1980-06-10

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Otto Jelinek (Halton):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43 I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. I sincerely hope that all members will agree with my non-partisan motion as it affects the safety of millions of consumers.
In view of the fact that a number of people in North America have already lost their lives as a result of explosions of disposable butane cigarette lighters, which are said to have the same amount of force as approximately three sticks of dynamite, and because as recently as last night another similar accident critically injured comedian Richard Pryor who as of this moment is fighting for his life, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Hamilton-Wentworth (Mr. Scott):
That this House instruct the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to launch an immediate investigation into the safety of all disposable butane cigarette lighters in order to determine which brands should be removed from the marketplace and what appropriate safety warnings must be established.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANADA BUSINESS CORPORATIONS ACT
Mr. Bill McKnight (Kindersley-Lloydminster):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. In view of the sweeping changes when the Canada Business Corporations Act succeeded the Canada Business Act, which affected some 21,000 small companies in Canada, and the severe consequences of expropriation of their assets by the government if continuance is not filed, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn):
That the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs make a statement on motions to this House as to his intentions and interpretation regarding this Draconian procedure and the apparent use by some companies to transfer to provincial jurisdictions where directorships are not covered by Canadian residency law.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Madam Speaker, considering that Houdaille Industries Limited, of the United States, yesterday announced its decision to shut down its auto parts factory in Oshawa in October, in spite of having a less modern facility in the United States, and considering that Canada runs an annual deficit in auto parts trade with the United States of almost $4 billion, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans):
That this House instruct the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce:
(1)	to take immediate steps to try to preserve the jobs in the Houdaille plant in Oshawa, and
(2)	to make clear to the United States government that the massive imbalance in automotive parts trade cannot persist.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INCOME TAX
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
The indexing of personal income tax to some extent prevents the tax man from profiting by inflation. This principle was first enunciated by the Hon. Robert Stanfield and adopted by the Hon. John Turner in his budget of 1974 as being an

June 10, 1980
element of fairness in the tax system. 1, therefore, move, seconded by the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone):
That this House direct the government that it should not in any way interfere with the indexing of personal income taxes, and if it needs measures to reduce its unmanageable debt it should introduce appropriate, honest fiscal measures and desist from its apparent intention to remove from the tax system the index for inflation.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion can be presented only with the unanimous consent of the Elouse. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Bruce Lonsdale (Timiskaming):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a motion which I hope will gain the unanimous consent of the House.
Whereas the Postmaster General (Mr. Ouellet) has confirmed that the previous Conservative government had approved plans to introduce a 35-cent stamp to commemorate the Moscow games this year, and whereas this government and many others have combined to boycott the Moscow games as a result of the U.S.S.R.'s invasion of Afghanistan, and whereas any action or gesture that might detract from the boycott's objective should not be pursued, I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Sudbury (Mr. Frith):
That this House recommend to the Postmaster General that all and any plans to issue a stamp to commemorate the Moscow games be immediately terminated.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion can be presented only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing national necessity regarding false and misleading practices of the Metric Commission in implementing conversion to the metric standard of weights and measures.
The Canadian Metric Commission has advised municipal fire departments that conversion to metric can be accomplished at a cost of $5 per pumper-the cost of applying decals to the vehicle. In fact, according to fire officials the cost can run to as much as $13,000 per pumper, including hoses and connections but not taking into account the cost of changing fire hydrants.
In view of information provided by the Metric Commission being inaccurate and grossly misleading, and the actual costs to municipal fire departments being prohibitive in many cases, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Cambridge (Mr. Speyer):
That a moratorium on the implementation of the metric conversion program be declared until the true costs are established and answers given as to whether metric conversion will result in better fire and rescue service, and will save more lives and more property, and whether or not litres of water will flow faster through metric hose.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion can be presented only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CHARITABLE FOUNDATIONS
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
In view of the fact that Revenue Canada has revoked the status of the Manitoba Foundation for Canadian Studies, publishers of "Canadian Dimension", as a charitable foundation, and in view of the fact that this unprecedented action constitutes a very serious threat to freedom of speech in Canada in attempting to make an unworkable distinction between education and promotion of a particular ideology, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Selkirk-Interlake (Mr. Sargeant):
That this House call upon the Minister of National Revenue to reverse this ill-advised decision and forthwith restore to the publishers of "Canadian Dimension", the Manitoba Foundation for Canadian Studies, its status as a charitable foundation.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
June 10, 1980


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Mr. J. P. Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Since the constitutional package for the public was opened behind the closed doors of 24 Sussex Drive, and since restraint in all matters was apparently practised inside, but the CBC did otherwise outside, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Halifax West (Mr. Crosby):
That the House direct the Minister of Communications to find out if the mobile satellite dish at the on-spot location for the CBC across the street from the Prime Minister's residence was, indeed, that of the CBC or some other provincial jurisdiction and if it had, in fact, permission to operate, and what the total extra cost was of this on-location CBC coverage.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Madam Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity concerning the aquatic weed known as Eurasian milfoil.
Recognizing that the weed Eurasian milfoil shows no political boundaries as it chokes out the recreational waterways of Canada-in particular, this weed is presently infesting over
100,000	acres in the Kawartha Lakes' chain, adversely affecting a $100 million tourist business-I move, seconded by the hon. member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. Scott):
That this government request the Minister of the Environment to meet with his provincial counterpart in Ontario in an effort to enter into a joint program of federal and provincial funding in order to eradicate this fast-spreading weed.


Madam Speaker:: Such a motion can be presented only with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR OF ONTARIO APPOINTMENT OF SENATOR JOHN BLACK AIRD-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Garnet M. Bloomfield (London-Middlesex):: Madam
Speaker, I rise, under the provisions of Standing Order 43, on
Oral Questions
a matter of urgent and pressing necessity with which I am sure all members of the House will agree.
Senator John Black Aird has been appointed Ontario's twenty-third Lieutenant-Governor. Mr. Aird's appointment will take effect on the current Lieutenant-Governor's retirement on September 10, 1980. In this respect, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Egmont (Mr. Henderson):
That this House congratulates and gives unanimous support to our new Lieutenant-Governor, wishing him a successful career in serving our country.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. John C. Crosbie (St. John's West):: Madam Speaker, my question is to the Minister of Finance. As we have seen today, the unemployment figures are again discouraging: there has been an increase to 7.8 per cent in the seasonally adjusted figure, which is worse than a year ago and worse than a month ago.
The minister, on April 21, predicted an average unemployment rate of 8 per cent this year. Back in December, the Department of Finance predicted a rate of 8.3 per cent. Since then, on May 27 the deputy minister of finance, in his evidence before a senate committee, predicted "a higher and more sustained increase in the unemployment rate than was projected last fall" and also, he went on to say, "the prolongation of rather severe unemployment rates."
Can the minister tell the House what average unemployment rate he predicts during this year and next year, and would he indicate, whether by a budget or in other ways, how he intends to deal with the increasing and serious economic problems in this country? If not by a budget, how does he intend to indicate his way of dealing with these problems?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, as the hon. member for St. John's West has pointed out, the projection for unemployment that I presented on April 21 was about 8 per cent, a somewhat different figure than had been presented by himself in the preceding December.
I have had no reason to change that projection for 1980. Perhaps it ought to be changed and will have to be changed

June 10, 1980
Oral Questions
with ongoing developments. 1 believe that the projections made by my hon. friend in December had to be changed as a result of new developments, and that may occur in this case; but at the present time I am not projecting an additional increase.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, on April 24 the Prime Minister said, "Our main preoccupation is to ensure economic growth and jobs for Canadians and the deficit is a long-term objective." The firm of Wood Gundy has predicted, for the first time since 1954, that we are going to have a real decline in output in the Canadian economy-a decline of 0.5 per cent-which does not say much for economic growth. We know from the figures that jobs for Canadians are seriously in danger.
Could the minister tell the House how he plans to ensure economic growth and jobs for Canadians, especially in view of the present record high deficit that he is prophesying for this year in his budget and the high deficit in the balance of international payments? How is the minister going to carry out the Prime Minister's objective in the light of this situation?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I should add, Madam Speaker, that the projection made by Wood Gundy is more pessimistic for growth in 1980 than the projection which 1 gave on April 21, which was real growth of one-half of 1 per cent. 1 notice that the president of the Royal Bank today gave a similar forecast. There is no doubt that as a result of declines in the United States and the absorption of very large oil price increases in the world economy, we are in a period of slow growth in Canada.
The hon. member has asked what my plans are with respect to dealing with that situation. I have said to my hon. friend that it is certainly not my intention at the moment to attempt to deal with that situation by recommending further increases in the very large fiscal deficit. I do not believe my hon. friend would recommend that course, either. There is a good deal of stimulus being provided by the very large deficit that is in existence at the present time. In the absence of that deficit, probably the unemployment rate-no question of probability, there is no doubt that the unemployment rate would be higher than it is at the present time.


John Carnell Crosbie: Madam Speaker, there is no question about it; the minister in office is a changed man from the minister out of office, and he had better get his act together.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Carnell Crosbie: Those on our left are only happy when there is trouble in the country.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Carnell Crosbie: My final supplementary to the Minister of Finance is this. In the minister's speech in Paris recently, June 4, to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, he said:
To the extent that these changes include further reductions in the demand for oil-
Sorry, the minister said this:
But the experience of the 1970s has brought home the point that we are unlikely to achieve a sustained improvement in employment unless we get inflation under better control.
Does this indicate it will be the minister's policy direction and chief priority to introduce policies to get inflation under better control? Not policies directed at increasing employment but, rather, that the emphasis is going to be in getting inflation under better control? In other words, does he mean what he says, or does he not mean what he says, or does what he says mean anything?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, that convoluted series of questions would require an answer that only the hon. member would be capable of giving.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: As the hon. member knows, there is always the dilemma of trying to deal with rising unemployment and the threat of inflation. The consensus of opinion at the OECD meeting of ministers of finance from the western industrialized countries was that at the present time it would be desirable to maintain the battle against inflation-not to attempt to reflate at the present time against the danger of renewed inflationary expectations.


John Carnell Crosbie: Did you agree?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Yes, Madam Speaker, I agreed with that approach. This is a situation that will have to be assessed as time goes on, particularly in view of what happens in other countries. But it would seem to be unwise today to begin to launch an abrupt change in policy and to assume that the threat to the economies of not only Canada but other countries from inflation is over. That would not be very wise.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. On April 21, the finance minister increased federal expenditures by $2 billion. In view of the rapidly increasing unemployment situation, can the minister tell the House how much of that $2 billion increase has been allocated for employment-creation projects?


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, as the hon. member well knows- because he has been in the House and participated in debates-we have announced two job-creation programs, one a summer job-creation program which was in the neighbourhood of $100 million, and the program announced last Monday of $137 million. Those are direct job-creation programs.
June 10, 1980

1 would also remind the hon. member that in the last three months this government has brought forward a number of decisions that will stimulate the economy-the fighter aircraft decision, major investments in DREE programs, major investments to support Chrysler-all of which are deisgned to provide a stimulus for jobs across Canada in terms of longterm economic development. If you add all those up, we are probably investing in this country to the extent that our fiscal limits will allow.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: There appears to be a contradiction between that statement and the statement of the Minister of Finance. If the Minister of Employment and Immigration is suggesting that $237 million out of the $2 billion is allocated toward job creation, I do not think we shall find it in the figures which were presented to us.
The labour force data released today suggests that in the past month this country has lost 68,000 jobs, on a seasonally adjusted basis; that is, 3,400 jobs lost each working day. Can the minister tell us whether, in his view, that loss is temporary or long-term and likely to accelerate?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I can tell the hon. member that the contradiction is surely in the eyes of the beholder. In this case there is no difference whatsoever between myself and the Minister of Finance. What the Minister of Finance has just said is that we, like most economies, are influenced by a number of factors.
Certainly, there is the international factor-the softening in the U.S. market and the severe recession which the U.S. economy is now experiencing. So in terms of giving an answer, it depends partly on decisions made elsewhere, outside the borders of this country. But I can assure the hon. member that we will do everything we can to soften the impact and respond with a great deal of care and concern.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: I have a question for the Minister of Finance. The unemployment figures released today show that over 900,000 people are unemployed. The seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment is up in every region. Also, in the heartland of the Canadian manufacturing industry, Ontario, unemployment is up sharply, to a large extent because 30,000 auto workers and workers in related industries such as rubber, plastics and glass are unemployed and are not likely to resume employment, if ever, until 1981 or 1982.
Given these facts, can the minister tell us whether the government is considering new programs which will put a large proportion of our unacceptably high number of unemployed to work? Or are we to assume that the government has decided
Oral Questions
that these people will just have to live as best they can until the international economic situation improves?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: No, Madam Speaker, I think that would be an unduly pessimistic attitude to take. The hon. member referred to the particular position of the auto industry. It seems to me that general demand policies would not have very much of an effect on improving the sales of automobile manufacturers. It is the kind of program announced by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, namely, to permit companies like Chrysler to adjust to market conditions, which has the best chance of providing employment opportunities. That is the type of program we ought to be seeking in the present situation.


David Orlikow: It seems to me highly unlikely that 900,000 unemployed are going to be in the market for cars, refrigerators, houses or anything else. Despite all the speeches about helping women to get jobs, or better jobs, figures today indicate that 400,000 women are looking for work. That is virtually 40 per cent of the work force. Does the government have any plans to ensure that more women will be able to find jobs in the coming year?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I think I should clarify my earlier answer to the hon. member so that he would realize that when I talked about the automobile industry, I had in mind those persons in that industry who are suffering from unemployment and whose only hope for future employment comes, not from general demand policies, but from structural readjustment within the industry itself so that the market opportunities for the product would be better.
As the hon. member knows, there are certain automobile manufacturers abroad who are competing very vigorously in the North American market because they have products which consumers want. That is the point I had in mind with respect to these unemployed.


John Edward Broadbent: What about the second part?
[Editor's Note: At this point Mr. Trudeau entered the chamber.]


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Orlikow: Madam Speaker, to say the least, I am dismayed at what I consider to be a very cold and callous reply from the Minister of Finance, who himself comes from an area which has a large number of unemployed, to a very serious problem.
I would like to ask the minister a very specific question. Almost 50 per cent of the unemployed are young people under 24, and of those more than 400,000, 95,000 are students who are looking for work for the summer. They not only have difficulty finding jobs, but also in the calculations which the provinces make with respect to student aid it is assumed that 45 per cent of their needs will be met by income they earn

June 10, 1980
Oral Questions
from working. Can the minister indicate what programs the government has to ensure that these people can find enough work so that they can go back to school this fall?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I would have thought the hon. member was aware that the Minister of Employment and Immigration has already announced a job-creation program, and that within his plans there is room for a very large number of employment opportunities for summer students.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF MINISTER OF PRIMARY INDUSTRY OF AUSTRALIA
Madam Speaker:: Order, please. I would like to draw the attention of hon. members to the presence in our gallery of the Hon. Peter Nixon, Minister of Primary Industry for Australia.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


HOUSING
Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works, who is responsible for housing. According to CMHC, housing starts are over
100,000	behind what CMHC says are required for Canadians in 1980. This translates into a loss of over 100,000 jobs both in the housing industry and in related industries. When is the government going to act on this crisis and start to provide incentives which would then produce jobs and homes for Canadians?


Hon. Paul J. Cosgrove (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, as I indicated in answer to a similar question yesterday in the House, it is my belief, and the belief of the corporation officials, that those figures for the month of May reflected the high interest rates of earlier in the year. It is our anticipation that they will pick up, with interest rates having been adjusted.
I would say that the Minister of Finance should take full credit for not having overreacted to requests for the spending of billions and billions of dollars in response to that temporary adjustment. In addition, I indicated that before the end of the month the government will be responding modestly to improve some of the programs designed to bring relief to all classes of people in the industry.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, perhaps the minister is going to change the construction season in Canada, because by the time he gets it out, it will be half over.


Some hon. Members:: Question.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Does the government not sense the urgency in the fact that the season is half over before it has put out any program?


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, the government indeed recognizes, for example, that there is a backlog in the demands for more starts and the number of programs which are already in place administratively by the government. We know there are people waiting and ready to take up starts which are released. I expect in the two programs which will be announced before the end of the month that there are clients and people ready and willing to start building almost immediately.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Dan McKenzie (Winnipeg-Assiniboine):: Madam
Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. It is with regard further to Air Canada's 747 problem with engine failure last Saturday.
In light of statements from Air Canada that there is a very serious idling problem with its 747s, and the statement from the Canadian Air Traffic Controllers' Association that the pilot involved in the 747 incident Saturday should not have taken out another flight the same night, will the minister expand the terms of reference of Justice Dubin to include these near-fatal accidents within the context of the study on air safety the justice is currently undertaking?


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, I have an answer to the first part of the question at least. The event in London is not considered to be an accident. 1 am told that in cases like this, in which the aircraft is not involved in an accident as defined in the regulations, there is no requirement for the crew members not to conduct a further planned flight. So this was not an accident. This was considered to be a mishap of some kind, but the normal procedure is for the pilot to continue.
With respect to the relationship between that and the inquiry conducted by Judge Dubin, my information is that the judge is taking a very wide approach to security in the air and will want to make recommendations on a very wide plane.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Madam Speaker, if that fourth engine had failed, I point out to the minister that there would have been a fourth accident. They were very fortunate.
In view of the fact that Transport Canada inspectors have stated before Justice Dubin's inquiry that it is impossible for Transport Canada to determine whether Canadian aircraft are airworthy as, and I quote, "they are being muzzled by their supervisors", has the minister taken action to correct this situation and to ease the minds of members of the travelling public, or will we have to wait for Justice Dubin's report in
June 10, 1980

October before the minister takes corrective action on safety inspections?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, just on details again, it was not three engines which had trouble; it was only two. Just to rectify these things.
With respect to representations made before the judge, I would think it would be in the spirit of asking a commission to inquire to wait until the judge decides which of these representations he considers to be valid, makes up his mind and makes recommendations accordingly. It would be unwise, obviously, to act before the recommendations of the commission of inquiry are given to the government.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. The minister is no doubt now aware that Hou-daille Industries in Oshawa has annouced its intention to close in October of this year, and that 150 more workers in Ontario are going to suffer as a result of the branch plant economy we now have. It appears that the industry is going to transfer its productive capacity to Huntington, in the United States.
Can the minister indicate, first, whether he or his ministry were informed of the intended closing? Was there any discussion, and has the minister made it known to the company that he would like it to come to Ottawa, to sit down and to discuss ways and means of keeping that plant in operation and those employees working?


