until the key month of June is over when rain in generous amounts must come to prevent a disaster in our agricultural growth year in the west.
Yesterday this subject of drought was raised in our first meeting of the Standing Committee on Agriculture, and today in this opposition debate is the first time this subject has come before this Parliament. I say very bluntly now that this drought debate should have taken place at least a month ago. The persistent questions in this House and in the Senate and the number of motions under Standing Order 43 certainly confirm that statement.
1 must say that I was very disappointed that my motion under Standing Order 26 for an emergency debate was denied about a week and a half ago.
Agricultural Drought
I repeat that our motion today is very appropriate, and I want to read it for emphasis. It is short and to the point and is as follows:
That this House deeply regrets the government's lack of response in the House of Commons to concern about the disastrous western agricultural drought and the related forest fire emergency, and calls on the government to abandon its secretive approach and consult with MPs of all parties in an open and forthright manner.
Surely this subject is much too important to be left to the traditional partisan, political type of debate. The subject is of widespread concern throughout western Canada, even after that good rain I said we have already received out there, and even in cities such as Calgary where the implications of a shortage of domestic water supplies are obvious. It is also a serious concern to our prairie governments, and because there has been no federal debate or action there is the perception- and I emphasize "perception"-in the west that this government and even this Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) do not care and do not know about the real drought situation in the west.
The subject of drought is at best distressing and unpleasant, but it should not be treated secretively, and especially we in Parliament should not be reluctant to talk about it. However, that situation does exist, mainly because politicians, of any stripe, cannot legislate or otherwise solve the climatic and geographic combinations which bring about droughts at irregular intervals. Suffice it to say that those of us from the short grass chinook country have learned how to pace ourselves or condition ourselves to live with a drought, and not to exist in spite of a drought, such as during those ten years in the 1930s and, more recently, the single drought years we had in 1961 and 1977.
I would say that it is almost a way of life. No one, however, can fully appreciate the true significance of a drought if he has not witnessed the tragedy of dust clouds hundreds of feet high rolling over the prairie like a black storm cloud-without moisture, of course-making it dark enough to require lights. That is a frightening experience. You cannot have a feel for drought if you have never witnessed, especially in the summer time, a large herd of cattle hungry because of no grass growth, or the spectacle of cattle becoming thirsty with no water immediately available. Hon. members should not hasten to tell me that these are management problems because these situations can develop, especially in the process of trailing large herds of cattle, even today. It is a frightening experience to see a herd of cattle on the trail suddenly and all at once stop walking and to see the cattle lift their heads into the wind when they can smell water upwind. It is almost an instant reaction. Have hon. members ever tried to smell water? Cattle can, but they cannot differentiate between fresh water and alkaline water, which is too concentrated to drink.
Western Canada has 45 million acres of grass suitable for grazing domestic livestock, and there are only 50,000 million acres of grass in that category in all of Canada. Our cattle industry and a relatively few sheep presently use nearly all of this grass. So drought has a special significance for our cattle, which harvest that grass year round. That is all they really do.

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
They harvest our native grass mainly on a year round basis, and very often it is very short grass. During the 1930s we learned the hard way that during a drought you cut your cattle numbers to fit your supplies of grass and hay. You try to retain a bare minimum breeding herd to produce calves the next year. In a nutshell that is our objective in a drought.
Today, due to the extreme shortage of grass and hay, it is not practical to move cattle to another source of grass or hay or to move hay any distance to cattle. That applies all over western Canada where the drought is so severe. The reason is that there are simply no available supplies of grass or hay in western Canada either to move or to move to. It may be very significant before this drought is over that the only area with a surplus of both hay and grass at this moment is in the province of Ontario.
Southern Alberta's 950,000 acres of intensive irrigation will produce two good cuttings of alfalfa this year. It is a major irrigated crop in our intensive irrigation, but that crop will be competed for mainly by the dairy industries of the four western provinces from British Columbia right through and into Manitoba. Presently the last of the 1979 alfalfa crop in the Brooks area, which is the heart of one of the irrigation districts, is selling at as high as $100 a ton in the stack before being trucked to places like Red Deer, Alberta, and that is an area in central Alberta which has seldom been short of hay. It is a very unique situation.
That is the drought picture today as straightforward by and factually as I can describe it. And, of course, I should remind the House that these are my personal remarks.
What can we do about it here in our Thirty-second federal Parliament? I want to address myself to that for the remainder of my remarks. I have some suggestions for serious consideration by all of us.
I said that in the thirties we had to reduce our cattle numbers to fit our grass and hay supplies. That, of course, was long before the days of income tax. Today that lesson of the thirties is still valid, but it is complicated by our tax laws. Forced sales of feeder cattle and even breeding herds, up to as-much as one-half of some of our cattle herds-creates an impossible income tax situation.
The obvious answer is to recognize the merits of what is known as the deferred income averaging trust account which would allow cattlemen to build up their own tax protected stabilization fund, but on a personal basis. The Department of Finance is familiar with this well thought out proposal because it refused to consider it in the 1977 drought, when it was put to the department in a very serious suggestion at that time. The deferral should last long enough for cattle producers to rebuild their numbers by natural increase which will follow the drought period, or to buy back in, when grass and hay conditions return. That, of course, could take several years.
Another suggestion already widely recommended is to require the Canadian Wheat Board to guarantee sufficient supplies of barley in the west, and especially in Alberta, to feed out the increased number of feeder yearlings now going
into feedlots. These supplies must be assured now for use before the new crop is available. We should be aware that significantly increased numbers of drought cattle-and that includes some cow and calf pairs-have been coming to markets in the west over the last month.
We should consider the practical possibility of encouraging the earlier movement of feeder cattle to Ontario-that is, more so than the usual pattern-and even the possibility of a back haul of hay by both the railroads and by trucks. The cattle, of course, would remain in Ontario on grass as long as possible until the beginning of winter and then be moved into the Ontario feedlots to be finished out on corn and corn silage. Eventually they will go to the fat cattle market in Ontario, we hope at prices high enough to pay the $6 per hundredweight freight rate which it costs to move the cattle from the west to Ontario.
I suggest that surely here is a worthy possibility that will require financial assistance which should be forthcoming from two sources, not only from our federal government but from the railways in some form of special reduced rates, especially on the back haul with the hay, if that possibility should develop. I think it is a very practical suggestion. Years ago we used to have what the railways called a feeder rate for moving feeder cattle. That might be reinstated with some modification to help out in this situation.
Canada's beef cattle industry desperately needs some positive indication of confidence over the long-term. That has been apparent since we got into this market situation which we share with the hog industry across North America. What better way to do this than bring in our beef import or, if you like, meat import legislation now? It will get widespread support here in the House and, I am sure, from the total Canadian cattle industry.
I should now like to say something about PFRA, or the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration. It is the agency created out of the tragedy and despair of the dirty thirties. Its new director, Dr. Harry Hill, has initiated the beginning of a drought contingency program quite recently. Only a few of us in the House are aware of it, but it is certainly not a security item! I say most sincerely now: let us give solid support to this approach. After all, PFRA developed the original guidelines for the original drought, at least in modern times, which was in about the mid-thirties. Is it not about time that PFRA was returned home to agriculture here in the federal government?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Herbert Thomas (Bert) Hargrave: Finally, Mr. Speaker-and this is perhaps the most important point of all-I should like to make a suggestion which I will leave with you at this time, and that is that we should all become involved in a serious drought dialogue in a non-partisan manner. We do not expect any instant solutions-that would be naive and impossible. I say to the Minister of Agriculture, let him give us much more detail about the drought task force. Who are the members? What
May 30, 1980

are their names and responsibilities? Are there any here in Ottawa, or are they all in the west, or is it a mixture of both? Let us hear about it.


An hon. Member:: The minister is not even here in the House.


Herbert Thomas (Bert) Hargrave: In spite of the heaven sent rain this week in the west, there is no reason whatever why a drought of several year's duration, even ten years, cannot come again. That, perhaps, is the most serious thought I could leave with you. With all of our sophistication to date, whether in weather forecasting or in trying to modify the weather itself, there is no reason why there could not be another dirty thirties. Some of us on this side of the House have of necessity become unofficial experts on the subject of drought, whether we like it or not. I think it is about time that we had an opportunity to share it with all hon. members.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Baker):: Order, please. If no hon. member to my right seeks the eye of the Chair, I will look among the NDP next, with the reservation that an hon. member from the NDP would have 20 minutes to speak and when, on the next turn, a minister or an hon. member to my right seeks the floor, he will have 30 minutes. Thereafter each member will have 20 minutes.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on the topic chosen by our friends in the Conservative party. However, I am saddened that the drought situation in the west is such that the topic is considered urgent enough to be the subject of today's debate.
1 was forcefully reminded of the seriousness of the situation in the west on the weekend when I heard the lowing of hungry cattle. It reminded me of the permanent drought area in the southern Sahara where I spent several years in the early 1970s as an educational adviser to the Kano state government in northern Nigeria. A million cattle starved in the drought conditions in the most appalling circumstances in a chronically food-short area. Hearing that sound again in my native Saskatchewan last weekend underlined how difficult the present circumstances are for livestock producers.
My colleague, the hon. member for Humboldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse), who is our party's agriculture critic, is not here today because of the drought and the necessity for him to be on his farm to find accommodation for his cattle. As of yesterday when he was in contact with his office, only one tenth of one inch of rain had fallen in his area since last fall.
Although some of the areas in the west have had rain recently, there are large parts of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan that have had little or no rain. Each personal difficulty that a farmer is facing is multiplied thousands of times. We must as a country and a government be prepared to meet the challenges presented by this drought and the ones which will inevitably follow. To date we have had many words from the government opposite but precious little action.
Agricultural Drought
Here is the situation regarding cattle and cattle feed, as I see it. Pasture land is critical at this time of year and it is critical throughout most of the west. There is little excess feed for movement among the regions of the west. Farmers are therefore making do with what they have for pasture and in some cases letting their cattle graze on seeded acreage that is not yet at a stage where plants will be damaged; still others let their cattle graze on hay land. The best these farmers can hope for is to keep their cattle going until the middle or the end of June. If there is rain by that time-and how many times did we hear the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) in committee yesterday invoke the name of the Almighty in hoping for rain-some of the hay land may still produce one cut for feed next winter.
I say to the minister and hon. members opposite that the Almighty might not choose to bail us out this time. The minister might remember another phrase from another era when farmers were seeking action from reluctant governments. It was "raise less wheat and more hell". The minister can expect to hear more of that from this side of the House.
The drought crisis is taking place right now. Many farmers, particularly dairy farmers, are already having to feed cattle reserve stocks of feed. Herds are being trimmed right now. Producers will try to carry their core herds through until next fall, but not all will be able to manage on current stocks. Many herds were being cut in the past few months because of low prices and the projection of low prices into the future. Now, with more culling because of feed shortages, the cattle industry may nearly collapse. Can I ask the minister what will happen to the cattle industry now?
I cannot agree with the suggestion of the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) that the sale of breeding stock should be accelerated by the government's giving an income averaging annuity to producers.


An hon. Member:: No, he did not say that.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Giving the farmer a tax dodge may help the big operator, but certainly it will not help the run-of-the-mill producers who are dependent on their breeding stocks confining from year to year, and the consumer will also pay considerably for the same beef when the herds have been diminished.
Surely the answer is a national meat authority which the minister has been asked repeatedly to establish. I understand he will be asked again by the ministers of agriculture in Toronto. Although he is not here, I call upon him to give a commitment to supply management in cattle just as he has given to other agricultural crops and animals in the past. Orderly marketing can give the Almighty and the minister a good deal of assistance. We need every bit of it.
The situation could improve if we could be sure of producing a substantial grain crop. However, there has been considerable damage to grain because of low germination rates, field pests such as grasshoppers, and the effects of hot, drying winds on available moisture and the crops. The government must be

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
doing its forward planning with the probabilities in mind. First, there is not likely to be enough rain to rescue the present situation. Second, even if there is rain, hay and grain production will be minimal this year.
On this basis a drought contingency plan can be developed if the federal government would consider the matter seriously and put its money rather than its ministers' speeches and tours first. That has been this government's approach throughout the spring. It has been the political low road for various superannuated senators who have been playing at make-work projects such as Drought Inspector. It is a high paying make-work project. But let me illustrate how the travelling-circus on the political low road is upsetting my constituents and many ex-Liberal voters in the west.
Many members are aware that the deputy ministers of agriculture from the four western provinces met with the federal government two weeks ago and agreed to share costs in a drought relief program on a 50-50 basis, or at least that is what the provincial governments thought. They are dealing with drought on a day to day basis, and that is what they thought they had agreed to. But this week and yesterday in agriculture committee hearings the minister repudiated any agreement. He said such an arrangement required Treasury Board and cabinet approval. He scolded Saskatchewan agriculture minister Gordon MacMurchy for having the gall to say that a substantial drought relief program costing $15 million to $20 million had not been cost-shared with the province.


Jean-Luc Pepin: There is no contradiction there.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: No one is saying that the Saskatchewan program will solve the drought crisis, but it may help those who are only partially able to cope. It is a rational approach to a desperate problem, yet the minister would only pour cold water, if he could find any, on a substantial effort by a provincial government. Unfortunately for the government, this ploy was uncovered. A cabinet document has been leaked which revealed the cynicism of the approach the federal government has been taking.
An interesting slice of this document appeared in a Canadian Press story in the Montreal Gazette on Wednesday. It reads as follows:
While it is recognized that because of the widespread nature of the drought and impact on the economy, responsive governmental programs will not have a large impact upon drought-related problems, it is of critical importance that the federal government be widely perceived as doing all it can to respond to the situation through as wide a range of action as possible.
The key word in that quotation obviously is "perceived"- "perceived as doing all it can". In a lifetime of watching cynical moves by the Liberal government, even my jaw dropped a little over that one. They seem to be saying, "Do not watch my actions, just look at the press releases" from the cabinet ministers on the low road. We have a saying in the west about people like this: "There is no business like no business".
Of course, the government thinks there will be a political payoff for its "as wide a range of action as possible". First there is the travelling circus of cabinet ministers. 1 understand that actually a drought agreement was signed with Manitoba today. On the weekend there may be more agreements to be signed in Victoria when the ministers of transport and the agriculture ministers get together.
I would simply like to say that there is a better way, a way that would not alienate the west and play into the hands of such evident opportunists as the Saskatchewan Unionist Party, a party led by a former Conservative leader who would like nothing better than to see the federal government play partisan politics with the drought. Surely no government in Washington would be so cynical as to say that the federal government must be widely perceived as doing all it can to respond to the situation.
On this side of the House we say, "Let us get on with the agreement Saskatchewan signed with the federal government in 1977". That agreement needs revising in view of changed conditions. In 1977 there was a shortage of surface water, but this year the water table has help up well. In 1977 movement of feed from farm to farm was a big component, but this year there is little excess feed to move. The federal government has been advised of these conditions for some time through its drought committee, yet as late as yesterday the minister of agriculture in Saskatchewan received a telex from the minister in Ottawa indicating that discussions have been tentative to date and that no commitments to drought relief have been made by cabinet. Who know what miracles tomorrow might bring?
The proposed agreement of two weeks ago does not have all the answers, and 1 must say that the hon. member for Medicine Hat pointed out other solutions in his speech today. But I think the draft agreement which may, after all, become a reality shortly, has some of the answers, and I would like to commend them.
First is the purchase of alfalfa pellets which were surplus to export commitments and the storing of them for resale as needed.
The second is back-hauling of hay on cattle liners from Ontario.
The third is assuring retention of enough barley stocks to meet regional needs-and I am repeating some of the suggestions made by the hon. member for Medicine Hat.
The fourth is a commitment of no further feed grain sales to export markets until the impact of the drought is known.
The fifth is halting the movement of non-Wheat Board grains for two weeks to allow for assessment of prarie stocks.
The sixth is return of pelletized screenings from Thunder Bay or Vancouver that are excess to export commitments.
The seventh is to use provincial and federal wildlife preserves for grazing where possible.
May 30, 1980

