1980-10-30

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. The unemployment insurance program has long ceased to be an insurance program and is, in reality, a payroll tax scheme. The other night, the Minister of Finance increased this payroll tax from $3.24 to $4.32 per $100 of earnings.
This tax increase on working people represents a hidden billion dollars of revenue to the government. It represents to the ordinary working person, people earning $290 a week or less, over two weeks pay to the government over and above income taxes, sales tax, duties and now new taxes on their home heating costs.
I move, seconded by the hon. member for Parry Sound-Mus-koka (Mr. Darling):
That the Minister of Employment and Immigration justify on motions the seizure of over two weeks' pay from the working people of this country, justify this additional billion dollars taken out of the pockets of working people, and justify his inefficient and inept handling of unemployment insurance.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


REFERENCE TO SUPREME COURT OF FEDERAL TAXES-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Bill Yurko (Edmonton East):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. As the federal government appears to be exceeding its constitutional authority and transgressing the constitutional powers of the provinces in imposing a federal tax and royalty on provincial resources in contradiction of section 109 and section 125 of the BN A Act, I move,
seconded by the member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Schellenberg-er):
That the federal government immediately refer to the Supreme Court, for a constitutional opinion and ruling, both its budgetary 8 per cent tax on net revenues from oil and gas and its domestic and export tax of 30 cents per 1,000 cubic feet on natural gas and liquefied petroleum products.
I am certain that in the interest of constitutional correctness the government would not hesitate to make such a reference.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, I rise to move a motion under the provisions of Standing Order 43. The motion has been drafted in consultation with groups such as Amnesty International.
In view of the fact that over 300 dissenters in the Soviet Union have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment, exile or have been forcibly confined to psychiatric hospitals since 1975, and in view of the increase in the arrests of dissenters in the Soviet Union which now exceeds 100 since October, 1979, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Dauphin (Mr. Lewycky):
That this House condemns the Soviet Union for its widespread harassment, imprisonment and physical ill-treatment of people such as the well known Anatoly Shcharansky; the Russian human rights campaigner, Malva Larda; the well known Russian orthodox activist, Viktor Kapitanchuk; and Zinovy Kra-sivsky and Olha Matusevych, who are members of the Ukrainian Helsinki monitoring group, as well as others ill-treated for their non-violent exercise of their human rights, and urges the Canadian delegation to the Madrid Conference in November to make these views known to the delegates from the U.S.S.R.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.

October 30, 1980


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Thomas Siddon (Richmond-South Delta):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 to propose a motion on a matter of urgent importance to the public service employees of Canada. Given that Tuesday's depression budget shows a cash requirement some $2 billion less than the projected deficit of over $14 billion, largely because the pension funds of government employees are plundered each year to finance a substantial portion of the national debt, and whereas the public service pension contributions are not secured by any form of investment in equity, as they ought to be, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Cambridge (Mr. Speyer):
That the government be directed to stop using dishonestly the pension contributions of public service employees, RCMP and armed forces employees to help pay for the extravagantly wasteful excesses of the Liberal government and, furthermore, that a royal commission be called now to investigate the scandalous mismanagement and misuse of the government superannuation accounts.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, 1 rise under the authority of Standing Order 43 on a matter of pressing and urgent importance. Whereas a number of Indian band councils in western Canada and perhaps in other parts of our country are endeavouring to get off welfare and raise their standard of living through the development of their natural resources, and whereas the Indian Act exempts our Indian reservations and the Indians from taxation directly or indirectly, I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Leth-bridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker):
That this House urges the government to desist from imposing the natural gas tax on natural gas produced on the reserves and thus give our Indian people an opportunity to get out of poverty.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


PARTICIPATION OF CANADIANS IN FUTURE DEVELOPMENT-MOTION UNDER S O. 43
Mr. Maurice Harquail (Restigouche):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. In view of the special considerations in the budget for all Atlantic Canadians with respect to regional development, and in view of the hundreds of millions of dollars allocated by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) to the Quebec-maritime natural gas pipeline, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Temiscamingue (Mr. Tousignant):
That this House should applaud the efforts of the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources for finally giving Canadians a real stake in their energy future.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


SHIPPING
Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter which has been presented by most members in this House from time to time. I hope there might be unanimous consent. 1 move, seconded by the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton):
That the members of this House affirm their support for the creation of an economically viable Canadian deep sea merchant fleet and recognize that this fleet would further encourage development of a full range of Canadian marine industries, including a world class shipbuilding industry, so that Canadians would have the opportunity to obtain a greater share of the economic and employment benefits of this industry.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


EMBARGO ON SALES TO U.S.S.R.-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Len Gustafson (Assiniboia):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43. The embargo on grain sales to Russia has cost Canadian grain producers an average of $1,200 per farmer. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Murta):
October 30, 1980

That this government take immediate steps to make necessary payment to western farmers.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


WILDLIFE
Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Nature conservationists have strongly criticized the federal government for permitting fur ranchers in Canada to import from Europe so-called "raccoon dogs" or Japanese foxes, as they are sometimes called, which could devastate domestic farm crops and wildlife in this country if they escaped or were released. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Esquimalt-Saanich (Mr. Munro):
That this House urge the government to require fur ranchers to send all Japanese foxes or raccoon dogs back to Europe; to compensate the ranchers for their losses; and to pass strict laws to prevent the importation of all exotic animals except those proven to be harmless and over which complete control can be exercised.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS REPORTED EXCISION OF ALBERTA FROM FEDERAL GOVERNMENT MAP-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, I rise under Standing Order 43 to seek redress from a news item and map which appeared in this morning's Ottawa Citizen and dealt with a Canadian government map which excised the province of Alberta out of confederation in favour of Saskatchewan. it is quite one thing for my province to be excised at the wellhead, but it is quite another thing to be excised out of existence.
I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Calgary West (Mr. Hawkes):
That the Prime Minister:
Woo the socialists if you must,
Bed them down in common-law lust,
Rush after them their favour to curry.
Because, after all, they're Liberals in a hurry;
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But don't get caught in the Broad-Blake snare,
And leave Albertans tearing their hair.


Madam Speaker:: For presentation, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Leader of the Opposition):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs that flows out of the possibility that new difficulties have arisen in the government's attempt to have Britain decide constitutional questions which Canada should decide here in Canada. The Secretary of State will know from British news reports that the British government does not want to become the arbitrator between the Canadian federal government and the provincial governments on amendments to the British North America Act. The reports relate both to alleged communications between the British government and Canadian representatives and to more recent statements by British government spokesmen.
My first question is: Has there been any suggestion, in correspondence or conversation involving ministers or representatives of the two governments, to the effect that the British government wants basic Canadian disagreements to be resolved in Canada before Ottawa asks Britain to resolve them?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, there has been no such request made by the government of the United Kingdom. There was a news story published this morning with which I am acquainted-it was also denied at 10 Downing Street this morning-to the effect that no message had been sent to the Canadian government as that earlier communique suggested.
There was also a news report stating that my colleague the Minister of the Environment and I, while in England, were told that the British government would not accommodate a request to patriate the constitution in the face of violent provincial disagreement during this year's parliamentary session. That report is entirely false.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I understand, as does this House, that the minister's department earlier denied the report in The Times as it was written. That was not my question. My question was: Has there been any suggestion communicated, in conversation or in any other communication, between British

October 30, 1980
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government ministers or representatives and Canadian government ministers or representatives suggesting that the British would want basic Canadian disagreements to be resolved in Canada before Ottawa asks Britain to resolve them? I am not asking for paragraph by paragraph verification of The Times story; I am asking the question whether or not there has been any suggestion to that effect conveyed in any way by any representatives of the British government to the Canadian government.


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, there has certainly been no proposal or request of that kind in our discussions with the British government. We had a free-flowing discussion, and while many possibilities were canvassed, as happens in a discussion of this nature, certainly that was not the way in which the conversation ended. There was no request, suggestion or proposal of that kind.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I believe that the minister has now said that there was no suggestion of that kind at any time. If that is what he intended to say, 1 would like him to verify his statement. Since the government strategy document anticipated provincial and parliamentary opposition to certain parts of the Liberal proposal, will the minister tell the House of Commons whether Canadian ministers or representatives raised with the British government or representatives the possibility of disagreement here in Canada and the possibility that Britain might have to decide questions that are deeply contentious in Canada?


Mark R. MacGuigan: We certainly acquainted the British government and its representatives with the fact that there would be disagreement in Canada. That was already apparent at the time we saw them but, of course, there was a common assumption on both sides that the normal constitutional convention in the United Kingdom would be followed, namely, that the advice of the Canadian government would be the advice heard by the British government and that a joint resolution of the Canadian Parliament would be what is accepted by the British Parliament.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, the minister and the rest of the House will know that detailed memoranda of conversations of this kind are kept. In light of the extraordinary circumstances, it being important that all members of Parliament know exactly what was discussed between ministers and, indeed, between officials on this question, and in light of the extraordinary situation of the government seeking a joint address on a matter that is contentious in Parliament and a matter of disagreement among the provinces and under challenge in the courts, I wonder if the minister would agree to publish the Canadian memoranda of the conversations in which he and his colleague, the minister responsible for the environment and other things, participated. In these extraordinary circumstances I wonder if there would be a willingness to publish those memoranda.


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I do not think that would be in accord with the precedents nor with the practice, because it would remove the sense of confidentiality all sides have in discussions of this kind.
As I mentioned to the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition, there was free-flowing discussion with various representatives of the British government. We have stated here the conclusions of that discussion. I do not think it would be appropriate to go through the discussion here in Parliament.


PATRIATION-POSSIBILITY OF DISAGREEMENT-POSITION OF UNITED KINGDOM GOVERNMENT
Hon. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the same minister. I want to reiterate that it is our belief that this is a Canadian matter, that we should patriate the constitution with an amending formula which has widespread support here in Canada and that all future amendments should be made in Canada.
In view of the at best very weak denial he issued this morning-his press release says that he denies the story as written, so the minister is obviously leaving a fair amount of doubt that there was veracity to the story in The Times this morning^-just on this narrow point, what would be the position of the government of the United Kingdom if there was widespread disagreement in Canada, including among the provinces? Can the minister answer that specific question?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I do not know to what communication this morning the hon. member is referring. I issued no press release this morning. In fact, my view was that the matter should await the House this afternoon where I assumed there would be questions. It may be that some answers were given by spokesmen for the department, but they were not intended to express our total reaction to the proposals or the comments which were being made by some British and Canadian media.
With respect to the precise question the hon. member asks, as I said, the common assumption on both sides during the discussion, which was never questioned by anyone and in fact has been expressly affirmed both in public and in private by the United Kingdom government, is that what the United Kingdom parliament looks to is a joint resolution of both Houses of this Parliament and nothing else.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is to the same minister and it flows out of his answer. It obviously raises the question of who is responsible in his department for press releases. More importantly, in view of the difficulty in which this minister has now put this House and in view of the various reports he has given, will he assure the House that he will make a statement on motions to explain clearly what happened.
Further, in view of the requests of a number of Canadians, notwithstanding also the premiers at the first ministers' conference, would the minister recommend to his cabinet colleagues
October 30, 1980

that an early meeting be convened between the Prime Minister and the premiers to discuss one agenda item only, namely, an amending formula, so that the joint address could then go forward with regard to patriation with an amending formula that would then have the widespread support all of us seek?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, 1 will certainly give consideration to the hon. member's request for a statement on motions, but I will not accede to his request to change the policy of the government, which I fully support. There has been no ambiguity whatsoever in the statements made by me and the Minister of the Environment. We have stated with no ambiguity since our return-and, indeed, in the United Kingdom before our return-that the United Kingdom would follow the traditional convention that a joint resolution of this House would be followed by the British parliament and honoured by the British government, and that the only adviser to the British government on Canadian constitutional matters is the Canadian government.


LABOUR CONDITIONS
Mr. Bob Rae (Broadview-Greenwood):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. The figures which have been released by the minister in his budget indicate that he himself anticipates that unemployment will rise by over 100,000 this year, and indeed it is projected that over the next five years there will be on average one million unemployed Canadians and perhaps as many as 1.5 million if one includes the real unemployed.
In light of those figures, which I am sure the minister would agree are pretty shocking, I should like to ask him what he means when he says, on page 3 of his budget statement, that the budget which he has brought down is intended to restore, over time, among other things, a fully employed society. What does he mean by "a fully employed society", and what does he mean by "over time"?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, the context of the budget anticipates for the short-term higher unemployment. The hon. member can have a dialectical argument, like we used to have ten or 15 years ago, as to what the concept of full employment would be. In this case I am talking about reduced unemployment over the time period forecast in the budget.


Bob Rae: I am not a dialectician but 1 could describe the government's recipe as short-term pain for long-term pain. Because if the minister looks at his own projections, he will see that the unemployment figures at the end of the five-year period are just as high as they are now, and that the average over the five-year period is higher than now. That is not dialectics, those are straight facts. Can the minister please
Oral Questions
confirm that, on the facts which are contained both in the budget and in the medium-term prospects which are described in his budget papers, if you look at the real number of unemployed in Newfoundland, for example, in the early 1980s through to 1985 one out of every four or five Canadians will be unemployed and that the average for all of Canada will be one out of every ten Canadians unemployed over the next four or five years?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: So?


Bob Rae: I am asking the minister to confirm those figures, and he is saying "so".


An hon. Member:: What do you mean by "so"?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the figures in the document are accurate. The hon. member's interpretation of them is a bit suspect.


Bob Rae: If my interpretation is suspect, I think the minister's complacency is nothing short of unbelievable.
My final supplementary concerns an article written in 1962 by someone describing himself as an economist by the name of Pierre Elliott Trudeau. The article is entitled "Economic Rights". At the end of this article the author writes:
-our laws . . . recognize as proprietors of an enterprise men who today hold a few shares ... whereas workers who may have invested the better part of their lives and of their hopes in a job have no proprietary right to that job, and may be expropriated ... whenever they grow old, whenever Capital decides to disinvest.
He describes that as an "erroneous concept of property". In light of all the statements that have been made by the minister in his document about the importance of labour mobility-and in fact he has turned the country into a nation of backpackers thanks to the levels of unemployment that he is expecting in many parts of our country-can he point specifically in his budget to any steps which have been taken which guarantee, not simply labour mobility, but the importance of providing some job protection, some pension guarantees and some economic security for those people who are affected by the 1,000 lay-offs per day that have been taking place over the past year and that we can be sure will be taking place over the next five years, thanks to this stand-pat-and-do-nothing budget.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: The hon. member's rhetoric is about as outdated as the amendment which he proposed yesterday in the House which looked to me like a warmed over edition of the Regina manifesto.


Bob Rae: A million unemployed is outdated?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: He talked about intellectual bankruptcy. It was demonstrated clearly yesterday in his amendment and again in his questions.
May I indicate to the hon. member, if he is serious about the question of growth and unemployment in the economy, that I

October 30, 1980
Oral Questions
have acknowledged in the budget my view about the medium-term economic situation as one which does not give any cause for satisfaction. The solution proposed by the New Democratic Party is to inject a "stimulus" into the economy by increasing the deficit at this particular time. In my view, that prescription is likely to fail and will prevent this country from participating fully in an economic recovery which will likely take place in the second quarter of next year. That is why there has not been an effort in this budget to run up a deficit, which is very large already, and make our problems in the medium term more difficult. That is the stance taken by the government in the budget.
The hon. member talks about jobs. Apparently he is interested in jobs, but he has not understood the impact of the budget. In the economic development envelope this particular year we are increasing expenditures by 22 per cent in order to support activities in the economy which we think will make a long-term contribution to improved productivity and growth. In addition to that, we have provided a special amount of $350 million in order to deal with the important problems of restructuring and manpower adjustments.
Finally, the hon. member talked yesterday about industrial strategy. His concept of industrial strategy or development is very limited.


Some hon. Members:: Order, order.


An hon. Member:: He is not answering today's question, he is answering yesterday's.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Madam Speaker, I sat through the budget on Tuesday night and a 50-minute-


Some hon. Members:: Question, question.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: It is coming, it is coming. We had a 50-minute "question period" yesterday and another 17 minutes of gobbledygook from the minister today


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: -and never was a meaningful word heard on behalf of the Canadian consumer. This budget leaves the consumer far worse off than the previous budget of my colleague, the hon. member for St. John's West.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Since this budget potentially permits a 75-cent per gallon increase in home heating fuel by 1983, why did the Minister of Finance not consider a
tax credit for home heating fuel or at least an increase in CHIP?


Mr. Lalonde:: What about GIS?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I want to repeat a statement I made yesterday. It throws a good deal of light upon the difference between the impact of this particular budget on Canadian consumers of oil and gas in comparison with the impact of the budget which my hon. friend supported last December. The schedule of price increases of oil and gas over the period up to and including 1984 saves Canadian consumers $40 billion in comparison with the budget presented last December.


Some hon. Members:: That is not true.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: If my hon. friend wants to get some facts, I would ask him to read the speech given yesterday by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources.


Mr. Crosbie:: Pinocchio.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: In it he demonstrated very clearly that the price of gasoline, natural gas and home heating oil will be considerably lower under this budget than the one the hon. member supported last December, and that is why we are not providing an energy tax credit.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


POST OFFICE
Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Madam Speaker, it just proves the point I was trying to make, that obviously the government cares nothing about the average consumer.


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: I have read enough speeches by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, and I think other Canadians have read enough too.
My supplementary question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs wearing his hat as the Postmaster General. The budget indicates that there is no planned deficit in the Post Office. His own estimates show a deficit of $400 million which will require a minimum 10-cent increase to consumers in the price of first-class mail.


John Carnell Crosbie: At least.

October 30, 1980


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: When does the minister plan to introduce this postage tax? How much will it cost us?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Postmaster General):: Madam Speaker, as it turns out, I answered that very question this morning before a parliamentary committee. Obviously the estimates introduced by the Minister of Finance cover the next four years and what we must keep in mind, therefore, is the fact that, whether a Crown corporation is set up or not, the Post Office Department will have to boost postal rates in 1981. That is nothing new, it has been said several times before. My predecessor as Postmaster General, the hon. member for Vancouver South, stated himself this morning that when he was minister he had plans to raise postal rates; he never did get around to it because of the change in government. Besides, and after two years without higher rates, it is only natural that they go up in 1981.


SOCIAL SECURITY
Hon. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. Given the impact of the budget on the elderly and those on fixed incomes, has the minister examined the budget with that fact in mind? For example, almost 40 per cent of the $35 increase in the GIS will be taken up with increases in the cost of heating oil in the months ahead. Has the minister examined the impact of the budget on the poor and the elderly? After one finishes reading through what the minister said in his budget, the bottom line is that the burden has shifted to the poor and the elderly.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
[ Translation]


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, in my opinion the analysis of the hon. member is altogether erroneous. If he examines the budget he will see that it definitely includes the notion of indexation of social programs geared to the full cost of living, which has always been one of our priorities. It is obvious that the Minister of Finance has decided to act as firmly as possible to boost growth and productivity. These extra costs will be offset by automatic indexation and the suggestion of the hon. member is false and contrary to the budget his government itself introduced last December.


James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, I stand behind what I said. The poor and the elderly of this country will experience what I am saying this winter. Given the fact that the energy and food
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portions of the consumer basket of the poor and the elderly is disoriented toward that fact-in other words, it is disproportionate-and that the consumer price index is the weighting scale for indexing, will the minister examine the consumer price index to see if it is relevant to the disproportionately high amount of the cost of living which must be paid out for food and fuel oil costs by the poor, the elderly and those on fixed incomes? If so, will she change it?


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, I have just returned from a fact-finding mission in a few European countries and I wish my colleague would have had the chance to join us. He would have seen in the discussions we had-and I am thinking in particular of Sweden-although that government, like many others, has decided to take the cost of oil and energy out of the consumer basket, out of the indexing indicator which will be used for the pensions of seniors, we have refused that approach in this country. We will keep the full consumer price index as the method of ensuring that, despite the unpleasant increases of different components of the consumer price index, our senior citizens and people under social programs, including families, will be fully protected.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. It is somewhat related to the question asked by my colleague. The minister speaks of economic recovery taking place in the second quarter of next year and the industrial redevelopment which he hopes will occur as a result of the budget initiatives.
Would the minister agree that the reduction in purchasing power which results from the increases that have taken place in costs in all the major areas of consumer spending can do nothing but reduce manufacturing, create higher unemployment levels, reduce the tax payable to the federal government and, in the final analysis, create an even larger deficit? What has the government done to reverse the trend which automatically flows from inflicting higher and higher costs on people in the essential areas, thereby causing this continual domino effect on the economy?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: With respect to the first point, the hon. member has asked what the government has tried to do to support the economy. The hon. member will understand that at the present time the deficit is $14.2 billion, which is an amount we are putting into the economy in order to give it support and stimulate activity.
Now hon. members in that party want me to do more in that direction, to run up the deficit in order to undertake the kinds of projects which have been enumerated. Yesterday the hon. member for St. John's West spent a good part of his speech

October 30, 1980
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denouncing the budget because the deficit was too high. I believe that the deficit at the moment is appropriate to the weak output of the economy and that any greater effort to increase it would be counter-productive. That is the general posture of the government.
My hon. friend asks about-


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Thank you.


Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, a supplementary question. If we have an increase in unemployment of 100,000 persons this coming year, that will surely mean 100,000 people who will purchase less. If we reduce the consumer purchasing power of the balance of the population with the increases which the government has inflicted upon them in this budget, that will mean they will buy even less in the consumer marketplace, which will in itself result in even higher unemployment.


Some hon. Members:: Question!


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. Supplementary questions should be even shorter than the first question asked, but the question of the hon. member looks as if it might be longer. Would the hon. member please ask his question now.


Ian Deans: What specific measure is there in this budget that will put an end to the domino effect which results from unemployment compounded on unemployment?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I am not sure I fully understand the hon. member's question, but I want to make one point to him. There is no way that I or the government can fully protect the Canadian consumer or citizen from increased energy or food prices. Most European countries and almost all of the OECD countries are fully absorbing world energy prices immediately. We have not done that. We have protected the Canadian consumer from the full impact of world price increases. But we have increased prices and there will be increased costs in the economy. Nothing I or the hon. member can say will change that if we want to face reality, one which is not only a Canadian reality but a worldwide reality.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


FINANCE
Hon. Sinclair Stevens (York-Peel):: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance. He has said he believes his deficit is appropriate. However, that does not appear to be what the marketplace is saying, with the Toronto Stock Exchange index down 74 points since Tuesday, the oil and gas index down 600 points, federal government bonds, which were bought only four months ago, down 15 per cent, the dollar into the 84-cent range once again, and hundreds of
millions of dollars going out of the country. Now it has been announced the bank rate is up four-tenths of a point over last week.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Would the minister indicate, now that we have had the energy statement, when do we get his budget in the hope that it might steady the market?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the forces in the market which have accounted for the increased bank rate today were quite evident before the budget was brought down.


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: The same is true of the slight weakening of the Canadian dollar. So the hon. member is drawing a very long bow if he is attempting to relate one to the other.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Surely it is unforgivable that a Minister of Finance would say that the forces which are driving up interest rates in this country were evident before he brought in his budget, yet in that budget he did nothing to correct that trend.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: In view of the fact that federal rates are now near 14 per cent for long-term bonds-that is the rates on Canada bonds-which indicates that mortgage rates are likely going to the 15 per cent or 16 per cent level, would the minister indicate what he intends to do to help the home owners in this country who have to renew mortgages, or those people who would like to buy houses in the future?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, if he shares the view his deskmate expressed yesterday that the deficit is too large, even as it presently exists, then he would be the first to urge me not to undertake another new major spending program to add to that already high deficit.


THE BUDGET
Mr. Garnet M. Bloomfield (London-Middlesex):: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Finance. Can he give us the reasons he chose to effect a somewhat smaller deficit reduction in this budget than his predecessor did in his budget?


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I think it is an important question.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
October 30, 1980


Allan Joseph MacEachen: l would make a clarifying observation, namely, that the former minister of finance was projecting a decrease of the existing deficit, over the time-frame, of about $2 billion, and that is exactly what I am doing, effective at the end of 1984. The hon. member for York-Peel said the deficit went up this year, which is absolutely right. It increased because of increased payments on the debt as a result of higher interest payments, interest rates which had run up even more explosively under the former government than under the present government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: It went up because of increased payments on oil compensation, which hon. members opposite would have had to pay in any event. I accepted those increased expenditures because of weak economic performance.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


INQUIRY RESPECTING MEASURES TO ASSIST AGRICULTURE
Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Madam Speaker, I should also like to direct a question to the Minister of Finance. Since the largest group of energy users in our society is those engaged in agriculture, and more specifically farmers, and in order to stop farm costs from absolutely skyrocketing under the added burden of the energy price increases that the minister announced on Tuesday night, there will have to be either a tax credit or some other kind of assistance given to agriculture or we will see absolutely skyrocketing farm prices. There was no indication of agricultural measures in the budget at all. What is the government considering doing for agriculture?


Mr. Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Sending Whelan to the Senate.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, we took action in the budget on Tuesday night to assist the agricultural industry by not proceeding with an 18-cent tax on gasoline and by bringing in a much lower cost structure for the agricultural industry.


Jack Burnett Murta: Madam Speaker, a supplementary question. The increased costs vary but there are some estimates that grain farmers, for example, will experience as much as a 15 or 20 cents per bushel increase because of additional energy requirements, since agriculture is such a high component in the use of energy. May I ask if any special consideration is going to be given to the agricultural sector? I would remind the minister that the answer he just gave me is not satisfactory.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I cannot understand why the answer should be unsatisfactory when the budget on Tuesday night provided a lower cost structure for the agricultural industry than the budget of last December, which the hon. member supported.
Oral Questions


HOUSING
Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: My question is also for the Minister of Finance. Surely the minister is aware of hardships in the construction industry, not only in the province I represent but throughout the country as well. The Minister of Finance also knows about the difficulties facing small home owners and other prospective buyers. Given these circumstances, having failed to provide anything in the budget to cope with staggering interest costs, would the Minister of Finance, despite all his pious arguments about the budget, be prepared to reassure those thousands of Canadians and promise very special assistance to small home owners to help them face interest costs?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: No, Madam Speaker, I cannot give the assurance that there will be a special program. I could not give the assurance earlier in the year, when interest rates were higher than they are at present, that the treasury could support an additional program of that size and expenditure magnitude. We made clear during the election campaign that we would not proceed with the mortgage interest deductibility program that had been part of the policy of the last government, and we do not propose to proceed with that program or any other program at the present time.