Hon. Herb Gray (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce):: Madam Speaker, no information was brought to my attention directly. I have not had any such discussions. But it is always my interest in situations of this type to discuss the situation directly, not only with the company itself but also with the workers involved, and I will be happy to move to arrange such a meeting as soon as possible.


Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, does the minister or the ministry have any procedure whereby in the case of the auto-related industries, given the problems which confront us in this country at the moment, the industries make known to the minister their intentions with regard to closings, lay-offs, transfers or any other changes in their productive capacity or production which will detrimentally affect the Canadian economy and Canadian workers?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, while what the hon. member is referring to is a matter which comes primarily under provincial law, we have officials in the department whose job it is to maintain close contact with the industry so that we can be up to date on developments. The strengthening of this aspect of the department is something I am carrying out right now.
Ora! Questions


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Mr. Alain Tardif (Richmond):: Madam Speaker, the Minister of National Defence recently attended the NATO conferences held in Bodoe in Norway, and in Brussels. Following his first participation and visits abroad as Minister of National Defence for Canada, could he indicate to the House what is the position of Canada in the collective agreements and what is the Canadian contribution to those agreements, more especially at the NATO level?


Hon. J. Gilles Lamontagne (Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, I am quite pleased to see that the member for Richmond is interested in this very important matter, considering present world conditions. We should not be naive or take peace for granted as I believe that a conflict is always possible. The NATO meeting in Brussels had been convened to assess the credibility of the deterrent capability of the NATO members. We developed our strategies in the face of Soviet strategies. As for our Bodoe meeting, I think it was a very important one. The nuclear group was gathering to assess the terms under which they might use nuclear power in case of conflict. Madam Speaker, Canada-


Some hon. Members:: Order!


Mr. Lamontagne:: Are hon. members opposite not interested to learn what occurred at those very important meetings? Before concluding, Madam Speaker, I would like to specify that in spite of the meeting of the nuclear group in Bodoe, Canada is not a nuclear power and does not intend to become one, but will remain a very firm supporter of NATO.


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Thomas Siddon (Richmond-South Delta):: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Transport and it relates to the same serious matter raised a few moments ago by my colleague, the hon. member for Winnipeg-Assinib-oine.
Will the minister tell the House whether the fuelling system at Vancouver international airport is being investigated in relation to the near-disaster involving the Air Canada 747 at Toronto last weekend? Is the minister convinced that fuel turbidity-that is, water and dirt in the fuel-was not a causative factor in the failure of the three engines, and is he

June 10, 1980
Oral Questions
aware of the fact that fuel quality is not monitored continuously at Canadian airports?


Jean-Luc Pepin: No, Madam Speaker, I am not aware of the specific case which my hon. friend brings to my attention. I will look into it and report to him.


Thomas Edward Siddon: Madam Speaker, I would like the minister to confirm that an automatic device to continuously detect impurities in jet fuel was specified by his officials, according to accepted standards, and installed in the fuel-handling system at Vancouver when it was designed in 1968, but that this important safety device was disconnected several years ago because it kept shutting down the fueling system automatically? Is it the ministry's policy not to include on-line turbidity monitoring devices in fuel-handling systems at airports, and is this the true situation?


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, the promise I made in reply to the first question applies to the second.


An hon. Member:: A very turbid answer.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Hon. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Madam Speaker, I should like to direct a supplementary question to the Minister of National Defence. Would he mind making a statement on motions, the logical place to tell us about his trip to Norway and Brussels?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Further, might he then take questions, as is the normal custom, which would be somewhat more pointed than the one he recently answered?


J. Gilles Lamontagne: Madam Speaker, in spite of the fact that no question has been put, I will point out to the hon. member opposite that we will be sitting in Committee of the Whole Thursday and Friday and hon. members will then have every opportunity to ask relevant questions.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
[Stage Direction]
DESECRATION OF GRAVES OF CANADIAN WAR DEAD IN FRANCE-GOVERNMENT PROtEST
Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain):: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. With regard to the desecration of
the graves of Canadian war dead at Bretteville-sur-Laize, France, two months ago, has the minister sent a note of protest to the French government?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, this was indeed a most unfortunate happening, but a note of protest to the French government has not been necessary because the French authorities themselves are very embarrassed by it, as is the community in which it took place. The graves are being restored and everything possible is being done to restore the dignity in which our veterans rest.


OPERATION OF PATROL BOATS IN CARIBBEAN-CIDA INVOLVEMENT
Mr. Bob Ogle (Saskatoon East):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In the light of press reports recently that CIDA is being pressured by his department to provide money for gunboats and various other types of security operations in several small east Caribbean islands, can the minister investigate these reports and assure the House that CIDA is not being forced to play policeman in the Caribbean under the cover of development assistance?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I understand that the boats in question are not gunboats but are patrol boats of various kinds.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mark R. MacGuigan: In other words, the premise of the hon. member's question is erroneous.


Robert Joseph Ogle: My supplementary question to the minister is if he could inform the House whether it was the U.S. State Department which put pressure on the Canadian government, via the World Bank consultative group on Caribbean economic development, to help subsidize the security networks of several island governments supposedly under the bogey of communist subversion.


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I will have to take notice of that question. Perhaps in the meantime the hon. member could furnish me with some details as to which islands and to what problems he is referring.


DESECRATION OF GRAVES OF CANADIAN WAR DEAD IN FRANCE-REQUEST FOR PUBLIC STATEMENT
Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Madam Speaker, I should like to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs whether, in view of his answer to me a moment ago, he could issue a public statement and make certain that it is sent to the London Times in England and to some of the papers in Paris, France, that the French government has apologized.
June 10, 1980

Furthermore, would he ask the Minister of Veterans Affairs to write to the families of the 3,000 Canadians who are buried there, expressing his regret at the desecration and telling them that an apology has been received from the French government?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I will certainly take that under advisement. I am not sure that we know all the families involved, but certainly some action of that kind might be called for and I will pass the suggestion along to my colleague. Perhaps the hon. member could furnish me with the information from those newspapers in which I gather there have been unfavourable comments.


PROVISION OF EMERGENCY RESERVES OF OIL
Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, I wish to direct my question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. In view of the fact that in September of 1974, Canada, along with 11 other countries, agreed to a scheme for stockpiling oil to provide emergency reserves sufficient for 90 days-an action that has not been taken, unfortunately, by Canada-will the minister indicate why this emergency oil base has not been established? Also, since the Atlantic provinces, and Nova Scotia in particular, remain especially vulnerable to energy losses-we have no natural gas to offset the need for liquid petroleum distillates, and no immediate oil for pumping-will the minister consider establishing an emergency reserve oil base in Atlantic Canada covering our needs for at least 90 days?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, first, I would like to stress to the hon. member again that in Canada we have one market and one price for oil, and that we will not allow a situation to develop where Atlantic Canada would be put at a disadvantage both in terms of price and in terms of supply. So far as the specific question raised by the hon. member is concerned, I will examine the situation and I shall be pleased to report to him later.


Lloyd Roseville Crouse: I have one brief supplementary, Madam Speaker. Since Canada to date has taken no special steps to meet the requirements of the 1974 agreement-1 stress the date of the agreement which Canada signed in 1974-what steps is the minister taking to ensure that Atlantic Canada will have an adequate reserve supply of crude oil?
Since, admittedly, we have a shortfall of 50,000 barrels of oil in our agreement with Mexico, I would like to ask the minister with what countries he is now negotiating in order to offset that shortfall. While he is at it, will he tell us the price
Oral Questions
that he and his government agreed to pay Mexico for those
50.000	barrels of oil?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I would have to ask the hon. member whether he is stating that Canada does not have a 90-day supply at the present time. If he says that-he does not say that-then I would challenge him on it. I would argue with him that if he checks the past, he may find that indeed Canada just now may have a 90-day supply. It is important that the whole country should have adequate supplies to meet its needs. This situation is being monitored regularly by my department and is on the face of it the subject of constant monitoring.
As far as the agreement with Mexico is concerned, again I should like to stress that Canada increased its supply by
50.000	barrels per day, thanks to that agreement. The hon. member may regret that it has not gone to 100,000 barrels per day, but it would have been easier if his government had moved when this matter was available for negotiation at the time.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Marc Lalonde: As far as the price of that oil is concerned, it is a matter that has to be negotiated in terms of the prices as the purchases are made on an ongoing basis. There is no specific price, like in agreements with other countries, between companies or even from state to state. These agreements are all subject to renegotiation in terms of prices.


HEALTH AND WELFARE
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare, in view of recent press reports concerning the use of the powerful hormonal drug, Depo-provera, for uses such as contraception in provincial institutions for the mentally retarded and other users, other than that which the Federal Bureau of Drugs allows the manufacturer of the drug to claim for it, can the minister tell the House whether she intends any strengthening of the ability of the federal department of health to achieve compliance with its own judgments about unacceptable risk when it comes to these particular kinds of drugs?


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, I regret to say that I am not aware of the case referred to by the hon. member. If he could give me more information after the question period, I will look into it and report as soon as possible.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is in a more general vein. In the absence of the minister being aware of this particular drug, could she tell us whether or not she intends any changes or any federal initiatives, either by her department or perhaps by the Minister of Justice and the Department of Justice, in the very important and long neglect-

June 10, 1980
Oral Questions
ed area of patients' rights and the need for more informed consent in Canadian health care-a need which was pointed out recently by a report of the Canadian Law Reform Commission-so that, particularly as it relates to these kinds of controversial drugs, people would not find themselves in the position of being unknowing objects of de facto medical research?


Monique Bégin: Of course, my reply to this question is yes. I am concerned with this problem which is still with us, and as tomorrow marks the one hundredth anniversary of the Ontario Medical Association, this is one of the issues l intend to raise in my speech.


CANADIAN RED CROSS
Mr. Jesse P. Flis (Parkdale-High Park):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the right hon. Prime Minister. Considering the fact that this year marks the sixtieth anniversary of outstanding contribution in social services by the Ontario division of the Red Cross to this country, would the right hon. Prime Minister agree to send a message of congratulations on behalf of the Government of Canada-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jesse Philip Flis: -to the Ontario division of the Red Cross for helping to preserve-


Mr. Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Order.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please, that is not a question.


EXTENSION OF NATURAL GAS PIPELINE TO MARITIMES- GOVERNMENT POSITION
Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Previously he indicated in the House during question period that he would not consider extending the gas pipeline beyond Quebec City into the maritimes from Montreal because of environmental studies. Are the environmental studies in progress now? Does the minister still stand by this decision?
[ Translation]


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, the decision to which the hon. member is referring had been made by the National Energy Board. As the hon. member may recall, the board had mentioned two factors which prevented it from recommending the
extension of the pipeline into the maritime provinces. The first was a series of environmental studies which had not been completed to the board's satisfaction, and the second was the board's desire to secure further information on the exploration of Atlantic offshore mineral deposits. In reply to the first question raised by the hon. member, I will say that I have already met with the promoters of this project. 1 have discussed this matter with them and asked them if they could possibly complete these environmental studies to provide information which would satisfy the National Energy Board, something the hon. member is aware of. Cabinet could only accept the board's report as such or reject it completely. It decided to accept it and allow at least the construction of the pipeline within Quebec borders for the time being, indicating its hope that the gas pipeline could be extended into the maritime provinces as soon as possible.


Jack Wendele Shields: Madam Speaker, 1 have a short supplementary question. Obviously, then, environmental studies were done on the extension of the pipeline from Montreal to Quebec City. Would the minister confirm that this is so; and if so, would he table these studies in the House? 1 would appreciate the information.


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, all these studies have been laid before the National Energy Board. They were part of the evidence produced by the various partners whose application was before the board. These documents have already been made public. If I can be useful to the hon. member by getting them from the board for him, I will certainly try to do so but again, I think these documents were made public and were used as evidence before the board.


THE CANADIAN ECONOMY
Hon. J. Robert Howie (York-Sunbury):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. In view of the sharp decline in seasonally adjusted employment for May-the greatest since April, 1967-will the minister consider implementing the provisions of the December 11 budget which proposed a system of tax incentives by way of tax contracts for industries locating or expanding in slow-growth areas?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, in the statement I made to the House in April I explained at that time why I did not bring forward the proposal that had been made in the December budget. Also, I believe I indicated that I would be giving further thought to possible steps which could be taken in that direction.
June 10, 1980


J. Robert Howie: Madam Speaker, will the minister immediately bring forward the small business bond which he mentioned in his recent budget-like economic statement?


Walter David Baker: Economic-like budget
statement.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, it is my intention at a very early date to bring forward at least the guidelines which will be the basis of this particular program.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Allan Joseph MacEachen: The legislation itself could not be ready and it could not be passed for some considerable time.


An hon. Member:: Why not?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Because it is part of the Income Tax Act. As 1 recall, I made a commitment at that time that 1 would allow the bill, or the draft bill to be made available for further comment. In order to avoid that anticipated delay, it is my intention to make available the ground rules with respect to the small business development bond at a very early date.


CONVENTION CENTRES
Hon. Michael Wilson (Etobicoke Centre):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of State for Small Business. Some weeks ago the minister made a statement in the House that a convention centre policy was under review and would be available shortly.
Would the minister advise the House whether such a policy is still under development, and whether the rumoured approval of the Ottawa Convention Centre will be part of that policy? When will the policy be made available to the House?


Hon. Charles Lapointe (Minister of State, Small Businesses):: Madam Speaker, as far as the development of a national convention centre policy is concerned, I want to indicate that the cabinet is still developing this policy and the announcement made this week with regard to the Ottawa Convention Centre is not part of this policy.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is to the same minister. Would the minister advise the House when government policy on convention centres will be available to assist people in Toronto and throughout Ontario in the planning of convention centres?
Could he also tell us in what way the Ottawa Convention Centre will not be part of that policy, and whether the conven-
Constitutional Renewal
tion centre here will replace the convention centre in Toronto in terms of funding by the government?


Charles Lapointe: Madam Speaker, the policy will be made available shortly. With regard to the help accorded to the Ottawa Convention Centre, or the Rideau Centre, that is part of planned federal participation in the centre by the Department of Public Works.


Walter David Baker: You are wonderful fellows.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
Second report of Standing Committee on Agriculture, in both official languages-Mr. Tessier.
[Editor's Note: For text of the above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]

Madam Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the Deputy Clerk of the House has laid on the Table the eighth report of the Clerk of Petitions stating that he has examined the petition presented by the hon. member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent) and finds that it meets the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.



THE CONSTITUTION


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, three weeks to the day after the Quebec referendum, I have the pleasure to report to this House on yesterday's meeting of first ministers on the renewal of the constitution. My remarks will be brief because I do not want to impose upon hon. members' good will on this opposition day and also because the leaders of opposition parties, as well as private members, will undoubtedly want to ask me further questions on this subject. I would rather use the time allocated to me to answer specific questions.

June 10, 1980
Constitutional Renewal
The first thing to point out following yesterday's meeting is that it resulted in a collective decision which could prove most beneficial for Canada. In effect, all first ministers have committed themselves to reach by September major decisions on the constitution, and in order to do so they have given themselves a very tight three-month schedule of meetings and negotiations.
In fact, Madam Speaker, we have made a commitment, in our own name and in the name of our ministers and officials, to spend during the next three months twice as much time on the constitutional problem as was spent in the last two years by the federal and provincial governments combined.
This is evidence of the importance and urgency that both myself and the premiers attach to the renewal of the Canadian federalism and of our constitution. It is also a sign of our strong will to fulfil the promise we have made to Canadians to bring real and substantial improvements to the fundamental law of this country.
| English]
The hope of the federal government was that the premiers would want to join with us in urgent and effective action to give Canada a new constitution which will be fully responsive to the present and future needs of the country and its people. That hope has now grown into a joint federal-provincial commitment.
I, therefore, want to pay tribute to the premiers' open-mindedness and generosity of spirit which made that commitment possible. I realize we could not have made that commitment if we were not aware of the strong support for real reform among the people we represent, so I gladly pay tribute also to the spirit and the will of the people of Canada at this decisive moment in our history.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am confident that the next three months of very concentrated effort will produce, at the next meeting of first ministers in the second week of September, an agreement on the so-called short list of issues which we discussed yesterday. I am equally convinced that if we fail to reach substantial agreement in September we will be courting disaster for Canada. In that event, the federal government would have to give very serious consideration to its options and recommend to Parliament a plan of action which would allow us to fulfil our responsibilities to the people of Canada.
It was drawn to my attention that, subject to correction, the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) would have said words somewhat to that effect last Friday and such is the case. I am encouraged to hear that, if properly reported, he would have indicated that if there were a deadlock in discussions at the first ministers' level, then Parliament would have to take its responsibilities. That is also my view and, also subject to correction, I believe it would be the view of the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent). I am very encouraged by this.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am confident that the agreement we seek will both strengthen the rights and freedoms of the people and define a division of federal and provincial powers which will enable Canada to achieve its great potential. I am determined that, in our progress toward agreement, we will not engage in any trading-off of the rights and freedoms of the people against the powers of governments.
With the consent of the House, Madam Speaker, I will table the documents I distributed to the premiers yesterday. They are a meeting agenda, a statement of principles for a new constitution, a list of priority issues, and a calendar of meetings for first ministers and ministers between June 17 and September 12.
With regard to the priority issues, Madam Speaker, I would not want to mislead the House in any way. The copies which I have tabled and the copies which were distributed are a statement by the federal government. The list itself has been amended by adding one item to the list which we brought to the meeting yesterday, the item of fisheries. The only other difference between the list now tabled and the list that we circulated at yesterday's meeting is that our list yesterday had two columns; one column lists items that are of general interest to the people of Canada and the other column lists items concerning the division of powers between governments.
I commend to the earnest attention of all hon. members the two documents dealing with principles and priorities. It would be my hope that members from every part of Canada, and of all parties, would consider and discuss the contents of these papers among themselves and with their constituents.
Such consideration and discussion would not only assist the federal and provincial governments and Parliament and legislatures in our progress toward constitutional renewal, but would also help ensure that Parliament will play its full and rightful role in the building of the Canada of the future.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Right Hon. Joe Clark (Leader of the Opposition):: Madam Speaker, I want to make a brief response to the statement of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and I will have some questions following the response of the Leader of the New Democratic Party (Mr. Broadbent).
1 want to begin by thanking the Prime Minister, on behalf of the House, for reporting so quickly to Parliament on the Prime Minister's conference yesterday.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Judging by the Prime Minister's statement and the public comments of other participants, it appears that the first ministers' meeting yesterday made a reasonable start on the process of constitutional change and there is no question that all members of the House applaud that progress.
June 10, 1980

As I understand it, the Prime Minister sought agreement on a statement of principles as well as on process, and the goal of agreement on a statement of principles was not reached. It may not even have been pressed by the Prime Minister after he noted the reaction of other first ministers. Consequently-and I think it important that the House and the country understand this fact-the document relating to principles which the Prime Minister has tabled represents only a proposal by the federal government and not an agreement by the meeting.
The Prime Minister made reference to my speech of Friday. He learned long ago the value to him of reading my speeches and adopting my policy, and 1 recommend that speech to him as well.
I must say that I am a little surprised by the Prime Minister's assertion in his statement that "all of the first ministers committed themselves to a September deadline for major decisions". My understanding from the public comments of the premiers is that many of them see the September meeting as an opportunity to conclude whatever agreement has been reached by ministers and officials in the intervening months, but that they do not regard September as a deadline for decision on all items in the list. Indeed, Premier Blakeney is reported as saying: "We agreed unanimously there should be no deadline for reform"; and if that is so it was a wise decision by the first ministers, because agreement on complex and fundamental questions is work that is too important to be jeopardized by artificial deadlines.
Premier Blakeney went on to say: "We also agreed unanimously if we meet in September and accomplish nothing, it won't look very good"; and certainly the House would hope that discussions this summer will result in an agreement on several specific matters. The question of the nature of the agreement yesterday and the nature of the goals for September affects the expectations that will surround the September meeting, and I hope the Prime Minister will indicate later whether, in his view, the other first ministers are committed to agreement, in principle, in September, on any, on all or on most of the 12 items in the list.