The eighth is to assist in the transportation of cattle to those areas or to other available pasture.
The ninth is the implementation of a fodder and feed grain listing service.
The tenth is assistance to farmers in developing wells.
The eleventh is assistance in respect of dug-out pumping where necessary; and lastly, the twelfth is assistance in the development of municipal wells.
The wording of this motion is very apt. We do regret the lack of action, just as we have sometimes regretted the lack of action by the Conservatives in proposing alternatives. The minister has admitted that his department has long been alerted to the problem, but there has been no action. There has also been an approach taken to the drought that has been secretive and clothed in cynicism. The government's hesitancy to commit itself either to the Saskatchewan program or to commit funds to implement it makes us a little suspicious that the reason the government is holding off is to make the meeting in Victoria this weekend a big media event. Such an approach is inexcusable and will make all of this government's stalling tactics suspect and opportunistic.
In closing, I would like to point out half a dozen main areas where the government could help farmers to survive this impending or partial disaster if we get as much rain as we have in the last few days.
Let us have some concern for action in respect of livestock right now. Let us have some concern for the livestock industry on a long-term basis, such as the suggestion regarding a national meat authority. Let us put into place a continuous plan which can be called upon on very short notice to keep the whole agricultural industry going in times of drought. Let us put in place a credit system which will allow farmers to survive in stressing times. Let us get all the feed grains back under the Canadian Wheat Board so we can be sure we have the kind of information and control of grain movement we need. Let us not appear to do something about the drought situation; let us do something about it. Let us do something as a Parliament and not as a party attempting to impress the west.
The bible story of the seven lean years is being repeated in southern Sahara regions. We pride ourselves on our planning and on our technology, but that may not be enough if the rains do not come. Let us approach this crisis as a nation should, and be prepared to do as a good government should.


Mr. Pierre Deniger (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Multiculturalism)):: Mr. Speaker, 1 want to say first of all that I am speaking today in the absence of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) who, as this House knows, has to leave for Africa today, and in the absence also of his parliamentary secretary who is in Montreal to close off the Floralies.
1 must tell the House how much 1 enjoyed the speeches of both speakers who preceded me. 1 thought both their interventions were in the spirit the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) mentioned in his speech on the twelfth when, in full evidence
Agricultural Drought
of our very low numbers of MPs in the west, he said, talking to colleagues in the opposition:
Like all of your colleagues in the House of Commons, you who represent the people of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia have a responsibility to represent your constituents to the nation. You also have an extra responsibility in the present circumstances to represent the nation to your constituents. It is a task no one else can fulfil. My government is prepared to co-operate fully in helping you to achieve this.
1 might say that when I heard the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) and the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo), I thought it was exactly in this context that they spoke. Indeed, I found that the description of the drought, this very serious matter that concerns all Canadians, given by the hon. member for Medicine Hat was one that was accurate; it was reasonable and it was sincere, and that from a man who has basically experienced droughts in the past and foresees the dangers that might face his people in Alberta, particularly the cattlemen, if this situation continues.


Some hon. Members:: You should go out there.


Pierre Deniger: 1 would be more than willing to go and meet the people in that area so they can discuss that with me; but I know that no one could better represent those constituencies than those who have been elected.
When 1 heard the member for Prince Albert, I could not help but remember that 1 was in Prince Albert on several occasions, as he knows, and I know how very interested he is in the ambitions and the needs of his people there. When he said that there should be something done as a Parliament, he is entirely right.
Before answering the very positive recommendations that both he and the hon. member for Medicine Hat have suggested to this House, let me bring the members of this House and the people of Canada up to date on basically what the situation is in relation to the drought in Canada right now. There is no question about it, the drought in western Canada and in northwestern Ontario also is critical and requires immediate federal action. In that regard I completely associate myself with the remarks of both the hon. member for Prince Albert and the hon. member for Medicine Hat.
At this time the Department of Agriculture is preparing an immediate contingency paper. The task force is in action right now. Indeed, later on this afternoon the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) will be speaking on this subject. At the noon break he is meeting with members of the Department of Agriculture in order that he can bring members up to date on the latest developments in this particular regard.
As the hon. member for Medicine Hat says, indeed, serious drought conditions exist on the prairies as well as in the United States and in northwestern Ontario. Pasture and hay crop conditions are poor. The supply of cattle feed for this summer is critical and of growing concern. Indeed, the few drops of rain in Alberta may have made it possible for some cattlemen to recover, but, indeed, the short grass situation is critical.
We do not know the consequences if the cattlemen were put in the situation where they had to dump all their beef on the

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
market with a subsequent drop in price and the difficulty they would face in restarting their herds. I assure this House that 1 will bring to the attention of the Minister of Finance the very serious and very adequate and fair tax proposals the hon. member for Medicine Hat has put forward today. As he knows, I also sit on the finance committee of the House and I intend to assist him and associate myself with his demands, because members of this House, even if they do not have a farm in their ridings, are aware of the concerns of the cattlemen of this country.
Water supplies in major streams, lakes and underground are deteriorating, but the information we have is that they are still expected to be adequate to meet requirements up until perhaps the end of the summer of 1980.
Again I agree with the hon. member for Prince Albert when he says that immediate action should be taken to assist in the drilling of wells, and to assist also in the drilling of municipal wells. Later on this afternoon one of our speakers will explain to the House and the people of Canada the very practical and concrete measures taken by the Department of Regional Economic Expansion to basically assist and put some sort of irrigation system in place in the west.
However, I understand sufficient soil moisture generally exists for the germination of crops. The situation, as I understand it, is more serious for the cattlemen because the grain farmer does at least have crop insurance and a stabilization scheme.
For this reason 1 should like to address my attention now to the situation of the cattlemen. Recently the cattlemen came before the finance committee and complained about clauses in the Bank Act which they felt were inadequate to meet their needs. Members opposite made serious representations on their behalf and I was there with several members from our side to support their plea.
Basically, the problem we face is the absence of rain, and all the programs we can develop on this side of the House with the assistance and positive co-operation of members opposite will not bring rain. So there are several propositions. The tax proposal will not solve the problem immediately though it will certainly alleviate the concerns of the farmer. Another possibility which was mentioned was the reduction of beef imports to give farmers an assurance that at least they would have a market in which to sell.
Another point which was raised by the hon. member for Prince Albert-I am not sure I agree with it-was that we should begin transporting hay from the east to the west. From the little knowledge 1 have, I believe the cost would be such as to be almost prohibitive. I will, maybe, ask the people in the departments of transport and agriculture to put together a package to find out basically whether the idea is feasible or not. When the hon. member talks about sufficient stocks of barley, I agree with him. There is no question we shall have sufficient stocks of barley because in the parts of Saskatchewan 1 know drought is something which could happen any
year. Basically, the weather in southern Saskatchewan and in the area around Medicine Hat is dry.
I agree with the hon. member from Prince Albert: now is the time to do something. The hon. member put forward some 12 concrete proposals for immediate action and five long-term proposals. I was not able to make note of all of them but 1 certainly intend in the near future to have a conversation with him and to make sure that his representations are brought to the attention of the departments of agriculture and finance. I will make sure that this is done.
However, I was disappointed with the hon. member when he said that we on this side wanted to make political gains out of this situation. I would point out that there is not likely to be an election for four years and that there are no political gains for us to make in the short term. The hon. member should understand that we, especially those of us who have just been through a referendum, believe we are here to represent the whole country and we do not want to make short-term political gains. Absence of rain is something we can do nothing about.
The hon. member has put forward strong and concrete proposals. But to suggest we want to make a big show for June 3 and 4 in Victoria is completely wrong. That is unfair and 1 am disappointed with the hon. member for making that suggestion. 1 can only think that some member of his staff wrote it and that he accidentally read it to the House. As the hon. member knows very well, we have the situation out west at heart. I hope that this afternnon when the Minister of Transport meets with officials from the Department of Agriculture and others about what the Department of Regional Economic Expansion will be doing, we shall be able to provide more satisfactory answers.
I also want to talk to the hon. member about the suggestion that somehow the Department of Agriculture did not agree with, changed its mind, withdrew or deceived the government of Saskatchewan and its minister of agriculture by saying one day that there was a deal and on another day that there was not a deal. From what I understand, according to information provided to me by officials of the Department of Agriculture and as repeated in this House by the Minister of Agriculture, an agreement was being discussed at a meeting of deputy ministers but nothing formal was decided. We have not turned down Mr. MacMurchy's request at this time. All we have done basically is say this: "Mr. MacMurchy has talked to our deputy minister, Mr. Lussier, Mr. Lussier has talked to the Minister of Agriculture, who in turn brought the matter to the attention of the various ministers who are concerned and who will bring it to the attention of cabinet". This is very different from saying we have rejected the request.
In a situation like this there can be no politics. We are here as a nation. That is why, when the provinces get together and talk to our department, 1 would never accuse them of trying to make politics. Basically, everyone is concerned about this situation. Concrete proposals have been made and we will act on them in the belief that the plight of the western farmer is of interest to all the nation.
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Agricultural Drought
I intend to go out west several times next year and in the years to come to meet with more of the prairie farmers. I think a suggestion which could be acted upon quickly would be to have the members of the agriculture committee travel across Canada and listen to the representations of the kind which were made by the hon. member for Medicine Hat and by the hon. member for Prince Albert. They could talk to the farmers and to representatives of the Cattlemen's Association to make sure that the crisis situation which has arisen this year, a situation we experienced partially in 1977, in 1960-61 and for ten years in the thirties, will not continue. I cannot but believe that we on this side of the House, especially those who have just finished a very strong battle in Quebec, will be willing and understanding and ready to go to bat with our ministers and our officials who have the plight of the western farmers at heart. The hon. member may rest assured that this afternoon he will get precise and up-to-date information.
The hon. member mentioned an agreement made with the government of Manitoba. I am not aware of that agreement; maybe there is one. The Minister of Transport, at the meeting with officials, will have up-to-the-moment information.
The hon. member mentioned a big show in Victoria. Again,
1 am not aware of that. I am aware there is a meeting in Victoria but not a big show, a big political rally. That is not what it is about. What we intend to do is to take forceful action immediately. In 1977 we had a cabinet committee, an officials committee and a task force. This year that task force went into effect, met with the different farm organizations and met with the provincial organizations at the official level. It then made a report to the senior officials who then met with the deputy ministers. Now we are at the cabinet stage and with the help of the positive suggestions by the hon. members for Medicine Hat and Prince Albert we have the benefit of an even better and more complete file.
I am very pleased to have the occasion, in the absence of the Minister of Agriculture and his parliamentary secretary, as one, who represents a very rural riding in southern Montreal despite the fact that its name is Laprairie and that it does not have a single farm on it, to get up once again to talk about my concern for and my devotion to the cause of the prairie farmer.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster.


Some hon. Members:: One o'clock.


Mr. Bill McKnight (Kindersley-Lloydminster):: May 1 call it one o'clock?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: If the hon. member is agreeable to calling it one o'clock, 1 do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon, when he will be recognized to take the floor.
At one o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. When the House rose at one o'clock, the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster (Mr. McKnight) had the floor. I understand that the hon. member has offered or will offer to give way to the Minister of Transport. Perhaps he might like to advise the House of that, and the minister might like to advise the House of his decision.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, in light of the emergency and the concern that we on this side have, I would like to give way with unanimous consent to the Minister of Tranport (Mr. Pepin) to make a statement, and rely on the good auspices of the Chair for the rest of the debate.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Is that acceptable to the Minister of Transport?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Yes.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: I want to draw to the attention of the House and of the Minister of Transport that Standing Order 58(13) makes it clear that the first member who speaks on a debatable motion in reply to the mover of the motion has a time limit of 30 minutes. My review of the Standing Order would indicate that the reply has been given. The minister would therefore be limited to 20 minutes. Regarding the fact that we now have two members from the same side of the House speaking one after the other, the Chair will have to try to sort that out in the next few minutes.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member. 1 shall try to respect my 20-minute limit. I believe I can manage it. First of all, I should like to reiterate the excuses of the Minister'of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) who had to leave yesterday or this morning-I believe he left last night, in fact-to attend the World Food Conference in Tanzania, Africa. I know the minister would have liked to be in the House today.
Secondly, 1 want to say that the government is really grateful for the debate today and wishes to thank hon. members who are willing to take part in it. This debate obviously gives the opportunity of keeping the people of Canada informed about the present situation with regard to the drought in western Canada.