Roch La Salle: A supplementary, Madam Speaker. If I heard correctly, the Minister of Finance has no intention of helping small home owners who are facing enormous difficulties and who are not yet at the end of their rope if we keep in mind that the minister did say the inflation spiral would continue at roughly 10 per cent. That being so, would the minister not show a little more sympathy for those small owners and tell us that in the near future he will introduce a measure, First to save those who already have homes and then to enable other Canadians to become home owners?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I recall that earlier in the year I examined this question very carefully in the light of the considerable interest rate increases that had occurred in relation to home owners who had undertaken the obligation of paying increased mortgage rates. After an examination of that problem I concluded, based upon the objective facts, that a very, very high proportion of those home owners, because of their increased incomes since mortgages had been taken out, and taking into account the normal relationship between income and payments for housing, could manage on their own resources.
We did undertake at that time to consider a program, not a financial program but a rearrangement of mortgages that
4250

October 30, 1980
Oral Questions
would assist a group that might be affected. That seems to have worked very well and up to this point has made unnecessary a very large expenditure program which is obviously being advocated by my hon. friend. I just do not have the resources at the present time to finance any other new programs.


Mr. Wilson:: Why?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: If I take the advice of the hon. member for St. John's West, I should be cutting down the current expenditures listed for the government.


NORTHERN PIPELINES
Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland):: Madam Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Yesterday the minister stated it was the government's intention to complete a Quebec-Maritimes pipeline. In view of the fact that 100 per cent of the pipe for the western pipeline is being made in Canada, could the minister tell the House whether he has ascertained if the industries in Canada will have the capability of producing the pipe which will be necessary for the completion of the Quebec-Maritimes pipeline in the desired time?


An hon. Member:: Of course they will.


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I think there is no reason to doubt that the pipe provided for that pipeline will come from Canadian steel companies.
apply to persons in high income brackets. That is acknowledged. The impact will be on increasing rental accommodation. I responded to representations not only from persons in the construction business but also to representations made at the recent ministers of finance meeting and representations made to me by members of the House of Commons, as well as by the minister who advised me that at the present time this would be the most appropriate way to provide additional stimulus. I noticed yesterday in one of the Toronto papers that it was stated the impact would be to create about 10,000 additional jobs, and I think that is rather important.


Mrs. Mitchell:: Madam Speaker, social housing would create just as many jobs. I wonder if the minister talked to tenants. Does the minister realize that from 1974 to 1979, the MURB period, over $315 million was added to our national debt because of MURB tax write-offs, yet during the same period, construction of rental units dropped by 41 per cent? Since MURBs cost so much, benefited only the rich, I repeat, and made no impact on priority housing problems of Canadians, will the minister reconsider his decision or at least invest a similar amount in non-profit and co-op housing for those who most need it?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, there has been consistent support by this government for co-operative housing and non-profit housing. One just has to travel the country to see the impact of the housing program. I believe that the introduction of this particular tax problem will have a beneficial effect on increasing rental accommodation in cities especially, where the vacancy rate is very very low. It will also have the substantial effect of creating jobs in the construction agency whose unions, I understand, are very much in support of this particular policy.


HOUSING
Margaret Anne Mitchell: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Finance. Since it is well documented by the Canadian Council on Social Development that MURB tax write-offs in the past did absolutely nothing to help build affordable rental accommodation for families, for native people or for pensioners, and that in fact family homes were often demolished in order to build fancy, expensive luxury bachelor apartments, why did the minister respond to the pressures from the real estate lobby to reintroduce MURB tax write-offs for the wealthy instead of investing in social housing to try to deal directly with Canada's most desperate housing problem?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is distorting the purpose of the program, which is to increase rental accommodation through a tax shelter which may indeed


OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY-REDUCTION IN FOREIGN OWNERSHIP
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. It relates to the intent of the policy announced in the budget to increase Canadian ownership in the oil and gas industry. The budget states that one objective is to achieve at least 50 per cent Canadian ownership of production by 1990, down from the current level of foreign ownership of about 70 per cent. In order to achieve this, exploration and development incentives will be phased out by the end of 1983 for all companies more than 50 per cent foreign owned.
My question is this. Is it the policy of the government to reduce the ownership level of all companies within the industry to the 50 per cent level, or is the policy related to the industry in the aggregate; in other words, to reduce the level of ownership to 50 per cent in the aggregate? As well, could the
October 30, 1980

minister answer in what time-frame he is trying to achieve this? Is it related to the phasing out of the incentives?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, the objective of the government is to reduce foreign ownership to less than 50 per cent in the industry as an aggregate. We do not foresee, for instance, the elimination of any oil or gas company in Canada that would be more than 50 per cent owned. But what we are concerned about is that overall there would be at least 50 per cent Canadian ownership, and that in the larger companies there would be a significant increase in Canadian controlled companies, that is, companies actually managed and controlled by Canadians. This is a very strong part of our policy and we have announced a number of steps to achieve it.
As far as Canadian ownership is concerned, we have indicated that it will be before 1990 and we have announced steps that I hope will achieve this objective well within this decade. We have not set a specific year within the decade, but we want to make sure that by 1990, at least, this objective will have been achieved, while the other objectives I have mentioned- greater control and a few acquisitions by the Government of Canada-are to be achieved in the early part of this decade.
As to the second part of the question asked by the hon. member with regard to the phasing out of some of the incentives, these are spelled out in detail in "The National Energy Program", and I would refer him to the tables published with that program.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I am aware of the phasing out of incentives. It is the concern I have which prompts the question. The primary objective, as stated by the government, was to achieve self-sufficiency during this period of time. Since the foreign-owned companies are a major element in achieving self-sufficiency, my question to the minister is this. Since the incentives for the foreign-owned companies-those companies which own more than 50 per cent offshore-are phased out, is there any intention of introducing at some time within the next ten-year period a change in the incentives to give encouragement to companies which bring in some degree of Canadian ownership but not the full 50 per cent, which would qualify them for the incentives?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his supplementary question. The phasing out of the incentives to the foreign-owned companies was put in the energy program to allow those companies to turn around and find Canadian partners and to bring Canadian ownership into their companies as they exist at the present time. We believe that the time lag we have provided for should allow those companies that want to achieve Canadian ownership. For those not wanting to open their companies to Canadians, we have stated that we are ready to buy them out. We will ensure that they will continue to work for Canada in order to achieve our self-sufficiency goal.
Our purpose is not to drive out all foreign companies by any means. As a matter of fact, and as the hon. member knows,
Point of Order-Mr. Johnston
the incentives for tar sands and heavy oil continue, including incentives for foreign companies. There are still incentives for foreign companies, but we would like them to concentrate their efforts in areas where there is most need to help us meet our goal of self-sufficiency.


POINTS OF ORDER
Madam Speaker:: I have received notice of a question of privilege from the hon. member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton). I see the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) rising on a point of order.


Hon. Donald J. Johnston (President of the Treasury Board):: Madam Speaker, Standing Order 43 is to be used for matters of urgent and pressing necessity and is to be based on facts. The hon. member for Richmond-South Delta (Mr. Siddon), dealing with the use of pension funds, suggested that the government was plundering these pension funds. He made allegations intended, I suggest, to frighten public service employees. These allegations are not based on any facts whatever. He made references to figures set forth in the statement by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) with regard to the financial position taken over a multi-year perspective, which is the same as that in last December's statement by the then minister of finance. If this had been a matter of urgent and pressing necessity, I suggest the hon. member should have raised it at that time.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Madam Speaker, I have been raising questions with respect to the state of the public service superannuation accounts with this minister, in committee and in this House, for several months. I have not been getting any answers. Therefore it has become a matter of urgent and pressing necessity.


Madam Speaker:: I understand the two hon. members do not have the same interpretation of these facts. Each is entitled to expose them as he sees fit. That is why we have debate in the House of Commons so facts can be refuted from time to time.
As I was saying before that point of order was raised, I have a notice of a question of privilege by the hon. member for Skeena. I require an hour's notice for questions of privilege, and I have not had quite that hour's notice. However, I could close my eyes to that. But when there is notice, if the hon. member looks at the Standing Order, he will see that he should give me a brief statement as to what his question of privilege is all about. He did not do that. The idea is to save the time of the House so that the Speaker, in advance, can look into the situation to be evoked during the course of the question of privilege.
Since the question of privilege does not flow from the deliberations of the House today, I will take his notice now, and ask him to raise it tomorrow.

October 30, 1980
Point of Order-Mr. Hnatyshyn GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING PROGRAMS


Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Madam Speaker, my point of order flows from an answer given by the Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Fleming) who has responsibility for the government's advertising programs, in response to a question raised by my colleague, the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gustafson), last Monday.
This point of order has to do with the address given by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) last night in Regina and the advertising which took place in advance of that particular function. I have in my hand, and 1 will present to you, Madam Speaker, a photocopy of some of the advertising that was placed in various newspapers in Saskatchewan before the Prime Minister's speech. By a scrutiny of this particular advertisement. Madam Speaker, you will be able to see that it is authorized by the Government of Canada, with the official Canada logo affixed to that particular advertisement.
These advertisements are very expensive. The difficulty I have, in terms of the response which was given to the question raised by my colleague from Assiniboia, is that I think the minister unintentionally misled the House to indicate that there was no government expenditure with respect to this particular program in the advertising for the dinner.
To compound this situation, the information in the advertisement under the logo of the Government of Canada is false, incorrect, and misleading. Listed in this advertisement are a number of organizations and associations, such as the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association, and the Palliser Wheat Growers Association purporting to be "hosting organizations". That is false, and incorrect. It is not true. These organizations were not hosting. They had withdrawn. I do not know how many other organizations in Saskatchewan were listed as hosting organizations that would have withdrawn prior to this meeting.
I have copies of press reports which verify the fact that even though this was known to whomever put the ad in the paper, that the organizations had withdrawn their support, they went ahead and published this misleading advertisement for the Prime Minister's visit to Regina. For example, I quote from the Palliser Wheat Growers Association press release of October 27 wherein president George Fletcher advised that for "The Prime Minister's Evening with the People of Saskatchewan" on Wednesday, October 29, their association had been invited to have their members buy tickets and attend as guests.
The difficulty I have in connection with this point of order is that the minister indicated in his response that the government had not contributed financially to this advertising campaign for the dinner. Today in the media across Saskatchewan, Mr. Ralph Langdale, the executive assistant to Senator Hazen Argue, reaffirmed that the government spent no money-this is, one way or the other. Either there has been an expenditure of public funds on misleading information, wrong, incorrect, a public lie in the newspapers of Saskatchewan, or they have not contributed financially, whereupon it is incumbent upon the
minister or the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet) to launch an investigation to determine who is using the logo of the Government of Canada unlawfully, and misrepresenting the position of this government.
My point of order is this. The minister was either incorrect in his answer on Monday with respect to the support and funding of this so-called extravaganza, "The Prime Minister's Evening with the People of Saskatchewan", or not. The Prime Minister's evening was terminated after television coverage was cut off. The Prime Minister abruptly quit his speech and left the people of Saskatchewan. I can assure hon. members that in terms of the crowd that received the Prime Minister there were bigger crowds at executions during the French revolution.
The minister has a duty to stand in this House and explain his answer, to admit it was false, or undertake to make an investigation with respect to the use of the logo of the Government of Canada in this connection.


Hon. Jim Fleming (Minister of State, Multiculturalism):: Madam Speaker, I am not sure how that rates as a point of order, but I want to respond to the hon. member. 1 will leave aside all the foofaraw about the attendance of various groups and so on. I obviously played no role with regard to who was invited, who was not invited, who came and who did not.
When I responded, as memory serves me, because I had no notice of this until a few moments ago when it was waved at me from across the floor, in the question the other day I was asked if the Government of Canada or the taxpayers of Canada were paying for a broadcast of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I said I had no knowledge of any such payment. I do know the broadcast was paid for by the Liberal Party of Canada. I know in fact that no time had been bought at that point. It was purchased later, although arrangements were under way. It was paid for. The ad I had not seen and had not approved, and I will look into it.


Mr. Bill McKnight (Kindersley-Lloydminster):: Madam Speaker, may I just respond to what my colleague from Saskatoon West mentioned about the reply the minister gave to our colleague from Assiniboia.
In obtaining tickets for the centennial auditorium or the Centre of the Arts in Regina, when they requested the purchase of tickets the telephone number of Senator Hazen Argue's office was given out. The person responsible, the contact person in that office, was a Mr. Bob Lyster, who happens to be an employee of the people of Canada, not of the Liberal Party of Canada. At the same time, another defeated Liberal candidate from Saskatchewan, also listed as an employee of the Government of Canada, was soliciting purchases for the same tickets from a government office in Regina. It was a government office, not the office of the Liberal Party of Canada. The point about the logo of the Government of Canada being used for a fund raising dinner for the Liberal party in Saskatchewan is that this is a misuse, and there was misinformation contained in the advertisement.
October 30, 1980


Madam Speaker:: Hon. members might have a complaint about the particular question that was raised as a point of order. It deals with something which took place outside this House. I fail to see how it can be the subject of a point of order since there is nothing in it which contravenes our Standing Orders. It seems to be a complaint, perhaps a legitimate complaint. I have had to listen to it, but I do not see it as a point of order.


PRIVILEGE
William J. Yurko: Madam Speaker, I hope you will give me several minutes to expand my question of privilege. Today I moved a motion under Standing Order 43 which asked that the federal government immediately refer to the Supreme Court, for a constitutional opinion and ruling, both its budgetary 8 per cent tax on net revenues from oil and gas and its domestic and export tax of 30 cents per 1,000 cubic feet on natural gas and liquefied petroleum products. You put the motion, Madam Speaker. Obviously you must have heard some "noes" from the government side because the motion was not accepted.
I would like to come to my question of privilege as a result of the motion. These taxes on the provincial royalty share of oil and gas from Crown-owned corporations are, among some experts, contrary to sections 109 and 125 of the British North America Act. The constitutionality of these taxes has been questioned by several provincial governments. As a member of Parliament, 1 believe it is incumbent upon the Chair and the House to ensure that the actions of this House are constitutionally correct in accordance with the rules of this House.
It is a basic privilege of the members of this House that we not only act correct constitutionally, but know that we are acting correctly. Therefore, Madam Speaker, I look to you to advise me and all members of this House that we are not involved in any actions which breach the existing Canadian constitution. Such action by me or any member of this House breaches the privileges of each member of this House in that they are or would be compromised in their actions by virtue of the fact that they may unwillingly or unknowingly be acting beyond the constitutional capacity of this House.
To circumvent such breaches, it is incumbent upon the government to assure us that it has unimpeachable legal advice and an opinion that the taxes it has imposed are within the constitutional capacity of this House or else the government will immediately undertake in the interim to refer these taxes for an opinion and a ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada.
My question of privilege is simply this. All members of this House should be apprised at the earliest opportunity as to whether we are acting constitutionally correctly in this matter. If not, then a reference should be made to the Supreme Court of Canada at the earliest opportunity. If this is not done and the question is left up in the air, then I look to you. Madam
Business of the House
Speaker, to advise me as to whether my privileges of this House in acting unconstitutionally are in fact effective.


Madam Speaker:: 1 suspect the hon. member knows that the Chair is in no position to interpret either the law or the constitution. Whether something which takes place in this House is constitutional or legal is not for the Chair to decide. The Chair only decides whether we are following our own rules. That is spelled out in article 12(1) of the Standing Orders which reads:
Mr. Speaker shall preserve order and decorum, and shall decide questions of order.
That is the scope of my responsibility. That is sufficient. At any rate, I am sure that I would be unable to fulfil the request that is being made by the hon. member through a question of privilege.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, today is Thursday. The government House leader earlier allocated Friday as an allotted day, and it is his intention, I understand, to carry the budget debate through to its completion next Thursday. Would he tell us now, well in advance, his legislative priorities. I am interested in knowing whereabouts in the scale of priorities the freedom of information bill stands. If he could tell me that, I would be grateful.


Mr. Pinard:: Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague is correct. Friday will be an allotted day, and on Monday we will continue with the budget debate. The freedom of information bill would have been introduced last Tuesday if the post office bill had been sent to committee on time. Since it was not, it is difficult for me to say at this time when we will be in a position to deal with the freedom of information bill.
Following the budget debate, high priority will be given to the Bank Act since it must be adopted and receive royal assent before November 30, as my colleague well knows. So following the budget debate, we will deal with the Bank Act. I understand that at the time we table the proclamations an hon. member for the NDP would like to have a special debate on the matter. This will also take up some time of the House. Excluding Fridays, there are seven allotted days before December 10. Generally speaking, this is the House business we will have to deal with before December 10.

Also, with regard to the discussion among House leaders about Remembrance Day, which falls on a Tuesday this year, as to whether or not the House would sit on the previous Monday, November 10, I think I can say now that we on this side agree not to sit on the Monday preceding Remembrance Day. However, I would like to have further consultations with

October 30, 1980
Petition
my colleagues as to when we will recoup the four hours of government time which will be lost if we do not sit on Monday. We would like to recoup those four hours in the following week or weeks. Hopefully, we will be in a position sometime next week to agree to a House order.


Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, there has been this discussion, and it is my understanding that there are four hours of government time to be recouped. We can certainly agree with respect to that.


Mr. Paproski:: What about December 25?


Mr. Knowles:: Madam Speaker, may 1 also indicate our agreement so that hon. members will know that the House will not be sitting on November 10. That includes an agreement later on to decide when to recover the four hours of government time that will be lost.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
First Report of Special Committee on the Disabled and Handicapped-Mr. Smith.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Mr. Thomas H. Lefebvre (Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle):: Madam Speaker,	I	have the	honour to	table	the	first	report	of
the Special Committee on Alternative Energy and Oil Substitution.
With the consent of the House, I move that the report be concurred in later today.
[Editor's Note: For text of above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITION
Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Madam Speaker, on behalf of my constituents in Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands and other concerned residents of British Columbia, 1 wish to present a petition to this House. The
petition expresses our great concern about the growing threat of oil tanker traffic on Canada's Pacific coast. It calls upon Parliament to oppose this threat to the Canadian environment and to ask the National Energy Board to hold local hearings in communities directly threatened by any oil port or oil route proposals.


ALTERNATIVE ENERGY AND OIL SUBSTITUTION
Thomas Lefebvre: Madam Speaker,	following an arrangement	between	parties,	I
move that the first report of the Special Committee on Alternative Energy and Oil Substitution be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. D. M. Collenette (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 306, 1,212, 1,484, 1,485, 1,488 and 1,502.
I ask, Madam Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Herbert: 1.	During the past five years, what amount was contributed by Canada to the Organization of American States and for what purpose?
2.	Is the government considering a membership in the OAS?


Mark R. MacGuigan: 1. As Canada is not a member of the OAS, Canada has not contributed to the budget of the OAS. Through Cl DA, Canada has contributed $778,000 toward a rural co-operative development project managed by the OAS. Canada is a full member of, and does contribute to, some specialized interamerican agencies, such as the Pan-American Health Organization, the Inter-American Development Bank, Pan American Institute of Geography and History and the Inter-American Indian Institute. However, these organizations are independent of the OAS.
2. The government has considered the question of becoming a full member of the OAS and has decided at this time not to apply for full membership. However, Canada maintains a permanent observer mission to the Organization of American States.
October 30, 1980


Mr. MacKay: How many of the enumerators and commissioners to be employed pursuant to subsection 5(1) of the Statistics Act, for the taking of the 1981 census, will be selected through the process commonly referred to as the Political or Ministerial Referral System in the constituency of (a) Blainville-Deux-Montagnes (b) Windsor West (c) Egmont (d) Saint-Henri-Westmount (e) Beauhamois-Sala-berry (0 Westmorland-Kent (g) Stormont-Dundas (h) Cape Breton Highlands-Canso (/) Ottawa West (j) Restigouche (k) Mercier (1) Rosemont (m) Charlevoix (n) Vercheres (o) Cardigan?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: Statistics Canada reports: Only candidates for census commissioner positions are identified through the ministerial referral system. Selection is based on an interview and test administered by Statistics Canada. The numbers of census commissioners to be employed under subsection 5(1) of the Statistics Act, for the constituencies named, are as follows:
Census Commissioners
(a)	Blainville-Deux Montagnes	6(b)	Windsor West	6(c)	Egmont	3(d)	Saint-Henri-Westmount	14(e)	Beauharnois-Salaberry	6(f)	Westmorland-Kent	6(g)	Stormont-Dundas	6(h)	Cape Breton Highlands-Canso	7(i)	Ottawa West	6(j)	Restigouche	5(k)	Mercier	4(l)	Rosemount	5(m)	Charlevoix	6(n)	Vercheres	8(o)	Cardigan	4


Mr. Cossitt: What are the names and job designations of all persons employed, directly or indirectly or under contract, with CBC television news and public affairs (English) and, in each case, what are the names of the television programs which they broadcast, produce, direct, etc?


Mr. Peter Stollery (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and Minister of Communications):: I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows: It has not been customary to require the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide such details of its internal management and administration as the names and job designations of people involved in its programming, whether staff or on contract. The background to this custom is explained in detail in the reply to question No. 2,530, May 22, 1975.
Order Paper Questions CBC-RADIO NEWS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS


Mr. Cossitt: What are the names and job designations of all persons employed, directly or indirectly or under contract, with CBC radio news and public affairs (English) and, in each case, what are the names of the radio programs which they broadcast, produce, direct, etc.?


Peter A. Stollery: I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows: It has not been customary to require the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide such details of its internal management and administration as the names and job designations of people involved in its programming, whether staff or on contract. The background to this custom is explained in detail in the reply to question No. 2,530, May 22, 1975.


Mr. Cossitt: What were the names of all persons used by the CBC radio or television news on a free-lance basis or hired under contract in the past three years prior to the date of this question and, in each case, what were their former news media affiliations through which they gathered experience?


Peter A. Stollery: I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows: It has not been customary to require the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide such details of its internal management and administration as the names, work history and use of people involved in its programming, whether staff, contract or freelance. The background to this custom is explained in detail in the reply to question No. 2,530, May 22, 1975.


Mr. Clarke: 1.	Does the CBC rent space in the British Columbia Turf Building at 475 West Georgia Street, Vancouver and, if so (a) how much (b) at what rate per square foot and per square metre (c) at what cost per month (d) at what cost per year (e) for what purposes does the corporation use the space?
2.	Does the corporation have space available at its new $26 million headquarters at 700 Hamilton Street in Vancouver and, if so, for what reason is it renting the space at 475 West Georgia Street?


Peter A. Stollery: I am informed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as follows:
1.	Yes.
(a)	10,151 square feet
(b)	, (c), (d) and (e) It has not been customary to require the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to provide such details of its internal management and administration as business arrangements with outside companies. The background to this custom is explained in detail in the reply to question No. 2,530, May 22, 1975.
2.	No.

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Lalonde
[ Translation]


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
[ Translation]

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Wednesday, October 29, 1980, consideration of the motion of Mr. MacEachen that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government; the amendment thereto of Mr. Crosbie (p. 4231) and the amendment to the amendment of Mr. Rae (p. 4235).
Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, in the few minutes that I have left, I would like to deal with another aspect of our energy policy. I indicated yesterday that our policy would ensure energy self-sufficiency in Canada by 1990, that it would afford all Canadians the opportunity to share in the benefits of the oil industry and that this policy was fair to all provinces. 1 also want to emphasize that this policy is fair to all citizens of Canada.
Yesterday, I heard Mr. Parizeau, the Quebec minister of finance, claim that low-income families would have been better off with the Progressive Conservative government budget. Having heard that statement, I am not surprised he overlooked a $500 million hole, under the Department of Education, in his budget last year. Now, let us take the case of a Montreal family that uses oil heating and runs an ordinary car about 12,000 miles a year. That I think is a good average for the typical family in Montreal. Under the Progressive Conservative budget, oil heating would have cost $1,760 in 1984, and running the car, including the 18-cent tax, $1,260 a year, for a total of $3,020 in that year. Under our program, it will cost the same family $1,350 for heating and $940 for the car, that is, a total of $2,290; this means a difference of at least $730 between the budget tabled by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the Progressive Conservative budget of last year. Moreover, if the family goes along with the energy conservation and substitution programs we are proposing, with the almost $3 billion subsidy program to that end, the same family, by insulating its house and using gas or electricity, can reduce the cost of its heating to about $740 instead of $940.
For this year that amounts to a total saving of $940.
The former Progressive Conservative finance minister (Mr. Crosbie) makes a lot of waves about his famous tax credits. Well, to bring our budget up to par with the Conservative budget, that family would have had to include not only the father and the mother but at least 16 children as well. And here I am not talking about the annual compensation of $420 which we have granted for each individual, that is the income supplement, thanks to the higher income supplement of $35 a month which we adopted early in this session. Indeed I must say that if we had been forced to adopt the PQ proposal, namely, bring prices up to international levels, well the poor Montreal family would have seen its bills jump to $3,000 in 1984, as advocated by the Tories, but the bills would probably have run closer to $4,000. So I think the facts are there to show that our budget is fair.
I have said that this budget is fair to citizens all over the country. I have just given the example of a family in Montreal. I could use the example of a family in Vancouver where, despite the ready availability of natural gas and electricity, fuel oil use is still quite high. Over the period 1980 to 1984 an oil-using household would have spent a total of $4,100 on home heat under the December, 1979, proposals. Under our program the total cost would be $3,450, some $650 less than under the Conservative budget. That is if the household stays on oil. If it were to use the conservation programs we have proposed, its heating costs to 1984 would be roughly $2,300. That is $1,150 less than if it continued to use oil.


Thomas Edward Siddon: We burn natural gas.