1 also noted the following words of the Prime Minister:
-the federal government would have to give serious consideration to its options and recommend to Parliament a plan of action-
-if there is no agreement on the short list of items.
Mention was made of the use of a federal referendum to try to force acceptance of some changes the federal government wants, and we would like to know if that is what the Prime Minister really means or what other unilateral initiatives he is contemplating.
I should like to add that if the federal government expects a co-operative attitude from the provinces with regard to constitutional reform, it must be co-operative itself about other matters that are of importance to some provinces. The Prime Minister knows that 1 worry over the recent statements some of his ministers made and that I fear they will ruin the
Constitutional Renewal
atmosphere of good will that will be necessary for constitutional reform.

In closing, I want to express my satisfaction and that of my party that the first ministers have agreed on a busy agenda for the summer, and to express also the hope that the discussion will be pursued in a genuine atmosphere of co-operation and lead to significant agreement by September.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, I, too, would like to join with the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) in congratulating the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) for reporting so quickly to Parliament on the results of yesterday's conference.
Clearly, Madam Speaker, yesterday produced solid evidence for the first time in a long while for believing that Canadians can expect early and substantial constitutional change. For this reason, all participants in the meeting yesterday deserve the unqualified commendationjof members of the House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: The participants showed their good will yesterday. The same attitude must continue to prevail this summer. And of course, Madam Speaker, some decisions will finally have to be taken at the September conference. I agree with the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) in that regard. Quebeckers and Canadians of other areas have been waiting long enough for a new Canadian constitution that would allow Quebeckers to prosper within Canada and would recognize as well the legitimate regional grievances. I repeat that it is imperative that decisions be taken in September.

It is worth noting in the context of the decision-making process that my party has previously made known its constitutional position on the importance of including fundamental rights and language rights in a new constitution; on the need to leave with the federal government certain financial powers that will enable it to provide at long last an industrial strategy for this country from coast to coast; and on the need to improve our representative system in Ottawa so that those who live in both the west and in the east in particular will feel that they have a higher degree of effective and numerical representation here in the nation's capital.
For a number of months, Madam Speaker, a special 35-member committee of my party has been at work preparing detailed recommendations on the constitution and other matters, including all of the specifics in the short list that the Prime Minister tabled today. I am pleased to say, Madam Speaker, that on these matters we have made decisions for a series of meetings that will take place over the summer as well, and we as a party will be ready for the September first ministers' conference with very specific suggestions for consideration at that time.

June 10, 1980
Constitutional Renewal
Having made these general observations about the substantial progress that now seems to be under way, I want to conclude with a minor but critical observation. No other democratic nation in the modern world has left to such a small number of people-in this case 11-the serious task of making the decisions which will reshape the nature of a democratic state. While unquestionably wishing those 11 individuals every success, on behalf of my colleagues 1 should like to say that I profoundly wish that the people who met yesterday had found a more effective manner of involving substantially more Canadians in this very important democratic process.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Madam Speaker:: Is it agreed that the documents referred to by the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) be tabled at this time and appended to Hansard?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
[Editor's Note: For documents above referred to, see Appendix.]


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, during my response to the Prime Minister I referred to the expectations that will surround the meeting in September and I quoted a passage from his statement today which I found surprising. I wonder if the Prime Minister could tell the House whether he is in a position to say categorically that all the first ministers at yesterday's meeting accept the September meeting as a deadline for decision on all or a great majority of the 12 items?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the best answer I could give would be to refer the hon. Leader of the Opposition and the House to the calendar for future meetings which I have just tabled and of which the Leader of the Opposition has a copy. Under September 8 to September 12 we read that the first ministers in open conference will meet in Ottawa to finalize agreements on work under way, and to put in train a further work program. These words were not the words of the federal government, Madam Speaker. The words we had in our first draft were: "to reach conclusions on work under way". In my view, they had the same meaning because we always talked of the urgency of making decisions by September. But it was at the request of some of the premiers that I put in the document that was accepted by us the words "finalize agreements." This indicates, it seems to me, a clear intention to consider that meeting final as regards the list that we then have before us, because it goes on to say that we will put in train a further work program.
This being said, I would not want the Leader of the Opposition or indeed any of the premiers to think that I am trying to impose on them a deadline if they do not want to accept that deadline. The Leader of the Opposition quotes a statement by one premier which seems to contradict that. All 1 can say is that that was not my impression of the meeting yesterday.
Several of us, indeed, on the contrary, made it quite clear- several of us, I repeat-that we had to have action by September, much as the Leader of the New Democratic Party has just indicated on behalf of his own party; otherwise there would be catastrophic consequences for the future of the country. So there is, I can certainly say, a large consensus to consider that a deadline, but I would take no exception if some premier would plead that he is not personally part of that consensus.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I think this important, and I am pleased that we have the undertaking from the Prime Minister that he will do nothing to try to impose a deadline upon the discussions which is not agreeable to the other participants in yesterday's meeting.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: 1 did not give that undertaking.


Charles Joseph Clark: The Prime Minister said he did not give that undertaking. I thought he said quite explicitly, Madam Speaker, that he would not impose a deadline. Perhaps, then, the Prime Minister can tell us whether or not he believes that he has an agreement from the other first ministers participating yesterday that the decision at the meeting in September will be a meeting to finalize agreement on all 12 items or simply to finalize agreement on those subjects on which agreement has been reached by the committee of ministers or "fonction-naires" of the public servants meeting through the summer.
The word "finalize" as it appears in the communique could have very different meanings. Since there is a very real importance here given to the expectations that surround the September meeting, I think it significant that we have a commitment from the Prime Minister that he will not try to inflate expectations in a way that might lead to either disagreement or disappointment in September.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the words are quite clear- "to finalize agreements on work under way", which are the dozen or so items. The Leader of the Opposition suggests that "finalize agreements" might mean only finalize agreements on that on which we had finalized agreement. 1 do not think that is a productive way of interpreting the statement we made yesterday.
The hon. Leader of the Opposition seeks a commitment from me that I will not consider that as a deadline. I will not give him that commitment. Quite to the contrary, I consider that as a deadline. I suggest that certainly many of the premiers there, and if I understand the Leader of the New Democratic Party, do consider that as a deadline. I do not want to rope in any premier who might say that he personally does not consider it a deadline. But I do, and I suggest that that was the meaning of the text that we adopted generally yesterday.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, just so that we are clear on this point, the Prime Minister is telling Parliament today that he expects to have, after the four-day meeting in September, an agreement by the 11 first ministers on each of the 12 items in
June 10, 1980

the short list. Is he telling us that that is his reasonable expectation today, that that is what he expects to come out of the September meeting?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I expect that we will have dealt with those 12 items in a final way. It is possible that we will not be able to agree on them all. If that is the case, I think we will each have to take our responsibilities as to whether there is sufficient body of agreement to consider progress satisfactory or not. I am not predicting we will all agree necessarily on everything. I am saying that we must make every effort to seek that agreement. If we do not achieve it, I indicated that I thought that would be a very considerable failure of grave consequence for Canada.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I do not want to pursue this matter at this stage. I simply express my hope that the Prime Minister will understand that such an agreement as was reached yesterday was reached because an atmosphere of co-operation existed involving all of the eleven governments, and indeed involving this House. If there were to be actions taken which led to false expectations and consequently to a disagreement in the meeting in September that might not otherwise occur, and to a rupture of the process, that would be something to be regretted by all members of this House.
Let me turn to one other matter, and perhaps other of my colleagues will have additional questions. During his remarks today, the Prime Minister referred to the possibility of the federal government reviewing other options. We have heard and discussed in the House the question of the option of a national referendum. Will the Prime Minister tell us, first, whether he is now considering a referendum, and whether he discussed that with the premiers? Second, what other kinds of options is he considering? Third, if it is a referendum, is it his present intention that a referendum sponsored by the federal government would deal only with questions which lay within the jurisdiction and the competence of the federal government?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, on the first part of the question, I want to emphasize most strongly that those who considered September as a deadline-and I took it to be the consensus of the meeting-included several premiers who made it very clear that in their mind urgency was of the very essence of the operation. Several spoke to the point that if we did not act with great urgency we might, as early as the fall, have cause to regret it. So that is the only glossary I can add to my previous answers.
As to the second part of the question on a referendum. Madam Speaker, I cannot recollect the matter having been raised yesterday. It was not certainly by me. Therefore, the third and fourth questions as to the nature of that referendum-


Charles Joseph Clark: The other options.


An hon. Member:: You referred to options.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: As for the other option, Madam Speaker-
Constitutional Renewal


An hon. Member:: "Options".


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -I think the text is as general as I would care to put it this afternoon because I am optimistic at this stage that we will all act, and act rapidly, in agreement.
I indicated that I would recommend to Parliament a plan of action which would allow us to fulfil our responsibilities to the people of Canada. It was at that point that I quoted the Leader of the Opposition, who I thought shared our views on that, without tying him to that particular date. I understood his views to be that if there were a deadlock which was judged to be such at some point, Parliament would have to take its responsibilities. That is my view. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition does not care at this time to express in what way Parliament would have to take its responsibilities, but I would be happy to discuss that with him privately if he wishes.


Hon. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Madam Speaker, my questions also are directed to the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I think *^11 of us in the House want the process to succeed and that is why it is so important we all understand the process.
In terms of the deadline, there are operative words in the calendar that the Prime Minister has tabled today with regard to the meetings of September 8 to 12. The last words are "put in train a further work program." I would interpret those words of the Prime Minister, who obviously wants to have some agreement at that meeting, as indicating that other work would still be necessary after the meetings of September 8 to 12.
I would like to ask the Prime Minister, was there any discussion yesterday with the first ministers in terms of enlarging participation from the 11 participants of yesterday for the meetings of September 8 to 12? It has been mentioned in this House and in other circles as well, in terms of constitutionmaking, that consideration should be given to enlarging that group. Was that discussed? What was the conclusion in terms of participation of other members, and specifically that of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark), at subsequent meetings?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, on the first part of the question concerning the other work to be brought in after the September meeting, the answer is, of course, that the list which we agreed on does not cover all the matters to which the provinces and the Government of Canada attached importance. We chose a list which was largely produced by a meeting in February, 1979, of first ministers and subsequently modified by the continuing committee of ministers on the constitution when the Leader of the Opposition was prime minister.
The basis of the list I put to the first ministers yesterday was indeed a list which, subject to correction, we inherited more or less from the continuing committee of ministers on the constitution under the Clark government, but we went through that

June 10, 1980
Constitutional Renewal
list and many participants specified that although the list was not all-inclusive, it did indicate the priorities we had for September. Of course, no one felt he would be excluded from bringing in other matters after September.
On the second part of the question concerning the enlargement of the participating group, I put the question directly to the premiers because I had in mind a suggestion which had been made to me last week by the Leader of the New Democratic Party. I asked if the premiers would consider enlarging their delegations as we would enlarge ours by the addition of leaders of opposition parties. Once again, I do not want to speak for all of them or answer for each, but I think it is fair to say that they were quite negative to that proposal, which I believe is the attitude of the present Leader of the Opposition who thinks that it should be the job of the 11 ministers, at least in the early stages, to pursue these meetings and to head the delegations.
As far as I am concerned, the subject matter is still open. I have told the leaders of the other parties in this House that if we were to agree on a plan of action, I would gladly consider making them active participants in any federal delegation which 1 would lead. To that answer I should add that we also discussed the question of participation by native Canadians, participation by the representatives of the Yukon and Northwest Territories and, indeed, the question of the participation of mayors and municipalities who are asking to be included in such discussions. We had a very lengthy discussion on these subjects too.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: I would like to ask the Prime Minister another question which arises from his last statement in answer to my first question, and that is the participation of elected members or elected leaders from the territories. If I can repeat my earlier words, as the process evolves those people who are not only deeply interested but who will be affected by constitutional changes will, if success is to be achieved, need to have some participation rather than a decision being given to them. Was there a clear rejection by the Prime Minister and the premiers of participation by elected government leaders of the territories, and obviously there is one territory that has different status, namely the Yukon?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I would state it in a more positive way. There was a clear preference expressed by, I would say, if not the totality then certainly the overwhelming majority of the 1 1 present yesterday, for proceeding the next time only with first ministers. The question was discussed, I repeat, of adding representatives from the territories and from the municipalities. Indeed, several first ministers indicated groups of different kinds in their provinces that would like to participate, such as the Francophonie Quebec.
The conclusion was reached that we should continue in the future as we have in the past and have the 11 governments head delegations. In those delegations we could, of course, include, as we have in the past, representatives of the territories. As some of the first ministers point out, they had in the past included representatives of municipalities, Indian bands
and so on. The procedure willed by the 11 first ministers yesterday was that we continue to have 11 delegations meeting, with each first minister being free to bring into his delegation those people he feels should have a voice or a place in his delegation.
I should add that the Minister of Justice (Mr. Chretien) did meet with representatives of the territories in recent days and indicated that we would want to include them in our delegation as we have in the past. There may be in the future some larger form of constitutional convention, but for the time being the procedure will be 11 delegations led by 11 first ministers.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister knows both from private conversation and from public statements that my colleagues and I favour at some point an outside deadline being established for these important talks. I understand from his comments that he shares the view that it is important, while setting a deadline, to avoid any suggestion of confrontation or'belligerency at this point.
In light of the Prime Minister's earlier answers to the Leader of the Opposition, and just for the purpose of clarification, with regard to the short list of items that were agreed to for the September meeting, what is the Prime Minister's view in approximate terms about the number of items that have to be agreed to before the September meeting in order for him to think that that is sufficient progress not to require, for example, parliamentary action?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I begin by saying that we agree with the Leader of the New Democratic Party who favours deadlines but no belligerence. I would indicate to him that there was no setting of a deadline by me yesterday. I proposed a calendar. It was discussed, modified and finally accepted. In so far as that calendar contains a notion of a deadline by talking of "finalizing agreements", I want to assure the Leader of the New Democratic Party that is was not as a result of belligerency that I got that particular agreement.
1 think the next question is impossible to answer except by saying the maximum number of agreements would be 12 and the optimum would be near the maximum. We will have to be reasonable and see if there is substantial progress or not. 1 am not sure I follow the logic of the Leader of the New Democratic Party when he says that if we reach a great measure of agreement, or a maximum of agreement, then perhaps parliamentary action would not be needed. I would think on the contrary. Perhaps 1 misinterpreted his thinking, but if we have reached optimum agreement, hopefully we will be proceeding with parliamentary action very soon after that agreement.


John Edward Broadbent: This is a two-part question to get clarification of the point made by the Prime Minister. As I understand it, both from private conversations and public statements there are two situations in which parliamentary action might take place. One is if there is substantial agreement, and as part of the normal process of amending the constitution and hopefully repatriating it a special act of Parliament would be required.
June 10, 1980

That would be essentially in support of or in agreement with action taken by the provinces. There could be no conceivable dispute that I can imagine about such a course of action.
The other circumstance under which Parliament might take action is if there is a constitutional deadlock resulting from a lack of unanimous agreement, or even in other circumstances where two or three provinces might not agree on a number of items. 1 was attempting to get clarification from the Prime Minister about the second situation as it pertains to this list. If I understand him correctly, he is not insisting that all the items on the short list be agreed to at the September meeting, or that the lack of complete agreement, if that should occur, would not necessarily lead to his wanting to bring before Parliament perhaps special legislation which would be submitted and voted upon to get constitutional change in spite of what some of the provinces are doing? Is that the Prime Minister's position?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am not sure I followed the question very closely, Madam Speaker, but I will attempt to answer it. Obviously, if some items of the 12 have not been concluded in the sense that some of the delegations are asking for more time to work them out, but there has been a large body of agreement on the rest, I would not then say we are courting disaster. The list is made up of items which various levels of government considered extremely urgent; and it may be that one premier might consider one item extremely urgent, and even if that item were not solved it would be possible for the rest to say: "Look, we are doing well, let's go on; we don't have to press the panic button".
But these are all hypothetical situations. Being short of unanimity on everything does not mean it will be catastrophic. But once again, the mood of the meeting and certainly the mood of people on this side of the House is that we have to make very substantial progress by September, otherwise we shall fail in the expectation which every party in this House and certainly every premier, including the Prime Minister, created during the referendum-that we would all get down to business and renew federalism very quickly.