Mr. Speaker, the first part of my remarks which I obtained from the Department of Agriculture has to do with a description of the present weather situation in the west. Serious drought conditions continue, as we all know, to be experienced
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May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
across a large area of the prairie provinces and areas also in northwestern Ontario and the interior of British Columbia. The generally dry fall in 1979, below normal winter precipitation, and a hot, dry April and May have contributed to cause below normal moisture conditions. The moisture shortages range from critical to below normal.
The one bright spot in recent weeks, as the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) underlined this morning, has been rain in southern and some parts of central Alberta, but a lack of moisture is causing great hardship on many other people elsewhere.
The worst forest fire conditions on record are being experienced in the northern areas of western Canada and northwestern Ontario. Substantial damage has already been done and, as we all know, many people have had to be taken by Armed Forces planes and personnel from their homes as fires threaten. I am glad to be able to tell hon. members that many of these residents of our northern areas now have returned to their homes. Cooler, damp weather has helped put out some of the fires and reduced the fire hazard. But it is recognized that the over-all dry conditions across the prairies continue and are threatening to have a serious effect on agricultural production.
1 share the concern of some hon. members that the cereal crop in western Canada is in jeopardy because of low moisture reserves in the soil and in some areas a total lack of rainfall. I am told that it is still not too late for the wheat crop to recover and to provide its usual bounty. Timely rains could indeed turn the situation around for grain producers. But there is no question that if the present weather conditions prevail for very much longer, there will be an increasing number of short and long-term problems developing. In a nutshell, the situation is serious but not yet critical. We all pray and hope that it will not become critical.
Livestock producers have been the first to be affected. Increasing demands placed on already short feed supplies and local water supplies are causing great concern. Livestock and feed, when available, must be transported long distances. There is also a concern that some cattlemen may have to sell off their herds if feed becomes scarce.
There is no question that the drought situation is more serious in some respects than the dry conditions of 1977. It is far more widespread, covering a very large area of western Canada.
What, then, is being done? First, the government has been continuing to monitor the situation most carefully. Cabinet members have met their provincial counterparts, and senior officials within various government departments have consulted with provincial officials.
In 1977, the last year drought conditions existed on the prairies, cabinet approved the formation of a federal task force on drought. The task force was charged with the responsibility of assembling information, recommending government action
and co-ordinating programs aimed at alleviating the situation for western farmers.
I would like to make it clear to my hon. friends that the task force was not simply a one-shot affair. It has continued in existence in Regina since 1977 and has been meeting regularly. In fact, it has regularly reported moisture conditions to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) and to the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. De Bane), and these reports have been made public.
This morning, the hon. member for Medicine Hat suggested that the names of the members of the task force be made public. If I am permitted, Mr. Speaker, I will do so now. The chairman is Mr. V. O. Coffey from Agriculture Canada; the secretary is Mr. D. James, a representative of DREE in Saskatchewan. The members are as follows: Mr. J. C. Lowe, representing Agriculture Canada; Mr. J. R. Lane, DREE, Saskatchewan; Mr. G. S. Brown, PFRA-as hon. members know, that is part of DREE; Mr. D. A. Davis, Environment, Regina; Mr. W. H. Willis, EPC, Winnipeg; and Mr. W. L. Tucker, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Winnipeg.
There is an interdepartmental steering committee working from Ottawa which is chaired by Mr. Mike Heeney of Agriculture Canada. I would like to thank these people for their participation in this task force.
As I was saying, the task force is a permanent institution now and it met last in Regina on May 16 with senior officials from the provincial governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It was agreed at this meeting that a drought of major proportions was developing, and that joint federal-provincial action was urgently needed. Action plans were presented as soon as possible to the respective governments of task force members for consideration and implementation.
As a result of this meeting, all hon. members would have received last week a memorandum of information from the Minister of Agriculture providing the most up-to-date information possible on the drought situation. Similar information has been made available regularly to western farmers and to the members of Parliament through media releases from Agriculture Canada.
Today marks the reinstatement of a weekly drought report first initiated in 1977 during dry conditions. The report which hon. members will receive on Monday morning not only provides current information on weather conditions, but also provides some predictions as to what these conditions mean to prairie farmers. That report is widely available in both print form and by radio across the prairies.
At lunch time I managed to get an advance copy of the report. If members want to know what the situation is in their particular region-it is divided into geographical areas-if they would get in touch with me, I will let them see it.
Just last weekend the Minister of Agriculture, the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy), the Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for the Canadian Wheat Board toured the most seriously
si
May 30, 1980

affected areas of the prairies to gain first hand information on the situation. They met in Regina with task force officials. A draft paper recommending certain federal action to alleviate hardships caused by the dry weather was also studied by ministers at that time.
Task force officials worked out details this week. Just three days ago a meeting of senior federal officials was held in Ottawa to review these details and to make specific recommendations. These recommendations for action will be placed before cabinet for decision next week, Mr. Speaker, and I can assure hon. members that the matter will receive the highest priority. Detailed federal plans aimed at assisting producers on the prairie provinces will be announced as soon as possible after cabinet has made its decision.
The Minister of Agriculture was sort of chastised this morning for saying that he could not act as rapidly as others thought he should. I thought he stood on very good ground. The proper way of doing these things is for the minister-or any one of them-to go to cabinet first to get authorization for whatever he wants to do before proceeding with an announcement. 1 thought some of my friends were unfair to the very friendly and able Minister of Agriculture. So I stand up today to support him.
This document, the one I referred to as coming before cabinet next week, will address the most urgent part of this situation, that is, pasture and feed for cattle. It will cover possible moves on the feasibility of transportation of cattle feed and transportation of cattle to pasture. It will make decisions about that. It will also address the possibility of accelerating programs for the provision of water facilities, not that these programs are entirely new-we all know that they exist-but there is a possibility they could be accelerated. This is the sort of thing the document will be about and it is on what the cabinet will base its decision. Therefore, my hon. friends will have their curiosity satisfied by this announcement next week.
In the meantime, the task force members and senior federal officials are considering further government action should the drought continue. The drought situation can change very rapidly, we know that, but the government will be in a position to react to a worsening situation very rapidly if it becomes necessary.
The hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo) seemed to make a great to do about a meeting to be held on June 3 in Victoria. I think he was implying that this was another one of those Liberal conspiracies to get maximum press coverage. 1 just want to tell him that I will be at that meeting. The meeting was called to discuss grain transportation. A minister from one of the provinces informed the chairman of that group that he would like to discuss drought conditions should they not improve in the meantime. It was by provincial action that the subject of drought was brought up as a possibility for discussion at the meeting in Victoria. My friend might want to apologize or blush for having imputed motives that were not there certainly in the first place.
Agricultural Drought
So that there is no confusion as to the action the government already has taken to handle the drought situation on a continuing basis, I would like rapidly to review some of its programs and other activities. While the emergency measures to be considered by cabinet will be geared to answer specific needs for this year, there exist other measures that have been in place, in some cases for decades. 1 will mention just three.
First, ever since the dust bowl days of the 1930s, Agriculture Canada's research stations in the western provinces have laboured to provide farmers with new tools, management techniques and different crop varieties to combat the odds of farming in what is naturally a dry land area. This has been met with great success and international acclaim.
The second measure I want to mention is crop insurance programs, half the premiums for which are paid by the federal government. This is another way in which prairie farmers can protect their investment in the land. About 80,000 western grain farmers have purchased $1.5 billion worth of crop insurance protection for this year. The federal government will contribute about $73 million to premiums in the western provinces. The government also assists provinces through reinsurance programs when indemnities greatly exceed reserves. This is another measure that exists, and I am sure hon. members are aware of it and others. 1 just mention them as a record of the system that has been built throughout the years to anticipate situations like the one now confronting us.
Third, the Western Grain Stabilization Act provides income protection should poor crop yields result in poor market returns and reduced net cash flows. Some 74 per cent of all rain producers on the prairies are part of this program.
As I have said, our immediate concern is for the livestock producers who are suffering the most from soil moisture conditions at the present time. I can assure hon. members that government emergency action will recognize that fact. The selling off of cattle and subsequent reduction in western breeding herds must be prevented, as was stated by some members this morning.
To sum up, the government stands ready to institute whatever action is needed to help producers as well as residents of western Canada should the drought conditions continue much longer. 1 repeat that the situation is a very serious one, but it has not reached critical proportions. Hopefully it will not. However, to react to the present serious situation, the government will make announcements next week.


Mr. Cousineau:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I thank the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster (Mr. McKnight) for having given the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) the opportunity to speak before him. We on this side have no objection to Your Honour now recognizing two Conservatives to speak on this motion.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The Chair wants to express its thanks to the hon. member for indicating that we might balance out debate in that fashion. Unless there are any

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Agricultural Drought
objections, that is the manner in which we will proceed. There will be two Conservative speakers. 1 will then go to my right again. I then have in mind a further member from the NDP. Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Gatineau (Mr. Cousineau) for assisting in this debate. I was pleased with the remarks of the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) in that we have finally had a statement in the House from the government on a very serious problem that faces the three prairie provinces, part of British Columbia and part of Ontario.
If I am critical of the Liberal government, it is because of the lenght of time it has taken them to realize the problems that drought is causing individuals. It may not be of a huge proportion in some minds, but this drought, this disaster, this quirk of Mother Nature, is of huge proportions in their personal lives.
1 would like to try and express this in a way a friend of mine from southern Saskatchewan does. When we are talking about drought, some people say drought, some people say "drouth". I don't care what you say, it's damned dry in Saskatchewan right now. We, and I am talking about men, governments and human resources, all believe that rain will come and that the "Man upstairs" looks after us; but we cannot wait for help because we need to have help now.
I would like to draw attention to some of the problems that we have, some of which were mentioned earlier by the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) and the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo). The task force that was organized in 1977 and which is still in existence is made up of those mentioned by the minister, very capable and responsible members of our bureaucracy. I have a great deal of empathy for those members. They come up with programs that are of great assistance. The only problem with the programs is that they cost money. These hard working civil servants go out and try to provide the answers. When they come back and ask for money to carry out the programs that will assist those suffering from this drought, they find that this is where the problem lies. It is not a problem of finding the answers. We have very capable people who have provided the answers. The problem lies with whether this government is committed, believes and is concerned that it will find the money or the resources to give the assistance that is needed in western Canada, not tomorrow and not next week but now.
The Minister of Transport took exception to one of the previous speakers' comment that things should be done quickly and should be done now. However, I would draw his attention to some of the things the present Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) said when we were in government and he in opposition. He said it was a shame that agriculture was not represented properly in the Clark cabinet, that the then minister of agriculture was not a member of the inner cabinet. What he forgot to recognize as important is that that minister was a member of Treasury Board. When you are a member of
Treasury Board, you have ample opportunity to get fast decisions on problems concerning agriculture. The present Minister of Agriculture is not a member of Treasury Board. That is why we have to wait so long before competent and precise help is given to those in western Canada.
I wish to bring to the attention of the House the supplies that we have in western Canada to give us assistance with this problem. It has been mentioned that screenings should be used to supplement feed. There are people in my constituency who have turned cattle out on to grass. When they did that, they also had to feed them. They have to grind, chop and supply feed in addition to grass for the cattle. The reason for that is that they were breeding stock.
I would like to correct an impression that may have been left by the hon. member for Prince Albert about a statement made by the hon. member for Medicine Hat, who has long been recognized in the cattle industry and other industries in Canada as a very knowledgeable person. He did not say that we should sell off half of our breeding stock. What the hon. member for Medicine Hat said was that in some instances farmers and ranchers are selling up to half their breeding stock. Selling half their breeding stock is giving away their ability to earn a living. It takes away the ability of families, ranchers and farmers to earn a living. They can no longer earn a living unless they have their breeding stock. The only cash they get comes when calves are dropped, grassed and then fed. When you give away or are forced to sell part of your ability to earn a living, it is not a small matter; it is critical, and it is critical right now.
We have very small supplies of screenings in western Canada. As a matter of fact, my information is that at the most we have available now only 450 tonnes of screenings, which would not make a significant difference, considering the numbers of cattle which will have to be fed. A problem arises because of a formula called the corn competitive formula which says that barley sold within Canada should be based on the price, the energy efficiency and the price of equal efficiency of corn which comes in from the United States.
What it is doing now is that the cattlemen who are in need of feed are buying barley from the Canadian Wheat Board stocks because they can buy it cheaper from the Canadian Wheat Board stocks under the corn competitive formula than they can buy it non-board, from elevator companies or from their neighbours, their farmer and rancher friends.
The other thing that is going to develop is a shortage of barley for both areas. There are approximately 200,000 tonnes of barley on-farm in western Canada, and it will not be sold to the Canadian Wheat Board. It will not be sold on quota until the price comes up 40 cents or 50 cents or until a quota opens up which will allow it to be sold. These are some of the problems.
Long before my time the PFRA served the people of western Canada well. It has the interest of the people of western Canada at heart at all times, but right now on PFRA pastures
May 30, 1980

there are aproximately 190,000 head of cattle. Officials of that agency say that the optimum expectation is that grass and water-one or the other and in some cases both-will dry up by the end of June. These cattle are going to have to be taken out of the pastures and put on feed in feedlots on farms. This is an additional burden, but farmers and ranchers will do this to save their breeding stock.
1 am aware of the deep program of the PFRA, but 1 would like to draw the attention of the House and the minister to the fact that in this year of drought there have only been 251 deep wells drilled in western Canada as of May 28. This compares with the year 1977-and I realize we are only at the end of May-when there were 4,059 deep wells dug by the PFRA or with the assistance of the PFRA. 1 commend this program of the PFRA, but I also ask that the government provide the monetary means-the dollars-so that this agency can function.
There are some other things I would like to mention, but one thing I want particularly to bring to the attention of the House is the suggestion the hon. member for Medicine Hat made regarding an annual income averaging program for cattlemen and farmers who are forced, through no fault of their own but because of the quirk of Mother Nature, to sell their stock. The hon. member for Prince Albert said that this would not help the small operator, but I think it should be drawn to his attention that a small operator with 30 or 40 head of breeding stock has a total investment of anywhere from $35,000 to $45,000.
If he is forced to sell half of that, he will pay anywhere from 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the proceeds in income tax. Five-year averaging does not help. 1 do not know how the hon. member for Prince Albert would feel were he a farmer or had he experience on the farm, but 1 would not want to have to sell my cows. I would not want to have to give away 40 per cent even on 20 head of cattle. Larger operators whose cattle are on short grass have no back-up. They rely on grass to produce the calves they sell for income. The smaller farmer is usually a mixed farmer. He has access to straw, feed grains and cereal grains, so that he can get through. It will cost him more, but he will get through. I would like to draw that to the attention of the House.
Mention has been made of programs which are available to producers in western Canada when it comes to crop insurance. The minister stated that there are about 80,000 farmers involved in the crop insurance program. We recognize that that program is funded partially by the federal government and by the provincial governments, but I must add that the people who buy it, the producers, also fund it. There are 80,000 farmers involved in this program, but there are 150,000 permit book holders in western Canada. That means that just s little over half of the farmers are protected under the crop insurance program.
Western grain stabilization was mentioned. This is a program which is of assistance, but again only 70 per cent of the producers participate in that program.
Agricultural Drought
One problem in the cattle industry which is critical now is that if it does not rain within the next ten days, there will be a problem with cereal grain production. For the information of the minister, we are about a month ahead in our growing season in western Canada now compared with the average year. Ordinarily if there has been no rain by the first of June we do not panic, but crops have been in the ground for 30 days or 40 days. The germination is not so good. It really is not great. Gophers have to pack a lunch to travel across 100 acres. There is nothing to eat. We must have some feeling of concern for the grain producer right now. I agree that the situation is not as critical as it is for the cattleman because the cattleman is selling off his ability to earn an income.
Considering the expressions of good faith and good will by the government toward people in western Canada and all parts of Canada who are having a problem, I hope that it will again take a very strong look at income averaging in order to protect people who, again through no fault of their own, have been forced to sell parts of their cattle herds.
1 hope the Canadian Wheat Board will be instructed to guarantee a supply of feed grain on the prairies, but again let us keep in mind that the mandate of the Canadian Wheat Board is to export grain out of Canada. I know this is a problem, but I think there must be some way of getting around it.
We certainly hope there will be federal assistance given to the movement of cattle from western Canada to Ontario and Quebec. We had the assurance from our confreres in the Standing Committee on Agriculture yesterday that there is more than enough forage in Ontario and Quebec to assist in a small way in saving our breeding stock. We would like to see if a back haul could be originated to haul grain and hay back.
We hope that the government will look at a meat import law. That would not help in the drought, but it would help cattlemen and farmers have some faith in the industry of raising beef. Unless they have faith, and unless they know they are going to get a fair return for their sweat, they will sell their breeding herds and it is not just the cattlemen and the farmers who will suffer; every consumer in Canada will feel the effect within the next 18 to 24 months. We hope the government will take a strong look at placing the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration, or the act, under the jurisdiction of the Minister of Agriculture.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Why not Transport?