Marc Lalonde: I can give the same example for natural gas instead and, indeed, electricity. I could use the same example for any family across Canada. I could give the example of a family in Halifax where again the savings would be very substantial and would amount to several hundreds of dollars between now and 1984.
In closing, let me repeat my opening theme. We promised decisions and actions to respond to Canada's energy problems and opportunities and to achieve energy security, opportunity and fairness. This, I submit, we have done.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I was interested to note that the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) responded with his usual Pavlovian reflex to a statement by Jacques Parizeau. This House will be interested in his response to the statements made by the Hon. John Turner on his budget and his energy policy which Mr. Turner believes are disasters not only in the economic sense but will, as we believe, drive energy investment out of this country and help OPEC much more than they help Canada.
October 30, 1980

One of the remarkable aspects of this budget is that the minister who presumably wrote it-at least the minister who read it-had less to do with this document than at least three other members of this House. One of those, of course, is my colleague, the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), who is now in the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, and whose budget last December included most of the positive measures which were subsequently adopted by this government. For example, 1 cite the small business development bond on which this Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) has fiddled away an entire year, the tax deductibility for working spouses which was an innovation in our budget, ignored and resisted for literally decades by the Liberal government, and the tax incentives to spur new manufacturing investment in our less developed regions.
The second more important influence was the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, who has just left the House, because this is not a budget establishing economic policy. This is an energy polemic creating division in Canada and dependence on OPEC.
The other hon. member to whom this budget owes more than it owes the Minister of Finance is the hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood (Mr. Rae), the silver-spoon socialist who, having been nurtured all his life at the rich bosom of privilege, presumes to lecture the rest of us about equality and poverty. I think it is interesting to compare the two budget amendments that member introduced because they indicate the clear loyalties and purpose of what the New Democratic Party has now become. His amendment in December was drafted to seek Liberal support to defeat our budget. This amendment is drafted to prevent Progressive Conservative support and thus to protect the Liberals, as the NDP and his Ontario troika have sought to protect the Liberals in constitutional policy. The NDP posture now, as it has been a posture in election campaigns and in debate, is to stand sternly on principle but then to collapse in any crunch, going over to the Liberals.
To maintain their pose of independence their sub-amendment links our name with the Liberal name, but the NDP links its arm with the Liberals in any important vote, whether on the budget last year or the constitution this year.
Some of us remember the NDP when it was a party of principle which stood with its word and stood with its workers. Now the leadership of that party says to every NDP voter in western Canada that an NDP vote in February was a vote to give western provinces second-class constitutional status and to give Pierre Trudeau a blank cheque. I think it is well for the traditional supporters of the New Democratic Party to ask what the NDP represents today, apart from the Liberal party and the London School of Economics.
Speaking of reputations and other times brings one naturally to the Minister of Finance, the man who signed the minister of energy's budget. There was a time, I am told, when this minister was known for his compassion and for his conviction. Today he is celebrated only for his guile. He has a lot of that, but what the country needs rather more is a Minister of
The Budget-Mr. Clark
Finance with the courage and honesty to face and to try to solve Canada's economic problems, and not simply to be clever in avoiding those problems.
We may disagree about the details of those economic problems, but 1 think all in this House know their magnitude. We know-and the people who sent us here know-that we cannot wish our economic problems away, and we cannot continue to avoid dealing with them. Last year our government tried to deal directly with those problems, but we lacked the majority necessary to carry our program through the House. This government has a majority, but it lacks the courage to use that majority to deal with the economic problems of Canada.
Budgets demonstrate the heart and mind of a government. This document is mindless in economic policy and heartless in responding to the needs of the average Canadian. What is offered here as this government's clarion call to the 1980s is a message of despair. It says to Canadians first that even more Canadians will be out of work, 1,023,000 next year by the minister's own figures. The only response of the government is to slam the working people of Canada with $1 billion more in unemployment insurance taxes.
Second, living costs will continue to rise. The minister says the rate of inflation will be 10.2 per cent next year. We believe 12 per cent would be a more honest estimate. This government offers not a penny of support and not a dime of assistance to low and middle-income Canadians who will pay more for food, more for shelter and more for energy, thanks to this government.
Third, despite all the election promises of several months ago this government is socking it to Canadians on energy prices, the equivalent of a dollar a gallon more over the next four years, and what Canadians get for that is more confrontation, more uncertainty, and a virtual guarantee that Canada will continue to fritter away our energy potential and our opportunity to be energy self-sufficient within the decade.
Finally, the message of this document is that this Liberal government intends to grab more and more tax revenues, $4 billion more next year alone, and for those higher taxes Canadians will get less help from their national government to pay for basic social services. Those are the messages of this non-budget.
The minister said his purpose was to set a direction for the eighties. His direction is down-less growth, more unemployment, more inflation, more taxes and fewer services. Welcome indeed to the 1980s, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion this budget does absolutely nothing for the economic policy, but its impact on the Canadian population will be hard felt. It is a budget which punishes, a pitiless budget, a budget which is not sensitive to the average Canadians, a budget which makes their energy more expensive, a budget which adds to their tax burden, finally a budget which widens their chances of being unemployed and which
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October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Clark
does not offer, even to the poorest Canadians, a single cent to counter the effects of this heavier load.
As a result of this budget, between now and 1983 the average Canadian will shell out $500 more annually to keep his house warm and $400 more annually to keep his car on the road. We all believe that energy prices must go up and that most Canadians should pay more to use energy. But what will happen to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who just do not have $900 to spare to heat their homes and drive their cars? We offered them significant assistance through the energy tax credit. This budget does not offer them anything.
Because of this budget, if we base ourselves on the figures given by the minister himself, 1,023,000 Canadians will be out of work next year. We have offered incentives to create jobs in the home building and ship building industries and to promote regional expansion. And now this budget sets aside the ridiculous amount of $45 million a year to improve manpower training, and an 8.6 per cent increase in benefits paid to Canadians who are jobless and who have to cope with doubledigit inflation.

For Canadians who still have jobs next year, this budget proposes a $1 billion increase in unemployment insurance taxes, a 33 per cent increase on a tax which charges the working poor the same rate as the working rich. For Canadians who want to own a home or who want to work in the housing industry, this budget offers nothing. When we proposed mortgage tax credits, the Liberals said that was not enough, we had to help renters too. This budget does not help anyone own or rent a home. Its only housing policy is to provide a haven for the rich, to bring back MURBs so that wealthy Canadians can avoid paying taxes. We tried to help ordinary Canadians own a home; this budget helps rich Canadians dodge taxes.
That is not all that this budget does to punish the average Canadian. Because this minister refuses to take restraint seriously, because he is adding, over four years, $12.7 billion to the cash requirements of last December's budget, he is guaranteeing that interest rates will remain high, that Canadians will continue to pay exorbitant rates for their home mortgages and their consumer loans.
Finally, the minister says that, despite millions of dollars in new federal taxes, he intends to pay less to supporting basic social services in Canada. Let me quote him. He wants "significant savings here", savings he will get either by forcing services to be cut or by forcing the poorer provinces to carry even more of the burden. This is one more trick in his budget. They promise that social services will be cut; they do not say by how much, they do not say where, they do not say which services, but the people of Canada who have grown dependent upon social services from this government know that it is the intention of the Liberal Government of Canada to cause a reduction in the standard and availability of social services across this country. But the government does not have the courage to spell out the details.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The minister faced two challenges in putting together this budget. The first was economic. Canadians desperately need a strong and purposeful statement of economic direction to break through the malaise which existed through a series of years in which, owing to various circumstances, there has not been an accepted statement of government economic policy. We need a statement of economic direction to restore confidence among our people that there can be jobs for them and their children and that the vicious inflationary cycle can be broken. That was the economic challenge facing the minister and he failed it completely. Indeed, he did not even try to meet it.
The second challenge was a political one. This budget was brought forth at a time when the Prime Minister's (Mr. Trudeau) personal determination to ram his constitutional package down the throats of Canadians has created serious tensions in this country, especially in western Canada. The minister had an opportunity to use this budget as a healing document, as a way to bring Canadians together in common economic cause, as a chance to show western Canadians in particular that at least someone in this government understood their frustrations and was sympathetic to their genuine aspirations.
That was the minister's political challenge, and again he failed. Instead of healing wounds he chose to deepen them with energy measures which can only be seen by western Canadians as a singular, deliberate assault on their region.
Mr. Speaker, the ultimate tragedy, the ultimate condemnation of this budget, is not just that the minister failed to meet those economic and political challenges. It is that a man who was elected here, presumably on the basis of principle, a man in the tradition of Father Coady, chose not even to try. There he was with a majority behind him, a majority that will shove through anything he wants. He had a mandate and he had a majority to act for Canada, but all he could produce was another federal revenue grab so the ministers opposite could indulge in the 1980s the spending appetites they whetted in the 1970s.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Since this is not an economic statement but an energy statement, I want to deal for a moment with energy matters. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, who has now left the House, talked about the purpose of his energy program. He said the purpose of the energy program is fairness. Well, fairness is an unassailable principle and we all believe in it. Certainly it is a worthy goal of the economic policy. As my colleague, the hon. member for St. John's West, pointed out yesterday, the journal "Canadian Taxation" indicates that, while Liberal budgets of the 1970s served the comfortable, the Crosbie budget actually honoured the principle of fairness by helping Canadians at the bottom of the income scale. Fairness is also the purpose of the equalization program, which this Liberal government is apparently allowing
October 30, 1980

to lapse without any significant effort at renewal or modernization on the basis of agreement with the other partners in confederation.
Fairness is fine as a principle, unassailable as a principle, but surely the first purpose of an energy program should be energy. Surely before you focus on distributing energy, or distributing the proceeds of energy, you ensure there will be energy to distribute and energy proceeds to distribute. This policy, instead of ensuring energy, drives away the people who produce and find energy in Canada.
I am not talking here about the multinationals which have feasted for so long on Liberal tax policies. Ironically, they are the least likely to move out of Canada because their parent corporations already occupy the ground in the United States and elsewhere in the energy producing world. The companies, the investors, the energy entrepreneurs whom this budget will drive out of Canada are Canadians who already are comparing the higher returns and the more certain atmosphere south of the border and moving their dollars and their expertise out of this country to create jobs and growth somewhere else.
One of the ironies of this budget is that there is one region which this budget will undeniably help. This budget does a great deal to help the economies of Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, and of other American states which will take advantage of the investment money we are driving out of Canada and which will welcome the technicians, the experts and the investors, who would be happier staying at home and staying at work in Canada if there were a Canadian energy policy whose purpose was to find energy.
This document represents the triumph of ideology over common sense. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and his advisers live in a dream world-they believe if you talk fast and wave a flag, oil will miraculously appear. Well, the real world does not work that way. It does not always conform to economists' projections or intellectual theories. A similar approach nearly crippled the Canadian energy industry in 1974 when rigs and experts flooded out of Canada and, coincidentally, this nation began a slide into the arms of OPEC. We will see what happens now in this highly mobile industry, whether it stays in Canada or moves away, a rig at a time, an expert at a time, to make some other nation energy strong while Canada becomes more and more dependent upon foreign energy sources we cannot control.
One result out of this package is already evident. It has added to anger and to alienation in the west. It has struck another blow against Canadian unity. Already two of the energy producing provinces have announced their reactions. British Columbia is taking Ottawa to court, Saskatchewan is considering the same action. Alberta, the province against whose interest this package has been deliberately aimed, has
The Budget-Mr. Clark
not yet responded. But one can expect that province will respond. 1 think all of us recognize that it would be foolish to assume the province of Alberta would accept such deliberate federal provocation quietly.
Ten months ago we in this country had an energy policy to which the federal government and the provinces agreed, accepted by the industry, and designed to make Canada self-sufficient in energy by 1990. It was an agreement on which Canadians could plan with certainty and build with confidence. It would have produced more Canadian energy, more Canadian wealth, more Canadian jobs and more Canadian security. Today we have no energy agreement. Instead, we have a federal policy which has all the producing provinces angry and all of the industry upset. In place of certainty we have confrontation and potential chaos. Instead of building for the future we risk tearing down what we have and frittering away the unique energy potential of this country.
The government now has a clear choice to make. It can bull through the measures set forth in this budget. We all know from last week's closure that the silent majority over there will do anything their ministers tell them. The government can do that, but I stress that they will do it knowing these measures are seen by western Canadian as a direct attack on their resources and that they will be responded to in that way. Knowing all that, the government can persist on its course, realizing confrontation is inevitable, realizing serious disruption on the energy front and on questions relating to national unity. Serious disruption is a strong possibility. That is one choice before the government.
The other choice has been sitting on the desk of the Prime Minister for ten days now. It is an offer from the Premier of Alberta to sit down with him and try one last time to reach agreement. The Prime Minister has not met the premier on the subject since July 25. A lot has happened since then, including this budget. It is not asking too much of the Prime Minister of Canada to inconvenience himself, to use his word, and meet with the Premier of Alberta now. I do not know whether agreement is possible. Certainly attitudes are hardening by the hour and the atmosphere has soured dramatically since July. But the consequences of not even talking, not even trying to agree, are dangerously clear. They are conflict, confrontation, disruption, all caused by the federal government, and they are not good for Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Talk about Canadians.


Charles Joseph Clark: I hear from the back benches of the Liberal party someone saying that I should start talking about Canadians. It is my view that Albertans are Canadians, British Columbians are Canadians, and the citizens of Saskatchewan

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Clark
are Canadians. It is my view that there is an obligation upon the government to start treating them like Canadians and to stop building in policies which give advantages to Texans, Oklahomans and the citizens of OPEC countries, advantages which should be given to the citizens of this country so that we can get on with building Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: One of the matters which is most troubling to us here is that it would be absolutely unthinkable, as I have had occasion to say outside the House, for any government deliberately to fashion a policy against the basic interests of the province of Quebec. That would be unthinkable anywhere in this House by any party here, but it should be equally unthinkable for the Government of Canada to design a policy directly against the basic interests of any other province or region of this country. Yet, that is what this policy does. This is not a Canadian policy; this is an anti-Alberta policy, an anti-British Columbia policy, an anti-Saskatchewan policy. This is not a policy designed to build on the strengths of this country. This is a policy designed to cause division in the country, perhaps for political reasons, perhaps for constitutional reasons, but certainly not for reasons of accomplishing our economic goals or realizing our energy potential.
In the budget speech the Minister of Finance, reading what was written for him by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources, indicated that his government had the magnanimity to change positions on two questions of principle. One was indexing. He admitted that he listened to the protests against his plan to take indexing away from the poor of Canada, protests which came from this party. He said he listened to those, so he has delayed his plan for a year. He has amended his budget, he has amended his plan by leaving indexing in for at least one more year. The other is his claim that because of the protests of western provinces, particularly British Columbia, he has changed the export tax on natural gas. All he has changed is the name of the export tax on natural gas. The point is that if the Minister of Finance was prepared to change his position on indexing, if he was prepared to change at least the language which he used to describe an export tax on natural gas, why would he not now be prepared to sit down and seriously consider-and have his Prime Minister seriously consider-the offer by the Premier of Alberta before we proceed to the next stage in confrontation orchestrated by the federal government, to sit down premier-to-Prime Minister- "don't take Marc Lalonde"-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Order.


Charles Joseph Clark: -to sit down premier-to-Prime Minister to see if some new agreement could be worked out. That was the proposal put by the Premier of Alberta. One has to wonder, if it was put by another premier, whether it would have been more warmly responded to. In any event it was put by the Premier of Alberta, and the Prime Minister of Canada rejected it, saying it would be inconvenient for him to sit down with
the premier to try to avoid a confrontation which could be deeply damaging to this country. The Prime Minister has put his personal convenience to the fore far too long. It would be convenient to Canada to get on with developing our energy potential. It would be convenient to Canada to stop these federally-orchestrated feuds with the provinces. It would be convenient to Canada to make this nation work, and I suggest that is the obligation of the present government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Yesterday I told the Minister of Finance I would be pleased to show him and the people of Canada how the government had betrayed its election promise to keep energy prices to the consumers of Canada lower than we proposed last December. Let me start with the current year. We proposed an increase of $4 per barrel in wellhead prices. On Tuesday night the minister added 80 cents per barrel to the $3 per barrel increase already in place and to the 75-cent increase already made in the Syncrude levy. That means for the year 1980 the government is increasing the wellhead price of oil by $4.55 per barrel, more than 10 per cent higher than the $4 increase we proposed. I remember, as I am sure the people of Canada will, the promises of the Prime Minister that the price would not rise above $4 per barrel. At that time we said that that promise was worth as much as his earlier promise never to bring in wage and price controls. Now we have the proof that he is as trustworthy in 1980 as he was in 1974, because the Liberal government, having promised solemnly not to raise prices higher than $4 per barrel, has raised them $4.55 per barrel; another broken promise.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Mr, Clark:: In the next three years the minister is proposing $4.50 a barrel, the same rate that we set out ten months ago. And what is their ultimate ceiling on prices? It is 85 per cent of world or U.S. prices, which is precisely the same ceiling which we set ten months ago. In fact it is a full 10 per cent higher than the ceiling which the Premier of Alberta offered this government in July. That is a question for this government. In energy negotiations it is one area in which they succeeded more than we. They got the government of Alberta down to a 75 per cent level, but then they threw it away.
The province of Alberta was prepared to agree to a lower ceiling. This government insist on a higher ceiling. Why do they want to expose the industries of Ontario, Quebec and all of Canada to higher energy costs than those which could have been achieved? Why do they insist on a higher ceiling than the government of Alberta was prepared to agree to? What sense does it make? I hope the ministers and members opposite will respond to this question, particularly the Minister of Labour (Mr. Regan), who is here and who represents low-income constituents. He represents them at least for the time being.
I hope that they will indicate to this House why it was that this government insist upon a higher ceiling than the government of Alberta was prepared to accept. Why is there that
October 30, 1980

determination to add extra costs to the industries of Canada and the individual taxpayers? Why would they not settle for the lower cost of oil? Why did they insist on a higher price for oil and a higher ceiling than the province of Alberta was seeking?
In any event, that is what they have done. Alberta said 75 per cent and the Liberal government said, "Oh, no, Canadian industries and Canadian individuals can stand a higher price. Kick it up to 85 per cent." That is the comparison with wellhead prices. By 1983 under this budget those prices will be slightly higher than we proposed-55 cents a barrel. But that does not include the so-called Canadian ownership charge, the open-ended invitation to tax Canadians which this government is giving to a Crown corporation-Petro-Canada.
The minister's own officials talked in terms of a tax as high as $4 a barrel. If that tax is used to that level over the next four years-and I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if anyone in Canada has ever known this government not to use a tax to the legal maximum-then by 1983 MacEachen oil will cost $4.55 a barrel more than Crosbie oil would have cost.
If you applied that, plus the proposed natural gas tax increases, to the average Canadian consumer, here is what you will find. By 1983, under our budget, the average consumer would have been paying $983 more a year for heating oil and gasoline, with his or her net cost being $763, if he or she qualified for the full energy tax credit. We proposed this tax credit to help low-income Canadians, and this government, because of its disinterest in low income Canadians, has written it out of its budget. In contrast, under this budget, by 1983 the average Canadian consumer will be paying $1,100 more a year for heating oil and gasoline. That is $337 more than he or she would have paid with our energy tax credit, and $117 more than he or she would have paid even if he or she did not qualify for that tax credit.
Those are the facts, Mr. Speaker. That is what the Liberal promise of lower energy costs means to Canada. To the Liberal party "lower" means "higher", "no controls" means "more controls" and "below $4" means "above $4". This is the party of duplicity. This is the party which, instead of dealing directly with the economic problems of this country and instead of dealing directly even with the energy and economic potential of this country, has chosen here to avoid those problems and to undermine and erode that potential.
This budget could have given Canada direction-it did not. It could have contributed to Canadian unity-it did the opposite. This budget could have moved this country toward energy self-sufficiency. Instead it is moving this country away from energy self-sufficiency and toward more activity by Canadian money and experts in other countries, toward a greater reliance by the people of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario and the people of all of Canada upon the insecure sources of supply from OPEC nations. This budget could have helped low-income Canadians, as the Crosbie budget did. But this budget ignored low income Canadians. This budget could have been courageous and honest, because there is a majority
The Budget-Mr. Regan
government to back it up. Instead this budget is divisive and creates illusions for the people of Canada.
It is a budget which missed the opportunity to provide economic leadership for the country. It is a budget which will drive energy investment and energy expertise out of Canada and put Canadians back into the situation of relying more upon foreign sources of supply. These are foreign sources of petroleum which we cannot control. It is a budget which deserves rejection by this House of Commons.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Gerald Regan (Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to participate in this debate I do so with some distress at the inaccurate statements made by the right hon. gentleman with reference to the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen). I will turn to those in just a moment.
I say once again, as I have said in the past, that I have a very considerable respect for the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark). In honesty, I cannot say that my respect has been heightened as a consequence of his remarks in the last few minutes. Indeed, his speech can only be characterized as a sour grapes speech based on the fact that they could not do it and it pains him terribly to see that someone else was able to bring in a successful budget, one which can help the economy and the people of this country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Gerald Augustine Regan: The Minister of Finance, to whom the right hon. gentleman referred, has a most distinguished career with respect to helping the people behind him. Over the years in this House he has been known always to follow the high road of helping those who need help. He has done this for many years, long before the Leader of the Opposition himself was here. The sadness of the position of the right hon. gentleman opposite is that even though, in his heart of hearts he knew better, he caved in to the Baron of Water Street last November when he went along with the 18-cent excise tax on top of the oil price increases. He now conveniently and totally forgets this and does not mention it at any point in his comments when he compares the two budgets. Of course, that is a very convenient lapse of memory.
What distresses me most is that one would have thought that the Leader of the Opposition would have learned a new trick since last year. He is still trying to fool the people with last year's trick, which did not work then. Does he now feel he has perfected it to the point at which he is now going to con them and get them to change their minds, after this passage of time, by defending last year's budget which was rejected by the people across the country?
If the right hon. gentleman, who says that the budget was an energy statement and not a budget, had a better understanding of the connection between energy and the economy, he might still be in office.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Regan


Gerald Augustine Regan: If he had had the strength to stand up to his minister of finance he might still be in office. If he had stopped to realize, when that 18-cent excise tax was proposed on a commodity which was going to rise in price tremendously anyhow, how punitive that was, he might still be in office. If he had stopped to realize that his minister of finance, the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), came from a group of merchants in Water Street, St. John's, who are not noted for their compassion, which is something my ancestors in rural Newfoundland could well attest to, then he might have stood up to him. The cold hard fact is different. For him to say that the budget presented by the Minister of Finance was mindless and heartless, when he had supported and condoned a budget that put a special tax on a commodity that was rising in cost at any time shows that he takes a very unusual position.
I want to make two or three more remarks about his comments, Mr. Speaker. First of all, he makes an effort to link the NDP with the Liberals. He does this at a time when his friends in the Conservative party, like Mr. Buchanan, the Premier of Nova Scotia, have just appointed the leader of the New Democratic Party in Nova Scotia to one of the top civil service positions in the province-the sensitive position of director of intergovernmental affairs and deputy minister.


Walter David Baker: How could he have overlooked you?


Mr. McDermid:: He took care of you, too.


Walter David Baker: That is one job you won't get.


Gerald Augustine Regan: Well, you win some and you lose some,-and some are rained out.
I was distressed by the essence of what the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition said when he talked about the rigs probably going south as a result of the financing policies outlined in the budget. The stark statement he makes is that we should pay more to the multinationals-that we should bribe them with this nation's destiny in order to have them remain here rather than develop policies on the basis that we are using at the present time.


An hon. Member:: That is not what he said.


Gerald Augustine Regan: Oh, there were other things too. No wonder they are squealing over there, Mr. Speaker, because that hurts. When they start squealing, you know it hurts.


An hon. Member:: That is not what he said.


Gerald Augustine Regan: Let them continue to squeal, but preferably not so loud.
The other thing he talks about is prices. The two biggest distortions that they have practised over the past ten months with great energy are, first, that there was something in their budget that was going to contribute to self-sufficiency which
does not exist in the Liberal platform. They are unable to say what it is. The distinction is that they were going to pay vast rewards to the multinational companies to take the money out of this country for oil that has already been discovered and is already being produced. There are still incentives for new oil-just as good and even better incentives for Canadians, but they turn their backs on that.
The other distortion is that prices are comparable. Every time he tries to compare prices, he compares apples and oranges. He does not add the 18-cent excise tax nor does he say anything at all about the fact that under the previous minister of finance who came from St. John's West, at the end of the third year they would move to 75 per cent of world price-a $10 hike or in all probability more by that time-and by 1984 they would move to 85 per cent of world price. He seems to forget those footnotes.
On this general subject, Mr. Speaker, I want to say that I thought the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition might have something new to say. Instead, he spoke-and it was not a question of speaking as an Albertan or a Canadian but more like a man who was speaking as an Albertan first rather than as a Canadian first.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Steve Eugene Paproski: Come on now; that is awful.


Walter David Baker: You are going to need help from Buchanan.