John Edward Broadbent: A final question, Madam Speaker. As the Prime Minister knows, in February, 1979, a substantial amount of agreement was reached between the government he then headed and the provinces on virtually the whole of the list which has been tabled today. Is it now the position of the federal government that the agreement which was reached on most of those items in 1979 is the take-off point, or is it the view of the Prime Minister that all these items have to be looked at anew?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, it is precisely because the leader is right that we were able to set so early a deadline, because there was a lot of work done before and since February, 1979, on those items on the agenda that we think it is not unrealistic, after weeks of meetings at the level of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Chretien) and the provincial attorneys general,
Constitutional Renewal
to think of setting a deadline as early as September. So I say to the hon. member that the commitment was not specific because every one of the participants yesterday wanted to take it exactly from the point we had reached in February. Each will perhaps want to reconsider his positions on one item or another of the agenda, but on the whole 1 think the plan we had made to September, 1979, will hold and we will be able to take it from there this summer in the discussions that will be taking place.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Madam Speaker, my question to the Prime Minister concerns his statement that Parliament should play its rightful and full role in these developments. Has he anything in mind for Parliament between now and the conference in September and, if he has, what kind of role is he contemplating-for example, the establishment of a special committee, or a joint committee, or of providing opportunities for special debates in this House? Is there something he can tell us about extending the input role of parliamentarians?
The right hon. gentleman also made the statement that perhaps it would be better if there were more participation and that this might be a way of ensuring it. Could the Prime Minister elaborate on what he has in mind?
[ Translation]


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, it is precisely because 1 did not have a firm answer to that question that I preferred to make a statement on motions as early as today. I am open to suggestions from the other side as far as the participation of parliamentarians until September is concerned. The Minister of Justice is known to be a flexible man. He will be directing the work and I am sure that if members of other parties want to participate in the drafting or the elaboration of some of those documents or those thoughts, either in this place or in committees on a private basis or in parliamentary committees, he would be verry happy to welcome assistance from all sides of this House.


Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask at least one question that I find very relevant in the circumstances as the provincial premiers had an opportunity yesterday to make some of their particular interests known to the Prime Minister of Canada. I am also pleased to see the good co-operation of the provinces and particularly the Premier of Quebec who showed 1 think a measure of good will. Like all premiers, he also indicated certain reservations and at the same time he set a certain minimum in that desire to co-operate for that new federalism. He reiterated in particular that principle of self-determination on the powers regarding languages and education. Indeed that principle has already been recognized as acceptable by both the Pepin-Robarts report and Mr. Ryan. I do not know whether he repeated it again last Friday to the Prime Minister of Canada, but to have that good co-operation from Quebec, it seems there are, never-
1942

June 10, 1980
Constitutional Renewal
theless, minimums that are hopefully, it seems, according to Mr. Levesque, basically non-negotiable. Does the Prime Minister-and that is my question-intend from here to September, for the good operation of those future negotiations, to meet his Quebec counterpart and discuss as a whole those three specific points that seemed very obvious in any event in the statement of the Premier of Quebec at yesterday's meeting?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I wish to assure the hon. member that all provincial premiers will be most welcome if they wish to meet me before September to discuss specific issues, but I repeat to the hon. member for Joliette (Mr. La Salle) that according to the procedure established by the premiers themselves yesterday, the ministers responsible for constitutional renewal, in our case, the Minister of Justice will be responsible for holding meetings and following up on the debates.
This does not preclude meetings between the premiers and myself. In fact, as everyone is aware, the premiers will meet in Winnipeg around the end of August and they might also discuss these questions. However, I should add that the list of priority issues for the decisions to be made in September was established with the unanimous agreement of all premiers, including the Quebec premier, and that he himself did not ask that the subjects mentioned by the hon. member for Joliette be added to the list. He might want to express his opinions when we or our delegations discuss the statement of principles, but in any case, we shall discuss this matter when he asks his questions.


Roch La Salle: Madam Speaker, it seems that the Quebec premier deplored for instance the fact that in his statement the right hon. Prime Minister of Canada mentions only the existence in Canada of the Canadian people. It seems that Mr. Levesque would have preferred that mention be made of the existence of two peoples, Francophones and Anglophones, which duality was also recognized by the Pepin-Robarts commission. Does the Prime Minister intend to recognize this Canadian duality in future negotiations?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, we on this side of the House have always rejected the political concept of two nations. I do not know the position of the hon. member for Joliette on this issue. Of course, we would be interested to learn what it is. However, for our part, we recognize the concept of duality both from the point of view of history and from that of its application to the linguistic reality of everyday life, and we alluded to it when we spoke in the statement of principles about the meeting of the English fact and the French fact in America. This recognizes the historical duality of Canada. Further on, we spoke about the official character of the French and English languages in Canada. This recognizes the linguistic duality or the equality, if you wish, of both official languages. But from there to believe as the hon. member seems to do that there are several people in Canada, we prefer for our part the expression-


Roch La Salle: I did not say several.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Two peoples in Canada? We speak about the Canadian people, and if 1 am not mistaken, this was the position taken by the majority of Quebeckers in the referendum.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Madam Speaker, I have been listening to the questions and I have not seen the list, but I would like to suggest in my question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) that he consider the fact that we are trying to build a constitution which hopefully will be as good and last as long as the last one.
One of the facts which seems to be omitted in these discussions-and, I suppose, in the list-is the fact that 60 per cent, 70 per cent and maybe 80 per cent of our people now live either in big cities or in large regional concentrations, or will in the future. Is there some way we can work in the views of the Association of Mayors and Municipalities which have been expressed to the provincial governments and to the federal government for the last 30 years which would make it possible for the civil servants who will be working on this problem during the summer to consider some imaginative proposals on how both the federal and provincial governments can delegate some of their powers for temporary periods to these large cities or large regional governments to provide some evidence to this big mass of the Canadian people that we are trying to meet the needs of these many people who, for their own good reasons, want to live in the cities and yet have a place in the power structure without interfering with the constitutional powers of the federal or provincial governments? I believe there is a way. Would the Prime Minister consider allowing a place on the agenda this summer to get this input to the officials?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: discussion by September, and that indeed the question of municipal institutions was raised by our government in February, 1979, as a subject matter which deserved a great deal of attention. I can tell the hon. member that as far as we are concerned we still consider that a priority item. It simply is not on the list of items for the work between now and September, but we still consider it, as I understand the hon. member does, an item to which anyone working on a new constitution should give attention.


Francis Alvin George Hamilton: Madam Speaker, I am very grateful to the Prime Minister for his answer because 1 think it has been a great disappointment to many Canadians that both levels of government have not given consideration to this over the last 30 years when the situation was arising.
I would like to go on to my previous proposal and suggest that since this is not a matter of priority in the first two summer months, it might be well for Canada if the Prime Minister took the lead in putting forward some proposals dealing not only with cities per se and with large regional governments, but also with groups of provinces or parts of provinces using the technique of delegating powers from other sources of power, the provinces and the federal government, to solve some of their problems which are basic to the wider constitutional difficulty. It would be in the interest of realizing that Canada has changed a lot in the last 112 years if the Prime Minister could put forward one or two imaginative ways which could solve this situation in a co-operative sense by keeping it flexible, so as to maintain powers with the provinces and the federal government on a permanent basis but to delegate those powers over periods of time, first to the cities and second to these large regions, to a group of provinces or in some cases several regions within a province where the clashes are just as great.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I could not agree more with the intention of the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton). 1 repeat that we took the initiative in February of 1979 of putting that on the list of items to be discussed because-and 1 repeat-we feel that the provinces have tended to centralize powers too much in the provincial capitals rather than use some such method as the hon. member suggests to spread around the exercise of administrative and other powers.
I will certainly undertake to give consideration to the precise suggestion for delegation put forward by the hon. member, but I remind him of something he of course already knows, and that is that municipal governments under the BNA Act come within provincial jurisdiction, and they are somewhat jealous of that jurisdiction. For that reason, I think we would only be able to proceed by way of suggestion rather than action by the federal Parliament.
So 1 would hope that the municipalities themselves, and interested Canadians such as the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-
Constitutional Renewal
Moose Mountain, would support the municipalities in pleading with the provincial governments that perhaps a new Canadian constitution would have greater provision for municipal powers and autonomy within the centralized provincial governments.
[ Translation]


Mr. Louis Duclos (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) a question on what seems to me to be at the heart of constitutional reform, this whole matter of a new distribution of constitutional jurisdictions.
Assuming that the provinces fail to reach agreement in this matter or, say, if. a province like Quebec or a minority of others would wish to have certain powers that a majority of provinces would rather see entrusted to the federal government, does the right hon. Prime Minister foresee a solution which would also allow for constitutional reform or does he feel that to all intents and purposes, we would reach a complete impasse?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, this matter was discussed at various meetings on the constitution and proposals have been made to find a solution, namely the delegation of legislative powers in one sense or another. I know that the Premier of Alberta for one had pushed this idea at a constitutional meeting held at a time when the Progressive Conservative Party was in power. It was not advocated yesterday but we would be prepared to examine it if it is in the interest of the provinces.
Madam Speaker, I would like to add that, as the hon. member has said, the distribution of powers is truly at the heart of the constitutional problems but he must surely know that there are other constitutional problems than those which might give rise to some sort of power struggle between the two, three or four levels of government. Some constitutional provisions are of particular interest to all Canadians while not really being part of this problem of distribution of powers. I hope that in this matter, we will also consider what is directly in the interest of the population rather than government and bear in mind that these matters are also at the heart of the problems, to use the member's expression.


Louis Duclos: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the right hon. Prime Minister if, from what he has just said, we might not reasonably conclude that the idea of asymmetry contained in the Pepin-Robarts commission report could be a means to achieve an end with respect to constitutional reform and more precisely with a new distribution of constitutional jurisdictions?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, that would depend on the asymmetry in question. If it is on the jurisdiction level per se, we think that federalism cannot be very effective if some provinces have more jurisdiction than others. That is my

June 10, 1980
Constitutional Renewal
personal position which does not preclude asymmetries in particular fields, either with respect to the administration or the application by one province or another of jurisdictions granted to them by the constitution. The hon. member is certainly aware of dozens of examples of special agreements made by our government, for instance, when we made arrangements with the province of Quebec concerning immigration, family allowances or, in the Pearson era, old age guaranteed income supplement. So, from an administrative point of view, it is possible to have arrangements differing from one province to another, but the most important thing is that all provinces have free access to such arrangements if they so desire.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. I should warn hon. members that from now on 1 will allow only one question from the different questioners, and this will apply to those who have already risen. I have on my list the hon. member for York North (Mr. Gamble), the hon. member for Annapolis Valley-Hants (Mr. Nowlan), the hon. member for Pembina (Mr. Elzinga) and the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields). I am in the hands of the House, but this is an opposition day and perhaps hon. members would want to debate other matters as well. So I will entertain only one question from the next questioners.


Mr. John Gamble (York North):: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) has dealt with two questions posed to him with respect to the part that he thought that this Parliament might play, and he answered one of them clearly in terms of the part played by Parliament in the event that we were discussing work which might lead up to the final meeting in September.
My question to the Prime Minister is: What part does the Prime Minister propose that this Parliament play in the constitutional discussions, given its legal limitations under the constitution which he proposes to change, in the event that there is no agreement ultimately between the provinces and the federal government?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I am not sure what constitutional limitations the hon. member is thinking of. Parliament, of course, would be free to discuss the general subject of constitutional change, and I indicated to the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), I believe it was, that we would be open to suggestion in that regard. I understand from the government House leader that the opposition has two days together in the first part of July which it can use to discuss any subject it wants. For all I know, it may want to discuss the constitution. Opposition days can be used for such purpose and, of course, the government can set time aside-in consultation with other House leaders-if such is the desire of the opposition parties and if such a discussion seems called for at that time.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Madam Speaker, I should like to direct a serious question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). This matter arose at the end of his press conference yesterday and it ties in with the questions of
my leader today in terms of expectations in September. The right hon. Prime Minister said that if there was a success in September-depending on how we define success-then this could well expedite his retirement.
I am asking this question seriously to try to remove perhaps some personal elements here. In view of the fact that the Prime Minister has also used words like "disaster" and "catastrophe" if we do not have substantial agreement in September, what would his position be? Would this expedite his retirement, or what would be his status?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: In that case the catastrophe would be that I would stay on for a considerable amount of time.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jack Wendele Shields: Madam Speaker, I just wanted to ask the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) whether there has been an agreement to set a deadline before the finalization of all 12 points by September-to which I am not privy at this point-for the energy agreement with the producing provinces, namely, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia, and if so, what is it?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the question of a deadline was not settled yesterday. I did not understand it to have been raised as a deadline. We all know the present energy agreement expires on July 1. I would refer the hon. member to the energy minister as to the exact status of the discussions with the petroleum producing provinces.
I think on this matter the premiers of those provinces could best speak for themselves if they have views on that, because one of the rules of the meeting we had yesterday was that we would state our own positions, that we would not quote the positions of others by name. That is why today, except when a name was mentioned, I did not want to bring out any names myself. The hon. member seems to wonder about the position of the Premier of Alberta. I could only refer the hon. member to the Premier of Alberta to state that position for himself.


Mr. Peter Elzinga (Pembina):: Madam Speaker, in response to the question put by the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton), the right hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) indicated that he was very sympathetic toward hearing the views of the municipalities. In his opinion, the powers of the provinces were too great and should be decentralized. I wonder whether the Prime Minister could indicate if he holds the same view in regard to the sentiments expressed pertaining to the powers of the provinces? Does he hold the same view in regard to the powers of the federal government and the centralization of those powers?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, 1 think it has become something of a cliche in the country, in the media and particularly among members of the Conservative party who talk about extreme centralization of the powers of the federal government. 1 just wanted to offset that cliche by perhaps
June 10, 1980

creating a new one and a new idea, I would even argue that Canada is probably the most decentralized federation in the world, but this does not prevent members on the other side from continuing to lament that we are too centralized. I just want to draw to their attention that the provinces are extraordinarily centralized. If one asks the opinion of the municipalities, they complain much more about the centralization, and sometimes the autocracy, of the provincial governments than they do of the federal government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Madam Speaker:: With my apologies, I have to make one slight exception. I understand the hon. member for Nunatsiaq (Mr. Ittinuar) was seeking the floor from the very beginning and I did not see him. In order to be fair to him, I will allow him one question.


Mr. Peter Ittinuar (Nunatsiaq):: Thank you, Madam Speaker, for making an exception and recognizing me. I should like to address a question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I think the Prime Minister and the provincial premiers are of the knowledge that the territories are not in the same category or have the same status as municipalities existing within provinces. They are a territory and a government unto themselves without obedience or adherence to provincial governments.
I should like to know specifically what are the plans of the provincial premiers for native, Yukon and the Northwest Territorial governments' participation in constitutional talks and upon what they based their decision of yesterday? What are the Prime Minister's own views in regard to this matter?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I refer the hon. member to the priorities which were proposed by the Government of Canada, which were tabled in this House half an hour ago and which will be appended to Hansard. If he looks at the last paragraph in those priorities, he will have in part the answer to his question. With the permission of Madam Speaker, I should like to read it; the document was tabled:
The government also proposes that the leadership of the native peoples continue to be involved in the discussion of constitutional changes which directly affect the native peoples, in the context of the joint work on the item "Canada's Native Peoples and the Constitution". In addition, governments would pay special heed to representations from them on the items in the package set out above.
In so far as the Yukon and the Northwest Territories are concerned, I will just repeat what I believe I have said several times, that under the constitution those territories fall within federal jurisdiction much as the municipalities fall within provincial jurisdiction. I am not attempting to equate them both, but as the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton) pointed out, there are many, many more citizens living in municipalities than there are in the territories put together. All these various groups have their legitimate grievances. Some formula must be devised to hear them on constitutional matters.
Patriation of the Constitution



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Pinard:: Madam Speaker, out of courtesy for hon. members, I would like to give the order of business for tomorrow and Thursday.	__
Tomorrow we will resume consideration in Committee of the Whole of Bill C-19 on employment tax credits and I hope we will be able to complete that stage tomorrow. Thursday will be the last day of the second reading debate on Bill C-30.



PETITION


Mr. Stan Schellenberger (Wetaskiwin):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present to the honourable the House of Commons in Parliament assembled, a petition pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 67 which, in brief, prays that the system of weights and measures known as the Imperial system always shall be legal and acceptable in Canada, regardless of any other system that may happen to be used.
The petition attached bears the signatures of 4,088 electors. It was sent to me in my capacity as the hon. member for Wetaskiwin for transmittal to the honourable the House of Commons in Parliament assembled. If the petition is found to be in order, I pray it will be referred to an appropriate committee of the House of Commons.



THE CONSTITUTION


Mr. Bill Yurko (Edmonton East) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-598, to provide for the patriation of the British North America Act and for the amendment in Canada of the Constitution of Canada.
He said: Madam Speaker, in introducing a bill I understand that it is the practice to permit a member some three minutes of explanation of the bill.
This private member's bill is a follow-up to the unanimous acceptance of a motion under Standing Order 43 introduced by me on May 9 on patriating the Canadian Constitution from Britain, and followed up by a suggested address to the Queen on a question of privilege raised by me on May 12, 1980.
For some time now I have argued forcibly that patriation of the existing Canadian Constitution is inevitable. It can be patriated in four different stages in regard to the evolution of a Canadian constitution. The first is that it can be patriated in the very near future-

June 10, 1980
Order Paper Questions


Some hon. Members:: Order.


William J. Yurko: As I indicated, it is customary to give a member some three minutes-


Mr. Collenette:: Thirty seconds.


William J. Yurko: It can be patriated in the very near future with the unanimity amending formula, as 1 have proposed. Second, it can be patriated by an act of the British parliament deleting section 7 of the Statute of Westminster, but leaving Canada without an entrenched amending formula until one is found.


Some hon. Members:: Order.


William J. Yurko: Third, it can be patriated by an act of the British parliament with an agreed upon amending formula similar to that detailed in my motion No. 13 on the order paper. Fourth, it can be patriated with a new constitution if one is found in Canada.
1 want to place on record that a new Canadian constitution must be drafted by Canadians, for Canadians and passed into law in Canada. It would be inappropriate if Canada, after 50 years of effort, finally agreed on a new constitution, but had to adopt it through an act in another country. Therefore, I am very pleased to request first reading of this bill, which is an act to provide for the patriation of the British North America Act and for the amendment in Canada of the Constitution of Canada.