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: The minister suggests Transport. I will pass over that. The Minister of Transport is a busy man and I do not think he really needs anything else to keep him occupied.
The hon. member for Laprairie (Mr. Deniger) said he had a feeling for western Canada and understands some of the problems there even if he does not have a farm. I recognize that, and there are other members on his side who have a similar approach. If the government is willing to take the steps which are needed along the lines of suggestions which have

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Agricultural Drought
been put forward, it will renew faith in western Canada that the federal government does care about the region. But if steps are not taken, and taken soon, this belief will be very hard to maintain in western Canada. In contradiction to the view held by some people, I should like to say that the situation is critical now. It is critical for individuals and it is critical for the industry-for the farmers, the cattle business and everyone in Canada. So 1 hope the government will take a look at these problems.


Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, 1 welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate although I regret the situation we are discussing is not a healthy one in terms of the western economy or the Canadian economy as a whole. It is very unpredictable. Today we might be talking about a very serious drought; tomorrow the rains may come and continue to fall and then, all of a sudden, the situation is fine and dandy.
This does not excuse the government from taking action. After all, the government has a responsibility here, as it indicated in the Speech from the Throne. Along with many other western members, 1 read that speech and heard it from the mouth of none other than the Governor General, and the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) recited to us in western Canada that we had a responsibility to indicate to the people in western Canada what the government was doing. I ask you, Mr. Speaker, how can we tell the people of western Canada what the government is doing if the government does not tell us what it intends to do?
If anyone doubts the seriousness of the drought, one has only to look back at past history. I can remember what happened in 1961. Not too many people have experienced drought conditions but I suppose that in my lifetime I experienced it also in the thirties as a boy. 1 did not understand the seriousness of it in those days. I was just a young shaver at the time and it really did not make much difference to me. One could have a lot of fun, even in the depression. You did not need much money to get by. You ate what was available, you did what everybody else did and you did not ask questions.
That was in the days when you did not require capital. Those were the days when you could feed a horse, turn it out to pasture for a couple of hours in the afternoon in the heat of the sun, and about four or five o'clock hook him up, drag him back out to the field and work again until late at night. But you cannot do that any more. So in terms of today's economy there is no comparison with the thirties, and 1 think we may as well forget about trying to make one because any time reference is made to the thirties it is such a foreign thing for everybody to understand. It is something for the CBC to recall whenever they want to drag out something about the prairies and western Canada.
Western Canada is not the prairies any more. Western Canada is far more than vast prairie dust bowls and so on. It is true there is the possibility of dust bowls and grave economic consequences. But the dust bowls are gone forever in terms of our agricultural approach and our ability to cope with them. Our ability to cope demands several factors. One of those is the ability to raise capital, and ability to raise capital depends
very much on the ability of the government to understand the consequences of what is happening today.
We have a far more serious problem than relates to only one province. Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia and parts of Ontario are affected by drought. When I say parts of Ontario are affected, I am talking about the forest fire situation as it affects the northern area. If anybody doubts the consequences of forest fires in the northern parts of our country he has only to look at the value of the tourist dollar that produces an income to Canada. If ever Canada needed income from foreign capital, it needs it today. And if ever a government needed a jolt to make it understand the consequences of the folly of the financial policy it is pursuing it needs it now. It is oblivious to the fact that it is heading totally in the wrong direction in terms of deficits. The time to budget for deficits is when we have the one we are facing today, to pull us out of an economic recession.
Just look at what is reported in today's The Globe and Mail. If people in eastern Canada are not aware of the consequences of what is happening in western Canada, let them look at the Massey-Ferguson lay-offs which will reach 6,850. Do 1 need to say more? Who is it, Mr. Speaker, who buys the tractors? Who buys the combines? It is the people who have been complaining to their representatives in the House of Commons, and they are asking this government to outline a plan for coping with the situation.
The government announced they had a plan. They told us they had some sort of a task force. Where was it? Hidden in a cupboard? What was it doing? Studying itself-studying its navel, 1 guess. I do not know what it was doing. But the point is this: they did not indicate to the people most affected what they intended to do in the event of a serious situation developing. And it was developing very rapidly. Imagine the situation which existed when we started out this spring. Interest rates stood at 18 per cent. What were the producers to do? Were they to look up into the sky, say it was too dry, that interest was at 18 per cent and that the government didn't care? Were they to fold up?
They asked themselves these questions and said: "We don't care about the government, we don't care about the interest rates and we don't care about the weather. We are going to take our chances despite everything that everybody does to us because that is the nature of the farmer". But does that mean we have to say to them: "Yes, your're tough, but you withstood it before"?	[DOT]
You know, Mr. Speaker, there are such things as bankruptcies. We see the evidence of that. Once in a while the CBC comes out with a spectacular case. But we do not have to look at the spectacular cases. Businesses go under and nobody even notices them. All of a sudden a family farmer pulls out of a suitable home and goes into the city and becomes a statistic. We look down at the records later on and see that another farm has closed down.
May 30, 1980

What is important is net to come up with some grandiose scheme later on, but to deal with the situation right away. It is important to give them an indication of where you are going. They also have to make plans, whether or not the government knows it. Everybody in business who is affected by the income of the producers, whether they be cattle producers or other agricultural producers, has to make plans. You cannot imagine what it is like when you see grass which in the middle of June would normally be two feet high now only six inches high and very scarce. You can walk through it, you can see through it, you can see a blade of grass ten feet away. That is the kind of situation that you run into.
These people are not stupid, they know that they cannot carry their cattle through the winter, they know they have to unload them, and they know that every buyer in this country knows their situation. They know that the sooner they unload their cattle the better, because if they wait the situation will become worse. The government waits and waits, thinking that perhaps something will happen and it will not have to come through with anything.
With regard to the drought, the situation is not yet critical in my area. We hope that with some rainfall, perhaps even a bountiful crop might be produced. But let me tell the minister who sits over there who, although he is not responsible for the Canadian Wheat Board, is pinch-hitting for the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) at this time, that he had better take the message back that whatever kind of plan this task force may have for the cattle industry and for the grain industry, it had better be announced very quickly. Even an interim program is better than nothing.
Now let me go on to speak about the other industry affected, and that is the tourist industry. Elere I do not fault the federal government, and in fact I do not think it was through any action on the part of the federal government that the tourist industry has suffered. I want to give full marks to the Department of Regional Economic Expansion in so far as Saskatchewan is concerned, despite the credit which the province might want to take for itself, because people within the department foresaw the need for water bombers for Saskatchewan, and through DREE funding-perhaps the minister does not even know about this; in fact, 1 am sure he does not and I would like to fill him in on this-


Jean-Luc Pepin: Mattery goi you where you are.
Mri Korchinski: I want to give the department full marks because with the funds out of the northlands agreement, 60 per cent of the cost of the $1,500,000 program was provided to buy three water bombers for northern Saskatchewan. And what did the province of Saskatchewan do? They were not ready for the forest fires. They had a few tracker bombers which were on wheels but they could not scoop up the water as a water bomber can. The water bombers that were provided were equipped to cope with the situation. But they took their time, and of course the forest fires do not take time-whenever they come, they come.
Agricultural Drought
I want to give DREE full marks because they knew what the consequences would be to the tourist industry. The tourist industry depends a great deal upon Americans coming to northern Saskatchewan to fish. Tourist facilities in that area have had to be shut down, but the federal government had nothing to say to those people who heard nothing other than a bald announcement which came from the province of Saskatchewan. The province reversed a few statements here and there and implied that it was all to their credit, which is a lot of baloney, if I can use that term.


Walter David Baker: It is parliamentary.


Stanley James Korchinski: The province was trying to take the credit for everything that was being done. I want to give the federal government credit in that regard, because at least the officials of DREE were aware of the need for water bombers. I do not know whether those three water bombers were sufficient for the amount of work that was being done.
Now I want to go back to the throne speech where the following statement was made:
It has been said in recent weeks that the three westernmost provinces have no elected voice in the governing of this country. That is not true. Parliament is the supreme law making assembly of Canada, and every Canadian is represented in the House of Commons by his or her duly elected member.
Like all of our colleagues in the House of Commons, you who represent the people of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia have a responsibility to represent your constituents to the nation.
That is fair enough. In other words, the government is admonishing us, western representatives, that we have a job to do to inform the people. And yet when an industrial park was being opened up at La Ronge, what did the minister and his department do? It did not matter that I as the elected representative for 22 years-was not invited on the occasion, but they even denied me the opportunity to tell the people about what the federal government was going to do.


Some hon. Members:: Shame.


Stanley James Korchinski: They denied me that opportunity, but they invited everyone else. They admonish me, they lecture me, and they tell me what my role as an MP is, and then when the opportunity arises they deny me the chance to play that role. It does not really matter because they have done that to me before and yet I am here. I would have told them the same thing I am telling them now. I give them credit where credit is due, if there is any credit due, but at the same time they deny me the opportunity to make information available to the people. That is what the resolution is all about, and that is what we are asking for. We ask for information about what the government is doing about the drought as it applies to dairy producers, beef producers, grain producers and the tourist industry.
Mr. Speaker, I do not think I need to say much more, but let me tell you that in my area, in Cumberland House, there are marshes-it is marshland area-and despite the droughts in western Canada we can grow great amounts of feed in that area. In 1961 when everywhere else there was no feed, we in

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
Cumberland Elouse grew it and made it available. We had a trucking program to bring the feed to the southern parts of the country. Now it will be available there because the marshlands still exist. The land is flooded and grass will grow there. There are many other areas in the province that have similar programs in existence where feed will be available. They can be co-ordinated to benefit the beef industry so that cattle do not have to be slaughtered and producers will not have to make sacrifices at this time. It is an industry which is badly needed at this time.
I should like to say one other thing with regard to the effects of the forest fires in the province of Saskatchewan. The forest products industry in the province is about to abandon some of its operations. The fires have ravaged many parts of the province through the Hudson Bay area and around La Ronge in the north, a prime producing area where no less than three plants, to say the least, will be closing their operation. They will be using the excuse that it was high interest rates and everything else, but in reality the reason for their closure will be partly because they were not ready to cope with the forest fire situation.
The federal government has now reached a point where it requires $14 billion for its deficit position. That is an increase from the $11.5 billion which we projected. The federal government will never be in a position to help western Canada at this particular time, or maybe another area at another time, because of the monetary policies it is pursuing.
The other day I suggested that the Bank of Canada should take into account the drought in western Canada and its effect upon the economy. I was swept aside by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen), but a few days later I saw a headline in The Globe and Mail which indicated that Ontario is affected. I am not a strange soothsayer. I do not have any way of knowing or predicting that certain things will happen, but I know if things are happening in one place that it will affect another place. All it takes is a little common sense on the part of the government. I ask the government to give us as much information as possible. The grain producers, the cattle producers, the tourist industry and the lumber industry in western Canada are capable of coping with difficult situations. They are intelligent people, but they must be given information so that they will know what the government is prepared to do and how far the government is prepared to go, and they will carry the rest.
[ Translation]


Mr. Marcel Dionne (Chicoutimi):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to join my colleagues in this House to talk about the drought conditions in western Canada. Serious drought conditions affect a large part of the prairie provinces, certain areas of northern Ontario and British Columbia. A generally dry fall, below normal winter precipitation and a very hot and dry April and May have contributed to the present situation.
Moisture conditions range from low to average and the situation is critical.
The one bright spot in recent weeks has been rain in southern and some parts of central Alberta but a lack of moisture is also causing great hardship elsewhere. The northern prairies and northwestern Ontario are now having the worst forest fires ever recorded. Substantial damage has already been done and, as hon. members undoubtedly know, many people have been evacuated by the armed forces because of the threat those fires represent. Fortunately, most of these residents now have returned home. Cooler damp weather temperatures has helped put out some of the fires that were raging and reduced the fire hazard. However, the over-all dry conditions across the prairies continue and seriously threaten agricultural production.
I share the concern of my colleagues representing certain western areas that the cereal crop is in jeopardy because of low moisture reserves in the soil and a total lack of rainfall. But I am told it is still not too late for the wheat crop and yields could still be excellent if it rains and continues to rain as it has been doing in certain areas recently. But there is no question that if present weather conditions prevail we will face short and long-term problems. Livestock producers were the first to be affected. Because of increasing demands we can expect cattle feed shortages. In certain regions, the drop in water supplies also poses serious problems. Livestock and feed, when available, have to be transported over long distances. Also, cattlemen may have to sell off their herds if feed becomes scarce.
There is no question that the present situation is more serious in some aspects than the problems which existed in 1977. The problem has much greater proportions than three years ago. The government is monitoring the situation most carefully. In 1977, cabinet approved the formation of a special task force on drought whose mandate was to assemble information and make recommendations to government, besides co-ordinating various programs to alleviate the situation out west. The task force is still active and continues to meet. They met recently in Regina, on May 16 to be precise, with Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba senior government officials. According to the task force, we are facing a serious drought and the federal and provincial governments must be prepared to take immediate action.
During the last weekend the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy), and also both ministers of state responsible for economic development and for the Canadian Wheat Board visited the most affected areas to see for themselves the extent of the problem. At the same time, they considered a working paper proposing that some measures be adopted by the federal government. A special committee has prepared the particulars of those proposals only three days ago. Those recommendations will be submitted to cabinet which should make a deci-

May 30, 1980

sion soon. In the meantime, the task force and the senior officials will continue to co-ordinate the goverment's action if the drought were to continue. The situation could improve quickly, but the government must be prepared to act as quickly as possible if things were to get worse. Not only have action plans been provided but I am convinced as all members in this House that the government will act in time and effectively to give assistance to western farmers.
It is important that decisions taken in those circumstances be the best possible. I believe that negative criticism would be contrary to the best interests of farmers and consumers alike. However, Mr. Speaker, we should refrain from dramatizing so as to avoid useless panic. Rain has fallen in some areas and yesterday we were informed that in some specific areas, four inches of rain had fallen, three inches in others and one inch elsewhere. Let us hope that the rain will greatly improve the grazing areas so that cattle may feed properly. Let us hope that this will continue and let us search for practical short, medium and long-term solutions because this drought could seriously impair western Canada's economy.