Gerald Augustine Regan: Mr. Speaker, I want to say something about the Liberal budget and then I will have something more to say that may be of interest to my squealing friends.
This budget signifies our commitment to fiscal responsibility, and it calls upon those who have reaped the most from the Canadian economic society to make the greatest contribution.
It indicates our determination to make the most of our energy opportunities, and it fulfils the promises the Liberal party made in the election campaign.
The next point is that energy questions are integral to the economic performance and industrial development of this country. To ignore this fact is to be out of touch with reality.
Budget making is the most difficult part of the art of governing. The pleasure of governing is spending on worthwhile programs for the benefit of our people and the improvement of our country. The pain of governing is the difficult chore of collecting the money to carry out the programs; the arbitrary task of deciding who pays and how much. The necessity of government is doing this. The responsibility of government is doing it as equitably as possible with recognition of the burdens of individuals and industries; of protecting those who must be protected and, at the same time, of maintaining employment and incentive.
None of these goals is absolute; none can be achieved to the extent that all representatives of the people would wish. In our imperfect society, the art of governing is that of reaching those goals to the greatest degree that the resources of a country will
October 30, 1980

allow. The wisest minister of finance who ever lived cannot provide the benefits that Swedes receive, from the limited resources of a country like Bangladesh. In meeting these goals as well as this budget does, the Minister of Finance has performed an admirable feat and he has done incredibly better than his predecessor.
The opposition parties say the budget is not good. They say it is bad, for very different reasons. If you discount a certain amount of what each says, you end up in the middle of the budget, and the provisions it makes. It is a heck of a good budget.
This budget must be regarded with the recognition that the western world is in an ever-deepening energy crisis, a crisis that has aborted the normal economic cycles. This crisis has brought inevitable burdens to people in many countries of the western world in vastly increased energy costs-and beyond the western world. It poses special problems to those who live, as we do, in northern climes and who have the added cost of energy for heating. It has affected trade and comparative standards of living. It is a crisis that requires extraordinary response.
This is not just a budget to deal with the country's financial affairs for a year. It is a new direction, bold undertaking to plot a secure Canadian future in an uncertain world.
For countries without resources, this international crisis is bringing disaster and comparative declining standards of living-hence the need for the provision in the budget for greater Third World aid. Some Third World countries are the hardest hit by the increased energy costs. That is what it brings for countries that do not have natural resources. For countries with resources, like Canada, it brings a difficult challenge but exciting opportunities.
Canada has resources, undeveloped resources. We have opportunities, and to fail to seize the emerging options would be an abandonment of the responsibility of government and would carry long term penalties for our people.
To seize those opportunities comprehensively is to reach for an attainable far horizon where Canadians, almost alone in the western world, can enjoy energy self-sufficiency at the minimum price that will bring the maximum development and therefore a dominant economic position for this country to carry into the twenty-first century.
The budget outlined by the Minister of Finance for the first time presents us with more than a one-year goal. It provides a comprehensive reaction to today's realities. The opportunity that exists for Canada is being seized by this budget. What does it provide? It provides an opportunity to combat a lagging economy by spurring industrial growth and job creation. The energy package in the budget is a vast industrial strategy made possible by the crisis that affects the world today.
Some people say that there is not an industrial strategy. We are not only increasing the economic development envelope, Mr. Speaker, and we are not only undertaking new industrial strategies not related to energy, but the energy related indus-
The Budget-Mr. Regan
trial strategy is perhaps the most exciting thing that has happened in this country for a long time.
A review of the budget shows vast assistance to the development of the Lower Churchill in Labrador. It shows the construction of the Q and M Pipe Lines all the way to Halifax. You find incentives, placing money and jobs in every region of the country, for conversion from oil furnaces to gas furnaces. That alone will have a profound effect on employment.
What about the $4 billion western initiatives package? Will that not create jobs? I come now to the frontier development. What about the steel that will be needed, the roads, the equipment as a result of the energy development? With something like $11.8 billion to be spent on projects of an energy-related nature, in the next several years, I suggest that that activity will bring about economic activity far beyond the direct projects themselves and will help employment tremendously.
When this government announced the pre-build of the pipeline in southern Alberta, Stuart Cook, Ontario regional director of the United Steelworkers of America gave his full support and the support of the steelworkers to this project. These people knew that it meant jobs and economic activity. If it did, think of how much greater this is in relation to all of the vast projects involved in this job-oriented budget.
Let me move on and tell hon. members what else this budget provides. It provides an opportunity to halt and reverse the growing dominance of our economy by several multinational foreign-owned oil corporations. The increase in the value of oil, at the stroke of a pen each time the price of oil goes up, vastly increases the value of foreign holdings in this country. It increases the value on their books, the value to them of American holdings in this country of the vast reservoirs of oil which they have already discovered and are producing.
Our current deficit is affected to a very adverse degree by a flight of interest and dividend payments from this country to shareholders of those multinational companies in the United States. There is also the enhancement of the foreign equity holdings. As the value of their holdings and reservoirs goes up, their stock values go up. Similarly the cost to Canada of ever buying out those shares from American owners becomes more and more remote.
Even if you were to prevent the foreign oil corporations in this country from taking the money out of Canada, then they could not possibly invest the vast earnings they are getting with the higher prices from oil production alone. What they will do, as some of them already have been doing with buy-outs, is to move to other aspects of the economy. Therefore over the next few years as their cash flow vastly increases, their holdings will be increased an incredible amount. Our answer is greater Canadian ownership through acquisitions and special incentives to Canadian owned oil and gas corporations, as well as the intervention by PetroCan. That is the direction in which Canada must move if we are ever to repatriate our economy.

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Regan
I must remind hon. members that Petro-Canada is the corporation which the hon. member for St. John's West and the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition just last year were determined to destroy, and judging from their statements a week or two ago they still take that position. I am sure they will not be heartened by the Gallup poll which showed in yesterday's Toronto Star that today 82 per cent of Canadians-up some 8 per cent since last year-recognize the value of Petro-Canada and want PetroCan to continue to do the sorts of things it is doing which are so vital to the Canadian economy.
Petro-Canada is the company which made Hibernia and Sable Island possible by participating in the cost of those drilling programs when the multinationals had backed off. These projects would not have gone ahead if Petro-Canada had not participated. PetroCan also helped in the Beaufort Sea. Petro-Canada is the company the Conservatives would have done away with. We have to decide in this House, in considering this budget, whether we want to salvage our destiny or become hewers of wood and drawers of water as the Conservative pattern of playing into the hands of those multinationals would have us do.
My time is short, and I want to move on. The budget also offers a plan to shelter our people, to an extent possible, from higher prices. We recognize that there must be higher prices, but only those necessary higher prices that contribute to the well-being of our people.
The budget of a former minister of finance, the hon. member for St. John's West, had three defects. First, it raised the price on old as well as on new oil, thus unnecessarily enriching foreigners, and it placed those foreign oil companies ahead of the Canadian working people. Instead, we provide the incentive for new oil while keeping some sense in the escalation of the price of the old, and guaranteeing greater Canadian ownership in the new production. I say to hon. members, decide which you prefer of the two budgets in that regard.
The second defect is that it proposed to raise prices, which we recognize must go up, but the proposed rate of increase would have placed impossible burdens on our consumers. The Tories pursued one goal, that of raising the prices to move toward sufficiency, but they forgot the other one, that of sheltering our people-a Tory tendency, I might say. I think when you consider that the Tory budget contributed no more to self-sufficiency than does ours, then the error of their ways can readily be seen. Our budget is less burdensome to the consumers. Before bringing down the budget we recognized the problems of our senior citizens and increased the guaranteed income supplement.
The third defect in the Tory budget placed an excise tax on gasoline. Heaven knows why. This 18-cent excise tax was on top of all the other increases which, in themselves, are larger than ours for oil and gas.
I want to recommend that Conservative members study the table published in yesterday's Toronto Star on gasoline prices, entitled Crosbie versus MacEachen. I tell hon. members to take a look at the comparisons. It shows for 1981 under the
MacEachen budget $1.36 per gallon; under the Crosbie budget $1.56. In 1984 under the Liberal budget the cost is $1.95 per gallon, yet under the Conservative budget the cost would be $2.63 per gallon.


Some hon. Members:: Shame!


Steve Eugene Paproski: That is how much the Toronto Star knows.


Gerald Augustine Regan: That is how much the hon. member knows.


Mr. Kempling:: It is the "Trudeau Star".


Gerald Augustine Regan: No one in Canada, perhaps other than the Leader of the Opposition, is more sensitive to the success of the Minister of Finance's budget then the member for St. John's West. I notice that he used the word in his remarks yesterday or the day before, of "lemmings"-that little animal. I thought that that was an unfortunate example when you consider their suicidal trek to the sea caused by their budget last year.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Gerald Augustine Regan: Unfortunately the hon. member is unrepentant in his desire to solve energy prices on the backs of working people. Let me say this: some people say that our program is unfair to the west. Let us return to basics. Does the existence of an international cartel to multiply oil prices artificially justify to Canadians that we automatically impose the same havoc on our own people? Only if the answer is yes, only if our producers join in the looting of society can it be said that the producers are being punished by this budget.
If you regard the vast increase in the Canadian price of oil and gas products, you recognize no hardship in the national necessity of taking a very small part of the current price enhancement for the noble national purpose of repatriating our economy, meeting the costs of sheltering our consumers from unreasonable cost burdens.
To do that, if more funds are required for such purposes for government, do you tax industries with expanding revenue and profits, or do you expand those that are in trouble? Remember, this is a crisis situation. We have in this country a tradition of sharing. In the past, when its relative wealth to the rest of Canada was small compared to Alberta today, Ontario had to assume that burden. In my own province, and in other provinces, great benefits were received as a result of taxes paid in Ontario and the equalization which followed from that. I am sure the majority of the people of Alberta recognize that with their sudden increased wealth they have some role in Canadian sharing today.
We have in Canada an economic and fiscal crisis. This crisis is contemporaneously warping the fiscal and economic fibre of our country. The imbalance of revenue, if unredressed, will mean serious consequences for minimum national standards which must be maintained. I am sure hon. members will agree that they cannot picture Ethiopia and Switzerland as both
October 30, 1980

being states in one federation without some cash transfers. There must be some relationships between the standards of living and the level of public service in different parts of the country.
Those provinces which from time to time happen to have great wealth have to help provide that sharing in the country. Some say, however, that we are depressing the price of Alberta's depleting resource. I love that province very much. It is a blessed province. However, after oil they have gas, after gas they have coal, after coal, far on into the twenty-second century, they have tar sands. With their incisive entrepreneurship you can be sure that Albertans will play a key role in the development of the north and northern resources, and bring back further wealth from that.
The most important thing we can do is repatriate our economy. The hon. member for St. John's West said that in buying out the American multinational corporations we use up our resources for nothing, that we do not bring about the production of one extra barrel of oil. I say no. I want the people of Canada to know that what we will be doing as oil companies are purchased is that we will replace American equity capital by foreign debt capital. It would have been much better if our country had been developed in that way in the first place. The United States development was financed by debt financing from Europe rather than equity financing.


Walter David Baker: Who was in power when that happened?


Gerald Augustine Regan: I recognize the flat earthers will have difficulty seeing that, but I believe, and I think most Canadians believe, that it is extremely vital that we patriate our constitution and our economy.
This budget clearly shows that this government is as determined to restore our economic sovereignty as it is to assure our political sovereignty. In our constitutional package there is provision to make our constitution Canadian, and now, in our budget, there is provision to make the oil industry Canadian. On both counts, the Tories stand opposed to the Liberal government. Both issues show clearly the differences between the Liberal and Conservative parties. It is the Liberal party that wants to move ahead, to seize the moment, and it is the Tory party that is determined to hold back the clock. I believe they stopped the one on the Tower. I believe with regard to that comparison, the position of the Liberal and Conservative parties, that the people and history will be kind to the Liberal party.
The Budget-Mr. Nielsen



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Waterloo (Mr. McLean)-Industry-Application to FIRA by Finnish Tire Company-Reason for government approval; the hon. member for Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands (Mr. Manly)-Indian Affairs-Consultation on proposed financing agreements; the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace (Mr. Allmand)-The constitution-Consultations with Indian groups.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. MacEachen that this House approves in general the budgetary policy of the government and the amendment thereto of Mr. Crosbie (p. 4231) and the amendment to the amendment of Mr. Rae (p. 4235).
Hon. Erik Nielsen (Yukon):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to say a few words today about probably the highest cost area in the entire country, that of my riding. It is an area where fuel costs constitute one of the major components of the average householder's budget. Fuel costs in the city of Whitehorse for stove oil are $1.61 a gallon. Regular gasoline sells for $1.32 a gallon, plus 14 cents tax, and unleaded gasoline costs $1.49, plus the 14 cents tax. These costs become even more astronomical as we move north.
In Dawson city we find that furnace oil costs $1.49 a gallon, whereas in Mayo furnace oil is $1.74 a gallon. At Beaver Creek, furnace oil costs $1.26 a gallon. In other communities it goes as high as $2.30 a gallon. Gasoline, essential for native trapping in that part of Canada, costs $2.50 a gallon in some communities. Indeed, a cord of cheap wood costs $115. Fuel costs in these areas are even higher when one gets into the Northwest Territories and the more northerly portions of that jurisdiction.
During the last election campaign the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) made a few speeches, not too many, in the south. He was kept a little too closely wrapped up by his handlers. He made one speech in Halifax setting forth several promises, promises which have been broken in the short time these rascals have been back.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Honourable rascals.

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Nielsen


Erik Nielsen: Ele made a promise in Toronto, a five-point platform, that was shattered. Ele also made some very interesting speeches in the north during that campaign. One was made in Whitehorse and the other in Yellowknife. By coincidence, I just happen to have a transcript of the speech he made in Whitehorse on January 21, 1980, at a rally being held for the Yukon Liberal candidate.
Hon. members will recall that in the Crosbie budget of last December the taxation which was being suggested on fuels was confined to transportation fuels. There was no tax suggested in the Crosbie budget to be imposed on home heating fuels. Quite apart from the offsets in the form of energy tax credits which were contained in the budget, the defeat of which was engineered by our friends to the left, the Prime Minister on January 21, 1980, said in Whitehorse, and I quote his words:
The climate, more extreme than southern Canada, your communications, your transportation, are more difficult, and your costs are considerably higher than they are in the south, but what you need is a national government which is practical and which is sensible, that's consistent-and what you had with the Joe Clark government is a giant double-cross.
Those are strong words. And he goes on to say on what he bases his opinion:
The last thing you need in the north is an 18-cent per gallon tax on gasoline and on diesel and which I repeat will serve entirely to pay for that mortgage plan, and nowhere will that Joe Clark tax hurt more than here in the north, because under the energy plan every household here in Whitehorse-every household will be paying nearly five hundred dollars ... more for home heating oil by 1982.
Those are the words of the Prime Minister. When he uttered them he knew full well that there was no tax on home heating fuel. So much for the integrity of the man who now occupies the highest office in this country. He deliberately, in public on a public platform, told a deliberate falsehood to the people of Yukon. It was reported in the press. And he has the gall, and I do not intend a pun on that word, to refer to the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark), the then prime minister, as being guilty of a double-cross.
We have the $500 increase in Whitehorse now, and it is no thanks to the Crosbie budget, but thanks to a Prime Minister who deliberately lied to the people at that meeting in Whitehorse. The hon. member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans) was not here when I quoted from the speech of the Prime Minister.
I am prepared to stand by those words because they are there in black and white.
A tax has been levied by this government which will double the heating bills of every household in Yukon. Indeed, it will double heating bills throughout this country. As the Prime Minister himself said in the speech from which I just quoted, it is more costly to live in the north. I have given out some of the costs of fuel oil in that part of the country.
There was another benefit to which the then minister of finance, the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), agreed before the budget was defeated and before the necessary resolution could be brought in, and that was the introduction of further benefits to ease the burden of fuel consumers in
the more remote parts of the north. I believe it was yesterday that the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) challenged the Leader of the Opposition to prove that the new taxes on gas, oil and heating fuel will prove more costly to the consumer than those of the Clark budget. The issue has now become one of the credibility of the minister and the government.
I just alluded to the crumbling of the credibility of a Prime Minister who went into a public meeting and stated the things that he did, knowing full well that they were absolutely false. During the election campaign, the Liberal party promised not to raise the price of oil and gas to the consumer. That was the promise.


Mr. Evans:: That is not true.


Erik Nielsen: The hon. member for Ottawa Centre says that that is not true. It is true. The Liberals promised not to raise the price of gasoline in this country. That was their election promise. That was their whole campaign. The election promise was that prices would not rise.


John Leslie Evans: That is not true.


Erik Nielsen: They were just as deceitful then as they are in the wording of this budget which is just as craftily put together and just as full of guile. I repeat, the election promise was that gas and oil prices would not rise. Now enters the question of credibility. Beginning in January Canadian motorists and tourists will be paying 15 cents more for a gallon of gasoline. In 1981 Canadian householders will face fuel costs that are double those of last year. That is just a beginning. There is no question, in spite of the way the minister juggled the figures, that in 1982 and in 1983 across-the-board fuel costs will have surpassed those projected in the Crosbie budget. Let the hon. member for Ottawa Centre tell me that the very least that is true is that his party promised to hold prices below the price increases in the Crosbie budget. I see that he is nodding his head in the affirmative.


John Leslie Evans: And the facts prove that that is correct.


Erik Nielsen: The government went well beyond the Crosbie price proposals. The Minister of Finance indulged in what I believe is fiscal legerdemain to try to prove a point. In spite of his word and wonderful permutations and computations, the facts are there. The figures of the Crosbie budget are available. The hon. member for St. John's West went into them to some extent yesterday. Clearly, the Liberal government of today has not in any way adhered to its promise of holding prices down. The hon. member for St. John's West also reminded us yesterday of the famous promise made by the Prime Minister in Toronto, that spending would be held down.
Today, the government is following the same tortuous course it followed in wage and price controls by ramming down the throats of Canadians arbitrary constitutional provisions in spite of provincial resistance. The credibility of this government is in rags and tatters once again. It is no wonder. It is the same old bunch with no imagination, the same tired old bunch that has been over there for 12 years. They have no
October 30, 1980

new ideas except a Machiavellian approach to expressing the same things that were in the Crosbie budget, but adding to the burdens of the very people whom we tried to shelter in the Crosbie budget.
For the Minister of Finance to come before this House at this stage of the proceedings and talk about credibility, is the final absurdity. The minister's budget performance was one of the most impressive in recent history. His suiting was as impeccable as was his phraseology, as he carefully explained why, beginning in the new year, Canadians will be paying more for gasoline and oil than they would have paid in the budget which we brought down a few months ago. He has managed to postpone the day of reckoning by a few short months, but when it comes it will hit harder than the budgetary changes which we had contemplated.
This budget doubles the heating bill of every Canadian family. This is from a government which campaigned on the promise not to raise the price of gas and oil and which campaigned in 1974 against wage and price controls but then turned around and brought them in. Credibility? Hon. members must not forget that this takes place in the context of the enormous subsidies paid by the Liberal government to keep down the price of gas and oil. Now those prices will go up, as 1 have said, well beyond those predicted in the Crosbie budget of last year. The enormous subsidies which the government has paid out over these years have been wasted on the desert air.
The most insidious feature of the budget is the creeping control that the federal government plans to assert over the extractive industries. We are now embarking-and this is just the tip of the iceberg, as I assess their antics over there-on the same course down which the Labour government took British industry in its nationalization program. 1 reject that, even though my friends to the left will be happy with it but perhaps not with its speed. This government, which has run the country into the hole to the tune of $14 billion, now attempts to compound this malfeasance by taking for its own purposes some 24 per cent of the oil income. There is no question here of cutting back. They have done nothing.


An hon. Member:: You didn't learn.


Erik Nielsen: There is an interjection from over there, sir, that we did not learn. We do not want to learn to function in that deceitful, underhanded and wily way. If that is what it has come to in this country, that in order to find ourselves across the way once again we must learn to be as deceitful as that government over there, then we have come to a sorry pass indeed in this country.
I do not blame the general voting population of this country for having as low an opinion of politicians as they do. 1 point out to them, though, that it is those people over there who have been in office the major portion of the last half century.
For members of this government to come to the House and demand the right to tax the oil industry up to a quarter of that industry's revenues as a cure for the economic malaise they
The Budget-Mr. Nielsen
themselves have created, is exactly like a drunk demanding to be cured of his habit by being handed a quart bottle of whiskey. That is exactly the parallel of the cure they are trying to find. There is no question of any repentance on their part, nor even is there any question of an acknowledgment that they are the authors of the greatest spending spree in the country's history, a debt which has ballooned some eight to eight and a half times in the short 12 years they have been over there, and a deficit which was $1 billion when they took office and is now-it will be before this fiscal year is ended-approaching $16 billion, in my estimation, and not $14 billion. They are the biggest spenders in the country's history.
We have the highest rate of unemployment in the country's history, the highest interest rates in the country's history, and now the highest fuel costs in the country's history, and that after a campaign in which they said that they would not allow fuel costs to rise. You do not cure the kind of extravaganzas on which this government has embarked by handing those irresponsible people over there billions of dollars to play around with. That is what they are asking for here, billions of dollars more. They are asking for a billion here and a billion there. It is of little moment to the present Minister of Finance. A few hundred thousand unemployed here, a few hundred thousand there, perhaps a million-what does he care? Put on another shift at the mint. That is the answer from this Disneyland government.
Technically Canada has been bankrupt for something like three years. What else can we call it when a country is in the hole for an amount representing some 20 per cent of its annual revenues. That is why the Canadian dollar has been in difficulty and is down again. I hear one of those economic pundits over there. That is why it is in difficulty. That is why our U.S. reserves have dropped below salutary levels. That is why our export picture and our balance of trade have been unhealthy. A spendthrift and prolifigate government has been running hog wild with the patrimony of the Canadian people, passing on the accumulation of their created debts to as yet unborn generations. It is robbing Peter, not to pay Paul but simply in order to carry on with its spendthrift policies.
We saw the present Minister of Finance prior to the election running around Cape Breton-if it is possible to conceive of that spectacle-promising $50 million to SYSCO in order to buy votes. That is ethics for you. What a sad and degrading spectacle. A man apparently of high principles was reduced to buying votes in a blatant and extravagant fashion. None of this appears in the budget because they were running scared then. Now they expect to remain in power for a few years.
So, the iron fist of Liberalism and the iron fist of the Prime Minister once again appear. His answer is to crush. This budget does not represent the cost of running this country. It represents the cost of keeping the Liberals in power, and that is the real meaning of this situation. It is an example of political inflation of the worst kind.
The minister rose on budget night looking like a man who had pulled a rabbit out of a hat. What came out of it was not a rabbit. It was more like a boa constrictor!

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Nielsen
Tom Gould, a commentator noted for sincerity and honesty, said this morning that the minister had avoided antagonizing the oil companies and avoided a head-on confrontation with Alberta and at the same time had added billions to federal revenues while asserting the federal government's intention to get into the marketplace, or words to that effect. Presumably the minister would agree with that favourable analysis, but let us have a look at the cost. He has staked out a claim to 24 per cent of national oil revenues, a claim to which it is extremely doubtful that the federal government has any clear entitlement. It is a claim which will be disputed by the provinces by every means at their command, further worsening relations between the federal government and all levels of government. The fact that these huge revenues are being sought, not in pursuance of a policy of economizing and cutting out waste, renders the situation even more subject to criticism.
There is no sign in this budget that the government intends to follow a policy of sensible and stable reduction of costs. Quite the contrary, every indication is to the contrary. Expenditures are up, not down. Programs are increased, not being cut back. We hear the empty words of the Minister of Finance saying he will embark on no new programs, yet that is precisely what he is doing. Hon. members opposite are even talking about more Crown agencies to move into oil field to compete with private industry to try to wrest control of resources from the provinces by this device. Why does this government proliferate Crown corporations in the manner that the walnut tree grows new walnuts? One reason is simply that the expenditures of Crown corporations are not subject to the same direct scrutiny which affects government departments. That is another thing we lost here. We have lost the ability to scrutinize any of these expenditures in a meaningful way. Through the device of spawning Crown corporations the Liberal party has removed from parliamentary control or scrutiny vast areas of activity in a number of vital domains including petroleum, transportation, and others.
In each case we have witnessed the burgeoning of fiefdoms of Liberal patronage growing and swelling at the taxpayers' expense, and now this budget proposes another such entity to conceal from the gaze of the Canadian taxpayer-if he is still breathing when that time comes-the application of Liberal policies in the field of petroleum.
On top of all this we must advert to the manipulation engaged in by the minister prior to the release of his budget when, for a period of ten days, he let fall little tidbits from his table about the way he was going to crack down on registered pension plans, the way he was going to raise individual income taxes, and so forth. He was deliberately manipulating the slavish media to create a climate of despair so that, when this make-shift budget finally appeared, it would grow and sparkle by comparison with the advance warnings. If it was a plot, it succeeded admirably as the media fell in line with the carefully calculated leaks administered by Liberal party flacks-


An hon. Member:: Sucked in.


Erik Nielsen: Yes, sucked in, in spades.
Perhaps it is this kind of unprincipled manipulation by a minister who is a past master at the game which represents the most sordid aspect of the whole sleazy, deceitful performance.
As Canadians pay an additional 18 cents a gallon for gasoline in the new year, with more and steeper rises to come, and as householders find their fuel costs doubling through the winter months, Mr. Speaker, I hope they will pause and reflect on the duplicity of a political party which won an election on the promise made over and over again that they would not do precisely what they have now done in this budget. As hundreds of small businesses in the trucking industry and in transportation of all kinds, as well as those which depend on transportation, find themselves with their backs to the wall-because there are no compensating factors in this budget-they too may reflect on the morality of a party which has broken its solemn engagements, solemn commitments.
Our budget raised fuel prices as a modest and realistic way of coping with the problem. Anyone is free to examine our proposals and compare them with the Draconian measures brought down last night.


An hon. Member:: Read the Toronto Star.


Erik Nielsen: The Toronto Star? That bastion of impartial, unbiased journalism, compared them last night.


An hon. Member:: How about The Toronto Sunl


Erik Nielsen: 1 invite hon. members opposite to do the comparing for themselves. I do not have the time in my remarks.


An hon. Member:: Ask Blakeney or Turner.


Erik Nielsen: See your Prime Minister about the statement he made on January 21, 1980, and compare.
Our budget provided compensatory provisions. We tempered the wind, quite literally, for householders and small businesses. The minister has kept the negative aspects and thrown out the positive approach which we recommended and which alone made the others feasible and palatable.
It is, of course, traditional for the Liberal party, to decry what an opposing party does and then to adopt it holus-bolus-the NDP is familiar with that kind of conduct, they have been living with it for years-but with no understanding of the philosophy behind the recommendations.
Our budget presented balanced and reasonable proposals. The budget before us now presents many of the same proposals but without the other proposals required to compensate and counterbalance the measures which we suggested. In other words, it is a picture of fiscal imbalance and fiscal bias being perpetrated for political advantage. This is what Canadians are being asked to accept and, like the constitutional proposals, it shows the true face of Liberalism.
In the constitutional proposals they placed the provinces in a strait-jacket. With the budget they have placed small business
October 30, 1980

and the householder in that strait-jacket. All that remains is for the voters, at the next election-and it cannot come too soon-to place the Liberal party in a strait-jacket from which it will not wriggle free for a long time to come.
I want to close by quoting, for the benefit of the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, the words that he missed because he was taking umbrage, in a very agitated way, because they are strong words. To accuse any hon. member of deliberately lying is to use strong words. But I am doing that tonight with respect to the Prime Minister and I am doing it on the basis of a speech that he made in Whitehorse on January 21, 1980. I have a transcript of the words he used on that occasion. Here it is in black and white. The hon. member will recall that the Crosbie budget did not tax home heating fuels, only transportation fuels. I see him nodding his assent to that.


An hon. Member:: The excise tax only.


Erik Nielsen: It did not apply to home heating fuels.


An hon. Member:: That is correct.