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

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
['Agreed.']
David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 12, 27, 139, 141, 274, 331,411,666, 667, 798, 823 and 927.
I would ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.



Mr. Cossitt: 1.	In each of the past four years, by province, what was the total amount paid by the government for electrical power?
2.	(a) What was the over-all total for all of the provinces in each of the past four years (b) what was the total for all of the provinces for the past four years combined?


Paul James Cosgrove: 1 and
2. Public Works Canada does not aggregate records for this type of information by province. Following is a breakdown by regions for the fiscal years 1975-76 through 1978-79 as figures for 79-80 are not yet finalized.
	Expenditures	for Electricity	by Region		
		($000's)			
Region	1975-76	1976-77	1977-78	1978-79	TotalAtlantic	1,465	1.902	2,693	3,451	9,51 1Quebec	2,480	2,846	3,300	5,230	13,856National Capital	7,270	10.004	11,186	1 1,716	40,176Ontario	3,715	4,928	5,827	5,383	19,853Western	2,524	2,998	3,476	4,138	13,136Pacific	1,349	1,585	1,709	1,928	6,571Total	$18,803	$24,263	$28,191	$31,846	$103,103


MR. MIKHAIL KHVATOV
Mr. Cossitt: 1.	(a) Did RCMP witness Spooner state to the Court at the Peter Worthington trial under the Official Secrets Act that Mikhail Khvatov was a KGB agent involved in certain activities during 1975-76 and, if so, what was the exact period of time that these incidents supposedly occurred (b) on what dale did the RCMP become fully aware of Mr. Khvatov\s alleged activities?
2.	(a) During the week of June 3, 1975, was the security division of the RCMP contacted by the honourable member for Leeds-Grenville concerning Mr. Khvatov and, if so, what was the name of the RCMP official who spoke to the honourable member (b) did the RCMP official request the honourable member to report anything that might be of interest arising from a luncheon meeting with Mr. Khvatov (c) did the honourable member ask that his telephone communication be duly noted in RCMP records for future reference and did the official assure him that it would be (d) did the honourable member ask the RCMP security service if Mr. Khvatov was a bona fide diplomat or whether they had any knowledge if his activities included those other than of a diplomatic nature (c) did the RCMP security service assure the honourable member that Mr. Khvatov was definitely a bona fide diplomat to the best of their knowledge and, if so, what are all the reasons for the contradiction between this statement and the one made by witness Spooner in Toronto?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General):: 1.	(a) RCMP witness Spooner did not state during public
sessions of the Worthington trial that Mikhail Khvatov was a KGB agent.
(b)	The RCMP became aware of certain activities on the part of Mr. Khvatov in late 1972.
2.	(a) The RCMP do not have any record of Mr. Cossitt
contacting the security service of the RCMP in Ottawa concerning Mr. Khvatov during the week of June 3, 1975.
(b)	Although the identity of the member of the RCMP whom Mr. Cossitt would have contacted cannot be established, it would be in keeping with RCMP security service policy to request that Mr. Cossitt report anything of possible interest arising from a meeting with a representative of the Soviet mission.
(c)	As the Ottawa RCMP security service has no record of contact with Mr. Cossitt during the week of June 3, 1975, they cannot comment on these questions.
(d)	and (e) See (c) above.
June 10, 1980


VIA RAIL CANADA INC., EQUIPMENT
Mr. Turner: 1.	How many pieces of serviceable equipment does Via Rail Canada, Inc. own or lease and what is the breakdown, by type (i.e. standard coaches, bar cars, sleeping cars, dayniters, club cars, etc.)?
2.	(a) What is the breakdown, by type, of serviceable equipment that is (i) 1 to 5 (ii) 6 to 10 (iii) 11 to 15 (iv) 16 to 20 (v) 21 to 25 (vi) 26 to 30 (vii) over 30
Order Paper Questions
years old (b) how much of this equipment does Via Rail Canada expect will need to be replaced in the next five years?


Mr. Robert Bockstael (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: 1 and 2(a).
Via Rail Canada Inc.-Inventory 1980
Serviceable	Age of Active Equipment (Years)	AcquisitionsEquipment Type	Equipment	1-5	6-10	11-15 16-20	21-25	26-30	Over 30	1980-1984Turbo	18	18	Tempo	25	25	Meal Service	76	15	61	Sleepers	228	190	38	Club and Lounge	41	20	21	Coach	319	28	173	1 18	LRC Coach 66Dayniter	53	53	Railiner	83	44	39	Railiner 20Baggage	72	65	7	Miscellaneous	33	14	19	Subtotal	948	43	87	615	203	Diesel Locomotives	146	110	34	2	LRC Loco's 22Conv'I Loco's 12Steam Generators	87	15	72	Electric Generators	3	3	Total	1184	43 15	272	649	205	120
2(b). Via is currently acquiring 21 locomotives and 50 coaches from Bombardier representing an additional 3750 seats. In addition, Via has acquired some surplus self-propelled cars from other railways and is undertaking a complete redesign and rebuilding program with these units to prove out the feasibility of modernizing and redeploying its present self-propelled car fleet. New management controls incorporating the assistance of our new reservation system, RESERVIA, to improve occupancy rates, car, assignment and fleet utilization have also assisted in being able to operate with our present fleet size augmented as required with the new equipment on order and other equipment being rebuilt.


VIA RAIL-TRAIN CREWS
Mr. Turner: 1.	Does CN Rail and CP Rail supply train crews to Via Rail Canada for the operation of its trains and, if so, does this include stewards and porters?
2.	Does Via Rail Canada pay the railways for these crews and, if so, in what amount?
3.	Does Via Rail Canada intend to supply its own crews for the operation of its trains or will it continue to rely on CN and CP?


Robert Theodore Bockstael: 1. Via Rail Canada Inc. contracts with CN and CP to staff its trains. The contract price includes the cost of providing operating crews such as conductors, enginemen, trainmen, flagmen and baggage handlers who continue to be CN and CP Rail employees. It does not include employees
such as stewards and porters. Employees who provide meal, snack, dining, sleeping, club and lounge services on trains are Via employees.
2.	Via pays a negotiated contract price to CN and CP Rail for hauling its trains. One of the elements of railway costs is operating crew wages but such costs are not identified separately to Via. The costs are included in a train operating charge calculated in accordance with costing order No. R-6313.
3.	Via has no immediate plans to supply its own operating crews and will continue to rely on CN and CP Rail to provide these for operation of its trains.


NATIONAL FILM BOARD OPERATING ACCOUNT
Mr. Herbert: In each of the past five years, what amount was transferred to the National Film Board Operating account?


Mr. Peter Stollery (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State and Minister of Communications):: I am informed by the National Film Board as follows:
Fiscal Year	Amount
1974-75	$ 9,359,663
1975-76	12,254,046
1976-77	10,519,064
1977-78	12,353,076
1978-79	12,334,462
1979-80	10,150,000 (Forecast)

June 10, 1980
Order Paper Questions CANADA STUDENT LOANS ACT


Mr. Herbert: 1.	Does the government request an accounting from the government of Quebec for moneys provided for student assistance?
2.	By province, what amount is outstanding under the Canada Student Loans Act?


Peter A. Stollery: In so far as the
Department of the Secretary of State is concerned: 1. No. Under the Canada Student Loans Act, a province such as Quebec, which elects to operate its own program of loan assistance, is entitled to an alternative payment calculated under a formula set out in the act. The formula is designed to assess the cost to the federal government were it to provide the assistance provided by the province concerned and this amount is paid to the province to help defray the cost of providing its own loan program.
2. Amounts outstanding under the act are not maintained by the federal government by province. Outstanding amounts are recorded by lenders (banks and designated credit unions or other designated lenders) in respect of accounts handled by the lender concerned. However, data on loans authorized by province are maintained by the federal government and are published in the annual report for the Canada Student Loans Program.


AHOP DEFAULTS
Mr. Orlikow: In each of the past three years, by province, how many persons who purchased homes under AHOP defaulted on their payments or withdrew from the program?


Paul James Cosgrove: 1 am
advised by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as follows:
Mortgage Insurance Fund Claims Paid(l) Assisted Home Ownership Program, by Province, 1977-1979
Province	1977	1978	1979Newfoundland	14	66	210Prince Edward Island	1	1	2Nova Scotia	8	21	60New Brunswick	13	75	97Quebec	73	292	522Ontario	89	547	3,286Manitoba	1	8	15Saskatchewan	5	9	23Alberta	1	2	3British Columbia	43	471	936Yukon Territory	-	-	1Canada	248	1,492	5,155
O Includes AHOP unit acquisitions from builders where the units were originally designated as qualifying for AHOP assistance and there were separate mortgages on individual units at the time of acquisition. Data is not readily available to distinguish between AHOP acquisitions from purchasers and AHOP acquisitions from builders.


PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE-SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE
Mr. Cossitt: What are the names of all the persons, other than Mr. T. D. Finn, involved with security and intelligence in the Privy Council office or the Prime Minister's office and, in each case (a) what was the date of their appointment (b) what is their annual salary (c) what are their specific duties (d) what is their employment history with the public service and particularly, what training did they have in security and intelligence previous to assuming their present job?


David Michael Collenette: Gordon F. Frazer
(a)	April, 1957
(b)	$31,400-$38,800
(c)	Security Policy Adviser
(d)	Research with RCMP Secretariat duties in PCO
John T. Gannon
(a)	February, 1977
(b)	$24,273-$27,070
(c)	Cabinet Document Security Auditor
(d)	Canadian Army Intelligence Corps
Public Service-Departmental Security Officer CIDA; IT&C Jeremy Godfrey
(a)	January, 1979
(b)	$20,815-$23,162
(c)	Security Adviser
(d)	DSS (Security Services, Physical Branch) Penitentiary Service (Operational Security)
National Museums, Security Services
William J. Hackett
(a)	August 1, 1979 (on secondment)
(b)	$30,720-$34,500
(c)	Administrative Officer
(d)	Major, Canadian Armed Forces Arthur Katona
(a)	June 18, 1979 (on secondment)
(b)	$19,252-$26,549
(c)	Current Intelligence Co-ordinator
(d)	External Affairs, Foreign Service Officer Burton F. Kelso
(a)	January 7, 1980 (on secondment)
(b)	$40,480-$44,110
(c)	Co-ordination of long-term assessments
(d)	Department of National Defence Special Research Bureau, External Affairs Industrial Policy, Industry, Trade and Commerce Research Branch, Canadian Transport Commission

June 10, 1980_____________________________COMMONS DEBATES____________________________________________1949
Order Paper Questions
Lillian Roy
(a)	February 18, 1974
P. A. Lemieux
(a)	July 5, 1972
(b)	$31,400-$38,800
(c)	Senior Secretariat Officer
(d)	See reply to Question No. 9, Hansard No. 18, dated May 7, 1980
J. C. Upton
(a)	July 16, 1979 (on secondment)
(b)	$37,380-$38,796
(c)	Secretary, Intelligence Advisory Committee
(d)	Colonel, Canadian Forces Security Branch Louise Bigras
(a)	March 24, 1971
(b)	$12,993-$14,141
(c)	Secretary and Office Manager
(d)	Department of External Affairs
Royal Commission on the Status of Women Prime Minister's Office
Lesley Hilyer
(a)	April, 1978
(b)	$11,650-$12,731
(c)	Clerk
(d)	Joined the Public Service (PCO) in April 1978
Therese M. W. Hobart
(a)	November 21, 1977
(b)	$12,508-$13,676
(c)	Secretary
(d)	Secretary, RCMP
Muriel Kauffeldt
(a)	March 16, 1960
(b)	$16,071-$17,588
(c)	Secretary
(d)	Department of National Defence
Diana Larkin
(a)	September 15, 1978
(b)	$12,508-$13,676
(c)	Secretary/clerk
(d)	National Research Council Constance Merle McCann
(a)	January 4, 1974
(b)	$12,508-$13,676
(c)	Secretary/clerk
(d)	Personnel Pool (DREE, Public Archives, Transport)
(b)	$12,993-$14,141
(c)	Security Equipment and Records Clerk
(d)	Department of National Defence Linda Farevaag
(a)	November, 1977
(b)	$14,678-$16,053
(c)	Secretary/clerk
(d)	Department of External Affairs Ross Christensen
(a)	May, 1979 (on secondment)
(b)	$31,000-$39,000
(c)	Resource Management Co-ordinator
(d)	Canadian Armed Forces Treasury Board Secretariat National Defence
Peter C. Cameron
(a)	April 2, 1979 (temporary assignment)
(b)	$31,000-$39,000
(c)	Researcher
(d)	Indian Affairs
Treasury Board Temporary Assignment Pool All of the above were appointed to their positions in accordance with the competitive requirements of the relevant statutes, taking into account knowledge, education, experience, suitability and other factors.


MR. T. D. FINN
Mr. Cossitt: Is Mr. T. D. Finn Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet for Security and Intelligence and (a) if so (i) what is his complete employment history in the public service (ii) what are all of his qualifications that led to him receiving the job (b) if not, who is the assistant secretary?


David Michael Collenette: Yes.
(a) (i) Secretariat Officer, Privy Council Office August, 1971-May, 1974 Director, Consumer Services Branch, Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs May, 1974-October, 1976 Director, Policy and Interpretations, Prices and Profits Branch, Anti-Inflation Board October, 1976-September, 1977 Current appointment taken up September 6, 1977;
(ii) Mr. Finn is a lawyer with experience in both the public and private sector. This experience, together
1950

June 10, 1980
Order Paper Questions
with his range of government knowledge and experience led to his appointment.
(b) Not applicable.


SCHOOL BUS SAFETY
Mr. de Jong: 1.	Is the Department of Transport considering regulations that would force the manufacturers of school buses to improve the safety of such vehicles?
2.	Will the installation of seat belts be compulsory on all new school buses?


Robert Theodore Bockstael: 1. To date, Transport Canada has issued 28 school bus safety standards under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Included in these standards are four new requirements published in The Canada Gazette March 12, 1980, which will significantly improve the protection offered to school bus occupants in an accident. The requirements address seat strength and padding, body joint strength, fuel system integrity and emergency exits; they become effective for vehicles manufactured after September 30, 1980.
2. The installation of seat belts in school buses will not be made compulsory at this time. Such requirements cannot be justified on the basis of Canada accident statistics and could increase the hazards to younger passengers, unless monitors are provided on all school buses to ensure proper use and fitment.
As a practical alternative to seat belts, two of the recently-introduced safety standards entitled "seat strength and padding" and "body joint stength" combine to provide passive protection for all passengers by increasing the degree of encapsulation afforded them in an improved passenger compartment.


MARIJUANA STUDIES
Mr. Howie: Since April I, 1975, what amount was spent on studies related to marijuana by the Department of Agriculture?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: None.


DEPARTMENT OF SUPPLY AND SERVICES TENDERS
Mr. Cossitt: 1.	In each of the past five years, how many tenders were called fay the Department of Supply and Services on (a) an invitation basis (b) a public advertisement?
2.	What is the over-all total in each case for the past five years?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: 1. (a) (i) Headquarters
1975- 76: 11,390	1978-79: 11,782
1976- 77: 12,349	1979-80: 10,455
1977-	78: 12,967
(ii) Regional operations figures are not recorded.
However, the following number of contracts
were awarded, generally on the basis of an invitation:
1975- 76:223,871	1978-79:278,810
1976- 77:230,164	1979-80:259,162
1977-	78: 261,414
(b) 1975-76: I	1977-78:3	1979-80:4
1976-77:2	1978-79:2
2. (a) (i)	58,943
(ii) 1,253,421 (b) 12 [English]


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Hon. Ron Huntington (Capilano) moved:: That this House condemns the government for the approach used to impose the metric system on the people of Canada, for its failure to introduce a Metric Act, and for its imposition of a timetable which ignores the wishes of Canadian consumers and the needs of Canadian export.


Mr. Kempling:: Madam Speaker, I understand that discussions have been held between the House leaders and that an agreement has been reached that the lead-off speaker in this debate will have 30 minutes, and that all succeeding speakers will have 20 minutes each. Could we have a House order to formalize that?


Mr. Knowles:: I gather that my hon. friend is about to correct himself; the agreement was 15 minutes, not 20.


William James Kempling: I am sorry, I was told 20 minutes, but I accept 15 minutes.


Stanley Howard Knowles: The rule is for 20 minutes. The understanding we had, and I took part in those discussions, was that the lead-off speaker for each party would have 30 minutes and that all other speakers would have 15 minutes. Under such conditions we usually agree that no one will ask for any overtime.


David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, the agreement was as modified by the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre, that each lead speaker would have 30 minutes and each subsequent speaker 15 minutes. I might say also that the proportion of
June 10, 1980

speakers for the official opposition would be the same as that established a few weeks ago on the first opposition day which, I believe was, four, three and one.