Mr. Stan Schellenberger (Wetaskiwin):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise today realizing that in my area we did get the first rains this year over the weekend, much needed rains, because, as the hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster (Mr. McKnight), said, much of the crop had been in the ground for 30 to 40 days and had been germinating sporadically. In the lower areas germination was taking place, and in the higher areas of fields there was no germination. This would have resulted in a very uneven crop and grain of very poor quality this fall. However, we did get the rain and I now am pleased to say that most of my farmers are saying germination is taking place across all of the fields.
This does not alleviate the problem regarding pasture lands in the west part of the ridings of Wetaskiwin, Red Deer and, I suspect, Vegreville, Bow River and Crowfoot. The pasture lands and hay lands are not growing. The only plants growing are the deep rooted alfalfa plants, which are already coming into bloom and should be cut one month before we generally go out and make the first cut of that hay for the year. This is disturbing.
1 am also concerned that many of the ranchers and farmers in the area raising cattle, because the pastures grass did not grow this spring, were forced to turn their cattle out on their hay fields to keep them going long enough until the pasture lands could get a bit of a foothold so that the pasture lands could hold the cattle through the fall when maybe some grain lands and straw would become available.
The very serious problem of drought has really affected most seriously now, and will continue to do so, feed for the cattle on the prairies, and that is something we have to turn our attention to as a Parliament.
Agricultural Drought
As I looked at the act which was brought forward by the government in 1935 to deal with drought I found that it had remained in its same form since that time. It has never been amended. Obviously it was well thought out by those who brought it forward at that time. We have found that because of that it has served as well since 1935 when first brought forward in this House. I refer to the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act.
I looked back at the debates of that time as I felt people then had just been through a most serious drought and surely we might be able to learn a lot from history. We may find ourselves in a recurring situation. Many of the things we should have been doing through the years were brought up at that time in 1935, and they have not changed.
I noted that the then minister in 1935, Mr. Weir, when bringing forward the act stated a number of policies that DREE should consider. One of those policies was to set up small areas, sort of experimental plots. He considered they should be a township in size and there should be three in Saskatchewan, one in Alberta, and one in Manitoba. The purpose was to develop grasses and grains that were hardy in drought conditions. There was also to be a tree-planting program to help farmers in the conservation of water. These were practical educational plots for farmers suggested by the scientists of that time who were capable of producing drought resistant plants, shelter belts, and the types of farming necessary in drought conditions.
I do not know what has happened to that program. I do not believe these experimental township plots are now in existence. Perhaps there is no need for them to exist, but surely with our modern techniques we must still learn the proper methods of farming when water is in short supply. If we look back to those records we might find that some of those techniques can still be applied today. Some of those crops could still be planted today in our pasture lands. We should bring these methods forward and make them available to farmers who may now have to experience similar weather conditions.
Many members of Parliament who spoke at that time talked about less water available than they had known in previous experience. As I look at my farm which has experienced the drought I can see the very same thing happening there today that happened to my ancestors back in the 1930s. Sloughs, as we call them, which contain water-we lament them because we have to go around them with our large equipment-have dried up. Usually they hold water which infiltrates the land around the slough and supplies water through capillary action to plants. As I have said, they are now dry. My brother seeded right through them this spring. I do not have a chance to work the farm any more since I am a member of Parliament, but I do keep watching on weekends to see what is happening. There is no water in them any more, largely as a result of very little snow this winter and no rain for 50 days this spring. The one and a half inches of rain we received are going to assist, but surely will be of no lasting value unless we get more.
Members back at that time talked about the very same thing. In fact one of the opposition members stated:

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
The present situation presents an opportunity of guarding against a recurrence of these conditions. When limes were good people would not bother with rehabilitation, and that is why at the present time it creates a special opportunity with regard to the projects which we are now going forward.
They were talking then about preparing themselves for a situation that could come forward again in the future.
Another matter they talked about, which is essential, was the planting of shelter belts. When our forefathers came to this area they wanted to farm and they cut the trees. The rains came and they did not worry until the thirties when the rains did not come. The hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) said he was able to remember, and I am not, about the dust clouds and the drifting of the soil. Shelter belts can gather the snow in the winter as the winds drift it across the prairies, preserving that moisture in the areas where it is needed. In this way the snow does not drift onto the highways and into the towns where it is not needed. The shelter belts are absolutely essential. They also prevent the winds from gaining velocity and the soil does not drift as rapidly as it would otherwise.
Many members at that time spoke about the planting of trees. They suggested two things, shelter belts and plots. The advice accepted was in respect of shelter belts. 1 must commend the PFRA administration for what it has done since that time. I phoned the tree planting nursery at Indian Head, Saskatchewan. It was set up to do exactly this. I looked at some of the statistics and 1 was astonished. From 1935 to 1978 they have spent $11 million. In 1978 the nursery shipped its 400 millionth tree to prairie farmers in that region. In fact in 1977 when we experienced a bit of a drought, similar but not as severe as the one we are now experiencing, the demand for trees was greater than they could meet. They increased their yearly supply from six milliori in 1976 to 6.96 million in 1977, and they still had orders they were unable to fill. If there is anything we can learn from this it is that perhaps they need a larger grant so they can plant more trees to meet the demand.
As 1 looked at the records it seemed that each year, and 1 have the figures for 1974 to the present, their budget has been increasing, from $800,000 in 1974 to $1.2 million in 1977-78, which means that they are meeting as closely as possible the demands for this absolutely essential service to western farmers.
Another suggestion the hon. members spoke about at that time was in respect of measures for improving soil erosion controls, the provision of water storage, irrigation, and the better utilization of soil resources. They spoke about the withdrawal of submarginal lands from intensive farming to go over to pasture.
1 have some interest in renewable energy and it seems to me that the poplar tree that our scientists have developed, and which grows so rapidly, will be a valuable contribution. I know it is a relatively new tree, and some education would be required for farmers to learn the value of it over the traditional crops of alfalfa and other forage. It may sound odd to those of us who have farmed for years that we should switch submarginal lands from growing alfalfa to growing poplar trees. The tree grows so rapidly that, within two years, the farmer can take off 12 or 14 tons of matter for feed. He would not get close to that production with alfalfa. It grows very well on rocky, submarginal land, and it does not have to be harvested in dry weather. It has many advantages. Because it is deep rooted I suspect it would also be an advantage in a drought year such as this one. It is something on which agrologists might work with our farmers for submarginal lands in order that we can prepare ourselves for times like these.
We hope drought will not come very often, but when we go through a period of light rainfall we should utilize the technologies that are being developed which are essential to our agricultural industry. These trees can be developed to produce the energy required for that agriculture, because the product of the tree can be distilled into ethanol and methane gas. Those are two very welcome uses.
We welcome the way the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Act has served us over the last 35 or 50 years. It set up some excellent programs from which we can still learn and which we should constantly study. It would have been useful in 1977, also this spring, and who knows when in the future? It set up four programs. One was for land use service to rehabilitate lands which were submarginal. The primary activities of the program were to be operational and administrative for a community pasture program. The second was a water development service. The hon. member for Kindersley-Lloydminster told us about the deep well drilling service which is very essential to the dry land ranching area of the prairies. In times of drought it means they can bring water up to fill their dug-outs.
I was out in western Canada last Friday, Mr. Speaker, and spoke to the minister of agriculture for Alberta. 1 asked him about the drought conditions there. He was very concerned and listed a number of programs that he was ready to put in place for the farmers of Alberta. One that he had already put to work was the filling of dug-outs. As there was no run-off from winter snows, the dug-outs were empty and there was nothing for the cattle to drink. Water had to be trucked in. If more deep water wells were drilled on the ranches under this program, I am sure it would cost less than it does to hire the trucks to haul water to fill the dug-outs. This is a very important program under the PFRA that should be going forward.
Another program for the distribution of seedlings and trees is operating very well. There is an irrigation demonstration facility at Outlook, Saskatchewan. The minister of agriculture in Alberta told me that irrigation is the solution, as the waters from the mountains flow, even under drought conditions.
The Alberta Heritage Trust Fund is often criticized but it is a pool of money that could be used for these programs, and $8.25 million has been set aside this year for irrigation head-works improvements, and $31.26 million for the expansion of the irrigation district. That is very welcome not only to the farmers of Alberta but to the farmers of western Canada
May 30, 1980

because alfalfa production in those irrigation lands can be used for alfalfa pellets and hay.
We are concerned about the province of Saskatchewan. The Diefenbaker Dam which was established for water resource management and hydroelectric development has run dry in the east ditch, and the Saskatchewan government has not brought forward plans for irrigation. That ditch should have been filled and put into use four or five years ago in order that the conditions we face today could be met. It is very important that more irrigation be planned for western Canada.
The third part of the PFRA program was to investigate plans, designs, and to be responsible for construction and maintenance of various works pertaining to water development, irrigation, and community infrastructure programs. This is more of a long-term planning procedure.
The last part of the PFRA program concerned administration, to provide for the internal management and programs related services for PFRA.
I think we can learn a lot from history, Mr. Speaker. That is where we find the best examples that members of Parliament and people in the committee of an earlier time felt had to be worked out. They have provided the examples for us. Surely we should continue with that excellent program, fostered by modren technology where possible. We could use some of the other scientific inventions such as plant breeding tools for such things as more drought resistant crops and poplar trees.
In summation, Mr. Speaker, I should like to quote from a statement by the director of PFRA, Mr. Hill, contained in the 1977 annual report, as follows:
PFRA was uniquely able to render immediate aid to drought-threatened areas and was successful in administering relief programs in co-operation with provincial governments and other federal agencies. Valuable information obtained during the course of these activities led to the conclusion that the consequences of severe drought, which have occurred at random throughout the region, are not understood in terms of our present-day society, with its increasing water consumption and diversifying economic base.
The director tells us in this annual report that modern society has forgotten what it was like to live through seven, eight or nine years without rain and without snow in winter. We have now developed a society capable of wasting water day after day. Many of our farmers have not listened to their forefathers and are not using the techniques necessary for them to exist under dry land conditions. The government should take a lesson from what the director stated in this annual report given just after 1977 when there were sporadic drought conditions on the prairies.
I should like to turn now to a private member's motion which 1 introduced regarding the income averaging trust account. This is most important to the ranchers of my region and I am sure to ranchers of other regions which are similar. Sometimes they are compelled to sell their livestock because they cannot feed them. They then have money and no use for it, but find that one-quarter or one-third of it has to be paid in income tax-with which we all agree, of course. Surely we could bring forward a program to assist farmers at such times. In my motion which I put forward in February, 1979, I set out
Agricultural Drought
eight ways of doing that. The ideas are there. I would recommend that the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) look at these ideas. They are not just mine; most of them come from Peat Marwick Mitchell & Co. in a study prepared for the Department of Agriculture. These ideas could be used to set up a program and there would be no difficulty getting it past this side of the House, Mr. Speaker. I think it is essential that farmers be allowed this tool.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Laverne Lewycky (Dauphin):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise this afternoon to speak on the motion before the House.
That this House deeply regrets the government lack of response in this House of Commons to concern about the disastrous western agricultural drought and also the related forest fire emergency, and calls on the government to abandon its secretive approach and consult with members of Parliament of all parties in an open and in a forthright manner.
The farmers of the three prairie provinces are presently facing a very serious situation with possible consequences which could create economic havoc on a scale that has not been witnessed since the dust bowl days of 1930. While the majority of citizens in some of these provinces may be basking in the unseasonably hot weather, the farmer certainly is not. The livelihood of a number of producers is threatened, as well as the various businesses that service and process the farmers' goods.
A few areas in my own riding of Dauphin, such as Dauphin and McCreary, have received some rain within this last week, but other areas such as Roblin and Swan River are in desperate need of precipitation. In fact the majority of the provinces 30,000 farmers are worried that the drought may ruin their 1980 crops. There is widespread fear that the rye crop is already lost, for example. The Winkler weekly report states "-that emerged crop is turning yellow and may need to be reseeded". Certainly the situation is desperate in many places in the west.
We welcome, with appreciation, the department's reactivation of the 1977 drought task force. However, much more needs to be done. It is true, as has been mentioned, that there are certain programs in place that might be able to reduce the impact of whatever kind of weather conditions we have in the west, such as the crop insurance which covers some loss of crops. Also there is some protection under the Western Grain Stabilization Act. However, we would urge that the government act quickly in signing agreements, especially with the affected prairie provinces supporting drought assistance programs. We are reminded that Saskatchewan has submitted at least a ten point proposal for a drought assistance program which would be cost-shared between the province and the federal government. We would want action taken on programs like that, and similarly that action would be taken for Manitoba and other areas.

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
I want to draw attention to what I consider to be six areas needing examination. There are six objectives that we should have when we look at the drought and related forest fire situation on the prairie provinces.
The first area that I wish to address is the area of feed and water supply assistance. One of our major objectives must be that we maintain the livestock herds in the west. There have been reports of some increase in the slaughtering of animals, and we would not want the slaughtering to affect the foundation herds. We must make sure, therefore, that we have a secure supply of feed even if it means that the feed must be brought from Ontario, or whether such things as feed pellets must be brought in from Thunder Bay. The foundation cow herds, the breeding stock, must be maintained, otherwise shortages of beef will occur along with a major disruption in the livestock industry in the future. Likewise, dairy herds must be protected.
To achieve this objective and to make sure that there is maintenance of livestock herds, we must take a look to see if there are some Crown lands available for emergency hay and pasture use. We would suggest also that perhaps there is some land which is under the auspices, at this stage, of the Wildlife Association of Canada, which should be examined. We should also make sure that there is an adequate feed supply for livestock in the area.
Similarly, when we take a look at some of the needs that we have in the west, 1 think we would want to see that the western livestock producer is treated in much the same way as the eastern livestock producer. In the east there is a domestic feed grain policy that guarantees supply to meet domestic needs. We would also want to ensure that something like that is true for the west. There should be a halt to export sales commitments of feed grains until we can be positive that there are adequate stocks on hand for the needs in the areas that might be affected by the drought.
There should be some direction given to the grain transportation authority to halt the allocation of cars to the movement of non-board feed grains from the prairies so that the needs of the drought-stricken areas might be met.
Perhaps there could also be a return of certain pelletized screenings from Thunder Bay or Vancouver that are in excess to our export commitments to make sure that the farmers in the west are able to supply their cattle with the necessary feed.
In connection with reaching the objective of maintaining our livestock herds, the other area 1 wanted to talk about is that of the provision of water. True, there is some assistance through the PFRA programs that already exist, but we may need to look at the need for irrigation of hay crop areas where there is such a feasibility, and also perhaps to take a good look at grants that might be available to farmers to assist them in developing water supplies that would be necessary to reach the objective that I have stated.
The second area I wanted to look at, in addition to the feed and water assistance areas that I have mentioned, is the whole area of transportation and storage assistance. There should be
some sort of policy there to make sure that, where necessary, the assistance is provided for the transportation of hay or feed grains to the required areas. In addition, through the hauling of feed there might be a necessity for moving cattle to alternative accommodation, moving cattle to pastures. Likewise, there is a major need for assistance for the farmers so they can be sure their cattle are provided for.
In the area of storage, the hon. member for Humboldt Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse), in his letter to the minister, mentioned that pending the outcome of the crop the federal government should implement a program for storing feed grains and forage in the prairie region in order to reduce the sell off of basic livestock herds. This is certainly critical to make sure that we are able to maintain the livestock herds in the west and to ensure that feedstocks will be available in the coming fall and winter. We want to make sure we protect our feed supplies now so that enough grain will be available to carry us through the upcoming winter.
The third area that we ought to look at with respect to the drought situation in the west is the necessity to alleviate the many problems that are faced by farmers. Basically I am looking at two areas when I look at the financial difficulties with which farmers are faced in the west. First is the area of income, and then comes the area of credit.
On the income side of the problem, we would want to see an initial price for wheat being kept at $4.25. The initial price as proposed for the wheat board grains for the 1980-81 crop year should be increased to the current level rather than dropped to $3.75. We want to make sure that we would discourage any selling off of grain before the end of July when this grain could more properly be held for feed and also for seed.
The federal government should also ensure that there is a final payment which is equal to the pre-embargo levels. Also, in the ara of stabilizing income we have always urged the implementation of national marketing systems for beef and hogs and for an expanded role for the Canadian Wheat Board. It is essential for the federal government to implement a stabilization plan for farm commodities which would reflect the net farm costs, because this whole area of income is definitely one of the problems and financial difficulties that farmers are facing in the west.
I also said that there is the whole area of credit, or the necessity for additional money. Many producers went into this drought faced with a heavy short-term debt load. There was a reduction in their cash flow. A potential crop failure could force many of them into bankruptcy. For this reason, the suggestions on extending credit amounts and guaranteeing the interest rates at minimal levels are a very necessary and integral rates at minimal levels are a very necessary and integal part of any program of drought relief. The federal government should set up some sort of emergency fund, perhaps through the Farm Credit Corporation, to allow for the transfer of short-term operating credit to longer-term loans at guaranteed low interest rates so that the necessary interim
May 30, 1980