Erik Nielsen: That is my point. He agrees it is correct. The Prime Minister was speaking about the north, and he said:
The climate, more extreme than southern Canada, your communications, your transportation, are more difficult, and your costs are considerably higher than they are in the south, but what you need is a national government which is practical and which is sensible, that's consistent-and what you had with the Joe Clark government is a giant doublecross. The last thing you need in the north-
Pay attention to that.

is an eighteen cent per gallon tax on gasoline and on diesel and I repeat will serve entirely to pay for that mortgage plan, and nowhere will that Joe Clark tax hurt more than here in the north, because under that energy plan, every household here in Whitehorse-every household will be paying nearly five hundred dollars a year more for home heating oil by 1982.
Nothing could be clearer than this outright, deliberate falsehood by the Prime Minister. He directly stated there what he would not say in Toronto or Halifax for the sake of gaining a seat which he has been after for a good many years. If the hon. member for Ottawa Centre wants to try to explain to me-


John Leslie Evans: I can.


Erik Nielsen: -and to the people of the Yukon, that that did not mean a promise by the Prime Minister that the Clark budget would mean an additional $500 fuel cost to them as a result of those taxes, if he can turn that around, he would be even more of a magician than the Minister of Finance. It is very clear.
1 am sorry, Mr. Speaker, I ran out of time, but I am glad I had the opportunity to put that on the record for the hon. member for Ottawa Centre.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Bud Cullen (Sarnia):: Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Edmonton North (Mr. Paproski), in endeavouring to introduce Leslie Nielsen as one of Canada's outstanding
The Budget-Mr. Cullen
actors, by a slip of the tongue said "Erik Nielsen, one of Canada's most outstanding actors".


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


An hon. Member:: That is right.


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: I think we have had a demonstration of that today because it is hard to believe that the hon. member for Yukon believed everything he was reading. He had his lines down pretty well, but I do not really think he felt that what he was saying was in accord with what the policies and what the promises of this party were during the last election campaign. I have to give the hon. member the benefit of the doubt. Possibly he was not listening when the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde), in concluding his remarks, stated quite clearly what our promises were during that election campaign, namely, that we will keep price increases to less than $4 a barrel in 1980 and $4.50 a barrel in 1981, 1982 and 1983, and thereafter prices will rise more steeply. Then he illustrated his point by reference to the December 11 budget proposals. He said that under those proposals the wellhead price of conventional oil would have been $52 a barrel on January 1, 1984, but under the national energy program, it will be $25 a barrel, enough to get the oil supply job done but also fair to the consumer.
That is what the Liberal party was talking about during the election campaign, and we heard about the made-in-Canada price and the blended price. No Liberal during that campaign ever suggested that the prices would not go up. What we did indicate is that we would not put the 18-cent excise tax on and that our increases on the per barrel level would be lower than those provided for in the ill-fated budget of 1979.
It is a particular pleasure for me, Mr. Speaker, to be here today to participate in this debate. It is somewhat ironic that, because of the last budget which was introduced in the House, I am now back in the House of Commons and able to participate in a budget debate, on a budget which, I guarantee, will help me to stay in this party on this side of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: It was my privilege to serve as parliamentary secretary to a former minister of finance when the indexing element was introduced. When I hear members opposite say that there is nothing in this budget for the ordinary Canadian, I wonder if they are trying once again to underestimate, or if they are underestimating the intelligence of the Canadian public. The Canadian public knew what indexing was all about, and they have been reading that it represents a saving of $1.6 billion in one year alone. That is revenue the government is forgoing so that it will be in the hands of ordinary taxpayers. At that time the opposition indicated how wonderful the indexing system was, how great it was, and that it had a most beneficial impact on the ordinary Canadian taxpayer. So, the indexing program was left in, it was not taken out, and the ordinary consumer and taxpayer of Canada has received a

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The Budget-Mr. Cullen
magnificent bonus as a result of the indexing system being introduced and continued by this party.
1 think it is significant to point out as well that, since the inception of this particular program, $11 billion has gone into the pockets of taxpayers which otherwise would have been government revenues if we did not have the indexing system. The deficit at the present time would have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of $3 billion or $4 billion if we had seen fit not to introduce the indexing system. But we felt it was necessary "to help the ordinary taxpayer".
They suggest that there is nothing here for the ordinary Canadian. I suggest that people living in areas of high unemployment, those areas designated under DREE, will be very happy to know about the 50 per cent investment tax credit which will be available to manufacturers who locate their operations in those areas of the country and create jobs there. The fact that people will be given an incentive to switch from oil to cheaper priced gas can be laid as a benefit to the ordinary Canadian, the ordinary taxpayer.
When the opposition does not have too much to attack, it tries to make something out of it. It reminds me of the story of the lawyer who indicated when he had the facts on his side that he pounded them into the jury, and when he had the law on his side he pounded it into the judge. When asked what he did when he had neither facts nor law on his side, he said, "I pound the table". That is what we are hearing. With all this rhetoric from opposition members and western premiers, we are hearing a lot of noise and a lot of pounding of desks because they cannot, in all conscience, fault what has made Canada the strong country it is today, that is, sharing the assets and benefits of one part of the country with another when help is needed.
Of course there is a tendency on the opposite side to say that everything should be covered in the budget, and a tendency to ignore what is already in place, such as the fact that we have increased the guaranteed income supplement and the old age security and Canada Pension Plan are in place. The fact that UIC premiums have been increased seems to bother members opposite, but the point of fact they do not look at is that also the benefits have been increased. Self-employed fishermen, a unique group under the unemployment insurance program, are the only self-employed people who will be allowed to benefit from unemployment insurance. Their benefits will cost the program something like $100 million to $125 million a year. The ordinary fisherman is benefiting from programs already in place-family allowance, medicare, and a myriad of programs already in place to help the average Canadian. As I said earlier the tradition which has helped this country become the great country it is, is that one region of the country helps another when help is needed.
The minister of finance for the province of Manitoba stated that the budget will have a stabilizing effect on the economy and reduce the national debt. Later on he had some less complimentary remarks to make about the budget. Of course, that is the nature of the beast, but he grudgingly conceded that
that in fact will be the impact of this particular budget- helping areas that need it.
I doubt whether there is anyone in Ontario over a particular age who does not remember the time when Alberta needed help when it was endeavouring to establish its oil economy and Canadians had to pay higher than the world price to help in that particular area. We did that without complaint, we did that without rhetoric, and we did that without crying foul because we recognized it was a necessity in order to help the oil industry of Alberta. Then we hear the counter-argument, "Yes, but you put that higher-priced oil into your manufactured products and ship them back to Alberta and, in the final analysis, we pay that increased cost anyway." In so far as manufacturing and businesses operating with this higher-priced oil are concerned, we have to concede that they might very well have passed on that particular cost. But the average Canadian living in the eastern part of the country could not pass on that additional cost, the person heating his home or driving his automobile. They were prepared to do it because it was their contribution to help the province of Alberta develop its oil industry.
What do we hear when we look to Alberta and the producing provinces for some help? We hear rhetoric and hysteria. "It is like a declaration of war", said one of the premiers out there. Another minister said, "We feel as though we have been abandoned by the federal government". The comments of Mr. Hyndman from Alberta were "swift", "harsh" and "a massive discrimination against Alberta". What is to be gained with that kind of rhetoric? We are trying to work out a system of sharing, of fairness. Various overtures were made to western Canada, particularly the one to help with the tar sands. We were prepared to say, "You will get the $38 per barrel for the oil produced in this particular operation, plus a built-in indexing system in order to enable this particular operation to develop." That was rejected because they wanted the whole package. They did not want this in sawdust piecemeal. To suggest that the government was out there and not preparing to negotiate, or "not giving any indication of negotiation" as Mr. Leitch of Alberta apparently said, is just not in accordance with the facts.
I should like to get back for a moment to basics. Quebec and the Atlantic provinces would have had to pay the world price for their oil. The government said that it was unfair, came up with the one-price oil system right across Canada and endeavoured to find a means by which to bring it about. I do not think anyone seriously objected to it, nothwithstanding the fact that it would cost a considerable amount of money, a massive amount of dollars. We found one way, through the export tax on oil, to give some of that money to the project, and, of course, the ordinary taxpayer had to pay his proportionate share out of income taxes. Given the fact that in developing the oil industry in Alberta Canadians had to pay more than the world price, that we allowed depletion allowances so that these operations could develop, is it fair that the federal government's share of the production of a barrel of oil should only be 10 per cent? Is it a massive infusion or a
October 30, 1980

massive intervention with Alberta to say that rather than getting 45 per cent they will get 43 per cent? Is it fair for oil companies that were making 45 per cent of $3, $4 and $5 per barrel for oil, thus enabling them to operate, work in the north, build islands in lakes and rivers and do exploratory work, to tell me now that they cannot get enough cash to explore, develop and produce at 43 per cent of the price which will be paid for oil? This, to me, stretches credibility a little too far.
There was a suggestion that federal government policies led to the fact that the Atlantic provinces had to rely on offshore. It is rather interesting to have the genius of hindsight. I know when I first came here, Mr. Speaker, and we were talking about exporting to the United States something like 350,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil a day and the pressure was on every day to do everything we could to increase that from 350,000, we looked upon it as a victory if we were able to do that. Had we possessed the value of foresight we would not have taken that action.
I heard the former minister of finance yesterday castigating this government for its Canadianizing procedures, and knocking Petro-Canada. I must say that when I first came here I was not all that sold on the idea of Petro-Canada or a Canadian national oil corporation. But when I found out that we had been misled by the oil companies back in 1971 and 1972, when they told us we had all the oil we would require for the next hundred years, and then almost overnight there was a shortage, it was then I knew, and became convinced, that we needed a national oil company-and so did the majority of Canadians.
Thank heaven for the former minister of energy, mines and resources, the Hon. Alastair Gillespie. I think he left us a tremendous legacy. Petro-Canada is going to evolve into Canada's national oil company and it is to his credit that he stood fast and saw to it that this operation was very much involved and had the kind of funding it needed so that it could be successful. What did we hear from the Conservatives? The government was going to dismantle Petro-Canada despite the obvious need for this particular Crown corporation. I understand that as recently as two years ago they were still talking about that, that Petro-Canada should be dismantled. I wonder if they will really ever learn that Canadians want a national oil company.
I listened very carefully to the former minister of finance yesterday. He is always entertaining but he is not always very accurate. He suggested that eventually they might very well erect a couple of statues, the Clark-Crosbie statues. It seemed to me that if they were going to construct statues they would have to put them on a much firmer base than the Conservative party has for the particular platforms they are advocating. I think after a while you would find the two statues leaning on one another and the only ones appreciating the statues would be the pigeons.
I was really concerned with the position taken by the New Democratic Party, who were talking about spending more
The Budget-Mr. Cullen
money in the interest of creating jobs-a stimulative deficit, is what they called it. That has a nice ring to it. The only problem is that it probably would not work. If it did not work we would have an even bigger deficit than at the present time. The one we have now is too high and barely manageable, but it is manageable. The constant pressure from the NDP to spend more money to increase the deficit is a counter-productive idea, in so far as it relates to average Canadians.
I listened to their criticism when I was the minister of employment and immigration and they told me to stop using band-aid solutions, to stop the Canada Works program and to get into something which would be more permanent. That is exactly what we endeavoured to do with the economic growth component of Canada Works. We worked with the provinces and we created longer-term jobs. Today the emphasis is on more permanent job creation and not on Canada Works projects. I think that at a time of high unemployment there is a place for Canada Works and Young Canada Works programs. It gives people an opportunity to do a bit of work, earn some money and make a contribution to the economy. Obviously the impact is short term, but it does give people a sense of accomplishment, of making a contribution. And most assuredly they were getting experience which was required. To suggest there is no job creation at the present time is just ridiculous, Mr. Speaker. We know the investment which has to be made.
The new energy program which has been introduced by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources screams out with the promise of jobs which will be made for Canadians. The fact is that funding will be made available for apprenticeship training for the young people who are looking for and who need the jobs. They should be the ones to fill them as a result of training received in Canada. These jobs should not be filled as a result of immigration.
Examining the unemployment figures we see that for the adult male over 25 the unemployment rate is 4.8 per cent. The rate for unemployed females over 25 is 6.2 per cent. This is definitely too high, but the Leader of the New Democratic Party himself has used a figure that full employment in Canada means about 3 per cent unemployment. We heard the Hon. Darcy McKeough suggesting that something like 5.5 per cent unemployment was full employment because of the benefits which accrue, whether they are negotiated through union contracts or benefits which accrue as a result of government action. This is an area where we have high unemployment but where there are means available to help people in particularly difficult circumstances.
Where the emphasis must be is where the unemployment is tragically high-among our young people between the ages of 14 and 25. And that is why I welcome the large amount of money which will be spent on energy projects, on counselling and guidance work, hopefully. We will say to the provinces, "Please honour and respect and give more training to your guidance counsellors at your high schools because they will have a bigger and more important role to play in the future."

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Cullen
At the present time the government has the Adult Occupational Training Act and we do not wish to move into the educational field, but the creation of jobs is everyone's responsibility. Elere is an area where the federal government co-operates with the provinces and negotiates three-year agreements so that training programs can take place right across Canada. So, Mr. Speaker, the training opportunities are there. We know that the jobs will be available and I think that what must take place is more meetings between the federal minister and the provincial ministers to see to it that we dovetail this work in order that the young people are trained for the jobs which will obviously be available in the future.
One of the difficulties we have in this party and in this part of the country is getting the message across to Alberta. The Alberta Chamber of Commerce seem to think that Canadians in this part of the country do not appreciate that when Alberta is successful and pipelines are built there are spin-off benefits for Ontario. We do understand that and we do appreciate it. We also appreciate the contribution which Alberta has made with the export tax on oil helping toward the one-price oil system. That is a significant contribution, and nobody denies it. But when the message is spread out west that we do not have that appreciation and that we expect all of the manufacturing and development should take place in Ontario, it is just not in accordance with the facts.
Some years ago, in approximately 1968 or 1969, the petrochemical industry was in some difficulty. The then minister of industry, trade and commerce, the present Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin), brought together a group of government and business people and, without recrimination, asked what was wrong with the petrochemical industry and what could be done to make it work. There was a whole series of suggestions made by industry and by government. But the main thing that emerged was that we did not have the economies of scale here and we did not have the needed access to American markets. We needed to build world-scale plants. But if every company got involved in building a world-scale plant that would be counter-productive and, down the road, we would have to rationalize. So the determination was made, as early as 1968, 1969 and 1970, to build three world-scale plants. This was not a government decision, it was an economic, business decision that the first one be built in Ontario. The intention at that time was to build the second one in Alberta and the third one in the Montreal area. That prediction has proven to be true.
But the feeling is that Ontario got the Petrosar plant and that this has worked to the detriment of the Alberta petrochemical industry. In fact nothing could be further from the truth because, with a strong petrochemical industry, be it in Ontario, Alberta or Quebec, it will be beneficial to all of Canada. It will help with the balance of payments. Just as one indicator, I believe the Petrosar balance of payments picture represents a difference of about SI.5 billion and Alberta is now embarked upon the construction of a world-scale plant and other petrochemical operations in that great province. So, Mr. Speaker, it is not that we are unaware.
I see the hon. member from Calgary is here. I must tell him the story that was going around when we were endeavouring to get our message out there to The Calgary Herald, the Edmonton Journal or to our good friend Ron Collister who, we understand, has an open line show. There was a suggestion made that if an earthquake struck Calgary the headline would be: "Harvie Andre's House Slightly Damaged in Earthquake". It is very difficult for us to get our message across in face of that kind of rhetoric in Alberta.
I want to make the point again, Mr. Speaker; we appreciate that the Albertan people are generous. We appreciate what has been done, not only in Ontario with the tremendous benefit it has derived from the petrochemical industry, but also in Quebec and the Atlantic regions which have the benefit of the export tax which keeps the price of oil down to at least a manageable level.
There is room for all in Canada, Mr. Speaker, and there is money enough for everyone. All we are asking is for a proper sharing. I do not think the production from a barrel of oil divided on a 45-33-24 basis is out of line. It is appropriate, given the involvement and investment that all Canadians have contributed to make the oil industry the success it is today. I think it is appropriate to set the price of $38 per barrel to help with Syncrude and the heavy oil operations.
There is an opportunity for us to develop, but we have to work things out together in the traditional Canadian way of sharing the benefits, of helping one another, so that when we are down, other provinces and the federal government will come to our aid. They will help us over the hurdle and then go on to help whatever other area of the country needs assistance.
1 can support this budget without qualm or concern. It does not cover all subjects and it was not meant to, but many of the areas the opposition would like to see covered are already taken care of.
The energy package is the most dynamic energy policy ever introduced in this country. The companies asked for ground rules and now we have ground rules as suggested by the federal government. On a radio or television program I heard Mr. Daniels asked if he was going to sell out and get out in view of the budget and its detrimental effect on the industry. He said he was not and that he could operate within this regime. It would certainly be nicer to have 45 per cent than 33 per cent but we should not forget that the 33 per cent will be based on a much higher price per barrel of oil.
We can make this country work, Mr. Speaker, if we stop the rhetoric and the use of words like "declaration of war", "rape of resources", "unconscionable", "not thinking", "not caring" or "not appreciating". That is what is going to kill it, Mr. Speaker, not a budget like this or an energy policy like this. They are good for Canada. If there is more negotiating to be done, then let us do it. At least we now have good ground work.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
October 30, 1980


Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada have been waiting for the Government of Canada to show leadership with an energy policy for a long time. On Tuesday night we watched the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) closely as we did the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) in this House yesterday and today. I think people did so feeling that the energy policy would be a blueprint for the future, at least to the year 2000- that this was to be the financial and energy policy of our generation. As a Vancouver musician friend of mine would say, "This is it, baby, and it had better be good."
Pericles who is not a Vancouverite but an Athenian, once said that only a few people may originate a policy, but we are all able to judge it. This afternoon I want to judge the government's policy, not so much from the point of view of a member of Parliament but from that of a typical family in my constituency. 1 do so in reply to the last speaker for the Liberal party. I will call these people the family from Renfrew Street because that is a street which runs through the middle of my riding. Similar families live in all the regions of Canada. They care little for the constitutional debate which has so preoccupied this House. They are insecure about their jobs, about the price of a litre of milk and, now, about the price of a litre of gasoline. They want the federal government to show leadership and to help them. In short, they are concerned about the bread and butter issues. Who can blame them?
Let me discuss the budget in terms of these headings or concerns, Mr. Speaker-prices, taxes, jobs, western development, off-oil policy, Canada's north, Canadianization and further public control of the oil industry.
Let me deal with prices. Yesterday in this House the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources made a rather remarkable statement. He said that in energy the essence of good government is to make good promises to the people. You will note he did not say good actions, but good promises. Mr. Speaker, I suspect this Liberal government was elected on the promise of cheap energy, after the Conservative party had proposed to devastate the average family in this country with high energy prices.
I was shocked to hear the former prime minister, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) and the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) attack my party for opposing their Conservative budget, that maggoty fish of a budget they brought in last December. The people promptly decided it was not good and promptly threw both the rogues out. Now they have the nerve to stand up and attack us. I noticed that the hon. member also attacked the London School of Economics. I can at least say, Mr. Speaker, that I did not flunk out of law school twice, as he did.
I want to go back to the family on Renfrew Street. Look what they get as a result of the new Conservative budget, this time called the Liberal budget. The government's own estimates show that the cost of home heating will double in three years. On page 106 of "The National Energy Program," figures show that the cost will go from $640 per year to $1280 per year. If the families on Renfrew Street heat their homes
The Budget-Mr. Waddell
with natural gas they can expect a 30 cent per thousand cubic feet tax on their December bill. By 1984 the price of gasoline for the average family will double to $1248 per year. Those are the government's figures-$100 per month for gasoline for an average family. By 1989 it will cost $50 to fill the tank. So much for the Liberals' cheap energy prices.

Mr. Speaker, the cost of heating oil for that family will double in 1984. The price of gasoline will be nearly double in 1984. In 1989 Canadians will have to pay $50 for a full tank of gas. It will cost $100 to drive from Ottawa to Quebec City and back.

In 1989 it will cost $100 to go to Quebec and back. You can bet that wages and pensions are not going to increase so fast. I say to my friends opposite that in a short time the family on Renfrew Street, when they feel the full impact of these prices are not going to want to put a tiger in their tank-they are going to want to put Trudeau in their tank. I use that as a general term, Mr. Speaker; I was not referring to the member from his particular riding.
We in the New Democratic Party have resisted the rise in oil prices. This is not because we do not believe in conservation, as there will be some conservation with these high prices, and not because we believe that the provinces should not get a proper rent from the resources. We do believe they are entitled to those rents. What we wanted, if the government brought in higher prices, was that they would bring in measures to protect the ordinary family, that it would act to cushion the impact of these higher oil prices on jobs, on prices, on people on low and fixed incomes.
The Minister of Finance has claimed there are no general tax increases in the budget. In fact, there are seven indirect tax increases. Just count them. Many of my constituents-the elderly, those on government assistance, the unemployed-do not earn enough to pay income tax, but they will certainly have to pay the increased energy costs.
I am sorry the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources is not in the House but I see his parliamentary secretary is. I wanted to suggest to the minister of energy-I am sorry he is not in the House tonight, although his parliamentary secretary is here-that the essence of good government is honesty, and this is not an honest energy policy.
For example, let us look at the tax on natural gas. We are told that the government has saved us from a natural gas export tax. In British Columbia we are very happy about that-at least we are supposed to be. But the truth is there will be an export tax, and the fact is there is also a domestic tax. It is easy for the minister to say that British Columbia and Alberta will get all future price increases. But I say to the government and to its members that of the last seven National Energy Board approvals last year for increased gas exports, only two have been approved by the U.S. government. So the minister knows, and he knew before the budget, that prices are

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Waddell
not going to rise in American markets. The only realistic future gas price increases will be the tax of 30 cents per 1,000 cubic feet which the federal government has now put on. British Columbia will lose $35 million in export revenues because the 30 cents per thousand cubic feet would have gone to B.C.
In British Columbia natural gas is subsidized. Yes, it is available at a low price and I do not apologize for that. The low prices should help the very people which this budget is not helping. What does this government do? It simply taxes the gas making the price higher. I have to go back to Vancouver and tell that family on Renfrew Street that social services will likely be cut in British Columbia as a result, that their gas bills will increase and that the government is not giving them a cost of living tax credit. They are not going to be entirely thrilled with this budget.
I said I would talk about jobs. Failure in this area is the second big objection we have against this budget and against this energy policy. There is no industrial strategy in place in this country. We continue to export jobs with our raw resources. Very simply, what I mean by an industrial strategy is this: we want Canadians making the finished product from our resources for Canadian markets and for export. That family on Renfrew Street knows instinctively, as we all know, that this country is the most blessed country in the world in terms of resources. We also know that we are letting the Japanese, the Europeans and just about every other country in the world beat us in manufacturing. That is where the jobs are. Jobs are not in pipelines, though I hate to say that. There are a few jobs in pipelines, such as welding, digging and so on, but the real jobs are in a new manufacturing industry in Canada. But that is not the direction in which the Liberal party is moving and that is the second objection we have.
Let me give hon. members an example about which some members opposite know. The committee on natural resources held three hearings last week on the Arctic pilot project. This is an incredible project which will take gas from Melville Island, in the north of Canada, right across the northwest passage down to either Gros Cacouna in Quebec or in the Strait of Canso. What is equally incredible is that we are going to take the gas in foreign ships and export it when it is brought down. There is the whole problem of Canada; we have no industrial strategy, and it is evidenced right there.
In the budget there is mention of a regional strategy, a western development fund. Remember, this budget is taking $20 billion out of the west. That is fine. The west should be sharing resources, but the west should be getting something back as well. What is the west getting back? We are getting a $4 billion development fund.


Mr. Andre:: It is $2 billion.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: It says $4 billion but my friend points out that it is $2 billion. As a matter of fact, Senator Perrault announced this program in Vancouver a few months ago and everybody yawned. Then he went to Toronto and announced it again. Next it appeared on the front page of The Globe and
Mail, that oracle of wisdom in Canada. Apparently it was read by the government, taken up and put in the budget. The problem is, and I say this sincerely to my friends opposite who might wish to understand some of our concern in western Canada, that to us in the west it seems as though this is another example of Ottawa knowing best what is good for us, because it will be administered by one cabinet minister, the hon. member for Winnipeg-Fort Garry (Mr. Axworthy), and eastern Canadians. I ask the government: would it not be better to involve western Canadians in the development? Would it not be better to do what Premier Blakeney said, by making it a joint federal-provincial program? I suggest that to the government.