Madam Speaker:: Is that agreed to by all members in the House?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: Madam Speaker, 1 would like to preface my remarks on this motion by saying that as a person with a science background and as a businessman, I carry no personal antagonism to metric per se. I recognize the need for rules and order in the business sections and sectors of the country and in the international marketplace.
My concern is with the approach used by the government to impose metric on the people of Canada. There are four basic points 1 want to make. First, there has been a lack of honouring the main tenets of the white paper tabled in January, 1970, on metric conversion in Canada. My second point is that it is unwise in metric conversion to make moves that are not in concert with the United States. Third, metric laws should make use of the metric system voluntary, as is the case in the United States. And fourth, the will of the people to make change has always been of prime importance in the parliamentary system. Metric conversion in Canada is being imposed and does not have the will and understanding of the people.
This country in 1871 passed the Metric Weights and Measures Act, which was an act to render permissive the use of the metric system. In 1873 the act was enlarged to the Weights and Measures Act. In January, 1970, a white paper on metric conversion was tabled in the House of Commons. It received the initial support of all parties. In April, 1971, the Weights and Measures Act was updated. I would like to quote one part of it:
All units of measurement used in Canada shall be determined on the international system of units established by the Government Conference of Weights and Measures.
This act authorized both a systems international metric system and customary Canadian units of measurement for trade. This act also contained a clause prohibiting governor in council amendment of schedule II of that act. To quote from the metric overview board report of February, 1980:
In essence, this act, which was proclaimed three years later, made SI the standard measurements units for Canada. But Canadian units of measurement were also authorized for use in trade as well as the special land measures for Quebec.
In June, 1971, the Metric Commission was established to advise the minister. In March, 1974, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) sent a letter to the premiers of the provinces advising that the plan of the Metric Commission had been endorsed by the government and asked the premiers for their assurance that the guideline dales were generally acceptable.
In March, 1975, there was a debate in this House on the motion to approve the guideline dates of the Metric Commission. Then in November, 1976, the omnibus bill. Bill C-23, was tabled in the House of Commons. This bill dealt with details
Metric System
pertaining to the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the Western Grain Stabilization Act, the Prairie Grain Advance Payments Act, the Two-Price Wheat Act, hectare measurement in lieu of acres, Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, etc.
The metric overview board report points out that one of the provisions in the omnibus act was the repeal of the Weights and Measures Act which, in effect, allowed for metric only. This slipped through the eyes of Parliament. In effect, it meant the abolition of the Canadian Weights and Measures Act and removed from that act the early limitation of power of the governor in council to abolish Canadian units of measure in trade.
It is now obvious that members of Parliament were concerned and caught up in the details of the omnibus bill and missed the important and major play buried in the legislation at that time. All through the white paper of 1970 were warnings and cautions. I speak of the metric conversion white paper which I am holding in my hand. There were warnings and cautions that those planning metric conversion would have to be aware of the importance of the public understanding the reasons for metric conversion in Canada. I would refer hon. members to paragraphs 3.1(111), 3.2, 3.3, 5.2 and 4.8.3, which carried these warnings throughout this report.
In 1977 the other place issued warnings in its hearings, which were again ignored, concerning metric conversion in Canada. It is my opinion that the government, the Metric Commission and its officials failed to accept the wisdom of the white paper's concerns and warnings. They even failed to accept the warnings and admonitions of the present Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) who spoke in the debate in March, 1975. I trust that one of my colleagues speaking later to this motion will be good enough to cover some of the points made by the present Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce in that debate. They got themselves entrenched in planning, in engineering, in kiosks, in details and with legislative intrigue and, in this process, forgot about the Canadian people, the need to have the people understand the "why" of metric conversion in Canada and the importance of people accepting the change.
As I stand to speak in this debate a decade later, there is no "why" for metric conversion in Canada. The case put forth in the white paper has not withstood the test of time. We have had the right to use metric in Canada since 1871. Am I the only person in this House who finds the patchwork, piece by piece, step by step use of this Parliament to impose the SI system of hard metric conversion on the people of Canada rather strange and frightening?
The failure of the Metric Commission to heed all aspects of the white paper became evident when a large number of Canadians expressed their deep antagonism and resentment about metric conversion to the candidates competing for office in the 1979 election.
As we came out of the 1979 election we had a situation where the imposition of metric conversion on the people by the

June 10, 1980
Metric System
Liberal government, through the heavy-handed actions of its commission and federal inspectors, was a direct affront to the majority of the people and to the parliamentary system.
The whole approach of the Metric Commission and the Liberal government has turned out to be one of planning the imposition of metric on the people through the use of indirect authority, indirect amendment to key legislation, interdepartmental intrigues, removal of legislative safeguards-all in the spirit of well organized stealth and contempt for the people and their Parliament.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Ronald Huntington: As we enter the constitutional debate on the centralization of powers, let us be aware of the hazards to our freedom by centralizing powers into commissions, tribunals and the bureaucracy, as against increasing the power of Parliament by improving its institutions and structures. The latter will allow for reactions from the people and will preserve freedoms through the continuous process of change while the former will surely lead us into a form of democratic dictatorship. It should anger us all when bureaucrats who are supposed to be apolitical professionals in their service to the Crown engage in political partisanship through official government communications.
I should like to draw your attention, Mr. Speaker, and the attention of my colleagues, to a memorandum regarding the main estimates, 1980-81, from the Metric Commission of Canada to the minister which reads, in part, as follows:
The completion of the final or implementation phase has been delayed by the decision of the former cabinet to postpone the conversion of scales in the retail food sector.
The memorandum continues in another paragraph as follows:
Previous favourable public response to the Metric Commission's information and awareness activities recently has been damaged by the actions of the previous government, and considerable remedial work is required. Gallup poll surveys in 1973 and 1977 and a July 15, 1978, Weekend Magazine poll reflected the growing favourable trend towards SI. Latent negative reactions to the changeover, brought out and exacerbated by the previous government's actions and statements, show up in a November 1979 Gallup poll-
That is misleading in the extreme, Mr. Speaker, because the downward trend in popularity of metric had taken place over a period of four years, if you look at unbiased polls and surveys.
Another comment in this memorandum to which I take exception is the misleading information it gives the minister when it states as follows:
-now published will have been implemented as this country joins the rest of the world in converting to the full use of the international system of units (SI).
Singapore and Australia use SI units and there might be one other country. We are rushing to join the whole world? I suggest there is a bias in the Metric Commission that is extremely dangerous to the parliamentary process.
Let me return to the matter of trade, Mr. Speaker. If we consult the white paper on metric conversion in Canada, one of the main reasons it gives to justify metric conversion is trade.
It tells us that we have to join 110 countries that are using metric. Paragraph 4.2.1. of the white paper reads as follows:
The marked trend to the metric system outside North America, and the increasing importance to Canada of export markets, especially for manufactured goods, make it urgently necessary to consider the matter of conversion. The question is a complex one because the United States, which is Canada's main export market, has not made a decision to convert.
Paragraph 4.6.1. reads as follows:
Important benefits of conversion are to be found in ability to maintain and expand Canadian trade with nations in the metric sphere. Because of the vital importance of foreign trade to Canada, especially the need for growth in exports of manufactured goods, there must be serious concern about damage to Canada's competitiveness in world markets as a result of the pace of changeover to the metric system in the world at large.
I could go on, as there are several other sections which refer to trade. One decade later we find that only 4.8 per cent of our trade is with metric countries-Australia and Singapore-who have converted to the SI system. But that is not where our export trade is. We buy from them. The major western trading countries, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and Canada, still trade in standard measure. It should be pointed out that 75 per cent of Canada's trade is with the United States.
For Canada to rush into hard SI metric ahead of our major export markets is, in my opinion, just economic suicide. Certain sectors have changed voluntarily to metric and have been encouraged to do so. General Motors has sought international standards and it is in their interest to do so. Nobody argues with that. There is no problem in the pre-packaged area of consumer merchandise, except where hard metric, on top of bilingual labelling, becomes a non-trade tariff barrier to protect monopoly interests. There are interests in Canada that have been counting on this.
The white paper also says:
It would be wise to allow the timing and process of conversion to be closely related to the development of United States practice.
Paragraph 4.5.2. of the white paper states:
Where export to widely dispersed foreign markets is important, as in certain forest industries, the urge is strong to seek maximum international standardization.
They must have been thinking of the pulp and paper sector of that great industry because the approach imposed has escalated costs in the balance of the industry.
Sector conversion was to be voluntary. The white paper emphasized that and the Metric Commission reports and all their propaganda emphasize that it is voluntary. Yet through the calculated impression given by the Prime Minister's letter to the premiers in 1974, the province of British Columbia changed all forestry measures to metric without consulting the forest industries. We now have even the province of British Columbia backing off metric.
I should like to quote from a report by the government of British Columbia on March 11 to a meeting of the intergovernmental metric conversion committee, which says on page 3:
I do not wish to belabour the point, but our Interministerial Metric Conversion Committee has unanimously expressed grave concern to the Metric Commission that the failure to properly inform the public will result in unnecessary
June 10, 1980

future delays, public resentment and hostility. This matter was also the subject of discussion in the legislature of the province of British Columbia.
On page 4 it states:
There is a vast difference between the public being made vaguely aware that something is happening, and being positively informed of what is taking place, the reason for it and how it will affect them.
That is the dilemma in Canada. It goes on to say:
I suggest it is a rare individual in Canada who is not aware that we are converting to metric. However, the public have not been informed what that system is and the reason for the change.
The failure to inform the public, interpreted by many as intentional bureaucratic withholding of information, has caused serious apprehension and resentment which eventually led to the establishment of the overview committee. Rumblings of discontent by retailers, consumers and the general public have already surfaced. They could well develop into groundswell or even tidal waves of resistance if preventive measures are not taken.
That is what we were involved in when we ordered the overview board to make a report on the condition and the efficiency of metric conversion in Canada.
Except for the pulp and paper sector of the forest industry where definition of weights and measures is of little importance, we find that there is some $2.5 billion of forest products sold to world markets all in standard measure. Germany wants plywood in standard measure, such as 4 x 8 sheets. The United States uses standard measure. Sixty-five per cent of our lumber market in British Columbia is with the United States. The new Russian plywood mill has 4x8 sheets. Yet in the face of such trade facts we have the government trying to force the forest industry to go hard SI metric.
The type of pressure being applied is centralized federal power at its best-perhaps I should say at its worst, I stand corrected. No wonder the frontier provinces are concerned. In 1978 Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation refused to consider mortgage assistance unless plans were drawn in metric measure. Some time this year we will be looking at a new national building code entirely in metric, regardless of the fact that there is almost no hard metric dimension lumber or plywood in the country. Forty-two per cent of the construction dollar is a government dollar. Plans and bids have to be metric to win these bids. What does the winning bidder do? He makes his bid and submits his drawings in hard metric. He then converts his drawings to Canadian standard measure so that whatever is being built can be built within acceptable cost limits. The same happens with Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation mortgages for houses. The metric overview board recommended that the forest industry should remain in standard measure in Canada until, or if, an agreement with the United States is made. To change to another form of measure is insane. I suggest that that sector, as others with similar problems, be allowed to remain in soft metric measure.
I understand that the HUDAC group are lobbying members today and have recommended that the process of metric conversion be continued and that a clear and concise statement from the federal government be made setting forth the government's full support of the metric conversion program without introducing legislation. I completely disagree with their stance
Metric System
because it ignores the will and the expression of consumers in Canada and the majority of the people of Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


An hon. Member:: Talk to the builders and the insurance companies about it.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: A unilateral move by Canada will create two inventories, two sets of plans and unnecessary costs that can only weaken the economic strength of the country. All of this turmoil in the forest industry has occurred in spite of the warnings carried in the white paper. The white paper made it very clear that we must consider the progress of conversion in the United States, and that we should be in concert with that progress.
Paragraph 4.5.4 says that we should not attempt conversion independently of the United States. Paragraph 4.6.5 says that timing and process is to be closely related to the development of United States practice. Other warnings were carried in paragraphs 4.6.7, 4.6.8 and 4.8.2.
In 1975 the United States passed their metric act. At least the U.S. system works, and when the United States does something it is put up to their elected representatives for a debate. Heavy emphasis on that act was on voluntary compliance. The United States is still a democracy reflecting and respecting the people's concern. The spirit of the U.S. metric act is that its federal government is ready and willing to assist voluntary moves.
There is a great difference between the Canadian voluntary program and the voluntary program of the United States. The Canadian government has played with the word and with the legislation. Under the Canadian voluntary program we have been orchestrated. The development of sector plans has been by the government. People have been talked into it. We have had paid sector officials who repeated and repeated the fact that metric was now law.
Grass roots consumer organizations, such as the Consumers' Association of Canada, in my opinion, have been co-opted. Could it be that the $450,000 a year which it gets from the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs has had an effect? That organization was a grass roots organization that really created the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs out of grass roots consumer concerns. Yet where has its voice been when the dairy industry of Ontario and of other provinces converted to metric, and milk and dairy products have cost the consumer 12 per cent more as a result of the conversion?


An hon. Member:: Nary a word from them.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: On the other hand, in the United States there is a metric board and a metric act. The metric commission in the United States is supported by the private sector. It has no powers other than to assist where the change is desired. The voluntary initiatives have been in areas where it does not affect the consumer. In my opinion, it is foolish to force metric

June 10, 1980
Metric System
ahead of its time. The evolutionary process will take care of that.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Ronald Huntington: In Canada, pressure has been exerted. Small business has had to follow big business. There has been no consensus in major sectors that have been involved in the Canadian brand of voluntary conversion. We found that out in the meat packing industry after we were in office for a short time, and we found it also in the retail sector of the food industry. There was no consensus in those voluntary sectors.


An hon. Member:: And no consultation.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: There was leverage, use of regulation, use of inspectors and back room deals. The government has played games with governor in council powers, with legislation, with the provinces and with Parliament. The government has seen fit to impose system international metric on the people without a sustainable reason for it.
Canadian conversion is nine to 15, maybe even 20 years ahead of the United States. The Liberal government, with its fetish for secrecy, has not even published the metric overview board's report which is a valuable overview on the whole area of public concern.
Freedom of information is a serious issue as we watch the Liberals try to centralize more and more power into the bureaucracies and its tribunals and commissions. I have always thought that limited government was a cornerstone of Liberal-Conservative political principle. That is not the case here.
As an aside, the hard-working members of the metric overview board have not yet been paid for the valuable work they have performed. That is a twist that is below the normal sense of decency and fair play expected of professional, apolitical civil servants.
I urge the government to table or publish the metric overview board report. It is a valuable document for the metric debate. All that is published is this Metric Monitor which is a biased, one-sided view of the debate. It is straight propaganda done with the people's money. In the metric overview board report you have the other side of the coin. This matter can be opened up and perhaps understood in a more equitable, fair-share way.
The democratic way would be to have a metric act fully debated in the House of Commons so that all the pieces are together in one place in one play and all concerned could make input to the process. The debate we are in today is the manipulation, by stealth, of legislation and regulation to make the standard measurement system illegal in Canada.
What has happened in Canada and Great Britain is that too much power has been gained by the bureaucracy and the academic elite. Our challenge is to strengthen the parliamentary institutions so that the skills and knowledge of the academic elite cun be used and enhanced, but with the ultimate power and control remaining with the collective expression of the people.
If we allow the government and its bureaucracy to deny the expression and will of the people due process, then we in this House have pulled the curtain down on the parliamentary process and we in Canada are dangerously close to another form of government. The insensitivity and arrogance of those responsible for metric conversion in Canada attacks the heart of our system.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Vic Althouse (Humboldt-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, on my way to the House this afternoon, realizing that this opposition day dealt with the metric system, I looked down at my feet while walking through the tunnel and thought how history had been cheated. Had that king some x number of hundreds of years ago who sat on the throne of Great Britain huge feet like mine, three of them would have made exactly one metre and we would not have this argument this afternoon. However, such was not the case and today we have a very real concern in this country over the change from one system to another.
A number of questions and concerns have been put to me. When 1 first came here, one of the first things I did was list what I heard during the campaign. I was never sure how many were legitimate questions, how many were myths and how many were straight propaganda. I had a little study carried out on these questions. The questions I asked were: How did we get the metric system introduced in Canada? Was it done democratically?
In the minds of the population there seem to be a lot of metric systems utilized around the world. That is the impression you get when you read the pro and con letters to the editor in the small weeklies in my area. Are there in fact several types of metric? If so, which kind are we going to adopt for ourselves?
Of what use is the system? We are told that our trading partners mostly use the imperial system. Is that true? Who benefits from changing to metric? Who pays? Are these legitimate concerns or are they myths in the minds of the population?
I had a study carried out; I am not sure how objective it is. The questions were answered by the staff of the Parliamentary Library who tested out the legal basis and so on. I will review some of the answers that were found.
The legal basis for our system is the Weights and Measures Act passed in April, 1971. It became law on August 1 of that year. It allows the use of the metric system in commerce and trade in Canada. In review, a white paper on metric conversion was tabled by the government in January of 1970. The leaders of all parties in the House gave their support to the policy as outlined in the white paper.
Subsequently in June, 1971, the government established the Metric Commission by order in council and in 1974 approved
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the national program of guideline dates for metric conversion, consisting of four distinct phases. Phase one, investigation of the system, was to be completed by 1974. Phase two, the planning stage, was to be completed by 1975. Phase three, which dealt with scheduling, was to have been completed in 1976. Phase four, implementation, was to begin in 1975.
In March, 1975, the Hon. Alastair Gillespie, then minister of industry, trade and commerce, introduced a resolution to the House of Commons to approve the government's program of guideline dates for metric conversion. The resolution was referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs which examined and endorsed the program, and recommended that further legislation to facilitate metric conversion be enacted; as well, the ministers responsible for metric conversion in each of the provinces unanimously endorsed it in 1976. I was a little surprised to find these facts recorded in light of some of the comments made since.
The government announced its intention to introduce a series of four omnibus bills to modify the approximately 90 existing laws governing weights and measures and to allow for conversion to metric. The first of these bills, the statute law, the Metric Conversion Amendment Act, was introduced in the House of Commons on November 22, 1976. The act included amendments to several existing pieces of legislation including the Weights and Measures Act, the act of 1971. That act had previously stipulated that the governor in council could not amend schedule II to the act so as to prevent the use of customary Canadian units of measurement in trade. The amendments, however, removed that prohibition. Moreover, the amendments gave the governor in council power to make regulations setting a date beyond which any units of measurement set out in schedule II could not be used in trade. In effect, this allowed the phasing out of the use of Canadian units, as established in schedule II of the act, in favour of the metric units in schedule I for use in trade. That, briefly, is how we got into the situation we are now in.
Pursuant to the act, orders in council were passed relating to the use of metric units in the retailing of gasoline and diesel fuel, individually measured food and scale conversion, and home furnishings. Subsequently, an order in council removed the requirement that metric units of measurement be used in the retailing of individually measured food and that retail scales for such foods use metric units. Again, that occurred on January 18, 1980.
The system that we are moving toward is the system of international units, symbolized by SI, the system often referred to simply as the metric system. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about SI and whether there are any other metric systems. Perhaps the main source of confusion may be in the fact that different countries at different points in time have chosen to define their measurements in relation to different base units. Thus we have systems such as the so-called CGS system-which stands for centimetre, gram and second-and in other countries we have the so-called MKS
Metric System
system, which stands for metre, kilogram and second. Both systems have existed for a long time. These systems are different only in that base units and their legal definitions vary. One system may be based on the gram, another system based on the kilogram. Basically the metre in either country will be the same length, the gram will be the same weight. So they differ only in legal definition; the size of the units are integral, the same from country to country.
It has been necessary to review SI from time to time to add, replace or redefine certain measurements in order to keep up with technological and scientific requirements. This does not usually have any effect on trade or commerce. It is simply a way of more clearly defining the length of the metre for scientific purposes. For instance, to begin with the metre was considered-improperly, as it turned out-to be one ten-millionth of the distance from the North Pole to the Equator on the meridian that goes through Paris, France. Advanced measuring techniques later showed that this was not quite correct. The current definition of a metre-and I think this is the latest definition-is that it is 1,650,763.73 wavelengths of orange-red light radiated by the isotope krypton-86 as measured in a vacuum. Even that very lengthy definition may have to be redesigned as more precise terms are available, now that we have laser technology. In any event, while the metre has had several different definitions it has remained the same size throughout the world regardless of the legal definition.
How international is the system? Forty-five countries, including Canada, have signed the Treaty of the Metre of 1875 which requires that they express their units of measurement in terms of SI units and support financially the International Bureau of Weights and Measures at Sevres, France. These member countries also form the General Conference on Weights and Measures which oversees the advancement of SI. In addition many countries have converted or are in the process of converting to the use of SI measurements. Indeed, of the 154 countries recognized by the United Nations, 152 use some or all of the SI system in measurement, with only North and South Yemen remaining totally outside the use of SI measurement. The SI units adopted by Canada will be the same as those used in all other countries which have accepted these SI definitions as set out by the General Conference.
Who benefits from metric conversion? Well, as a general statement of principle I think one could say that the large international manufacturers benefit first from international conversion. To present proof I simply turn to the case of General Motors, one of the largest international corporations. In 1960 General Motors estimated the cost of conversion at about $1 billion. In 1973 this estimate was revised to approximately 11 per cent of that amount and the decision was made to proceed with metrication within General Motors. That was without legal coercion; it was a decision made at their head office in the United States. In 1979 they found that the actual cost of going metric in all divisions appeared to be less than 1 per cent of their original 1960 estimate. Instead of $1 billion it was to cost 1 per cent of that, about $10 million.