financing could be there for those farmers who require it until the drought it over.
In this whole area of credit or money problems, there is also a need for individual moratoriums of farm debts. This likewise should be looked into by the Farm Credit Corporation. I am speaking on a moratorium on interest under such circumstances as might be requested by the federal government.
Another aspect that is of concern to us in the Dauphin constituency is that in the long run farmers do not start losing their land due to the non-payment of property taxes. There might be some need for assistance in this area as well when we look at the financial difficulties that would be facing the farmers.
Another area we want to look at, in addition to the third area of the money problems that I mentioned that farmers are faced with and that must be addressed in any sort of drought relief program, is the matter of providing information to farmers. Whatever types of programs are announced next week, we want to make sure that the farmers are aware of the programs, what exists, and what would be required for them. There definitely has to be some sort of co-ordination of information regarding the supplies and pastures that might be available for farmers experiencing feed shortages as drought conditions continue in the area. There needs to be some sort of monitoring of feed supplies and shortages, and certainly some sort of co-ordination with regard to the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration and other feed and pasture supplies.
There would be a need for information packages being provided to the farmers so that they would understand the types of programs that are available. For example, the Saskatchewan government has suggested that there is an immediate need for implementation of a fodder and feed grain listing service whereby farmers would be asked to list seed oats so that any available supplies may be used for seeding in June or July to provide green feed. This type of information service would be essential for any sort of successful program to cope with the very serious drought conditions that exist in the west.
I wish to spend a minute on the fire situation. In my constituency of Dauphin we have been living either in or adjacent to the fire problems on several fronts. On the northern side we have the Porcupine Mountains which have been affected by fire. This created a lot of fear among many of the residents there simply because in some cases they were forced to anticipate evacuation. Fortunately places like National Mills did not have to evacuate, but the situation indicated there was certainly a lack of response, especially in terms of the federal government.
When we think of the situation at Riding Mountain and Porcupine Mountain and the fire hazards created there, there was certainly no initiative on the part of the federal government to ensure that the required facilities and necessary arrangements were in place to deal with these fires, especially considering that there were American firefighting authorities who had been prepared to co-operate in battling and suppressing forest fires in areas such as Manitoba. The problem that these fires created underlines the need for acting more effi-
Agricultural Drought
ciently, and ensuring that in situations like this there is more of an input from members of Parliament who represent the area.
This leads me to the sixth point I want to mention dealing with any kind of drought program to be brought forward. This is the whole matter of consultation with members of Parliament. The government stated that it was prepared to work with members of Parliament. I have not had any contacts by the government with regard to the problems that might be faced in this whole drought and forest fire situation.
An indication of the lack of being able to deal with this problem is indicated in the announcement made this morning in Winnipeg with regard to the drought situation. This morning the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy), the Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. De Bane), and the Manitoba government signed an agreement. Flowever, when you look at the impact this will have on the drought situation, there is only one sentence which suggests that some of the agreements as the apply to DREE might be implemented to deal with the drought situation. The whole problem of the drought appears to be merely an afterthought, as indicated by the type of agreement signed this morning.
Considering the pledge of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to work with the members of Parliament in the area, and considering the fact the government does not have representation in the west, I urge the government to ensure that there is a greater degree of consultation with members of Parliament so that, when faced with problems such as the drought situation and related forest fires, we can act expediently, effectively, and in such a way that will indicate to the people of the area that we are interested in their concerns and are prepared to deal with the problems they face.
1 welcome the opportunity this afternoon to express on behalf of my constituents our concern for the entire drought problem. I trust that the six points I mentioned in terms of implementing any programs relating to the drought will be taken into consideration so that we can be assured we will not face the prospects faced in years long gone by, but rather that the problems will be dealt with effectively.


Mr. Ralph Ferguson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State (Small Businesses)):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in this debate as a farmer. Although I am from a different area of Canada than those which are so badly affected by this drought, I wish to place on record my concern for the people of western Canada, those in northern Ontario and other areas of the north where forest fires are a factor at the present time. In particular, my concern is for the cattlemen in the drylands and ranch areas of western Canada. I understand their problems because I, too, keep a herd of cattle. I am well aware of the reproductive cycle in the beef industry, from the time a heifer calf is born until that calf reaches maturity, conceives, and produces an offspring that grows to market weight. We are speaking here of a time frame of approximately three and a half years. I am well aware of what will happen if our beef herds are depleted, and the ensuing hardships that will be

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
placed not only on our ranchers but on our economy in general. It is imperative that we keep our herd intact, and we must work for that protection in every manner possible.
I am concerned to about the grain farmers who face hardships, and those farmers in eastern Quebec and the Atlantic provinces who may not have adequate supplies of feed grains next winter and, therefore, may have to cut back their livestock and poultry operations.
1 well remember the drought of the early thirties that did extend into parts of Ontario and, more recently, the one in 1977 which existed to a lesser degree, particularly in the United States, in the State of Michigan which is not far from my riding, where a disaster did take place in terms of drought conditions at that time. I believe the type of help available today in Canada in situations like this is far superior to anything they have in the nation to the south of us.
1 indicated in committee yesterday that with respect to the area in which my family farm lies, in Lambton-Middlesex, we are in a narrow belt of land which does not receive the rainfall other farmers get just a few miles away. By a quirk of nature the storms and the rains seem to follow the Great Lakes. We happen to be in that area.
I phoned home today at lunch time. We finished planting our soya beans today. We have an excellent stand of corn and prospects to date are excellent. But conditions can change very, very rapidly. The weather patterns in our area appear to follow the lakes as I said, and the fact that we have to rely on moisture for our crops to sustain continued growth in our grain, our corn, soya beans and pastures, means we need to have some form of a contingency reserve of forage on hand. We always do this, but when we are planting our crops, too, we try to preserve the moisture in the subsoil reserve in the event that the normal rain does not materialize. Mr. Speaker, we fully realize the serious situation existing, particularly in B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and northern Ontario.
We look back in history. Drought is not new. There is a book, of course, which tells us of the wise ruler centuries ago who set aside grain reserves against a seven-year drought. But here in modern society perhaps it is time that we, too, examined the possibility of establishing food reserves of non-perishable products. We seem to have forgotten that history is a good teacher.
I fully agree with the hon. members from Medicine Hat and Prince Albert, who spoke first in this debate, that the situation is critical. The next few weeks will be indicative of the type of help needed. In all fairness, Mr. Speaker, these conditions did not just arrive over night. We all here should have recognized that the lack of snowfall last winter-much below normal- would result in dry land conditions to a greater degree than is normal. Perhaps we waited too long in the expectation of Mother Nature sending us the moisture required for bountiful crops, and it is obvious that in this regard we are all perhaps somewhat guilty. But as farmers, we are all optimists. We have to be, or we would not be involved in our sector of the
economy. Yet, as optimists, we have to think back, too, to where it is written some place:
He who watches the clouds neither reans nor sows
We have to be optimists. When we are engaged in that part of the economy, which is the greatest profession on earth, I trust that we can keep in mind the human suffering involved, the needs which must be met, and move in that direction to deal with the situations of distress as they develop, as the weather patterns unfold. At the present time the livestock industry is in distress and this alone is of real importance and of concern to all of us in Canada, regardless of whether we live in the east or the west. I agree that we must work together with all Canadians in an attempt to resolve these problems, and may I suggest the necessity of examining the feasibility of using some of our existing legislation to ensure that alfafa cubes and pellets are kept here in Canada. The legislation I refer to is the Export and Import Permits Act which was originally intended to be used in times of emergency.
We should make every effort to see that essential grains and screenings are kept in close proximity to the stricken areas, and that all forms of usable roughage feed be kept in western Canada. 1 fully realize that moving roughage from Ontario to the west is cost-prohibitive, but in emergency situations such as we face at the present time we must consider all possibilities. Every year there are countless numbers of trucks and cattle cars bringing cattle from western ranches to Ontario feed lots-we bring them in by the thousands-and I would like to ask the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin): do these trucks and rail cars go empty one way, or do they have a back haul? If there is no back haul, would it be possible to move some roughage on these empty units going west?
1 know that every year there are thousands of tons of clover and corn stover ploughed under, put back into the soil of Ontario farmers. There are thousands of tons of corn stover; in my area many farmers winter their cattle on corn stover alone, with no other additives than the protein additives and other nutrients. Could we examine this possibility rather than face the depletion of a vast portion of our national beef herd if conditions don't improve? I fully realize that at first glance, moving roughage seems quite illogical, but we must not leave any stone unturned in our effort to give help to our fellow Canadians.
To turn to another area, could we not examine the availability of irrigation equipment? Could such equipment not be sent out to those areas of western Canada where specialized crops are grown and where water is available? 1 fully realize that this is no help to the ranch areas or the grain-growing areas, but I refer to those areas where they grow vegetables and other specialized crops.
1 remember that several years ago the farmers of western Canada were unable to harvest their grain crops due to wet weather. But during the late autumn the grain combines were able to go on the fields and a large number of grain dryers were sent out to help dry the grain so that it could be stored safely and used as food and as livestock feed. Again 1 want to assure my western colleagues that we are willing to assist the
May 30, 1980

western farmers in this time of need. We sometimes teel quite helpless in situations such as this when, through no fault of the farmers or the governments at all levels, a national disaster occurs such as a drought, or maybe a flood, or an earthquake, or hurricane, to name but a few. We should remember that a drought situation is one which does not normally result in the loss of human life in North America, and for this we can be thankful. But we must realize the economic loss, the hardship and human suffering which will result from this natural disaster
1 have family relations across western Canada. Many of them are farmers and I well remember when I was young, before 1 went to school, going to Sunday school, and even though we ourselves were in a depression, bales of clothing were collected and Christmas presents were sent to help those in need. Again, 1 remember the disastrous drought which occurred here in the Ottawa Valley less than ten years ago. The governments helped those farmers through their times of need, and when I came into the airport here this morning I could not but help notice the contrast between the lush green valley here around the capital city and the parched fields I saw last week around Winnipeg. Certainly, as a farmer and as a member of this House, I am concerned and willing to help. 1 believe there have been several worthy suggestions made in the debate today. The statement by the Minister of Transport, the announcement of the task force, the discussion indicated for next week, have convinced me that the situation is being monitored closely-perhaps even more closely than some of us realize.
1 indicated earlier that farmers the world over are always optimists. Perhaps no other segment of society has to deal more closely with the elements. We hope and trust this spirit continues and that other segments of our society and all levels of government will work together to provide the assistance for Canadians so seriously affected by this quirk of Mother Nature's.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, food is the first essential of human life. The magnitude of the problems can affect each and every Canadian if these conditions continue. I urge the co-operation of all parties and the ministers involved in working toward the successful implementation of the programs outlined by the government today in the interests of all Canadians.


Mr. Fred King (Okanagan-Similkameen):: Mr. Speaker, first let me state my appreciation to the ten hon. members opposite who have waited so patiently and cut short their weekends so that they might sit under the influence of my spellbinding oratory.
I am pleased to have an opportunity to bring a somewhat different perspective to the matter of water supply in western Canada. 1 was pleased to hear the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) make reference to crop insurance and, inasmuch as we have somme officials of the Department of Agriculture in our midst, I would like to note that I am a great advocate of the
Agricultural Drought
crop insurance program. It has been of tremendous value to Canadian farmers coast to coast. 1 know it inside and out. 1 was employed by the B.C. ministry of agriculture in the crop insurance branch for more than ten years prior to coming to play this role. I do not know of another country in the world which has a better program. Few, if any, can match its effectiness. Certainly the insurance program offered south of the border cannot compare. Crop insurance effectively minimizes the effect of partial losses which farmers suffer from causes beyond their control, mainly weather-produced losses such as the drought circumstance which we are discussing today.
However, crop insurance does not always capably cope with those disastrous situations in which total crop losses are experienced, and this is particularly true of the tree fruit industry where expenses continue whether crops materialize or are lost. We must be prepared to strengthen the ability of that worthy program to protect against those most damaging losses which are presently in some circumstances subject to unsatisfactory limitations.
Not only do we have a water drought in the west; we also have a Liberal drought, and we have a Liberal government policy drought which ignores important economic and social factors of western aspirations.


Mr. Chenier:: Get serious.


Frederick John King: I will, my dear.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Frederick John King: Incredibly, we have a Liberal government and ministers who bleatingly imply that they do not even know their ministerial responsibilities. This strikes absolutely no western confidence in this government's ability to speak for Canada, let alone western Canadians. Under these circumstances, as a western member I say that there can be little hope of constructive talks on whatever subject is envisaged by this government. 1 am insulted, constituents are insulted, and western Canadians are insulted.
I would like to quote from the Saint John Telegraph Journal of May 15, 1980.


An hon. Member:: Saint John?


Frederick John King: Saint John, right. "Nothing too good for one region; nothing bad enough for the other. Hate for one. Love for the other. The basic Liberal strategy-win Ontario, Quebec could safely be taken for granted, and forget the rest".
To assume this same strategy in pre-constitutional meeting posturing is cynical politics indeed and a cynical approach. The Saint John Telegraph-Journal goes on to say that through the national treasury, the dominating politicians of central Canada, with grants, subsidies, handouts, and everything but honest and fair treatment, have encouraged the development of a "psychology of dependency". This concentration of power-

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought


Mr. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise on a point of order. I simply want to point out to the hon. member who is speaking now that he is quoting a very poor authority when he quotes the Telegraph-Journal of Saint John. It is the largest daily paper in New Brunswick. It and all four other daily papers in New Brunswick are owned by the same outfit, and they have not deemed Ottawa important enough to send a reporter to Parliament Hill, so they do not know what they are talking about.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Frederick John King: That was a valuable interjection.
Again, Mr. Speaker, this approach to the real problems of this potentially great country is attempting to hide the real drought of constructive policy of this administration. This is not the way to win the west. It is not the way to attack the problem which is under discussion today.
The drought situation now being experienced in the three prairie provinces and throughout northern Ontario has been well depicted through media attention and in this House by hon. members whose constituents are in the centre of that impending disastrous situation. It is not my intention to add further elaboration to that circumstance, particularly inasmuch as my closest proximity to the area most affected has been at 37,000 feet.
1 do, however, have more than a passing concern for those farmers and citizens of the provinces affected. 1 too have a background in agriculture.


Jean-Luc Pepin: It doesn't show.


Frederick John King: 1 have an emotional as well as a practical attachment to the land. I was raised on a fruit farm.


Jacques Raymond (Ray) Chénier: Is that why you called me "my dear"?


Frederick John King: If I was not here as a member of Parliament, 1 would be in Kaleden working my orchard. Although I lived then, as I do now, in the Okanagan, I remember all too well the great drought years of the 1930s. I recall the influx of prairie folk into B.C. seeking relief from the drought, the dust, and the unemployment-induced poverty. Many of my neighbours, friends and in-laws came to the Okanagan under those circumstances. What is it that encouraged the exodus westward? What is it that brought the influx into the Okanagan? Certainly those caught up in the prairie drought, the tumbling tumbleweeds and the moving landscape, did not come to the Okanagan seeking refreshing rains. The Okanagan, in reality, has desert characteristics. There is less than ten inches of average precipitation annually.