Harvie Andre: They are too stupid.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister shortly after the election suggesting the government should set up a committee of the House of Commons and call it the western development committee. Why cannot opposition members be brought into such a committee and an opposition member be made the chairman of it? By this method the government could get some impact from western Canada. But the government has to listen.
I made a suggestion about a gas bank. I know the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. MacLaren) took up the proposal and now a gas bank has been proposed in the budget. I congratulate the government for that. I might also suggest to the government that it try to get Ontario and Quebec to consider the concept of gas banking. These provinces will need the gas in the future for their citizens. Action on these lines now will help national unity by making an investment in Alberta, and that makes a lot of sense. I have asked the government to pursue that idea. I also asked the government to look at-I think it is called Enertech-the new Crown corporation for alternate energy mentioned in the budget. I ask the government to consider putting the head office of that corporation in Vancouver. There is no province or region more interested in alternatives than the people of British Columbia. That would be a good move toward national unity. I urge the government not to do it in the old patronage style. They should put the head office in Vancouver where there will be a real response to it.
I want to address a couple of remarks to the government's off-oil policy. It is a simple policy and it seems to make sense at first, that is to move from oil to natural gas. I bring to the attention of members opposite, the minister's words when he discussed this policy:
We would resolve the nation's energy problem in all its dimension.
I see the Minister of Finance has just entered the chamber. The words of the minister of energy I have just quoted remind me of the old Tommy Douglas story. I do not know whether the minister will recall when Mr. Douglas was first elected as premier of Saskatchewan. I think he visited a mental hospital in Weyburn. He went up to a man and said, "Hello". The fellow asked him who he was. He answered by saying, "I am the Premier of Saskatchewan". The fellow replied, "Oh, you
October 30, 1980

will get over that. When I was here for the first year, I thought I was Napoleon".
It seems to me that when we hear the minister say "We would resolve the nation's energy problem in all its dimension," he has somewhat of a Napoleonic complex, especially since he is so inconsistent and hypocritical on gas policy. I have to say that. Look at the evidence. This is the government which agreed to sell out huge quantities of Canadian gas on the pre-build of the Alaska pipeline. This is the government which is negotiating with New York now about sales to the eastern states, including New Hampshire. This is the government which is prepared to encourage Dome Petroleum-and I asked a question about this in the House the other day-to sell more Canadian natural gas to Japan. Even the minister's own statement in "The National Energy Program" document talks about more and more gas exports. Yet this is the same government that says in the next breath we have to move off oil to natural gas. Is there not a fallacy there, Mr. Speaker? Is it not likely that all the good cheap gas will be gone by the time provinces such as Ontario and Quebec are ready to use Canadian gas and at that time these provinces will have to pay more? The government is inconsistent in its policy.
There is nothing in the budget about the north, not one word about it. One can see that the industrial system will ultimately require the gas of the Arctic, but we must protect the northern environment. Above all else, we must honour the legitimate claims and aspirations of the native people. There is not one word about this side of the coin, we only hear of Arctic development.
I come to Canadianization. The minister, in a remarkable statement at his press conference, said, "I wish we had done this ten years ago." But who welcomed American capital with open arms? Who established those policies? This is where one can really describe the budget as basically a fake to the left and a hard punch to the right. If you look at it, you will see it right here.
What do we get under Canadianization? We get grants and incentives for Canadian companies. Let me give an example. Under the new system, if you wish to drill an oil well in the north, and it cost $10 million, the Canadian people will pay $9 million of it and they get nothing back. Here is how it works. Eighty per cent of the $10 million will be given as a grant, which is $8 million. Then there will be 100 per cent write-off for exploration. At the nominal corporate tax rate of 10 per cent, that is an additional $1 million. So, the Canadian people are paying $9 million and Bob Blair, Jack Gallagher or Conrad Black, the Canadian capitalists, are getting the benefits. What kind of progressive system is that?
There is a new book which I am sure all members have read called "The Northern Magus" by Richard Gwyn. On page 57 he quotes the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) as saying, some time ago:
The Budget-Mr. Waddell
A sound economic policy must never be based on the assumption, for example, that workers would be ready to accept a drastic lowering of standards of living for the mere pleasure of seeing a national middle class replacing a foreign one at the helm of various enterprises.
What has the minister done? He has replaced one economic elite, a foreign one, with a domestic one. That will not help the ordinary family on Renfrew Street, not at all.
This Canadianization idea is not new. Here is what the Prime Minister said in Sault Ste. Marie on June 29, 1974:
A re-elected Liberal government would set a priority objective requiring that all new major investments in resource industries have at least 50 per cent-and preferably 60 per cent-Canadian equity ownership.
That is a wonderful statement. I salute the Prime Minister of 1974. The only problem is this is 1980. What has happened is this: since 1974 we have experienced a 4 per cent increase in Canadian ownership. That is one per cent a year. At this rate, it will take until 2001 to patriate Canadian ownership. The message that comes to me and which I pass on to the government is: we simply do not believe you; you are really not going to do anything about Canadianizing the industry.
The other issue I wish to address is public ownership. There is no greater challenge in Canada to my generation and to the whole country, than the matter of taking the oil industry under public ownership. The people support this. The Toronto Star certainly does. I know the people of this country support it. That is the challenge.
What is the response from this budget? This is the fake to the left. Look at the response. There is no definition of the way in which companies are to be taken over. There are no specifics concerning which companies. And who is going to end up paying for it? The Canadian consumer. In short, there is nothing there. Maybe we will be pleasantly surprised-I leave that open to the government. However, a government that really wanted to be honest and straightforward would come right out and give a plan, as we have, to take over public ownership of the three largest companies, Imperial, Shell and Texaco.
In conclusion, there is a conventional wisdom which says the trend in North America is to the right. I think conventional wisdom is wrong in this case. The trend is toward social democracy and reindustrialization which will create jobs, stimulate exports, modernize aging industrial plants in the east and create new ones in the west besides nurturing new ideas which private enterprise is too timid to pursue.
I put this to the Minister of Finance who is sitting right across from me in the House of Commons; why couldn't the government show some real leadership and say to the people, to this family on Renfrew Street and to all similar families in Canada, yes, the price of energy will go but we will give you a cost of living tax credit or a grant to those retired or on government assistance. Why did they not say yes, we will guarantee your son or daughter a job. Also, to reassure those living in the west, why did they not say: we are prepared to see western development carried out with the active involvement of westerners. Or, to those in the east; we are prepared to ensure you will not get thrown out of a job at the next plant

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Ferguson
closure because of higher energy prices or continued difficulties with the economy. They could say to the people: yes, we are prepared to ensure that you will have relatively cheap supplies of natural gas in the future and we will not sell them all out to the Americans. That is what they should say.
They should say one more thing, and I leave this with the minister. They should say; no ads, no polls, no hype, we are just going to level with you.


Mr. Ralph Ferguson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State, Small Businesses):: Mr. Speaker, it is with a sense of relief and pride that I rise to speak in this budget debate today. My sense of relief is perhaps a reflection of what the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) said in his opening remarks during his budget presentation. I quote:
-the first budget of this new decade... is a budget which sets new directions for the economy-directions which will ensure both energy security and economic security for Canadians in the years ahead.
With those words, the Minister of Finance launched this nation on its long-term national energy policy. May I call it six o'clock, Mr. Speaker?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: It being six o'clock 1 do now leave the chair until eight o'clock this evening.
At six o'clock the House took recess.
[ Translation]


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. When debate was interrupted at 6 p.m., the hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of State for Small Businesses (Mr. Ferguson) had the floor.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, at six o'clock I had mentioned the sense of relief I felt last Tuesday evening when the Parliament of Canada was presented with a long-term national energy policy. I referred to a sense of pride, and my sense of pride is that this budget and the national energy policy contained in it will lead to greater Canadian control over our resources and economy and fulfil the commitments made by our party during the election campaign.
It is with a further sense of pride that I serve with this government when the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) bring out such a long-term policy spelling out our objectives and identifying our goals and the methodology of attainment. This budget is designed for all of Canada and to serve the long-term interests of all Canadians. It takes into consideration the need to reduce the budgetary deficit without adding undue hardships to the people of this nation, and in the
long term it will provide incentives to encourage industrial expansion in designated regions.
The 50 per cent investment credit is a massive incentive for industrial expansion, and this benefit alone will provide a climate which will lead to more jobs for more Canadians.
The energy program, founded on those three basic principles-first, security of supply and ultimate independence from the world oil markets; second, the opportunity for all Canadians to participate in the energy industry and to share in the accrued benefits; and third, the fairness of the pricing and revenue-sharing regime which recognizes the needs and rights of all Canadians-is a sound program with far-reaching effects.
But perhaps the most important aspect of this policy is the gradual implementation of price increases which will not send shock waves across our economy and trigger another inflationary spiral. Another important aspect of this policy is that it will conserve oil in the precise manner in which the gas conversion process will proceed-the Montreal-Quebec pipeline, the conversion incentives to home owners to use natural gas rather than oil and the incentives to convert to other renewable fuels.
As technology advances I believe we have the potential to make both energy and food renewable Canadian resources. The stage has been set, as responsible Canadian citizens respond to the incentives provided by converting their homes to gas and wood or biomass, and as this process proceeds, the use of oil for heating purposes will diminish, thus bringing production of oil into balance with our consumption. As this transition takes place, the need for imported oil is reduced and our balance of trade position will therefore be improved.
Rather than dismantle Petro-Canada as proposed by the previous government, we intend to strengthen and expand this company, which was established in 1975 and which is 100 per cent owned by Canadians. I was proud to hear the minister say that we will be purchasing other oil companies to ensure that at least 50 per cent of our resources are owned and controlled by Canadians by 1990. Just last week I noted that oil company profits are up by 65 per cent over last year. We want to ensure that those profits stay in Canada and benefit Canadians. In addition to strengthening this Canadian company we will be establishing a new Canadian alternative energy corporation, to be called Enertech Canada, the mandate of which will be restricted to renewable energy and conservation technology.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Do you really believe that?


Ralph Ferguson: I am extremely interested in renewable energy and believe that new technology will bring about an ever-increasing use of forest and biomass products which are now going to waste. For example, two young farmers in my constituency have each developed a new and highly efficient type of furnace designed to burn garbage, crop refuse or wood. These young men have risen to accept the energy challenge of the eighties, and while these furnaces were developed to provide heat for crop-drying purposes they can be used for heating institutions, schools or small factories and shops.
October 30, 1980

There are two other groups looking into the feasibility of producing ethanol. One group has access to natural gas which is being flared off from producing oil wells, but that gas is not in sufficient quantities to be of commercial value. But this gas is available in amounts sufficient to provide heat for the distillation process extracting ethanol from corn. These two farmers own beef feedlots and will be feeding the residue to their cattle. There is no waste, and this corn will be recycled to produce both food and fuel. I am delighted that the budget papers and notices of ways and means motions contain provisions to lower the bonding and licencing requirements, allowing such entrepreneurs to do their part to relieve the energy problems of this nation.
The other group to which I referred is made up of members of a co-operative which processes vegetables and potatoes. They too realize the potential fuel contained in that 20 per cent of a potato crop which normally ends up as culls and is left to rot, and are looking forward to utilizing this energy by converting it to ethanol.
I read just last night in the Ottawa Citizen that the National Alcohol Fuels Commission in the United States issued a report showing that a gallon of ethanol can actually save .83 gallons of crude oil under certain conditions. This fuel is widely used in the midwest United States and some countries in South America.
This forward-looking budget is responsible in its pricing formula. It is responsible because it does not begin with a harsh excise tax on fuels, and it is responsible because it recognizes the needs of our citizens and the generation to come by not only ensuring our energy supplies but by also providing the incentives for industry to become established in regions not ordinarily recognized as regions of potential. I would further stress that this budget ensures our industrial competitiveness across Canada yet maintains our enviable standard of living, which is among the best in the world.
I refer specifically to the made-in-Canada price which will never be allowed to exceed 85 per cent of the imported oil price or the U.S. oil price, whichever is the lower. This budget will cost the consumer $40 billion less than the budget of December, 1979, yet we are maintaining our competitive edge, ensuring our supplies for the future, bringing our industry under Canadian control and encouraging the use of alternative energy and renewable energy. Above all, this budget and energy policy will not trigger another inflationary spiral, which we all fear, because the increases will be implemented in a planned and responsible manner over a six-year period.
In comparison with the budget of December, 1979, the impact of this budget will be far less inflationary. Perhaps I should place on record the differences in relation to gasoline and diesel fuel costs to consumers. To the commuter the 1979 budget would have meant a gasoline price of about $1.56 per gallon in 1981 compared with $1.50 per gallon in our budget. By 1984 the December budget would have resulted in a price of $2.63 per gallon, while this budget will provide a price of $2.10 per gallon, or 53 cents per gallon less. This is important to a commuter, for example, if he is driving 12,000 miles per
The Budget-Mr. Ferguson
year. Our budget would result in savings of over $200 per year in 1984 based on an automobile operating at about 30 miles to the gallon.
But there is a more important comparison to be made, and that comparison is in the area of food production. In this instance we will use the differences in the costs of diesel fuel. For the purpose of comparison we will assume that a particular farm uses about 6,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year, or about 27,300 litres. In 1981, under the December budget this would cost $7,140 for the year. The cost in the budget under debate here today would be about $6,360 for that same year. By 1984 under the previous December budget, the price would amount to an annual cost of $13,620. In our budget here today the cost would be $9,780, a saving to that particular farmer of $3,840. In that four-year span the budget we are discussing tonight would result in a saving of over $8,220 over the December, 1979, budget. Just imagine the impact of this on farmers and food producers; just imagine the impact of this comparison on a small family-owned trucking firm in my own constituency which uses over 100,000 gallons of diesel fuel per year.
Even more significant is the difference in natural gas prices as they will impact upon the fertilizer industry. Natural gas is one of the main ingredients in the formulation of some nitrogen fertilizers. In this context, when we compare these two budgets, natural gas prices in the Crosbie budget would have been about 71 per cent higher in 1984 than those under the government budget we are discussing tonight. Such a drastic increase would be reflected in food prices, and this item alone would have meant a devastating increase in food production costs. I submit that the impact of our budget, as it relates to farm input costs across this nation, is far more realistic than those cruel, harsh measures presented in the House last December.
The reduction of excise tax from $3 per gallon to $ 1.25 per gallon on fortified wines is welcome news to the grape industry of Canada and will allow the wine industry to continue to upgrade their vineyards and products which in recent years have been recognized as among the best in the world.
This budget not only provides for Canadians to invest in their own future, but also allows a tax reduction of $248 for a family of four earning $15,000 per year, or a reduction of nearly 20 per cent. This tax saving is a result of the continuation of indexing for 1981. We can be proud that Canada is one of the few countries in the world which provides such automatic indexing adjustments.
While they may place a small additional burden on workers and employers, the changes to the unemployment insurance fund contributions are necessary if the present trend continues of increasing numbers of men and women entering the labour force. While the increase in these contributions may seem to be large, the combined contributions amount to 4.32 per cent of the insurable earnings. We must remember that only those who are working and their employers make the contributions,

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Ferguson
and ultimately it is only those workers who are laid off, either seasonally or otherwise, who are the benefactors.
As well there are provisions for exemptions related to metric conversion in the retail sector. Under these provisions kits and parts to convert retail scales to metric are exempt from federal sales tax and duty. Sales tax on purchases of new metric scales is reduced by one-half, and a 100 per cent immediate write-off for income tax purposes is provided for metric scales used in small businesses. Also, small businesses will benefit from the extension of the small business development bond issue to March 31, 1981. Technical amendments are proposed to better define the scope of the small business deduction, that special low rate applicable to the Canadian active business income of small corporations.
As I have indicated thus far, this budget is bold and responsible, securing our energy supplies and ensuring that those non-renewable resources will be controlled by Canadians. Also it recognizes the needs of the taxpayer, the home owner, the need for conservation, the need for renewable sources of energy, the needs of small business and the need for ensuring adequate unemployment benefits.
One other aspect I want to emphasize is the recognition of the needs of the handicapped and their requirement for special equipment. On last Sunday afternoon I was approached by a mother in my constituency who was asking about the possibility of removing the duty on television captioning devices for the deaf. Her son was deaf and the captioning device was not manufactured in Canada. Naturally I was very pleased to phone her last night and advise her the customs tariff on such items had been removed in this budget and that her son would be able to enjoy another of the pleasures which so many of us take for granted.
This budget is a responsive one. It is responsive to the voice of the people. The government was listening to the provinces when they said they could not accept an export tax on natural gas. We were listening when the people of this nation said they wanted a continuation of indexing. We were proven right when a poll indicated that 82 per cent of our people wanted Petro-Canada to continue as a vital and integral part of our energy system. This budget is a wide-ranging one. The implication of the industrial strategy, the provisions for railroads to upgrade their tracking systems and the provisions for extended pipelines will have spin-off effects on our economy. All these measures will provide us with a solid economic base and give us the confidence to proceed into the decade of the eighties.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. McKenzie:: Mr. Speaker, the figures of the hon. member were most informative. Would he entertain a brief question at this time?


Ralph Ferguson: Yes, Mr. Speaker.


A. Daniel McKenzie: I was very interested in the hon. member's figures concerning the price of gas, what they would have been under the December budget and what they will be under the
new budget. Has he allowed for the increase in gas prices in his figures? In less than a year they have increased by 40 cents per gallon. We were told in the February election that under the Liberals the price of gas would be increasing only by a very small amount, but in certain parts of Canada it has increased 40 cents a gallon. The Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) stated in the question period this afternoon that they would not be putting on an 18-cent a gallon tax. Is the 40-cent increase in less than one year included in the figures the hon. member related to the House this evening?


Ralph Ferguson: Yes, they are 1981 projected figures. Perhaps I should point out that I was very much involved in this issue during the campaign. As a matter of fact, I should give credit to my opponent in the campaign who was a previous member of the House. He realized the harshness of the excise tax being proposed. He realized the impact it would have on the rural economy across Canada. Because of those facts, in the last week of the campaign he stated publicly that he could not support the 18-cent excise tax.


Harvie Andre: Mr. Speaker, I compliment the hon. member for Lambton-Middlesex (Mr. Ferguson) on how well he read his speech, but I have never heard a speech read so well which contained so many inaccuracies, distortions and downright mistruths. The pathetic thing-and I say this sincerely-is that he does not recognize the impact; he believes what he read. I do not recall a time during my eight years in Parliament-and as a matter of fact it is eight years today-when I was more distressed, alarmed or concerned about the future of my country.
Since the Liberal party was re-elected last February the country has been subjected to more abuse, wrong-headed, stubborn, insane and immoral government actions than at any time in this country's history. The culmination was reached in this budget.
I want to say this as dispassionately as I can because it is not political rhetoric but rather a genuine fear on my part for the continuing integrity of our country and for our democracy as the result of the events in these few months. We have seen from this government in the last few months the most cynical, manipulative and dishonest approach to governing of which I am aware in any democratic country. Witness their advertising campaigns designed for mind management of the type I read about as a school kid in George Orwell's "1984", the cynical, Machiavellian manoeuvres of the type described in the Kirby document to pit one province against the other, one region against the other, and to accomplish goals for which no mandate was sought or received from the people of Canada, and all this in the name of national unity.
The pathetic thing about this, Mr. Speaker, is that there are sincere Canadians over there, I believe-people who genuinely do not understand what they are doing to this country. That is what is so sad. It is sad that such intelligent, dedicated people-they ran for office, so obviously they have an interest
October 30, 1980

in this country, they are obviously Canadians and believe in our motto "from sea to sea"-would sit in such a sheep-like fashion and accept the drivel which comes forward under the guise of truth, and not question it one bit. For the sake of this country I beg of you, every one of you who is twinned with a western riding, to spend this weekend on the telephone and talk to the defeated Liberal candidate out there, talk to an NDP member out there, talk to anybody you can get on the telephone and try to understand what you are doing to Canada. I beg of you to learn a little bit. Go to your next caucus and when the government House leader says, "Here is our strategy for closure", or when the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) says, "Here is how we are going to sock it to the west," or when the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) says, "We are going to get those multinationals," understand a little about what they are really saying in terms of this country.
I was one of these who was cut off in the constitutional debate and I do not intend to bootleg a constitutional speech into this budget debate, but I wonder how the NDP feels. Their ranks in the House are empty tonight.


An hon. Member:: Not quite.


Harvie Andre: I wonder how the Leader of the NDP feels tonight.


An hon. Member:: We have a higher percentage of members in the House than do the Conservatives.


Harvie Andre: I wonder how they feel after that press conference where their leader said, "I have negotiated with the Prime Minister and I have secured resources for the west. I have secured a guarantee under this constitution." How do they feel now after seeing this budget and seeing what it does to Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia? 1 wonder when the NDP will seize control from that Ontario troika, Eddie, Bobbie and Ian, and represent the constituents who elected them here.
It is really sad to see that party deteriorate in such a way. It was a party which stood for its principles, a party with a conscience. They had a philosophy which I could not accept, but when they articulated their views, one could believe that they were set on the basis of principles and of their fundamental beliefs. It was a party which felt for the common man. That mantle does not fit them any longer. Bobbie and Eddie have taken over, they are playing these games. I suggest that members of the NDP who would like to see the party return to the days when it had principles should seize control or else have the decency to merge formally with the Liberal party instead of being the "little red rump", as the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), described them last night.
The NDP, through their chicanery and political opportunism, have not only damaged themselves but have damaged the country severely. The budget they defeated last year would have provided for Canada lower energy costs than the budget we are seeing now. It was based on an agreement with the provinces-there was no constitutional conflict-which con-
The Budget-Mr. Andre
tained the same crude oil increases as in the budget last night. There was no conflict. It was a tough agreement which took a lot of commitment and energy. There were meetings between prime minister Clark and Premier Lougheed in Ottawa, Edmonton, Saskatoon and Montreal, but we were determined to show that confederation can work. They reached an oil agreement which was the same, in terms of the impact to the consumer, as the one reached by this government, but better when combined with the budget and its tax credits in terms of lower income families. That budget provided a lower deficit than the current budget. It would have resulted in lower unemployment and lower inflation than the current budget. It was described in the Canadian tax journal as the most progressive budget in the last ten years. The NDP have helped to bring about the defeat of that budget, and now they have this budget. I hope the three stooges, Eddie, Bobbie and Ian, are happy because they sure are not funny.
It is pathetic to see what happens to people of integrity when they are associated more and more with the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I remember the hon. member for Windsor West (Mr. Gray) when he was a man of integrity. I remember, when I was first elected, Herb Gray was dull, bland and grey, but he was honest-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. Members should refer to other members by their constituency, not by name.


Harvie Andre: Certainly, Mr. Speaker. What happened was that the hon. member for Windsor West was booted out of the cabinet for being honest, principled and hard working because those are not qualities which are much admired by the Prime Minister. He sat in purgatory for a few years, saw who was occupying the front benches of his party, and learned from it. Instead of a man whom the country respected-previously he held respect-he is now sneered at. He said he would quit if the interest rates went up higher than they were under the Conservatives. They are higher now, so why does he not quit? He said he had an industrial development policy. Has he? He has no such thing.
An even more pathetic figure than the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce is the minister from Alberta, the senator who is here to represent Liberal interests in Alberta in the federal cabinet. He is part of the "Bobbsey Twins" responsible for economic development, the economic minister, this great representative of the west. His twin is the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Where was the minister from Alberta when the constitution was being discussed? He was at the Liberal club at the university of Alberta saying he did not think section 42 in the proposed Canadian constitution was appropriate. One wonders where he was when the matter was discussed in cabinet, or whether he is allowed to attend cabinet meetings where important matters such as the constitution are discussed. We wonder where he was when the energy policy was discussed which will bring devastation to the area of the country which he purports to represent in cabinet. Where was he in terms of his responsibility as economic development

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Andre
minister, and where was the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce?


An hon. Member:: Out to lunch.


Harvie Andre: This budget will take, out of the funds available for exploration and development in Canada next year, $3 billion to help make this nation self-sufficient. It would be good for the people over there to learn that Canadian companies do the bulk of the exploration in Canada. Seventy per cent of the exploration and development is done by Canadian companies. Recognize who you are hurting. It is the Canadian companies you are hurting, not the multinationals. Next year we are planning to spend $8 billion. Because of the kinds of things the minister of energy was saying earlier on, $1 billion or $2 billion has already been chopped from that budget and is headed for the U.S., to Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and Louisiana, and they are taking another $3 billion right here. So at best you have $1 billion left for exploring for the oil and gas which we are all going to need. That will be a sixth of what was planned in terms of exploration in this country.
A study conducted some years ago by a McGill economics professor showed that for every dollar spent on exploration in western Canada the spin-out from that, if you will, the multiplier effect, was at least three to one. A third of that money is spent in eastern Canada for pipes, valves, motors and all those things which cost money when you are exploring for oil and gas. So this little budget has taken out of central Canada, Ontario, at least $2 billion in economic activity. How many jobs is that? What do the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and the Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Olson) in the other place, propose to use to replace that? How are you going to replace those jobs? Unemployment is already horrendous and with this little act you have already added to it very substantially. And I am talking about the indirect benefit.
You know, there is a common myth in this place that the multinationals are all from the west, so you can get them. I have news for you! The multinationals are headquartered in Toronto-Imperial, Shell, Gulf, Sun and Texaco-and they are the ones who are going to be out of work because they will not need geologists, accountants, secretaries and all those people who work in their offices. They are not big bogeymen from New York or Texas, they are just honest, working citizens. They will not be needed. They will not be needed after this little budget. They will be out in the street. At least those members who cannot be brought to express any concern for the western part of this nation can express some concern from a self-interest point of view. You are going to be hurt as well. You will be hurt by future shortages of oil and gas and more immediately by increased unemployment. As a result of what this energy package has done to the oil and gas industry, record growths in every other sector of our economy will be needed just in order to stay even. The minister projected unemployment at 8.7 per cent next year based on what his friend, the minister of energy, the man who actually wrote the document,
sets out in his policy. Well, I do not think the minister of energy knows what he has done. He does not know what kind of unemployment he has caused by his action. It is pathetic, but he does not know what he has done.
The estimate of the Minister of Finance of 8.7 per cent for unemployment will be much less than the reality unless some corrections are made, and are made quickly.
The Minister of State for Economic Development tells the Liberals in Alberta that he is opposed to section 42. But apparently he was not at the cabinet meeting when it was discussed.


Walter David Baker: Who is that?