June 10, 1980
Metric System
In the six years during which General Motors has been converted to metric they have found that the cost avoidance, or savings, have overshadowed the cost of conversion by a factor of ten or 15 to one, so that instead of costing them money it was making them money. General Motors' metric plan goes like this: first, new development would be metric from the start. This would include items in the current development stage. This was the plan in 1973. Second, service parts and in-production parts would be left alone. Third, supplier coordination would be implemented; that is to say, suppliers would be worked into the metric system as well. Fourth, their capital equipment would be purchased with dual measuring capability where applicable. The result is that today 27 passenger car series in the General Motors line of domestically made automobiles are predominantly metric. Only seven remaining series have not been fully redesigned since the initiation of the metric policy in 1973, and it is anticipated that these, too, will be metric by the early 1980s.
It should be noted that General Motors' primary purpose in adopting this metric policy was to enable it to design, manufacture and market similar or identical products or components all over the world. This is a point which has not been lost on my local constituents. They realize that companies like General Motors get advantages from going metric. They realize that General Motors would have probably gone metric whether Canada did or did not. Their objection is on the grounds that a great many aspects of our commerce and our economy in this country and certainly in a lot of the smaller towns and villages offer really no incentive to switch to metric. The consumers are used to the old system, they have measuring equipment geared to handle the old system and to them the new system appears only to be a cost with no benefits. We have a whole generation of people who could be considered to be a non-metric generation.
Our school system and our educational institutions are busily turning out a new generation that were trained to conceptualize things in metric terms. My children, for instance, do not really conceive of inches, or even pounds. They speak in centimetres and metres. When 1 do little chores with them, help them build a playhouse or something, the length of the piece of wood 1 hand them, or ask them to saw, has to be converted so that I may tell them it is so many centimetres or so many metres long. This forces people in my generation to become familiar with the metric system.
My automobile has dual systems on the speedometer. I have used this to great effect in learning how many kilometres there are in so many miles. I now have more or less a grasp of how far 60 kilometres is, or how far 100 kilometres is. It is starting to mean something to me. But I know there are a great many more people in my communities who were not brought up to worry about the metric system.
To put it dramatically, one fellow presenting a petition to me said that just with this move to metric the government has made his whole education and his whole lifetime of experience
obsolete. His whole method of conceptualizing things has been made totally out of date, and he has been left almost in an alien society. I am not talking about western alienation, Quebec separatism or anything like that, but about a whole generation or generation and a half of our citizens who are being alienated through our attempt to move our retail trade at the local level too quickly toward metric. I think we should take a second look at that and slow it down a little bit, because we are asking a great deal of these people when we ask them to throw 50 or 60 years of their experience in the trash bin, so to speak.
We have asked farmers to make a sort of double switch by going from bushels to the tonne, because by taking that step we have gone through two forms of conceptualization. We must remember that the bushel was essentially and is essentially, if it still exists anywhere, a measure of volume. A bushel of wheat weighs 60 pounds. A bushel of oats weighs 34 pounds. When we measure things in tonnes, the old measurements do not work any more.
We have to apply varying numbers to the kinds of grain that we put into granaries which once held 1,000 bushels. We have gone from a volume system to a weight system, and then we have not used the kind of weight system with which we were familiar. We were familiar with pounds or tons, but we have moved to kilograms and tonnes. It has been a double shift, and it has been very hard for many farm people to catch up.
To be honest, it has created some problems for the grain trade. How can we measure the capacity of an elevator system which was laid out in bushels and cubic measurements when now we have to use tonnes? We knew the bushel capacity available in an elevator which might have held 100,000 bushels. Now that capacity varies depending on the kind of grain that goes into it. It will hold 6,000 tonnes of wheat but only 3,400 tonnes of oats. There are seven or eight kinds of grains that you could put in between with weights that vary. There are very sophisticated statistical methods for bodies like the Canadian Wheat Board or the Canadian Grains Commission by which they can plug in their computers and get a more or less accurate assessment of how much space there will be at any of the delivery points, given the kinds of delivery patterns that have existed.
However, it is still not the same as knowing how much volume there is out there. If the delivery patterns of farmers change from oats to wheat, for instance, the capacity is reduced almost by one-half without the computer or the managers of the Canadian Wheat Board even knowing about it. So it has created new ways of having to deal with old problems.
I think we ended up holding on to the acre as the basic unit of measurement in western Canada, simply because our land was already surveyed in discrete amounts. There is one mile between lines. This creates a certain number of acres, 640 to the square mile. True, we can make estimations. We can say 800 metres is approximately half a mile and 800 metres squared gives us about 64 hectares, which is only one hectare short of a full quarter section. It is close enough for figuring,
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but it is still stupid to go into the land titles offices and change all the titles just to fit into the metric system of measurement. Since my time is almost expired, Mr. Speaker, 1 would like just to reiterate that we in rural Canada can see that large scale corporations do not have any disincentive to switch to metric. We can see the large scale food industries switching to metric because to them there is no real cost. Their equipment handles a large enough volume of weighing and measuring that it wears out occasionally, and they can use that five-year or six-year changeover to put in metric scales at really no cost to them. But we have little businesses, even some fair-sized ones like the Wynyard Co-op, which estimates it is going to cost $25,000 just to switch over to weighing and metering under a metric system if it becomes something that it must do.
We understand that some of this will happen whether the law changes or not. We realize that General Motors will be producing metric cars, but we cannot see why small retailers have to switch to the system cold turkey, if you like, leaving the old imperial measurement system completely in the background. We think those scales have been working. We think their traditional customers have been used to using those weights and measurements, and we think this should at least be allowed to go on in concert with the new changes.
1 make one last plea. Let us reconsider that generation of people who feel completely alienated by the change. They have their rights, they are part of this country, they have made their contribution and 1 think they should be considered in the next few years. Let us slow down the change and be more humanistic.


Charles Lapointe: Mr. Speaker, in answer to the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), I would like to make a few comments on existing acts pertaining to the metric system, and the way Canada has been approaching metrication since the white paper was brought forward in 1970.
But before coming to specific remarks, I would like to remind the hon. member for Capilano that I took a good note of the memorandum he referred to, and indicate to him my undertaking to study it. Because on the principle he stated, that it was at least strange that government advisers took it upon themselves to criticize openly a decision taken by a government elected by the people, I would like to tell him I took good note of his remarks and I will try to get more details on the subject.
However, and this also concerns the speech made by the hon. member for Capilano, 1 would like to stress how much I was shocked when he referred to payments due the two members of the overview board. At least ten days ago, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member sat next to me here in this House, as is normally done between civilized people, to ask me to try to expedite within my department the last two payments due the two members of the metric overview board. This happened ten days ago. Unfortunately, I had to stay away from the
Metric System
House for a week, and when I returned yesterday, I already had from officials in the department I am representing an answer indicating the procedure to expedite these last two payments. And not later than noontime today, an official of my staff phoned the office of the hon. member for Capilano to inform him 1 was now in a position to expedite the last payments, as I intended to do within the next few days. I think mentioning those details in his speech while implying the government wanted by that to show its disagreement with the report of the metric overview board was not at all fair play. With respect to the release of the report of the metric overview board, the hon. member for Capilano should understand-and 1 also mentioned to him at the time 1 personally looked at that report for the first time on April 18, 1978, and as this is a 375-page report-that there must be delays due not only to the consideration of the report but also due to the translation of such a big document.
Mr. Speaker, I found it indeed very interesting to hear the comments of the hon. member for Humboldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse) who explained, without bombast, contrary to what his predecessor did, basing himself on examples drawn from everyday life experience in his area, that metrication or the conversion from the imperial system to the international system was obviously causing certain problems with a certain category of Canadians whom he called very rightly "the non-metric generation." I agree with the hon. member for Humboldt-Lake Centre that above all must be consideration for those people; the system I think is necessary, as indeed the leaders of the three parties recognized in this House in 1970 when the white paper was tabled. Even if the system is necessary in the short, medium and long terms, it is quite obvious that we must not above all metricate to metricate but rather take into consideration in the first place the interests of the users, the consumers and the industries affected by the changes that result from metrication.
Mr. Speaker, the motion before us implies that the Canadian economy needs other legislation on the metric system. I want, for my part, to remind the House that of the 88 sectors that released sector plans, only three, namely the sale of gasoline by the litre, furniture and balances in the retail food business, are regulated under the 1971 Weights and Measures Act which was later amended, as was mentioned, by the 1976-77 act.
Only in those three cases, Mr. Speaker, did the industries concerned ask, with the support of the Consumers' Association of Canada, for pertinent regulations throught the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. 1 would like, at this point, Mr. Speaker, to make a brief remark on the Consumers' Association of Canada because 1 was most surprised to hear the hon. member for Capilano mention or suggest that this association, which has so vigorously and competently defended the interests of Canadian consumers, may have been prevented from expressing honestly its views because of possible grants it

June 10, 1980
Metric System
may have received. 1 am taken aback by this judgment on the Consumers Association of Canada. As 1 already mentioned, some sectors are also under provincial jurisdiction and some fertilizers and pesticides are subject to the Fertilizers Act and the Pest Control Products Act of the federal government. Most of the other approximately 80 sectors convert without legislation in accordance with the guidelines, standards and target dates prepared by over 2,000 voluntary workers from all sectors of the Canadian economy, including unions, consumers and teachers.
A brief comment on some economic sectors might help to illustrate, Mr. Speaker, how the Canadian economy as a whole is adapting to metric conversion without requiring any legislation. Let us take for instance the manufacturers of motor vehicles and parts, which include the companies which manufacture or assemble motor vehicles, such as automobiles, commercial vehicles, buses and trucks. This sector also includes the manufacturers of motor vehicle parts and accessories such as motors, brakes, clutches, axles, gears, and so on.
Metric conversion for private vehicle manufacturers was implemented at the same time in Canada and the United States. The metric contents of 1980 models manufactured by the different companies vary from 90 per cent for General Motors, to 48 per cent for Ford and 34 per cent for Chyrsler. General Motors has publicly stated that it intends to complete conversion of its operations by 1982.
The hon. member for Humboldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Alt-house) may be right in saying that, in any case, these companies would probably have converted to the metric system with or without a metric conversion program, but it is important to note that this major sector of the economy undertook this process on a voluntary basis such as recommended in the white paper of 1970. Private vehicles and parts manufacturers are expected to complete their conversion program in December, 1982, according to the target date and to the metric conversion plan published in 1976. Truck manufacturers should have completed their metric conversion program by 1990.
Another sector which we could study for a little while would be forestry. Most research establishments in the forest industry are now operating completely in metric units. All forest inventories are now being carried out in metric measurements. As of January 1, 1979, metric scaling was used in British Columbia and Alberta and is expected to come into force in Ontario as of April 1, 1981. The national standard for scaling roundwood is now being used to some degree by most provinces. Training programs for woods personnel are under way across the country. The forestry sector has now completed 98 per cent of the activities in its plan and is expected to be essentially metric by mid-1980.
Another sector which would be of interest to members is the petroleum and natural gas industries and services. Metric
conversion in the oil and gas industries is another example of a conversion which has proceeded relatively smoothly. This has been brought about by the leadership exhibited by the Canadian Petroleum Association. The association, realizing the necessity to formulate a well-thought-out plan for the industry, established a committee in 1972 with the responsibility of bringing about an orderly transition to the metric system on a least cost basis. This sector committee is truly representative of the industry, with representatives from all phases of the petroleum production field. Operations have been essentially in metric since January, 1979.
Before leaving these remarks on sectors, 1 would like to touch briefly on the plastics industry. At present, a substantial number of plastics manufacturers are marketing their products in metric units. Further progress towards metric conversion is expected as more companies are identifying their products in metric terms in response to market demands. Blow moulders of plastic containers experience no difficulties in meeting market demands for plastic metric containers. Metric production is also on the way in the reinforced plastic composites, injection moulding, machinery and mould-maker areas of the industry, in response to market demands. The ultimate objective is international standardization. Conversion is to be compatible with related domestic and worldwide industries and achieved at minimal cost. The plastics industry as a whole is expected to operate predominantly in metric by July, 1983.
The motion before us also suggests that it is the government which has somehow managed to impose the metric system on the people of Canada. The motion suggests that this House of Commons has somehow avoided the metric system, while the government has somehow failed to consult the representatives of the people.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Lapointe: The facts do not support this view. As the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) pointed out, the metric system was made legal in Canada by the Metric Weights and Measures Act of 1871.
On January 16, 1970, the white paper on metric conversion in Canada was tabled in the House of Commons by the hon. minister of industry, trade and commerce and supported by all party leaders in the House. The policy conclusion stated in the white paper was that metric conversion was inevitable and in the national interest.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles Lapointe: If hon. members opposite are not happy with those comments, I should like to indicate that those are the comments made by the hon. member for Capilano when he said what happened in the House concerning the metric system. If they are not happy, they do not have to listen; they can work on something else.
On April 7, 1971, the Weights and Measures Act was amended and recognized the "systeme international" as the
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legal metric system for use in Canada. The "systeme international" is the latest evolution of the metric system and has been in use for close to 100 years. On June 10, 1971, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act made a metric contents declaration mandatory for all pre-packaged goods. A program of guideline dates for metric conversion was approved by the government and debated by the House of Commons of March 17, 1975. The Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs studied this matter at length and reported back to the House of Commons on December 17, 1976, with a recommendation that the House consider the advisability of adopting this program and also introduce additional legislation to facilitate metric conversion.
Subsequently Bill C-23, which became the Statute Law (Metric Conversion) Amendment Act of 1976, was debated in the House of Commons and the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs over a period of almost ten months. Exchanges took place on the floor of the House of Commons and in the Senate 16 times. It was passed by the House of Commons on July 15. 1977, and received royal assent on August 5, 1977. In view of these debates and discussions over the years, one can only conclude that the motion as presented is not based on the facts.
Now I should like to deal with the Canadian approach to metric conversion. To perform its task. Metric Commission Canada established 12 steering committees, each responsible for co-ordinating a group of economic sectors that have related interests. For example, steering committee No. 5 groups the following sectors: construction, non-metallic mineral products, structural and architectural metals, engineers, real estate, land surveyors and town planners. Canadians working in all types of organizations sit on the various steering committees representing the Canadian people and co-ordinating the conversion activities of all sectors of Canadian society. The commission established 100 sector committees which report to the steering committees. Each is responsible for a particular industry, group of industries or interests. These sector committees are preparing the basic plans for converting the sector for which they are responsible. They are doing this in collaboration with the individual firms and individual associations.
The ongoing task of the steering committees and their sector committees is to monitor the progress of conversion and suggest any necessary modifications to the plans in order to meet changing conditions. These sector plans are guides for the individual firms and organizations concerned. While there is no obligation on any firm to conform to them, they represent the best judgment of the industry on how to go about the process of conversion. Since individual firms and public service organizations are the entities that are implementing metric conversion, it is clear they have a major role to play in the national conversion process.


An hon. Member:: Why convert?


Charles Lapointe: The hon. member should read the white paper published in 1971 which was approved by his party.
Metric System


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Charles Lapointe: The basis of the Canadian approach to metric conversion is that it is a voluntary process, each firm and organization being guided by its appreciation of its own short and long-term interests. As I indicated in my opening remarks, some regulations had to be passed by the House concerning three sectors, gasoline sale per litre, scaling in the retail trade and also some furniture articles. As I said, the basis of the Canadian approach is that of a voluntary process. A corollary of this approach is that each unit of the economy is expected to identify the opportunities for change and to bear its own costs, just as it will reap the benefits arising from the change.
There are obvious advantages to both Canada and the United States in programs for metric conversion that are reasonably co-ordinated. The United States Congress approved legislation providing for voluntary metric conversion. At the same time, industry in the United States is moving on a broad front to implement conversion programs. In the meantime, Canadian and American sector committees are stimulating, supporting and assisting all efforts to press forward with preparations for metric conversion. In the investigation phase in each industry or occupation, research is necessary to define the most appropriate metric units to be used, the metric standards to be employed, and the range of sizes or quantities to be used in metric production. In the planning phase the sequence of events and the time needed for this conversion process in each sector is determined and these tentative estimates are co-ordinated with the estimates of the requirements of suppliers and customers. In the scheduling phase a time table is developed for each industry and field of endeavour so that it can be co-ordinated with all other sectors within the over-all target date. The implementation phase is the final stage where each sector and individual organization implements the plans laid according to the schedule defined in the previous phase.
As was also mentioned, the government has consulted all the provinces as to how they wish to implement conversion in their areas of jurisdiction.
These include notably education, highway design and regulation and land title registration, besides many other important areas. Interdepartmental committees are established to plan and co-ordinate conversion work carried out in the different departments.
The metric system is legal for use in Canada and has been for a long time. Our Weights and Measures Act has been amended by Parliament through the Statute Law (Metric Conversion) Amendment Act of 1976 to allow the phasing in of the metric system in any sector of the economy at a time considered appropriate by a consensus of all concerned. In addition, most sectors of the economy are converting voluntarily after careful investigation, planning and scheduling of implementation. Therefore, I submit, Mr. Speaker, that there is

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Metric System
no need for any over-all legislation concerning the use of the metric system in Canada.