Jacques Raymond (Ray) Chénier: It has some effect on you.


Frederick John King: I thank my friend. Agriculture is possible in the southern interior of B.C. only because the pioneers of that area-my father included-saw the possibilities and took the opportunities presented to them. As a result, the first efforts of these pioneer developers were to produce facilities such as
dams, weirs and diversions to store and to husband that most precious commodity on which our civilization hangs. Thus we find originally a system of earth dams with distribution of water by open ditches, completed at minimal cost with human and horse powered effort, often on a volunteer basis-the human part, I mean. Effective in their day, these simple works have been gradually superseded by increasingly more complex and constly systems adapting to the technology which became available, as science and ingenuity brought us advantage and efficiencies in construction and equipment.
In my remarks to the House on May 16 respecting the farm improvement loans bill 1 made mention of some of the government initiatives which have been of particular value to agriculture in British Columbia. One of those initiatives which has transformed the face of the southern interior of B.C. has been the joint federal-provincial program commonly called ARDA. Without the assistance available from the ARDA program, my own community of Kaleden would be totally different both in appearance and in optimistic outlook, and so too would most of the southern interior of B.C. 1 well recall days in my youth when water was in short summer supply because of limited winter snowpack in the surrounding hills which provided a too short period of runoff. I recollect water rationing measures which affected fruit production and farmers' incomes from the orchards of that area. So I speak on this subject with considerable empathy with those agriculturists now suffering in the drought areas of our nation.
We must accept our role as representatives of the people and do everything possible to bring relief to those so affected. We cannot, of course, legislate rain, and therefore 1 have listened attentively to the speeches presented in this House and in committee by those most familiar with the problems attendant with the drought in the specific areas they represent. Their deep concern is evidenced in the calibre of proposals which they have set before the House.
I trust that hon. members opposite will not be too proud to give adequate attention to the specific suggestions put forward by hon. members on this side whose ridings, constituents, friends and families are in the drought areas and whose concerns reflect a deep awareness of the implications which the drought carries, implications which require an attentive reaction totally free of political strategies.
Let me say something about my own area, something which, at first sight, seems to be a contradiction. The Okanagan-Similkameen area is renowned for the production of tree fruits of incomparable excellence, quality and appearance. This area is now attaining an equal reputation for super grape production, with most of that production destined for the grape crushers of Canada's newest and finest wineries. We have market gardens, ground crops and cattle farms. These verdant agricultural endeavours blossom and flourish in a desert. The natural vegetation on much of the land is bunch grass, sage bush and greasewood.
May 30, 1980

The agricultural potential of this area depends entirely on the judicious use of water from the limited precipitation in this whole watershed area, for domestic and irrigation purposes. Water shortages threaten communities and individuals in my riding, but there is something that we can do to relieve the situation and perhaps even to eliminate the problem, but the solutions are capital intensive. So we must set our priorities for spending in order.
There should be no more Mirabels, on which over $500 million was spent thus far. It is losing more than $1 million a week. It is so deficient in concept that the airlines are refusing to use it.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Not true.


Frederick John King: Mirabel does not even have the merit of fulfilling a need. We read such headlines as "Lonely Mirabel deserted once again." The article goes on to say:
Another airline is bailing out of sorely underused Mirabel airport, bringing to four the number of defections to date.
The reference is to Scandinavian Air Services. Mirabel is a disaster that was totally unnecessary, a blunder of major proportions perpetrated for reasons about which we can only conjecture.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Keep to the subject.


Frederick John King: The point of this reference to Mirabel is to refute emphatically the often stated complaint heard from ministers opposite that members on this side ask the government to cut the size of the national deficit while, at the same time, they ask the same government to spend money on specific programs.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Subject.


Frederick John King: This repetious and arrogant argument is, of course, the norm that can be expected from those opposite. We on this side advocate a regime of spending priorities. These federal spending priorities must be set to maximize the benefit to the nation rather than to the Liberal party. I know that this is a radically new concept which would be difficult for hon. members opposite to grasp. But I think that they might even start enjoying the feeling of doing something worthy for their country.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Subject.


Frederick John King: They must be warned that the highest priorities should not always be given to moving and establishing departments and agencies of the federal government exclusively to ridings represented by ministers of the Crown. So 1 am suggesting that a review of priorities would leave room to put tax money to better use without increasing the demands on the taxpayers of Canada.
Having indicated the beneficial transformation made possible in Okanagan-Similkameen through the auspices of the ARDA program of funding assistance, I must point out that the job is not completed.
Agricultural Drought
Individual areas and communities in my riding face their own drought possibilities due to inability to provide independent financing for upgrading. Westbank, a growing, expanding community, is suffering growth pains most evidenced and highlighted by last summer's water shortage which resulted in parched lawns and wilted gardens and even threatened the ability to flush toilets. This local community's drought resulted from design limitation in the water collection facility of the Westbank irrigation district. The water is there, the below-intake delivery system is in place, the engineering is available, the desire and initiative is present to tackle the problem, the action-inhibiting circumstance centres around available funding.
We, as legislators, must priorize the ultimate destiny of the Canadian tax dollar so that the federal government can assume a positive, supportive, financially responsive role in assisting communities such as Westbank and Skaha Estates and Naramata and Midway and Greenwood and Grand Forks and Oliver and Osoyoos, and others, with equal imperatives. We must assist them in the resolution of water-related problems beyond their fiscal abilities-whether these problems be ones of supply or ones of the disposal of domestic waste.
The Skaha Estates improvement district and the Naramata irrigation district are examples of places where rural water systems in the Okanagan Valley are in desperate need of capital funding assistance. The water is available, but the funding for its distribution is not.
One can now sense the real frustration of these once complacent westerners when they consider the vast amounts of taxpayers' funds that are squandered on such projects as the one I mentioned, namely, Mirabel, or the 3 per cent loan to Cuba- that great purveyor of cummunism and communistic effort in our hemisphere and in Africa-some of the undisciplined Cl DA projects, and yes, even the $258,000 advertising program after the fact telling Canadians what a great job this government had done in choosing a fighter aircraft. "A good deal for all of us in Ontario" said the ads in Ontario. In Quebec they said "For the Quebeckers in particular." In the west they said "A Good deal for all Canadians." Imagine that this advertisement ran two times in the Pentiction area. What was its purpose? Pentiction has many things going for it, but an aerospace centre it is not.
So again I must press for priorities to be assigned. Surely the over one quarter million dollars could have been better spent on the acquisition of works to provide vital potable water in a community where disaster threatens in the form of limited supply. No wonder Canadians are becoming cynical about their government, this government opposite which continually pleads poverty but acts as an irresponsible spendthrift.
I think hon. members opposite should take on the task of explaining Mirabel, of explaining the recent one quarter million dollar advertising and breast beating about the F-18, explaining to the people of Canada the government's recent movement of facilities to cabinet ministers' ridings, moves which are costing Canadian taxpayers millions of unnecessary

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
dollars. Elon. members opposite should take on the task of explaining their priorities to Canadians.


Walter David Baker: Yes, explain.


Mr. Evans:: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The challenge was thrown to explain priorities, but 1 should like to challenge the hon. member to explain how the particular set of subject matters he has just been relating for 15 minutes has anything to do with the drought problem in the prairies of western Canada.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member's time has almost expired. He has about 30 seconds in which to comment.


Frederick John King: I think I should take the time to say that I understand the topic to be the drought in western Canada, and British Columbia has been mentioned. I come from British Columbia and I have explained my situation.


John Leslie Evans: Look at the motion.


Walter David Baker: He did.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Explain.


An hon. Member:: He does not understand it.


Jean-Luc Pepin: It is the coming of the second drought.


Frederick John King: 1 appreciate the interjections. The people at home understand the implications of a lack of water supply. You may not understand it as it applies to the Okanagan Valley. 1 do, and the people out there understand it.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please.


Mr. Peter Elzinga (Pembina):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to participate in the debate on the motion brought forward by the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave). If there is one individual in the House of Commons who understands the drought conditions in western Canada, surely it is the hon. member for Medicine Hat. Because of his personal knowledge and the basis of his livelihood, he has firsthand experience in this area. One could not help but be moved when one heard the presentation he gave earlier. He shared with us the situation which existed in the 1930s and the possibilities of it developing again now.
In participating in this debate 1 should indicate that I am somewhat amazed by the participation of the member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) who supposedly is the twin of the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre). Rather than rising in his spot for a two-minute interjection, I thought he would be more concerned about the constituencies with which he is concerned and would participate in the debate himself. In the six years that I have been here, 1 think the hon. member has made more speeches from the seat of his chair than he has from his feet.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I am a little bit surprised that the hon. member for Pembina (Mr. Elzinga) either cannot read or cannot understand what be reads. Certainly I am not twinned with the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre), God forbid. 1 am twinned with the Liberal riding association in Calgary Centre, of which 1 am very proud. I do not pretend nor ever have pretended to be a spokesman for the west.


Walter David Baker: That is not a point of order.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: How I speak in the House of Commons-


Some hon. Members:: Order, order!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: With all due respect, I do not think the hon. member is making a point of order; it is a point of debate.


Walter David Baker: You can raise it as a question of privilege on Monday.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Mr. Speaker, a point of order-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Northumberland-Miramichi (Mr. Dionne) has not established a point of order to this point.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: 1 shall, Mr. Speaker.


Walter David Baker: Why didn't you do it the
first time?


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Pembina reflected on my ability to represent my constituency.


Some hon. Members:: No, no.


Maurice Adrian Dionne: Indeed he has. He has reflected upon my ability as a representative in this House of constituents who elected me, by saying that I had made more speeches from my seat than from my feet. 1 speak from my feet when I have something of importance to say in the House, I argue across the floor from time to time as do hon. members opposite all the time. The hon. member has no right to reflect upon the representative abilities of other members in this House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair hopes with this exchange the hon. member will be able to continue his speech.


Peter Elzinga: Mr. Speaker, I rather enjoyed this exchange because I had never heard anyone put on record exactly what the obligations are of the various members who are twinned with constituency associations or whatever. 1 am surprised the hon. member would associate himself with such a group of
May 30. 1980

losers because it is obvious that is exactly what he is, and he is exemplifying his own position by rising to protect it.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair invites the hon. member to speak to the motion.


Peter Elzinga: In speaking to the motion and the release put out by prairie members of Parliament in regard to the drastic drought condition, we have stated a number of options we would like to see the Liberal government follow. One such option is that the Department of Finance should bring in income averaging. The hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Schellenbcrger) on a number of occasions brought this proposal before the Eiouse of Commons. 1 should like to refer his speech of on February 26, 1979, in which he referred to a study that was done by Peat Marwick and Partners for the Alberta department of agriculture entitled "Feasibility of an Income Averaging Trust Account". The objective of this plan was that farmers would deposit a portion of their income during high revenue and withdraw funds in lower income years. This would give the farming population faced with such conditions as the current one an opportunity to equalize their incomes.
During the short period of time that my party was in government, we brought forward a number of positive proposals as they pertain to the agricultural sector in Canada. We laid them before the House of Commons, or were in the process of laying them before the House of Commons. Even though they do not affect directly the drought situation as it exits in western Canada, they affect the agricultural sector throughout Canada.
I wish to review some of those positive proposals. The reason I do so is to compare them with the action, or I should say inaction of the present Liberal administration regarding the very serious drought situation as it exists especially in Saskatchewan. In our budget which the other parties saw fit to defeat, we included significant capital gains relief for the farming sector. We promised that during the election campaign, and we delivered on that commitment when we were the government. We promised to make the salaries paid to spouses of farmers deductible for income tax purposes. 1 was encouraged to see in the so-called mini-budget brought down by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) that he included such a provision in his economic statement.
Also we promised a meat import law. The hon. member for Medicine Hat had been working on that when he was parliamentary secretary to the minister of agriculture. He had it ready for presentation to the House of Commons. It is my understanding, at least from the commitments we have to date from the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), that he is thinking of introducing a meat import law of his own. It remains to be seen whether he will do it or not, because this has been promised in the past.
We came forward with positive proposals. In regard to the drought situation, the hon. member for Medicine Hat who has spoken on this on several occasions in the House of Commons again has come forward with a plan of action which we would
Agricultural Drought
like to see the government adopt. When we read some press stories about what the government will do in regard to the drought situation, it is obvious their concern is only with the appearance of it rather than with exactly what they will do. 1 should like to quote from the Regina Leader-Post of May 27, 1980, the article entitled "Cabinet told to look good even if it can't really help", which reads as follows:
Draft proposals prepared for the federal cabinet on the drought in western Canada have warned that even if the federal government cannot do much to alleviate the impact of the drought, it must appear to be responding to the situation.
We do believe that is good enough. We would like to see some positive action as was outlined by my colleagues who spoke before me. I am referring to positive action not only in regard to the drought situation, but also in regard to the difficulties western agriculture is facing in totality. If the example we were given yesterday in question period by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) is the type of action that the government is taking, obviously once again the western Canadian farmer will be left wanting.