Harvie Andre: The man from the other place, the senator. He is out around the country giving speeches about the great things they are going to do for economic development. He must not have been allowed in the cabinet room when they were discussing the energy package, or the budget either. The minister of state could not possibly have had the gall to give the speech which he gave on October 20 about the great things the government is planning if he had an inkling of what was in this budget. He talks about the need for these eight new pushers in economic development who are to get the country going.
The second item on his list is capital investment. He speaks about the need to attract this money, telling us it will be vital to create a favourable investment climate, first by reducing the inflation rate and, second, by making sure investment is used as productively as possible. How could anybody who knew about this budget make a statement like that in public? It is pathetic.
His third point was energy and he talked about their main concern being security of supply everywhere in Canada. Yet they have killed exploration and development. He talked about energy conservation and substitution for oil. We will need substitution all right because there will not be anX oil. He mentioned the use of energy resources to maximize employment. There is the dilly! That little statement the other night is going to maximize unemployment!
Then he went on to talk about the importance of technology. Mr. Speaker, when the Prime Minister was first elected, Canada spent 1.5 per cent of its gross national product on research and development. And that was deemed very low. A special Senate study concluded we had the worst record of any of the OECD nations. It was pathetic and something had to be done. Today our expenditure on research and development, expressed as a percentage of GNP, amounts to .8 per cent. Ten years ago 1.5 per cent was deemed to be atrocious and the Prime Minister agreed and created a ministry.
I do not know what the other ministers are doing, but the minister responsible for science and technology is off seeing the Queen. He is running around the country shepherding the other minister from Windsor, who cannot be trusted completely with external affairs. He bears the title but they do not let him out alone. If you do believe that science and technology is
October 30, 1980

important, as you must, when are we going to stop the rhetoric and see some action? In his speech on October 20, the Minister of State for Economic Development said this was a top priority. Yet the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais) said on September 22 that we do not have any money to spend on technology. He said that in Vancouver. And the budget talks about this new great era of high technology we are approaching. It can only be described as fraud on the part of this minister. If the senator from Alberta, who is now the Minister of State for Economic Development, had a modicum of decency and self-respect he would resign forthwith.
I said earlier to the Minister of Finance that he does not understand what the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources has done to him. He has made a dishonest forecaster out of him. The minister of energy has no idea what makes the energy industry run in this country. He cannot understand and at the same time say in this House, as he did yesterday in response to a question by my hon. friend from Calgary South about the number of rigs which would be leaving Canada and the drop-off in exploration:
Madam Speaker, I have not had the latest report on the stock market, but by eleven o'clock this morning I was told Canadian stocks were holding very well and that some decrease had taken place in the value of the shares of multinationals, although those decreases appeared at that time to be rather small. I think it shows that the business community has indeed examined this budget and found that it was a fair and good budget.
I assume the minister believes what he said, believes that it was a good and fair budget and that it would be so viewed by the industry. Obviously, the hon. member for Lambton-Mid-dlesex believes it. But what did the stock market do? Yesterday, starting about an hour after the minister made his response, the market in oils took a drop and plunged 363 points. That was Wednesday. And today it dropped 420 points.
It lost 800 points in two days. To find a fall as disastrous as that we have to go back to October, 1929. What is it about Octobers, Mr. Speaker? In October, 1970, the government went berserk and brought out the army. In October, 1980, they went berserk and destroyed an industry. What happens? What happens in Octobers?


An hon. Member:: The full moon.


An hon. Member:: Hallowe'en madness.


An hon. Member:: Get your Indian blankets.


Harvie Andre: As I pointed out at the beginning of my speech, and with sincerity because I believe it-unfortunately it worries me-I do not know if this country will survive, if the integrity of this country will remain, if our democracy will remain.
On the question of democracy, Mr. Speaker, I will give the reasons I have reached that conclusion. In the budget speech, the Minister of Finance said he had heeded the representations of the provinces and so there would be no export tax. A
The Budget-Mr. Andre
paragraph later he said there would be a tax on the sale of gas to the United States. The pathetic thing about this is that the guardians of the public's right to know put that across the nation. Millions of Canadians saw it on television. There would be no export tax. They believed it, of course.
When the hon. member for Sarnia (Mr. Cullen) spoke earlier, he said the reason the west does not understand the Liberal party is because they cannot get their message across. And the Liberal member who spoke ahead of me was spouting out these blatant, dishonest statements from the budget as if they are true. The public believes it, because they saw it on television. To their credit, some economic writers were not fooled and pointed out that in fact this was a blatant, dishonest deception. A lot of the political writers, however, said, "My, isn't the minister clever. Isn't he wily. He is so wily he is able to confuse the people."
How long can a democracy carry on when the public guardians, the fifth estate who write about politics, look at chicanery, mischief, deception, advertising, polling, mind manipulation, as examples of wiliness to be applauded and cheered? How long can a democracy last under these circumstances, Mr. Speaker? Not long. This budget was a most disgusting example of political-[DOT]


An hon. Member:: Don't be shy.


Harvie Andre: The hon. member opposite sits there grinning. If he behaves and applauds, he will get in the cabinet too. He knows that principle is not the way in which to advance one's political fortunes. Why should he be worried about Albertans? His attitude is, "For goodness sake, they are a bunch of crazies out there-Saskatchewanians and British Columbians too. They do not vote Liberal anyway, so they must be dumb. They do not vote Liberal so how can they be Canadians? Why should we care about them?"
The minister had a choice in his budget. He had to raise money but he could have raised it across the whole country and have made everybody mad at him. He said in the House, oh no. The sun was not going to set on that minister of finance. He is too wily for that. Applause, applause. "We are going to pick our enemies. We are going to get those westerners. They did not vote for us anyway. We can form a majority government without them, so why don't we?"
I will tell you why he should not have done it, Mr. Speaker. It is because the country may not survive, that is why.


An hon. Member:: Come off it!


Harvie Andre: Phone somebody in the west. Do not just sit there listening to that nonsense. Phone people in the west and ask them, if you care about Canada. Can you imagine what would happen to a government that did this to Quebec? I ask you, what price would we pay for oil and gas if it were in Ontario and Quebec?


An hon. Member:: You are using Levesque's tactics.


Mr. de Corneille:: Oh, oh!
4282

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Andre


Harvie Andre: There is the man with the collar. What a disgrace! I was talking to a backbench member of the Liberal party and in all sincerity he said he was worried. He had been talking to his "twin" and was worried about what his twin was telling him about the mood. He said he did not understand why they are so upset. He was honest; he does not understand. This body blow is not the first one. This has been happening virtually since-


An hon. Member:: Oh, oh!


Harvie Andre: The hon. member from Quebec should read this little story about Louis Riel and what he was asking about resources and how Ottawa reacted to that. They stomped on him. Ottawa stomped on Riel.


An hon. Member:: Soak your head!


Harvie Andre: You sheik! The hon. member for Sarnia did not understand why the west was so opposed when Petrosar went to Sarnia. He thought, "We can share all across the country". He thought that Albertans were being selfish to begrudge the Petrosar plant to Sarnia and I think he was sincere. The reason he could say that is because he did not know why Alberta was so upset. Well, it was because at the Western Economics Opportunities Conference in July, 1973, "We will try to build up your economy. Yes, we will try to secure more processing of raw materials close to the source." For Alberta, that meant the development of a petrochemical industry. But five months later the government announced, "Get back in line,-Petrosar is going to Sarnia." It was not that Albertans begrudged Sarnia the Petrosar plant, but the fact is Alberta just could not understand how the Prime Minister could make a solemn promise at a conference called by him to discuss western economic opportunities and break it five months later.
He did worse than that, Mr. Speaker. Two months later he promised the fullest discussion before acting unilaterally. I am sure the Minister of Finance will remember this because he was government House leader at the time. Part of that organic understanding with that group over there was when David Lewis said, "Do something about inflation or I will bring your government down." They put a price freeze on crude oil. At the time the price was to go up from $4 to $4.10. That was six weeks after they had promised, publicly, to the producing provinces that there would be the fullest discussion before any energy policy was announced. Right then and there, when David Lewis said, "Do something," they said "We will do it- we will stomp on the west." David Lewis got his just reward. He was tossed out for that chicanery. But central Canadians said "Good for you, Pierre" and gave him a majority.
Mr. Speaker, I see you rising. I did not talk about all the things I wanted to but I will make one more plea to those hon. members opposite who care about Canada: please question what you are so quickly approving because you do more damage than you know.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
[ Translation}


Mr. Marcel Dionne (Chicoutimi):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to take part in this debate on the budget brought down by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) on October 28 last. The member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre) has not even taken the trouble to read the budget and, in my opinion, if he could have been a little more specific, he would not have talked so much rubbish, just as his party could have brought down a more constructive document on December 13 last, since it was defeated as a result of its budget, if one is to believe the hon. member for Calgary Centre.
I cannot refrain from feeling sorry for the Progressive Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, who, after 17 years in the opposition, have been thrown back there, because the Canadian people rejected the budget they brought down last December. I said when I made my maiden speech in the House that the Conservatives had known some hard times for 17 years. If we compare the budget of the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) with the budget of the Minister of Finance, we realize that the budget of the Clark government was devoid of ideas.
As for the new taxes contained in the Crosbie budget, they hurt as much as the spines of desert cactuses. The Crosbie budget was so bad that I suspect the Canadian people will remember it for at least another 17 years.


Some hon. Members:: Right on!


Marcel Dionne: The Canadian people made no mistake in bringing back the Trudeau government to power. The Crosbie budget took from the poor to give to the rich. Let us talk about social laws, Mr. Speaker: the fact remains that it was this same Liberal government which, in this country, passed 90 per cent of all our social laws.


An hon. Member:: That is true.


Marcel Dionne: People should be reminded here that, had the Progressive Conservative budget been passed, it would have cost every Canadian family $800 more a year because Mr. Crosbie increased the excise tax on oil by 18 cents a gallon. It would have cost us even more for food, clothing, housing, heating our homes and driving our cars. Heating and transportation alone would have cost every Canadian family an estimated $381 more a year, had the Crosbie budget been accepted.
The argument put forward by the Progressive Conservatives to justify that excise tax increase on gas was that it would encourage Canadians to save energy; but in that case, the government could have or should have exempted public transports, city buses and trains, if the people were to use their cars less. The Progressive Conservatives were forgetting that people have to travel to get to work.
October 30, 1980

Farmers have always been exempt from the excise tax because they are producers. The farmer who is driving his tractor out in the field is not out for a pleasure ride. That tax increase meant that the Progressive Conservative government was recommending to the farm producers that they go back to oxen or draught-horses. By refusing to bring the Clark government back to power, the people were suggesting it go and reflect until at least the year 2000. The MacEachen budget provides for increasing the price of gas by 13 cents a gallon in 1980, whereas it would have gone up by 32 cents a gallon had the Clark government budget been accepted.
On the evening of October 28, while the Minister of Finance was reading his budget, we could see that the opposition was ill at ease.
Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to find fault with a budget which provides for practically no increase in individual or corporate income taxes. Once again, hon. members of the Progressive Conservative Party, as birds of ill omen, had predicted that the Liberal government would do away with the indexation of income tax. I could see that the rank and file were desperate when the minister announced that the indexation program was maintained. Therefore, the indexation will reduce by as much as $1.6 billion the amount Canadian taxpayers will have to pay in income taxes next year. This represents anywhere between $200 and $300 for individual taxpayers.
Following the representations made by the hon. member for the Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean area, fortified wines with an alcoholic content of over 14 per cent will be taxed on the same basis as table wines. The excise tax on fortified wines will be reduced from $3 to $1.25 par gallon. 1 am pleased with this decision, for it will benefit wine producers in our area, especially those who make wine out of blueberries, a regional product.
It is, in fact, a sharing budget. Hon. members will recall that the Crosbie budget granted a tax credit for mortgage interest. The measure benefited few Canadians. Renters, those who make no mortgage payments, people with too low income to take advantage of the program, paid more taxes to favour a small category of taxpayers. The Progressive Conservative government increased the excise tax on gas to pay the cost of the mortgage interest tax credit program. On the contrary, we see that the Liberal government announced a national energy program that does not penalize taxpayers. Thus, thanks to measures announced in the budget, increased oil prices in Canada will always be below world prices. They will never exceed 85 per cent of the foreign oil prices, or, if it is lower than the oil prices in the United States, the Canadian industry will remain competitive.
Mr. Speaker, the whole package of energy measures aims at Canadianizing our oil industry. It is a measure that is part of the Liberal philosophy. Thanks to this policy, we are counting on a 50 per cent Canadian participation at least in gas and oil production by 1990.
The Budget-Mr. M. Dionne
Our proudest asset, Petro-Canada, will be instructed to take over the shares of one or several oil multinationals. Mr. Speaker, this is a real government in action, a government that looks after the interests of the taxpayers thanks to a Canadian policy under which all citizens from coast to coast will enjoy the benefits derived from our natural riches and through a fair distribution, through this sharing formula, $40 billion more will be retrieved to be distributed to all Canadian taxpayers instead of being exported by multinationals to foreign countries. This is what I call a responsible government, a government that is not afraid to legislate according to the needs of taxpayers from all regions of the country.
Another aspect of the energy policy is the announced extension of the gas pipeline to Quebec and the maritimes and the guarantee that the gas will be delivered to Quebec and Halifax as well as to Montreal and Toronto. To help conserve energy, the federal government is going to give grants to assist homeowners in converting from oil to gas, electricity or other forms of energy which we have in abundance in Canada.
Since we are on the topic of energy, I would like to draw the attention of the House to a number of facts which are worthy of consideration. In a letter addressed to all members of the House, the president of Dome Petroleum reminds us that industrialized nations want to buy their energy supplies from politically stable countries. There is oil in the Arab states but during the Israel-Egypt conflict, it stopped flowing and prices climbed. There is oil in Iran and Iraq, but because of the war between those two countries, the oil tap was shut off. Therefore, the oil and gas under Canadian soil increases in value by the sheer fact that Canada is a peaceful country. The industrialized countries of Europe are following very closely our discussions on energy. All Canadians are going to benefit from the developments which the Minister of Finance announced in his budget. According to the predictions made by the president of Dome Petroleum, our recoverable oil reserves in the tar sands and in heavy oil could keep us going for 300 years.
Our crude oil supplies total about 100 billion barrels and could meet the needs of Canada for 125 years. In view of such plentiful supplies and the strong demand from foreign countries, I wonder by what right and how long Mr. Lougheed can refuse to develop the energy potential of his province. Fortunately, there is a Parliament for all Canadians, because it is not normal for a premier to condemn thousands of Canadians to unemployment through his stubbornness. If we developed our energy potential, we would create immediately 150,000 jobs, according to the president of Dome Petroleum. This is the objective of this government, to stimulate employment while developing new energy sources, Mr. Speaker.
An article in the publication Commerce of the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce states that for each job

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. M. Dionne
created in the primary extraction of oil and natural gas, 100 more jobs are created in the manufacturing and finished product sales sectors. Are we not right to develop policies which promote further development in the energy sector?
I believe that it is wise to conserve oil because $24 of crude oil corresponds to $35 of gasoline and $3,500 of plastic goods. I believe that our industrialists should get into plastics, Mr. Speaker. What concerns me is that not enough of our young people are aware of the potential in that field. Indeed, according to a press release of the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais), Canada is an important producer of petroleum products, which are the main raw material of the plastics industry. Canadians do not take enough advantage of this competitive edge, otherwise, how can we explain the fact that Canada is the largest importer of plastics in the world and still has a trade deficit of $700 million in this sector? I am happy that the Minister of Supply and Services has undertaken to rectify this situation.
On the other hand, according to the article in Commerce, there is a plastics technology institute in Edmonton. There might be others elsewhere, but if not, more should be created. The graduates of the Plastic Technology Institute of Edmonton are being offered six jobs each. So, every graduate turns down six jobs and the starting salary is $1,300 to $1,400 a month. What saddens me, Mr. Speaker, is that the Plastic Technology Institute of Edmonton can accept only 25 students every semester. Yet, how many students registered to that course for the 1980 summer session? Six, Mr. Speaker, and then you hear people complain that we admit too many immigrants.
If Canadians refuse to make an effort, if our educational system is not interested in the employment opportunities available to the students when they graduate from CEGEPs and universities, I think some individual and collective soul-searching is in order. When provincial governments are more interested in the constitution than in creating jobs for the unemployed, we say that we are fortunate to have a national government and a prime minister with both feet firmly planted on the ground and who look after the real interests of the people. And I am glad that the Minister of Finance has announced that the government intends to promote exports. Mr. Speaker, the export potential of my area is well known. We have aluminum and newsprint plants whose production is exported to other countries. However, Canada does not develop its full export potential.
In fact, according to the committee which reviewed the services to promote exports and which published a report called the Hatch report, we find that only 178 companies across Canada, are responsible for two-thirds of all Canadian exports. Canadian companies must necessarily take an interest in exports. I shall give another example, Mr. Speaker. Canada produces extraordinary farm products, renowned throughout the world. Let us take beef for instance; pork, which now
enjoys a high rating, has the reputation of being the best in the world. The same goes for our grain. However, the Americans, our competitors, are travelling throughout the world visiting dynamic missions selling millions of metric tons of grain while Canadian businessmen are waiting for buyers who do not come to call. I would like to see the Export Development Corporation be a lot more dynamic and on their toes which, I think would greatly contribute to improve our balance of payments.
Furthermore, according to the Hatch report, Canada lost a share of the market for finished products in the competition for world markets. Comparison between 1967 and 1977 reveals that Canada's share of the finished products market went from 5.9 per cent down to 4.6 per cent in 1977. However, in that year it was estimated that the total export markets for finished products amounted to $650 billion. Therefore, a decrease of one percentage point in our share of the market means that we exported about $6.5 billion less than we should have.
In other words, if Canada had just kept its share of the 1970 market, which was 6 per cent, and not let it go down to 4.6 per cent, and if our imports had remained at their present level, the $7 billion deficit anticipated in our current account for the year 1979 would have been translated into a hefty surplus. On the matter of exports still, I think that we could make a better use of the aid we provide to developing countries. I do not share the view expressed by the vice-president of the CNTU, Mr. Christian Auger, who feels that Canada should increase its aid to the Third World but in a more unselfish way than we are doing at the moment.
To that statement I would like to add the following comment quoted from the Hatch report (Page 40, par. 1): "Business contends that the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) bas been far too philanthropic, as far as aid is concerned, especially since 1970.
Further on, the committee discovered the irony of Canada, one of the main benefactors to the multilateral agencies, having one of the worst records when it comes to getting contracts through those agencies. The report emphasizes that the Germans and the Japanese and others are better than we are at devising the right procedure to obtain contracts. They get far more from the contracts than they give away.
Mr. Speaker, I reject the view of the CNTU. Why should underdeveloped countries be allowed to use our Canadian dollars to purchase German or Japanese products, thereby creating jobs for their workers? I believe that the aid which is provided to the developing nations should be tied to a buy-Canadian policy, which would help the production of Canadian goods manufactured by Canadians.
Another sector which is particularly neglected is tourism. Canada should be going through an unprecedented tourist boom if only because of the lower value of our dollar. But such is not the case, and the result is that our deficit in current accounts stands at over $1 billion. We see lots of ads depicting
October 30, 1980

the merits of European ski resorts. Why do we fail to exploit the potential of the Rockies? The French spend their winter vacations in their ski resorts. They enjoy winter. Why should we run away from our Canadian winters? I hope a ministry of state for tourism will be created to remedy that problem.
In concluding, Mr. Speaker, I would say that in my opinion the Minister of Finance introduced a realistic budget on October 28. I believe it will enable us to reach the three objectives we have set for ourselves: first, security of supply and ultimate independence from the world oil market; second, opportunity for all Canadians to participate in the energy industry, particularly oil and gas, and to share in the benefits of its expansion; finally, fairness, with a pricing and revenuesharing regime which recognizes the needs and rights of all Canadians.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I hope that all Canadians from coast to coast will stop nurturing sterile divisions so that all our energies may be used to develop and reinforce our economy. Living as I do in the most beautiful, the richest and the freest country in the world, I urge all people and all politicians as well to seek more harmony in our discussions for the benefit of our descendants.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I was most interested in the remarks of the hon. member for Chicoutimi (Mr. Dionne) who has just spoken. He spent a great deal of time in his speech talking about Dome Petroleum. I hope he realizes that today the stock of Dome Petroleum fell $8.50 a share as a result of this budget which he praises.


Mr. Darling:: It fell $7 yesterday.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Yes, and trading was halted at mid-day. The trading on every single oil and gas stock in this country fell right out of bed. Is that the way to establish oil self-sufficiency? The hon. member for Chicoutimi said we should also do something for the plastics industry, the aluminum industry and the pulp and paper industry. He said that we are losing our market. What government has been in office for the last 12 years, except for a short period last year? What government? And where in this budget is there anything to satisfy the concerns of his constituents?
The hon. member also said we should not give as much help to the Third World. He said we should use our aid for ourselves because there is a lot to be done in this country. Has the hon. member read the budget at all? There is a promise by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) in that budget to significantly increase foreign aid. Should 1 read the budget to the hon. member now? Does he not even understand the contents of the budget?
The hon. member ended his speech by saying we have a great land, a land with opportunities unparalleled in the world.
The Budget-Mr. Blenkarn
He is right, but those opportunities are being destroyed. They were hampered and hurt by this budget. This budget must be described as follows: first, it is the most squirmy, deceitful and dishonest budget presented to a country for a long period of time.


Walter David Baker: Don't be so mild.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Second, it is the most regressive budget presented at any time in our history and, third, it is perhaps the most incompetent budget.
In the few minutes I have tonight, I would like to analyse those remarks. Dealing with the allegation that it is the most squirmy, deceitful and dishonest budget presented, I will call on Mr. Parizeau, whose comments were reported in The Globe and Mail this morning as my first witness.
Mr. Parizeau, who holds a doctorate from the London School of Economics, said it took a morning's work with a computer to figure out the two budgets' similarities since this one is 25 times more complicated and enveloped in an extraordinary cloud-
He went on to say that it will raise
-consumer gasoline prices two cents a litre less and heating oil 1.2 cents a litre more-
-than under the Crosbie budget. So much for the householder. We can decide not to drive our cars, but this is a cold country and we cannot decide not to heat our homes.
Let us take a look at the budget itself with respect to incentives. When I said it was squirmy and deceitful, one merely needs to look at the kind of incentives it offers to the oil industry-"A petroleum incentives program will be established to provide grants up to 80 per cent of exploration expenditures in the north, offshore up to 35 per cent and in other areas grants of up to 25 per cent will also be provided for development expenditures." Grants, grants, grants, grants and loans. A FIRA study will be held.
The government wants to find out to which party the people who run the oil companies belong. If they are the right type of people it will give them a grant with public money. It is the greatest patronage government this country has ever seen. It is squirmy and deceitful, and this is the kind of thing it is talking about in terms of money for development. It is a squirmy, deceitful budget because it is a budget for Liberal carpetbaggers. It is a budget for the bureaucrats to hand out money to their favourite friends.
We know how these grants operate in the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce. One puts in a brief and if it is the right brief, then maybe a grant will be given out, not to everybody but to some, and more to some and less to others. It depends on who you know, who writes your bief, who is your lobbyist and who is behind your case. The government says "you will drill where we want you to drill". I can imagine a drilling operation run by a bureaucrat in an ivory tower here in Ottawa with a Liberal carpetbagger as a friend handing out grants. That is how the government will work the grant system. The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) smiles because he knows how it works.


Mr. Whelan:: You bet I do, but it doesn't work that way.

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Blenkarn


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Let us talk about indexing. The Minister of Finance says we will not have indexing, that the government will not abolish the indexing of income tax. But then, of course, down further he says that maybe we will have some indexing anyway. Why can we not get a clean statement? The reason is that this is a squirmy, deceitful, dishonest budget.
On the topic of inflation, the minister forecasts a rate of 10.2 per cent. But then we look at the energy package and find that the cost of energy will go up 21.9 per cent. We find that the cost of food will go up 12 per cent. I looked everywhere to see what was likely to go down. What is going to go down so that the figures will balance at 10 per cent? I could not find anything.


Stan Darling: The stock market will.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: My friend says "the stock market." It surely went down. I could not find anything. I find that wages are likely to go up 10.5 per cent. I wonder what is coming down to bring the averages into line.
At the finance committee this afternoon the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) asked the governor of the Bank of Canada what was going to come down. He did not know. How do we arrive at this 10.2 per cent inflation rate? We get it because the Minister of Finance wants us to get 10.2 per cent, but there is not a single fact in this squirmy, deceitful and dishonest budget which indicates that inflation will be anything less than 12 per cent, 14 per cent or 15 per cent. There is not a single fact which indicates anything less. The Canadian people cannot believe this budget. It is squirmy, deceitful and dishonest.


Mr. Kaplan:: What is your next point?


Donald Alex Blenkarn: I mentioned that the governor of the Bank of Canada came before the finance committee this afternoon. The governor presented a paper at that committee meeting. I want to read a portion of page 7 of that paper, which discusses inflation. He says this:
That is why it is so important that public policy, including monetary policy, be firmly committed, and be seen to be firmly committed, to reducing the rate of inflation.
The governor was asked what he meant by public policy. Did public policy, in the main, mean the fiscal stance of the government? He said yes. He was asked whether the fiscal stance of the government did anything to help his battle to reduce inflation. He could not comment further. However, the governor did comment by saying that today the Government of Canada had to buy up almost all the 90-day treasury bills which were offered, and even at that we wound up with a Bank of Canada rate of 12.16 per cent based on the 90-day rate. Not as many 180-day bills were bought, so the 180-day rate was 12.4 per cent.
The bond market went up as of yesterday. It did not go up as of today, but as of yesterday, by at least .5 per cent across the board. So the Government of Canada is now borrowing at
in excess of 13 per cent with its bills and bonds. We do not have to be surprised that this slimy, squirmy, deceitful and dishonest budget will result in interest factors to the ordinary people of this country at 14 per cent or maybe 14.5 per cent prime before a week and a half is over with mortgage rates at 15 per cent or 16 per cent before that time. That is the kind of thing this budget gives us.
We asked the governor today how much money the Government of Canada can afford to borrow. He said he supposed it could borrow any amount it wanted provided it was prepared to pay a high enough rate. We asked what could be borrowed at reasonable rates while still leaving some money for the private market. He said that if the rate is raised high enough all investors would be driven out of the market. Later tonight I want to talk about what the government has done to the private market in this squirmy, deceitful and dishonest budget.
More important, though, I think this budget is probably the most regressive budget we have seen for a long time. I refer hon. members to page 27 of the budget where there is a table of alleged taxes which are being imposed on people. That table is reasonably accurate except that it leaves some things out. The total on that table shows $2,965 billion, but then we look around. Where did the oil compensation fund go as a form of taxes? That fund is $3.47 billion. When we look around further we wonder what happened to the payroll tax increase in the unemployment insurance fund, and we find that that tax increase of $1.1 billion is not included. When we look around to find where the new postal rates are to come from, it becomes clear that a sum estimated at half a billion dollars is not included. After we add it all up, we find that this budget increases taxes on Canadians by over $8 billion.