Mr. Frank Hamilton (Swift Current-Maple Creek):: Mr. Speaker, I must say that in our corner of Saskatchewan we are all saddened by the very tragic road accident that happened a couple of days ago in which some 22 young workers were killed. Certainly my condolences go out to the friends and relatives of the victims. Also I should like to pay tribute to the authorities in Swift Current and district, particularly the medical staff involved.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Frank Fletcher Hamilton: We would like to see Swift Current put on the map, but not through such terrible headlines.
The hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo) suggested that the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave) wanted to reduce the breeding herds. This is not correct. What he was suggesting was absolutely the opposite, that is, to protect the breeding herds through our taxing system with an income averaging trust account so that cattlemen could run their own stabilization plan. This is something we have called for many times over the last few vears.
It is the cyclical weather swings, among other things, that give rise to the ups and downs of our agricultural income, that make us look first to our provincial and municipal governments for immediate assistance. As a result of this it makes us in western Canada particularly jealous of our natural resources. We see them as the only possibility of making our provinces financially strong enough to ride out the inevitable downswings and catastrophes that face agriculture, Saskatchewan's basic industry.
Yesterday the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) stated that he got 1.3 per cent of the federal budget, and appealed for help in having it increased. 1 should like to take this opportunity to say a few words about the importance of agriculture,

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
not only to our nation but to the world, and about why it is so important to keep it viable, giving producers confidence to face the futre, most especially the young people who will be entering agriculture.
Our good friends to the south are way ahead of us in the way they are placing great stress on scientific agriculture. Agricultural colleges in the United States are now filled with the brightest young students. There is some excitement about agriculture down there which we do not have in Canada. I am sure the Americans have made the decision, looking ahead, that as they run down their natural resources, high technology and their ability to produce food will be the two great strengths of that nation.
I would like to look ahead one generation to the year 2000. The trouble with looking ahead is, of course, that it seems to be so distant and so far away; we can hardly imagine it. However, if we look back one generation, 1960 is the same distance back as the year 2000 is ahead, but it only seems like yesterday. What did we have one generation ago? We had gold selling for $37 an ounce and wheat selling to the Russians and Chinese at $2.60 per bushel. Now gold is $500 an ounce and wheat is selling at about $6 a bushel. As one of my colleagues said sometime ago, during the last generation we enjoyed cheap energy, cheap money, and cheap food. Now as we enter the eighties we see that cheap energy has gone, cheap money has gone, and 1 suspect that the era of cheap food will be the next to go. Two of the three have already gone.
Let us take a look at the importance of agriculture to Canada and the world in the area of security and co-operation. Surely it was agricultural deeds, the ability to produce food and move it commercially around the world, that opened up the links between the eastern and western worlds. I can think of the exchanges that followed, technical, economic and cultural, and I am sure this has been the greatest influence on security and co-operation that our world has seen in the last 20 years.
If we look ahead one generation the experts say world population will be up by 50 per cent. That means there will be six billion souls in the world. Arable land will decrease by 25 million acres, and for the first time agriculture will not be devoting its resources to producing food, but more and more to producing fuel. We will find food production competing with energy, with all the inputs required. This year alone Brazil will be planting more acres to sugar cane for alcohol production than the total world planting of sugar cane five years ago. We also must give some thought to the moral implications of this food versus fuel situation.
At the very local level, much as I admire PFRA, they seem more concerned right now in southwestern Saskatchewan about moving some cottage owners off a small dam, Duncairn Dam, than they are in working toward a solution of our water problems. As a first step I suggest once again that the minister give consideration to putting PFRA back into agriculture where it belongs.
In the southwest corner of Saskatchewan we have a tremendous aquifer. So far there is only one well drilled down to it.
This requires drilling about 1,400 feet and is very expensive, $40,000 a well. We have only one. Surely some work could be done on this resource.
The hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Korchinski) spoke about the farmer taking a chance, going ahead and seeding in spite of high interest, lack of moisture and low prices for his products. I think this attitude of farmers can be summed up in the one word "craft", which to me is a combination of skill and cunning. It is something that no government will ever really understand.
It is my understanding that the flood damage compensation from last year's Manitoba floods has still not been paid out. Surely we must have faster action than that. Compensation should now be in the process of being paid out for the flood of people to Winnipeg and other cities as a result of the move from the forest fire regions. There should be federal contribution to forest fire labour expenditures, and it should be immediate. Once again, immediate steps should be taken to protect our breeding herds for the livestock industry. We must have some long-range planning to protect our most important industry in Canada, agriculture, for its contribution to our nation's well being and to others will be one of our greatest assets in the years to come. 1 urge the minister to do everything he can to expedite some fast action in this regard.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, I thought the hon. member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) wanted to say a few words, but I will be very brief. 1 will take just a few moments to indicate my concern as well about the drought situation on the prairies, and the concern that has been expressed to me by a number of people in the last few weeks.
I concur in what other western members are saying, and that is that the federal government must act as quickly as possible, and must do all that is possible to alleviate the situation facing our people.
The hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek (Mr. Hamilton) pointed out the importance of food and agriculture in our economy and in the world. I want to concur with that, and to say that if we have to budget a few extra dollars now to help compensate farmers for the losses they are sustaining, by deferring payments on Farm Credit Corporation loans and the like, then that is a worth-while investment, because these farmers will need that money to maintain their operations, and the production of food is the most important thing that human beings can accomplish. We have a lot of people in this world, and if we do not produce food there will be more and more starvation.
I do not think most members of this House realize that Canada, according to the federal Department of Agriculture, is a net importer of food already, to the tune of $2 billion. If we include oilseeds and grains, according to the Science Council of Canada, by the year 2000 we will still be a net importer of food. This is a fact about a country with a small population, with a skilled work force, and with all the scientific and technical knowledge at our disposal. Still we will not be able to
May 30, 1980

feed ourselves. It is important when we get into a crisis like this that we are willing to invest a few extra bucks to make sure the farmers stay on the land, that they do not sustain losses, that they are helped in the national cause and in the national interest. I believe that to be a very, very important thing, indeed.
Many things can be done in the immediate sense and I have already mentioned a moratorium on loans. I mentioned assistance to get feed out to the prairies for livestock-the federal government could provide money for that-and assistance to farmers to find more water through dug-outs and wells and things of that nature. These are all very important. This is a real crisis, and that must be emphasized as vigorously as possible.
The hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo) mentioned how very unfortunate it is that the people who drafted the cabinet memo said that even if the government could not do much, it must appear to be responding to the situation for political reasons. That made a headline on the front page of the Leader-Post-"Cabinet Told to Look Good even if it Cannot really Help". Maybe the advisers got careless when writing to memo. Maybe it should not be leaked, but I do not think memos of that sort should even be written. They just increase the feeling of alienation and cynicism in the country that once again it is "they" in Ottawa who are trying to do a snow job, that they are up to their old trickery and up to no good once again. It just reinforces that kind of feeling. I hope the government will learn from his experience. Even if Ministers feel that way they should not put it in writing. I hope that they do not feel they have to do things for the sake of appearance and just put on all the cosmetics in order to look better. I think the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) can look well if he puts him mind into gear, without all the cosmetics.
These are the things that I am concerned about, that we do what we can to protect the agricultural industry. Farming is our No. 1 industry. It produces a lot of jobs in itself, and also in food processing and transportation. There is also the problem of feeding the world's people.
We have a lot of problems in the west that make farmers very angry and upset. One is the question of the grain boycott. Just the other day the hon. member for Prince Albert pointed out that despite the fact there is a boycott on grain in the world, the Russians are purchasing as much grain now as they did before the boycott. That makes our people very angry. The Argentinians, for example, have tripled their sales of grain to the Soviet Union. Spain is shipping some of its grain to the Soviet Union and buying cheaper grain from the United States where the market is depressed, thus making a profit on the grain they have in storage.
Some companies are shipping grain mysteriously to the Soviet Union. Once ships get out to the centre of the ocean they mysteriously change direction and their cargoes end up in Poland, Romania, and other countries. The Soviet Union ends up buying as much grain as it did before the Carter boycott,
Agricultural Drought
although perhaps at a higher price. The price of grain in Canada and the United States has gone down and the farmer suffers.
Just today the hon. member for Brant (Mr. Blackburn) asked questions about lay-offs in the farm machinery industry involving 5,000 workers. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) replied that people are buying fewer tractors, combines and farm machinery. This is because their income is not as good. The grain boycott affects them, the drought will affect them, and high interest rates affect them. All these things add up, Mr. Speaker.


Jean-Luc Pepin: We had a record export this year.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: Yes, we have good exports but the price has fallen. When the cost of production goes up and the price falls, even though the exports increase it does not mean the net income of the farmer increases. The farmer is caught in a cost-price squeeze and that is one of the reasons he is buying less farm machinery. The consequence is lay-offs in Brantford and other farm machinery plants in Canada and North America. The only way of putting those workers back to work is to improve the farm economy.
These are several of the problems we face on the prairies. I am not going into them in detail. One way to alleviate them is to try to get extra money from Treasury Board to be spent on helping farmers in need through moratoriums on loans, helping them find more water supplies, feed supplies for cattle to make sure that the basic herds are not sold off and that some marginal farmers are not forced off the land. All this may cost a little more in the short run, Mr. Speaker. 1 suggest it would be a good investment in the long run, however, to protect the farmers and people of this country, our No. 1 industry and the most important commodity in the world, food.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, I take great pleasure in participating in this debate which has been an excellent one. There have been good speeches and excellent contributions by members from all sides of the House. 1 should like to commend the government on its conciliatory approach to this very urgent and pressing problem. It is a very serious problem and one for which the government must take a great deal of responsibility. Clearly the federal and the provincial governments of the day have a heavy responsibility to ensure that the viability of our basic industry, agriculture, is preserved. There were excellent presentations by the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave), the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek (Mr. Hamilton) and the hon. member for Mackenzie (Mr. Korchinski).
It is quite clear that the most pressing problem at the moment is that of the cattle industry. You have been in this House a number of years, Mr. Speaker, and you have heard of the various problems associated with the cattle industry as a result of depressed prices and situations such as the present drought. One wonders just how many blows this important industry can survive. It has undergone a number of setbacks.

May 30, 1980
Agricultural Drought
The fact that the cattle producers of this country are very resilient and enterprising is a tribute to them and the fact that they have been able to survive.
The government must respond with some action. The comments of spokesmen on the government side lead us to expect some positive and affirmative action. The proof of the pudding will be the programs and steps they initiate to deal with this very important problem.
A number of very good speeches have dealt with the importance of the agricultural industry. What is disturbing, however, is that some of the things that have happened in the few months since this government took office show that there has been a plan for the reduction of the initial price of wheat. Wheat is still one of the major commodities produced in western Canada, and this government has seen fit to reduce the initial price effective August 1.


Jean-Luc Pepin: Compared to the adjusted price.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) is saying compared to the initial price set last year. That is true, but the Conservative government that was in power adjusted those prices and paid an interim payment. What in effect has occurred is a reduction in the initial price of some 50 cents per bushel. The minister cannot deny that.
We also have a situation where for a long time-


Jean-Luc Pepin: Oh, oh!


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Transport had his opportunity to make a speech. I am sorry I missed it, as I do not know whether he covered this point. If he wants to make another speech I am sure the House would concur. 1 would certainly like him to clarify that point. For the life of me 1 cannot understand how a government can reduce an initial price and then suggest it has increased it. The initial price, as it now stands, will be reduced effective August 1. There is no question about that.
I want to turn now to the two-price system. For a long time it has been recognized that the impact of the two-price system has placed a heavy burden on the producer. The current price of wheat for domestic human consumption is between $4 and $5, while the international markets are considerably above that. They were as high as $6.
In terms of looking at it from the point of view of the cost of production of grain, since 1973 when the two-price system was put into effect, there has been an increase of 105.5 per cent. If you take that back to the price established at that time, you would come up with the figure of $6 per bushel. As a government, we were prepared to increase the price. As a matter of fact we had cabinet approval to increase the price of wheat for domestic human consumption to a level of $6 per bushel. That price would have been in effect right now had our government not been defeated. Because of our government's defeat and the
subsequent taking over of the government by the Liberals, the farmers have lost something in the order of $25 million.
We have to address these matters in a very serious way. What is of deep concern to me, and I am sure to many other members of this House, is the fact that this country, even though it has a tremendous agricultural potential, is relying more and more upon imported foods to feed Canadians. In 1978, Canadians spent some $3.25 billion on imported food. That is almost equal to the $3.8 billion that we paid for imported oil products in that particular year.
We have a tremendous potential in Canada for production of food. However, if we were to take away the exports of our grain and oil seeds, we would be very, very heavily reliant upon imports of food and we would have a very negative imbalance in terms of our agricultural trade picture. Notwithstanding the fact that we are able to penetrate the world markets for wheat and oil seeds, and notwithstanding the fact that we are competing against countries that subsidize their producers very heavily-in this connection 1 am thinking of the United States and the European Common Market-we do quite well in feed grains, cereal grains and oil seeds, but there are a number of areas where we do not do as well.
By way of illlustration, in little over a decade our self-sufficiency in peaches has fallen from 40 per cent to 19 per cent; apricots have fallen from 48 to 25 per cent, and tomatoes from 74 to 43 per cent. In 1978, Canada imported $331 million in meats, primarily beef and pork, most of which could be grown and processed in this country. Next 1 come to the potato growers in Canada. Our tariff duty of 37.5 cents per hundredweight is one-half of the U.S. duty on its potato imports.
What we have to do is recognize the potential in terms of the food production in these areas. We hear it said often that Canada does not have an energy shortage. We may have a shortage of oil, but we do not have an energy shortage. We have many alternative forms of energy which we could use for the encouragement and the expansion of market gardening. Great reliance on hot house production, as far as I am concerned, is essential. Surely with the energy potential that we have, we should be co-ordinating that potential with the potential that we have in agriculture so that we can become more self-reliant in the total area of food production.
Clearly, that is one of the challenges of this government and one of the challenges of this House of Commons. More and more of our acreage should be shifted to fruit and vegetable growing. There is much land in this country that is not being used in its most productive way. It means that we have to be a little more enterprising and more innovative. A country that has the potential of feeding itself is on a drift which I believe will be very serious.
Let us go back to the time of the oil crisis. Prior to 1973 it was suggested that we had all kinds of oil. Yes, the reserves were there. The potential was there. But our will and desire to produce and exploit that were not there. We find that condition exists today, particularly in the absence of any definitive policy by this government to develop an energy plan which would provide self-sufficiency for oil in this country.
May 30, 1980

We have heard some very good suggestions today. We have had suggestions with respect to taxation policy which would help to alleviate the burdens and pressures caused by drought situations, such as this. The annual income averaging program, which has been referred, to is a very excellent example. The matter of capital gains is another one. There are a number of these things which form part and parcel of this party's and our government's agricultural policy. Some of those items were defeated in the budget that we presented to this House in December. Now I find it very strange that some of my hon. friends to the left are harping and chastising the Liberal government for its failure to act in a number of these areas.
This party which formed the government in May, 1979, really identified with a number of the agricultural problems in this country. We addressed those problems. We had a plan of action. We brought forth programs. I find it very strange that the NDP, notwithstanding the fact that these programs were for the benefit, particularly of western Canadians and western agricultural industries, did not support those programs. For reasons of political expediency it defeated the budget which was going to transform many of those thoughts and policies into action. In the short period of time that we were a government we did create an improved climate of confidence with respect to grain production in this country, and particularly our ability to move grain to export markets.
I am pleased that my hon. friend, the Minister of 3 ransport, has continued with a number of those programs. 1 have the assurance of the minister personally, and he has given that assurance in the House, that that will continue. I commend him for that stand. If we are going to develop and continue to exploit our export market potential, we must demonstrate to those customers that we have the facility and the capacity to move our grains to an export position when needed.
We have lost many markets. As a matter of fact over $1 billion has been lost in the last two years as a result of our failure and inability to move grain to an export position when our customers demanded it. It is important for the producers
Business of the House
to know that we will have the ability to move that grain to an export position. It is important for them to plan.
I urge this government to deal with this matter very seriously. This drought situation is one of those areas in which it can now act to ensure a continued climate of confidence and stability so that our producers can plan not only for this crop year but for future crop years.
As hon. members know, the amount of foreign exchange generated out of the export of grain and oil seeds to the export market is a very important component of our total economy.
Today we have heard of the impact that any reduction in agricultural revenue and activity has upon the industries of eastern Canada.
1 conclude by saying that this has been an excellent debate. 1 am pleased by the conciliatory attitude of the government. I simply want to say this that that conciliatory attitude will have to be backed up and demonstrated with positive actions and programs to ensure that this agricultural industry, so important to us, can continue to grow, develop, and survive as a vital industry.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
[Stage Direction]
Mir. Knowles: Mr. Speaker, may I ask if it is still the intention to return to the debate on Bill C-30 on Monday?
Robert Phillip Kaplan: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government House leader, I can inform the House that that is the intention of the government for Monday, namely, continuing debate on Bill C-30, the Supplementary Borrowing Authority Act.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being five o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that pursuant to Standing Order 58(11) the proceedings on this motion have now expired. This House stands adjourned until Monday next at 2 p.m.
At five o'clock the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Monday, June 2, 1980