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Including multinationals.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: I want to tell my friend that this tax budget is almost entirely on the backs of ordinary working Canadians, and that, of course, is exactly the problem.
Let us deal with the unemployment insurance fund for a moment. This is clearly a payroll tax. The hon. member for Broadview-Greenwood (Mr. Rae) mentioned as much in his speech the other day. It is a payroll tax. It does not matter whether it is charged to an employer or an employee; it comes out of the gross compensation paid to people for work, and that payroll tax has been raised by 3316 per cent, to $4.32 for every $100 remuneration paid up to $290 per week.
Working people of this country earning $15,000 or so a year will pay to this government, in addition to all the other taxes they pay, an amount of money which would give them two full weeks' holidays, and then some, every year. That is an additional tax, and that is the kind of regressive taxation the Minister of Finance has imposed. If we were to ask the working person whether he would rather have unemployment insurance or two weeks' extra holidays with pay, I wonder what he would say in a referendum. I wonder if that type of thing could be put into the referendum of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). The Prime Minister will put capital punishment and other things into a referendum-not just constitu-
October 30, 1980

tional changes, presumably-and I wonder what the people would say. I suggest the people of Canada have had enough of the unemployment insurance schemes run by this government as another form of taxation. They would boot the Prime Minister out.
The next regressive form of taxation has to do with the Post Office. We asked the Postmaster General (Mr. Ouellet) what the increase in the stamp cost would be. He refused to say. Undoubtedly he has the figures, but he refused to say. It has been suggested by the hon. member for St. John's West that it will be 35 cents. The minister had plenty of opportunity to say he would not double postal rates, but he said nothing. Clearly he accepts the view of the hon. member for St. John's West, the former minister of finance, and that is probably what he will do. But does the Minister of Finance in this budget come clean with the people of Canada? Not at all. Does the Postmaster General come clean with the people of Canada? Not at all. The truth of the matter is that the Post Office change contemplated in this budget is a further tax burden of half a billion dollars to the people of Canada.
We talk about regressive taxation. The ordinary person pays the same for a gallon of gasoline as the millionaire. The ordinary person, the pensioner, the Indian on the reserve, pays the same for the oil that is put in his space heater or for gas to the gas company as the person who drives around in a BMW or a Rolls Royce. Yet this budget makes no difference in how these people are treated. When asked about that matter, the Minister of Finance said yes, but they gave the people $35 more in the guaranteed income supplement. Well, he gave to some people who have to qualify for the GIS $35 more, but, as was pointed out by my other colleague from St. John's, the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), most of that $35, if it were applied to heating, would be used up just on heating. But what about the people who do not qualify for GIS, people who are too young to qualify or the working poor of this country? What about the income earners trying to support a family on $21,500 a year who, under the budget of last year, would have received a grant, a tax credit, toward their energy costs? Does the minister do anything for them? Not on your life because this budget is a grab it, take it, grasp it, squeeze it budget out of the poor people, the ordinary people. This is a consumption tax, it is not a tax which taxes people on their ability to pay. It taxes people regardless. It is the most regressive form of taxation you can get.
The Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) said it goes after the oil companies. I will be damned if it does, sir, because the oil companies and the large corporations in this country have long since figured out how to pass a tax on in the price of the product. Do not think they will get stuck with the tax, they will pass it on. If the revenue tax suggested in the budget happens to be constitutional, they will pass it on, you can be sure. It will be passed on to consumers, so this is a tax on the ordinary people of the country, it is not a tax that is in any way progressive or in any way aimed at collecting from those who are able to pay.
The Budget-Mr. Blenkarn
Let us go on to what is happening in terms of expenditure. On page 29 of the budget the government states that its budgetary expenditures this coming year will amount to $66.6 billion. But the budget is dishonest in that representation because it fails to take into account as a principal item the oil compensation fund, that $2.50 a barrel-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. It being 9.45 p.m., it is my duty, pursuant to section 6 of Standing Order 60-


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I think it would be appropriate if the debate were allowed to continue until ten o'clock because an arrangement has been made among the parties that the ordinary question would not be put tonight but would be put at 9.45 p.m. next Tuesday. So I think it would be appropriate if the debate were allowed to continue.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I think, Mr. Speaker, you will find it was agreed a few days ago-in view of the fact that there is no vote to be taken tonight but that the vote will be taken on Tuesday-that the debate should continue until ten o'clock tonight.


Mr. Turner:: It was agreed that there will be two votes on Tuesday and, if necessary, the following Thursday.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is that agreed?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The hon. member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn).


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, the expenditures are shown as being $66.6 billion, but the expenditure item fails to take into account the receipt in the oil compensation fund which will be a net $3,470 billion next year. In reality, that, together with the Post Office and other matters, should be added to the true government expense. The true government expense next year will be $73.65 billion, not $66.6 billion, and that, sir, represents a rise in government expense, calculated on the same basis, of $10.15 billion in one year. In other words, this government is going to tax more and spend more than any other government in the history of the country, and its rise in expenditures this year alone is in excess of expenditures of this government when the present Prime Minister took over in 1968.
The tax impact on Canadians is simply horrendous. It is a situation where we increase the take from Canadians by $8 billion; we turn that take over to the civil service, the bureaucracy, the mandarins of this government, and we let them do what they will with it. I say to you, sir, they will not use it to reduce the deficit. They have no intention of doing that. What they will do is to spend it. So even having taken $8 billion in additional revenue, this government has decided that it will continue to run an unbelievable deficit which, right through to the foreseeable future in this budget, is in excess of $11.5 billion a year.

October 30, 1980
The Budget-Mr. Blenkarn
The Minister of Finance said in his address that he will try to reduce the budget deficit over time. The fact of the matter is that right through to the end of the projections, the budgetary deficit of the government is forecast to be nearly $12 billion.
Consider the situation had this government not been in office. The budgetary deficit next year would have been $9.7 billion, reduced to $9.2 billion, reduced to $9 billion. In other words, the effect of the activity of this government is to increase the deficit astronomically and, what is even more important, increase the amount of money which must be borrowed, printed or in some other way obtained from the people of Canada. This year alone we will pay $10.4 billion in interest. Assuming interest rates stay the same, we would pay $12.3 billion next year. But they will not stay the same, they will go up. So it will be more than that. Assuming they will stay the same, even though they will not, it will be $14,375 billion in 1982-83 and $16.2 billion the following year. But the interest rates will not stay the same, so we will pay more than that. The interest alone is forecast to continue at 4 per cent of the gross national product. Approximately one-fifth of what the government takes goes to interest. The government's share of the GNP remains, throughout the entire forecasted period, in excess of 20 per cent for the GNP.
This is a government which says that inflation is a problem. This is a government which has an adviser, the governor of the Bank of Canada, who says there must be sound fiscal policies. This is a government which does not give a darn about fiscal policies or fiscal responsibility. This is a government organized to grab more and more of the resources of the country to feed its mandarins, to feed its appetite. This is a government which does not really care about cutting back programs which have spent themselves out and are no longer required. It carries on; there is no thought of sunset in the mind of this government. It takes more and more and more. It takes more of the economy, more of the wages and incomes of Canadians, and passes them through the ivory tower.
Before the end of 1983 the net debt of the country will be in excess of $100 billion. By that time the percentage of debt will be very close to 30 per cent of the gross national product. We are getting ourselves into a debt which our children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren will never be able to pay. Indeed, as one person commenting to me said, "They will not have to pay it because the economy will not work. It will not be there; we will have a new money system and it will be all over."
This is the most incompetent budget ever presented. I call as my first witness the governor of the Bank of Canada. Today we asked the governor about the problem concerning borrowing money. The governor has done a fine job this year. As the fiscal agent of the Government of Canada, he has managed to borrow, about $13 billion, netting out about $11 billion, in the last 12-month period. But even this week he had to finance, print or whatever, $683 million extra just to finance the
government along. How he can continue to borrow and finance the government without undue "monetism", I do not know. He has managed to do it, but he cannot do it much longer. He will not be able to do it much longer unless he has some help from the Minister of Finance and this budget gives him no help.
I call as my second witness Frank Miller, the treasurer of the province of Ontario. Today in the provincial legislature he called this budget "no answer to inflation, no assistance to manufacturing industries, no assistance to tourism, no assistance for anything responsible at all", and immediately indicated he would require a new provincial budget within two weeks.
I call as my last witness the people of Canada who responding in the stock-market today drove stock prices in Canada down $3 billion. They drove the indices down so far that we had one of the worst days on the market in history. Compare that to the "Crosbie" budget of a year ago.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I regret to interrupt the hon. member but his allotted time has expired. He may continue only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


An hon. Member:: No.


Mr. George Henderson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand here tonight and make some comments in reference to the budget presented by the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen). Regardless of what has been said by hon. members opposite, I believe this budget recognizes and indeed attempts very positively to deal with the economic and social realities facing Canada in the 1980s.
If this budget had been presented by my hon. colleague's predecessor with the same feeling of compassion for the little person and concern for disadvantaged areas of the country, the seating arrangement in the House today might have been different, but that is not the case. Very simply the budget before us is one which demonstrates the government's feeling of compassion and concern for the everyday Canadian. It is a budget which will improve the economic well-being of areas of the country which have been at a considerable disadvantage for far too long.
The predictions of doom and gloom of members opposite are obviously ill-founded. As evidenced either by their own budget of December, 1979, or the "boojit", as the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) used to say, perhaps they were preconditioned to expect the worst. It is quite amazing that the hon. member for Calgary Centre (Mr. Andre) and the hon. member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) should have claimed a distortion of the facts. I cannot find any distortion of the facts in this budget, but I submit members opposite have certainly distorted their famous budget of December, 1979.
I cannot understand how members opposite can rise in this debate and condemn the budget presented on Tuesday evening
October 30, 1980

when they went along with their budget of last year in which they predicted an increase of 32 cents per gallon for gasoline by January 1, 1981. In fact, their budget ensured this 32-cent increase by a date approximately two months from now. It is a far cry from the increase of 13.3 cents evidenced by the budget of last Tuesday night.
May I call it ten o'clock?



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Mr. Walter McLean (Waterloo):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This evening I am hoping to receive some assurance from the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) or from the government that it is truly committed to the protection of jobs in the Canadian rubber industry. I asked the minister, on both June 25 and July 3, about the decision of the Foreign Investment Review Agency, announced on March 28, 1980, concerning OY Nokia AB of Finland, and its advisability at a time when the government had announced a $50 million DREE grant to the Michelin Tire Company. Since that time Uniroyal Limited has asked its Canadian employees to accept pay and benefit cutbacks as a result of market conditions.
Since then 1 have received from the minister one written outline of the circumstances surrounding the FIRA decision. As well, the minister has written to Stuart Smith, the leader of the opposition in the province of Ontario. The common strain in the two responses is that with the decision of FIRA the government was afforded a bargaining position that it had not previously enjoyed. I quote from the minister's letter to me dated August 29, in which he stated:
You may not be aware that Nokia tires have been sold in Canada for several years through existing distributors and dealers and that.. . had the Nokia application to establish a new enterprise in Canada been disallowed, it is virtually certain that the importation of Nokia tires would have continued, and also that no compensating benefits for Canadians would have been obtainable.
This assertion, repeated in the minister's response to his colleague at Queen's Park, opens a number of extremely serious avenues for interrogation. In my canvass of tire manufacturers, dealers and distributors, most of whom are doing business across the country, not one has seen more than one instance of a Nokia tire being sold in Canada. That instance was a ship container of Nokia radial tires that sat in a Montreal warehouse for two years until early in 1979 when it was bought and marketed by Treadway Exports Limited of
Adjournment Debate
Waterloo, Ontario. No new shipment is anticipated or will be sought. If this is what the minister is referring to as an instance of the distribution of Nokia products, then will he tell this House why this valuable container sat and gathered dust for two years.
In fact, this constitutes no mere matter of bureaucratic overkill. What is far more important, and the reason I am pursuing this matter here tonight, is that the terms of the FIRA decision are exactly those given by the minister's Liberal predecessor to the Michelin application. This same innocuous form of reference gave Michelin, in effect, a duty-free holiday, unrestrained by either time or amounts. Nokia seems to be just as free as Michelin to build up its share of the domestic market for years, before actually building a manufacturing plant in Canada.
This is the case, Mr. Speaker, despite the written assurances given by the minister to both Mr. Smith and myself that there is nothing in the FIRA decision which would lead Nokia to believe that the federal government would at any time offer some sort of abnormal tariff break. What, besides a unilateral tariff exemption would possibly induce Nokia to enter an extremely competitive and hungry industry, one which by any account is running well below manufacturing potential?
Furthermore, I cannot comprehend why the minister feels that Nokia does not qualify as a foreign multinational. The FIRA decision refers to Nokia's undertaking to seek a joint venture for tire manufacturing. It is instructed to offer equity participation to Canadians of not less than 50 per cent. However, if no joint venture with Canadian participation is possible, Nokia is permitted to construct a manufacturing facility for car and truck tires which would be 100 per cent Finnish-owned. How can this possibly be construed as anything but a foreign multinational?
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, in his response to my questions on this matter in June and July, the minister hoped out loud that "the House will be supporting me before too long in legislation which, among other things, will enable the FIRA Act to operate with more openness." Should I presume that the minister was referring to the recently announced freedom of information legislation? Is this House to be presented with some proposed amendment to the Foreign Investment Review Act itself? In either case, I call upon the minister, through the parliamentary secretary, to take this well-documented opportunity to provide an example of openness. Will he shed a little light on a decision that seems to fly right in the face of the written purpose of the Foreign Investment Review Act? How, Mr. Speaker, is this decision concerning OY Nokia AB of Finland,-likely to be of significant benefit to Canada?"
How many jobs will it create for rubber workers across our land?
[Translation\


Mr. Gerald Laniel (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to
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October 30, 1980
Adjournment Debate
answer this question not only in my capacity as parliamentary secretary but also as a member who has in his riding a huge Goodyear factory which has known progress in recent years. The Michelin investment led me to ask questions as well, perhaps the same questions that the hon. member himself is asking.
Still I must point out to my colleague that I am replying to his question on behalf of the minister who unfortunately could not be in the House tonight. He is on an important mission in France with the France-Canada Economic Council where he will be discussing several questions related to automobiles, aeronautics, Michelin probably, state-of-the-art technology and, in any event, he is expected to sign certain agreements with the French minister of economy.

In any event, I welcome this opportunity to discuss this case and will try to provide an answer to the hon. member. I am told, and I feel, that this case is an excellent example of how a foreign investor may show significant benefit to Canada which is a basic requirement under the Foreign Investment Review Act.
The hon. member is a free enterprise politician and seems to be resisting free competition in Canada by others than those that are already in place. He has referred to some of the commitments of the Nokia AB parent company of Finland which has substantial undertakings in support of its proposals. Those proposals were contained in the press release. The hon. member has enumerated most of them. He can quarrel with them or put them in doubt but under the advice of FIRA the minister has decided that such a proposal was and could be for the benefit of the Canadian economy.
The hon. member referred to the reply of the minister. Of course, Mr. Speaker, there is a gamble but at the same time, there is the possibility of job creation, there is the possibility of investment and there is the possibility of involvement of Canadians in the United States market. All these things could be beneficial to the Canadian economy.
Although the hon. member is very much interested in protecting the Canadian rubber industry, I am sure this could become a very important rubber industry, one that could bring export benefit to Canada.


INDIAN AFFAIRS-CONSULTATION ON PROPOSED FINANCING AGREEMENTS
James Douglas Manly: Mr. Speaker, on April 23, I asked the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) about the failure of the department to consult with Indian bands regarding Treasury Board policy on funding those bands. I stated that this was completely unacceptable and asked how it squared with the government's announced policy of consultation.
Since then, the government has backed down somewhat and I understand that there is now an indefinite freeze on that particular funding policy. Bands continue to face problems
with funding which make it impossible for them to do any long-term planning. I should like to briefly outline three areas where these problems are most serious.
First of all, there is a problem with funds arriving late. Credit ratings of Indian bands are adversely affected because they are not able to make their payments on time. It results in the bands having to go to banks and borrow money at very high interest rates. Then the department refuses to help them pick up the extra cost of paying that interest. It also results in loss of skilled personnel who are not willing to wait around for their pay cheques. In many areas of this country where winter arrives early, it means the funds arrive too late for necessary projects to go ahead.
As one specific example, but by no means an isolated one, I would like to point to the problems faced by the Liard River band. Their first quarter funding should have arrived by April 1 of this year. Instead, part of it arrived on May 2 and part of it did not arrive until June 9. Money for a home-school co-ordinator should have arrived by April 1 but did not arrive until June 13 at the end of the school term when they were ready to lay off the co-ordinator.
A group home faced the problem of having its hydro cut off because funds had not arrived to pay necessary bills and expenditures. This fall, money should have arrived to help students who are staying in boarding homes buy their necessary clothing and school supplies. That money should have been there by September 1. Instead, it arrived last week. This kind of late funding is a disgrace. It is a direct cause of many problems that Indian people face. The department is sloppy in getting promised funds out to Indian people.
Second, the Core funding has been frozen at the 1975 level. That means Indian bands are expected to function with 1975 levels of funding. We all know how much the costs of this government have gone up in the last five years, yet we expect Indian bands to operate with 1975 funding. We discriminate against those who work for Indian bands doing jobs that used to be done by federal officials. When federal civil servants received pay increases, those increases were retroactive. When Indian people and people working for Indian bands received pay increases, they were not retroactive. This is a clear case of discrimination against those who work for Indian people.
Third, and this is most serious because this has become a widespread practice, at the present time, funds which had been allocated for band projects are being diverted and used to cover deficits in other areas of the Department of Indian Affairs. In other words, local bands which had planned necessary projects are having to cancel those projects because of cost overruns in other areas of the department's responsibility. For example, in New Brunswick $131,000 has been allocated for a hot lunch program. By the end of June some $30,000 had been spent, yet that program was cancelled at that time. This fall there are no hot lunches for Indian students in New Brunswick because that money has had to be returned and dealt with elsewhere.
October 30, 1980

In conclusion, in spite of all the rhetoric about consultation, about giving Indian people more responsibility to administer their own affairs, the government continues to keep them on a very short string. The department is sloppy in getting funds to Indian bands in time. It expects Indian bands to operate in 1980 with 1975 funding. The department diverts funds that should be available to band projects. It uses these funds to cover deficits in other parts of the department. The plain fact is that Indian bands are being made the scapegoat for the inefficiency of the department and for the government's failure to secure adequate funds so that at least some of these funds will get through the gauntlet of the bureaucracy and reach the Indian people themselves. In conclusion, I would like to read a few words from a letter a band manager wrote to the minister.
I quote:
You see Mr. Minister it's like if you made home-made beer. You and your department will drink the top part of the bottle and give the remaining to the Indians. This is exactly what's happening with the funding too.


Mr. Ron Irwin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Social Development):: Mr. Speaker, I often think that if there is a scapegoat, it has to be the Department of Indian Affairs which quietly goes about its business, trying to do the best it can, not always to perfection but certainly not with the incompetence as suggested by the hon. member.
On April 15, 1980, the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) met with the National Indian Brotherhood concerning terms and conditions for funding to Indian bands. As a result of this meeting, the minister announced an extension to July 15 to allow time for further consultation with Indian people to work out mutually acceptable financial arrangements. During that three-month period, the minister met with the chairman of the Union of New Brunswick Indians and reached an agreement on May 26.
With the understanding that bands would, as they had in the past, continue to meet information and accounting requirements through provision of a band council resolution or other appropriate instrument, the following points were agreed upon in regard to contribution arrangements.
First, an annual audit will continue to be provided to the department by bands. Second, bands will set out in their expenditure plans and by program their budget requirements for the fiscal year, for example, housing, roads, education. Another point agreed upon is that bands must indicate their cash requirements on a quarterly basis against the aforementioned expenditure plan and, in advance, their cash requirements and expenditures for subsequent quarters. Bands also have the option of continuing to be financed on a quarterly basis, which is the maximum period allowable for cash advances.
It should be mentioned that these points were agreed upon between the department and Indian bands in Canada as general guidelines. This does not, however, preclude the option of individual bands negotiating a financial arrangement with the government which better suits their own needs.
Adjournment Debate
Hon. members will be aware that the Department of Indian Affairs had in the past received complaints from Parliament, the Auditor General and the Indian people themselves, alleging inadequate accounting procedures and negligence over expenditure of federal funds. Prior to April, 1979, Treasury Board submissions specified the terms and conditions relating to each contribution activity, such as education, social assistance and so on. This practice resulted in several contribution agreements for any one band and each had to be controlled, monitored and accounted for individually. As of April, 1979, however, terms and conditions are now based on classes of activities. This means that a single contribution can be made by the department to a band which covers all activities managed by the band, thereby reducing the need for the control and accounting over separate contributions.
Under these new reporting procedures approved by Treasury Board, the bands must now submit financial reports to the department on at least a quarterly basis, specifying year-to-date expenditures and forecast total annual expenditures.
There is much more I would like to say, but this is only a three-minute period. The point I want to make is that we want to do a good job. At the same time, we have a fiscal responsibility, as do the bands. After all, it is the taxpayers' money. We have to answer for it, as do the bands.


THE CONSTITUTION-CONSULTATIONS WITH INDIAN GROUPS
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Graee):: Mr. Speaker, on October 17 I asked the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) when the Indian and other native groups in Canada would be consulted about their constitutional proposals and whether the constitutional proposals of October 6 would be amended to entrench Indian rights. While the Prime Minister said that Indians and other native people would be consulted on constitutional matters that concern them and that he was anxious to find ways to better protect their rights, regretfully he also said that this would be done only when the constitution is patriated to Canada.
This is not acceptable. If we can entrench certain rights regarding the French and English languages, fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, mobility rights, equalization and, now, the right to resources, then surely there is no reason why we cannot entrench at this time certain basic Indian and Inuit rights as well.
Some government spokesmen have argued that article 24 of the constitutional proposals protects native rights. But that section is extremely inadequate and is the barest minimum. Francophones of this country would never tolerate a similar proposal to protect their rights, and the Indians and Inuit have no reason to accept it either. The aboriginal people of this land want their basic collective rights entrenched in the present proposed charter. If they must wait until after patriation, they may have to wait for many years and then may never get the protection they want and need.
We must recognize that it will not be easy to pass amendments under the proposed amending formula. The Indian and

October 30, 1980
Adjournment Debate
Inuit people are not a large minority in many parts of this country, and many provincial governments might oppose and defeat any later entrenchment. With the federal government's present unilateral action, the chances to entrench aboriginal rights are much greater, if only the federal government would agree to do what it knows must be right.
On October 23 the National Indian Brotherhood announced their opposition to any patriation and charter of rights which failed to recognize and entrench their rights. They asked for amendments to the charter which would constitutionally recognize and protect their aboriginal rights, their property rights, their treaty rights and their right within Canada's federation to Indian government. Unfortunately, many failed to understand these demands by our native people.
People often look at our Indians and Inuit as just other ethnic groups and consequently fail to acknowledge that they should have any specially entrenched rights. But this assessment results from a complete misreading of our history and a prejudiced negative perception of aboriginal civilizations. The Indians and Inuit were established in this land for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. They had their own governments, laws, languages and cultures.
When the Europeans came in the sixteenth and following centuries, they unilaterally took over most of these lands by larger numbers, force of arms and more advanced technologies, rarely with the consent of the aboriginal peoples. How, under any concept of a moral justice, can we justify this action? How can it be justified under our Judeo-Christian concept of justice? We think it wrong for Hitler to march into France and Holland or for the Russians to annex the Baltic states but rationalize that it was all right for the British and French to take, without legal or moral right, Indian and Inuit lands in America.
No one suggests that we completely undo 300 years of history, but we can go a long way to correct the injustices of the past. We can recognize and entrench aboriginal rights in the constitution, and we can do it now. First, aboriginal rights are all those rights that our "first nations", the aboriginal people, possessed and which they never voluntarily gave up when Europeans arrived. These are rights to certain lands, languages, cultures, and forms of government. Second, we must also entrench their treaty rights so they cannot be abrogated by ordinary federal and provincial legislation.
These treaties were agreements between nations and meant to be basic constitutional documents. Third, Indian and Inuit lands and resources should not be subject to federal and provincial expropriation without consent. And fourth, the Indian and Inuit people, the "first nations" of Canada, should have the right within confederation to determine their own form of government. They do not want separation, they want to be full partners in the new Canadian dream.
Unfortunately, I did not have an opportunity to speak in the constitutional debate which ended last week. My name was too far down the Speaker's list when closure was applied.
Unfortunately as well, I have not been chosen to serve on the constitutional committee. I am committed, however, to doing everything in my power to amend the constitutional proposals to entrench Indian and Inuit rights now, at the same time as patriation. As far as I am concerned, no cause is more clearly just than this one, and it will never be suppressed.


Ron Irwin: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate and share the concern for the Indian people expressed by the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace (Mr. Allmand). He has indicated that the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) has said, first, that the Indians would be fully consulted on the constitutional proposals and, second, that there would be protection in a new constitution. I respectfully submit that it will take at least two decades more to settle the Indian claims of Canada and decide what their rights are.


William Warren Allmand: Why?


Ron Irwin: I will give examples. For instance in British Columbia there is a Nishga Tribal Council in the Nass Valley. All these people have claims in the process of negotiation, claims which are being litigated or being denied. There are certain bands in northern British Columbia. There is the Musqueam band of Vancouver. In the Yukon there is the Council of Yukon Indians, and Mr. Dennis O'Connor is dealing with this. In the Northwest Territories there are four separate groups making claims. There is COPE involving the Inuit. There is the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the Indian Brotherhood of Northwest Territories and the Metis Association of Northwest Territories. In Quebec there are three bands making claims, the St. Regis Band-


Gérald Laniel: St. Regis is in my riding.


Ron Irwin: -the Oka Band and the Caughnawaga Band. In Nova Scotia there is the Union of Nova Scotia Indians. In Newfoundland there are at least two I know of in Labrador. The Micmacs who came to Newfoundland about 150 years ago are claiming aboriginal rights. Then there is my area, northern Ontario. I do not even deal with non-status Indians, so I think it is oversimplifying the problem to think these can all be settled fairly and judiciously before a constitution can be passed. Section 24 is quite clear, and it does have a reverse declaration. I will read it:
The guarantee in this charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada, including any rights or freedoms that pertain to the native peoples of Canada.
In other words, if they have rights, then they will not be extinguished through the constitution.
Over and above this, we are meeting with them. We have provided them with $1,360,000 of tax money to research and put forward their claims. The Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Trudeau) has said-my hon. friend leaves-that native rights
October 30, 1980

as one of the first items on the agenda when the first ministers will meet again is a priority.
1 think we have dealt fairly. We are as concerned as the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace, and when he talks about Nazis and whatnot, it is only rhetoric.
Adjournment Debate


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 11 a.m.
At 10.29 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order 2(1).

Friday, October 31, 1980