William Henry (Bill) Domm: Mr. Speaker, I would like to preface my remarks with a comment which flows from the remarks of the previous speaker, the Minister of State for Small Businesses (Mr. Lapointe), who referred to the metric system we are now supposedly enjoying in Canada as being voluntary. I would remind him as the member of Parliament for a riding which was one of the three test centres for the metric system, Peterborough, that it is anything but voluntary in the minds of the constituents of Peterborough or in the pocketbooks of the businessmen of that riding.
There is a strange history behind this whole process of conversion to metric. It is a political history book about which members opposite should take a moment to think. They should think about the record of the two previous ministers of small business, and it should serve as a warning to the present minister of small business. I refer to the period when the guidelines for debate on this subject first came in, approximately 1975, if my memory serves me right.


Charles Lapointe: There was no minister then.


William Henry (Bill) Domm: The Hon. Len Marchand was the first minister of small business.


Charles Lapointe: That was 1976.


William Henry (Bill) Domm: He was followed by the Hon. Tony Abbott. Those two former ministers did not listen to the thousands of Canadians who voiced an objection to metric in the retail food sector, and they are no longer with us today. Perhaps I am too benevolent in paying attention to the point which hon. members opposite fail to realize, that they do not pay attention to the consensus of the people of Canada or listen to their constituents when they voice their objections, not by tens, twenties or hundreds, but by thousands.
I have in my hand a computer print-out. It represents the number of people who have objected to the metric system. They are voters and constituents from across Canada. These files which I have on my desk are files of letters from constituents in Sherbrooke, Quebec, one of the test centres for metric in Canada. This file is a one-week file which is to be added to the thousands of letters from constituents and petitions from the riding of Peterborough, where there was a voluntary test centre.
I can tell hon. members how voluntary this system is and what the millions of people in Canada can expect on January 1, 1981. They can expect in 21 cities across this country a voluntary process, a process by which the metric commission dictates arbitrarily. Without consideration for the citizens of Canada, the merchants in 21 to 25 cities will buy metric scales, imported from the United States. The merchants, including the major food chain stores across Canada- Loblaws, Dominion Stores, Sunnybrook, IGA-will be told they must put in metric scales. They will then voluntarily
meter out the merchandise to the consumers who totally misunderstand the reasons for this implementation.
If hon. members opposite and the minister of small business, who I notice is not present in the House, fail to hear these comments and refuse to listen to the people of Canada about the implementation of metric by this so-called voluntary process, then I predict the minister will follow the line of Len Marchand and Tony Abbott who, as former ministers of small business, no longer have a seat in this House.
I enjoy my seat in this House. The former member who represented my riding was a member of the Liberal party. He was elected four times and was a cabinet minister. I refer to the Hon. Hugh Faulkner who represented Peterborough from 1965 to 1979. He did not listen to the constituents of Peterborough, nor did he respond to their concerns about the high cost of metric conversion at a time of unemployment and at a time when small businessmen were trying to make a living. He did not respond, listen, care, react; he did exactly the same thing as the present Minister of State for Small Businesses is doing. He completely disregarded the constituents in his riding, in Sherbrooke, in Kamloops and across Canada.
Hon. members opposite in that party which forms the government of the day, will enjoy reading the letters of the people who object to metric. At the bottom of this yardage of computer print-out there are approximately 12 names.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. The Chair has had difficulty in the past when hon. members wanted to bring materials or things of the nature the hon. member is using into the House. There is a question as to how far one can go with regard to the difference between "tell" debate and "show and tell" debate. I respected the hon. member's original usage of the list because I recognized he wanted to make a point.
I am not going to, nor do I think the hon. member would wish it, make a ruling on the matter. However, I am concerned when I see cardboard boxes of material and things of that nature coming into the House. The hon. member has made his point with that computer list, and I would ask him to give some consideration to the problem which all occupants of the chair have had in deciding the difficult question of how much one can bring into the House during debate. I thank the hon. member, and 1 apologize to him for my interruption.


William Henry (Bill) Domm: Mr. Speaker, I respect your decision, but I would advise hon. members that 1 have no cardboard boxes. Perhaps you, sir, are referring to a member opposite or a member of the other opposition party.
During the question period on April 25 I asked the Minister of State for Small Businesses a question concerning the implementation of metric and whether there had ever been a full parliamentary discussion or an act formulated. At that time the minister said that there was no full legislation or implementation through an act of Parliament, in his memory, but he said he would look into that matter and advise me.
June 10, 1980

1 suppose it would be in order to read some of the concerns of the constituents which have brought them to my attention. Following a statement made in a speech during the Speech from the Throne debate in April, concerning the nightmare the metric implementation had brought to the people of Peterborough, a member opposite interrupted my remarks by saying there was not a single problem in Sherbrooke, not a single complaint. That remark is recorded in Hansard.
I took the liberty in finding out why metric, as it was implemented in Sherbrooke, Quebec, was such a roaring success when it was such a nightmare in Peterborough. I wrote a letter to the editor of the Sherbrooke paper-one of the two Anglophone papers in Quebec, I understand-saying 1 was very pleased to learn how successful the implementation of metric had been in Sherbrooke. I wrote that I would be very interested in learning from them why they related so favourably to this voluntary implementation program.
1 received more letters from Sherbrooke in ten days than 1 received in any ten-day period from my own constituents. They were totally unaware of the fact that it was implemented in Sherbrooke on a voluntary basis and totally unaware of the fact that it was implemented without a problem. I should like to read from one letter 1 received from a Sherbrooke constituent as follows:
You said you were surprised to be interrupted by the MP from Sherbrooke when you were commenting on metrication and that he said it was positive and there wasn't one complaint. Maybe he got no complaints. I don't know, but I doubt it . .. I have talked to many people in Sherbrooke and I haven't found one in favour of metrication.
Another letter reads as follows:
I was pleased to see your note in the Sherbrooke Record concerning the metric system. I am surprised the local MP stated there was no objection. 1 wish to state there is much dissatisfaction with the way the government has forced this on the public.
And yet another:
I cannot understand Mr. Pelletier stating that there was not a single complaint from the Sherbrooke area. The Dominion Store where I do most of my shopping took a survey, I think in February, and it was an overwhelming gesture against the metric system. I cannot see any benefit in the metric system, just a lot of confusion, and I can assure you the many housewives that I talk to are in agreement with me.
So you see, Mr. Speaker, it is not just the riding of Peterborough that is opposed to the implementation of forced metric. In January, Dominion Stores did a survey. The imperial measure was favoured by 88 per cent in Peterborough and by 68 per cent in Sherbrooke. The Dominion Stores study was a throrough one, a cross-section of detailed interviews of 3,000 people. In Peterborough, only 9.8 per cent of those interviewed favoured the metric system compared to 75 per cent for imperial. Those figures are for more than 2,000 interviews conducted in my riding by Dominion Stores. The figures speak for themselves.
Hon. members opposite may be able to totally ignore these figures and to say that the people of Canada will eventually learn to like it, but what about the food store owners?
Metric System
Allen C. Jackson, president of Dominion Stores Limited, in an interview I had with him followed by correspondence, said:
We are unable to find any significant benefit to the Canadian consumer at this time in using metric weights for fresh meats, fruits and vegetables. In fact, in the United States, which is our major trading partner, metrication is at least nine to ten years away.
Mr. Jackson's next comment, and 1 think it is a wise one, is that there is a clear need to delay metrication at least until the United States catches up to the Canadian rate of conversion.
I wonder if those on the other side of the House know how much money conversion will cost? Mr. Jackson says the cost to Dominion Stores alone for converting to metric sales is estimated to be $10 million.
Why should a company be forced to spend $10 million on metrication when it needed it for other purposes? Mr. Jackson says he would much prefer to spend the money on energy conservation. Why not spend this money on something like energy conservation? Could the Dominion Stores not spend $10 million in a better way, than in the United States to purchase weigh scales which Canada is unable to produce and supply? This has a negative effect on our balance of payments deficit.
It should be noted that it is not just the consumers of Canada who are up in arms over this issue. 1 had a letter from one storeowner in my riding who was particularly upset. He operates a store in Havelock, Ontario, which is on the eastern border of my riding. He indicated that his meat sales alone declined by 21 per cent from the implementation date of September 1, 1979, to November 24, 1979. He said the sales dropped because Havelock is only ten miles from Marmora and Campbellford which are still using imperial. Shoppers simply drove the few extra miles to shop in a system with which they were familiar. He estimated he had lost $37,000 at the time he wrote the letter, not including the $12,500 he had to spend for two metric scales imported from the United States.
Some hon. members may not believe there could be such heavy losses. As a businessman from the Peterborough area I can tell them there are, indeed, such losses. 1 should like to read an excerpt from another letter 1 received from a Peterborough constituent as follows:
I live in Peterborough, one of the three centres where the metric system is being shoved down our throats. I for one am defying the system and doing the larger portion of my shopping outside of the city and will continue to do so as long as I can find a merchant who will sell me 16 ounces to the pound and 12 inches to the foot.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, if the government will not respond or listen to the constituents of Canada, then perhaps the least we say on this side the better it will be for our party, because we will be returned with a majority, and will form a government that will listen to constituents, respond to their concerns and act accordingly.
This is not a voluntary system; this is a forced system. Two merchants have been locked up and forced out of business. Bands were wrapped around their weight scales so they could

June 10, 1980
Metric System
not sell one nickel's worth of their products until they purchased metric scales.
The implementation on January 1 in 21 cities will, I predict, cause a great upheaval across Canada. It should be put on record that Peterborough is not on the list of cities to face metrication on January 1. There is not one metric weight scale in any grocery store, chain or independent retail store in the riding of Peterborough today. That is what they think of metric implementation, Mr. Speaker.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. Before 1 recognize the hon. member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson) may I indicate that if she wishes to call it six o'clock I shall recognize the hon. member again at eight o'clock this evening. It is her preference, of course.


Miss Nicholson:: May 1 call six o'clock, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: It being six o'clock I do now leave the chair until eight o'clock this evening, at which time 1 shall recognize the hon. member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson).
At 5.58 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. When the House rose at six o'clock, the hon. member for Trinity (Miss Nicholson) had the floor.


Aideen Nicholson: Mr. Speaker, in the debate this afternoon, one of the members suggested it might be useful to look at the question of metric in historic terms. I would like to do that very briefly.
The white paper on metric conversion, tabled in the House by the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce in January, 1970, put forward the view that metric conversion was inevitable and in the national interest. Among the advantages that were stated in the paper were ease and convenience in education and in general commerce, improved trading abilities and opportunities in world markets for Canadian industry.
In 1971, Metric Commission Canada was established to promote, plan and co-ordinate the change-over to the metric system in Canada and to advise the minister of industry, trade and commerce on legislative and any other action required to facilitate conversion to the metric system.
The commission consists of a number of part time commissioners, and the chairman, drawn from various segments of the economy and geographical regions of the country. In organizing their work, the commission divided the various elements of the economy into some 100 sectors and organized committees
to consider each of these. As a result, there are more than 2,000 persons, each of whom is knowledgeable in the particular subject involved, engaged in committee work. It is done on a volunteer basis, and most of them receive only limited travelling expenses.
Each committee works through a four-phase program: investigation, planning, scheduling and implementation, and each committee, after consultation with interested members of the public, prepares a timetable for implementation.
One can always improve methods of consultation, but it is not accurate to say that the timetable of implementation is imposed on the affected section of the economy.
With a few exceptions, mainly where the area was already subject to regulation, but also where the sector committee considers regulation desirable for orderly and fair treatment of all concerned, timetables are implemented by those the sectors represent.
The Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs was represented on many sector and steering committees to provide a consumer viewpoint, as well as to explain the statutory requirements of the laws administered by the department.
[ Translation]
I feel it is appropriate to reaffirm, as the commissioners did on their fifty-fifth meeting held in January, that the Metric Commission of Canada has always endeavoured to facilitate and promote voluntary conversion. At the first meeting of the commission on January 16, 1972, the commissioners had stated that the conversion to the metric system should be planned by volunteers and they had sent a questionnaire to every national association and provincial government asking for their co-operation.
Such planned but voluntary policy was again discussed at the meeting of the commission held in October, 1977. Some members of the textile industry had suggested the enforcement of regulations under the Weights and Measures Act to put an end to the use of the imperial system. Although the legislation of 1976 amending the statute law (Conversion to the Metric System) had legalized the enforcement of those regulations the commission reconfirmed its policy of voluntary conversion. The commission objected from the beginning against the enforcement of regulations providing dates for compulsory withdrawal at the outset and suggested that they would be used only to complete the conversion in a market which had implemented the metric system.
The policy of conversion by consensus was reconfirmed at the meeting of the commission in October, 1978, when the commission discussed a proposal put forward by some representatives of the textile and furniture industries aimed at drafting regulations to set dates for the compulsory withdrawal of imperial units. The commission agreed on the conversion dates timetable but only after the commission staff and the commissioners had made considerable efforts to get evidence that the textile market was already largely converted to the
June 10, 1980

metric system. Special meetings were even held to which persons opposed to the regulations were invited to voice their opinion.
For obvious safety reasons the provincial governments enacted laws regarding the metric conversion of traffic signs. However this decision was taken by the provincial transport ministers at a meeting held in Nova Scotia in 1973 independently of the commission. That decision of the premier was incorporated in the conversion master plan of the research sector and the highway maintenance and construction sector at the time when the Roads and Transportation Association of Canada agreed to constitute the nucleus of that sector's planning subcommittee. The plan, including its legal provisions was approved by the commission only on September 15, 1976.
When this regulation was deemed necessary, the commission took exceptional measures during the scheduling phase in order to see to it that all those concerned be consulted and a consensus reached.
Mr. Speaker, 1 think it will be readily recognized that this was the case with the working group on scales in the retail food industry, when volunteers from the Retail Council of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Retail Grocers, the Retail Merchants' Association of Canada, the Quebec Food Retailers Association, the Canadian Institute of Food Distribution, the Consumers' Association of Canada as well as the scales manufacturing and repair industry co-operated with the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs over five years to prepare an orderly plan which, from the outset, required a consensus for the benefit of all before regulations were defined. The food retailing business, unanimously and with the support of the Consumers' Association of Canada, asked the Department of Consumer and Corporate Affairs to prepare regulations under the Weights and Measures Act.
In 1977, an amendment to the weights and measures regulations was passed to enable the conversion of certain commodities, particularly goods sold "loose" at the retail level, to be regulated.
In effect, this set a timetable for the conversion of scales in retail food stores. The schedule as developed by the retail trade, the scale industry, consumer groups and governments divided the country into a number of areas and set dates for the conversion of each area. In this way it was intended that there would be a rapid conversion and, within a few weeks, all the merchants in an area would complete the transition so there would be no possibility of some merchants taking a commercial advantage by not converting. This is, of course, a way of proceeding about which there can be different views. In Australia, voluntary conversion was tried. When a number of difficulties were found with it, the Australians moved to greater regulation.
Metric System
Three pilot areas, Kamloops, British Columbia, Peterborough, Ontario and Sherbrooke, Quebec, completed conversion in August, 1979. Other areas were scheduled to start in January, 1980, but in December, 1979, the former government decided to halt the program.
There were some useful things learned from those pilot areas. One of them was that a month, which was the period allowed for conversion in Kamloops, was too short. Most people seemed to need four or five shopping experiences in order to convert easily from kilograms to pounds.
There are also different views on whether to allow dual pricing and dual measurement while people become accustomed. There are certain advantages seen by people in allowing dual pricing for ease in comparative shopping and comparative pricing. Against this there is rather a lot of experience to show that a very long phasing in process simply interferes with the process, and, while the costs of conversion are not inconsiderable, the final results are well worth it.
Just this evening I was talking to three people who claimed they had greatly increased their business as a result of the change to metric, which has facilitated their penetration of the overseas market.
While there are different views on the best way to proceed, I think I have shown that the methods taken up to now have in general been reasonable, thoughtful, careful and not unduly harsh or fast.


Mr. Doug Neil (Moose Jaw):: Mr. Speaker, before beginning my remarks, 1 would like to make a comment on the statement of the minister this afternoon. He commented on the fact that the leaders of all the various political parties had agreed on metrication. 1 think he was referring back to 1970 when the white paper on metrication was presented to this House. If he has not seen the comments of Ged Baldwin, who was the one and only spokesman for our party at that time, I would refer him to Hansard for January 16, 1970.
While there was no doubt that all parties in the House agreed there was a need for metrication at some future time, there was certainly no agreement that metrication should be forced on the people of Canada. I wish to quote from page 2471 of Hansard for January 16, 1970. Ged Baldwin, the then hon. member for Peace River, said:
I agree that there must be a continuous and detailed study. We are prepared to co-operate with the government in this regard ... I would strongly urge the minister to give some thought to having the white paper he tabled today submitted either to a special or to a joint committee so that there might be a continuous study and reports from time to time to this committee by the boards the minister proposes to set up.
From that point on there was no referral to this House and no referral to a committee of any kind, but there was a forcing of the metric system on the people of Canada. It was in late 1976 or early 1977 that a debate took place in this House. It was a frustrating experience for those who took part in the debate. The debate was on Bill C-23, entitled "An act to facilitate conversion to the metric system of measurement". It was frustrating because it was the first occasion on which Parliament had an opportunity to debate conversion to the

June 10, 1980
Metric System
metric system and members were shocked to learn how far Canada had proceeded toward conversion on the basis of decisions made by the Metric Commission, a commission made up of bureaucrats appointed by order in council. This underlines the arrogance of the government in bypassing Parliament, ignoring our democratic system which provides for public debate by members of Parliament who are representatives of the people on matters which affect individuals so fundamentally, and which also provides for public input through committees.
What the government did was to set up a metric commission and say to a group of bureaucrats: Convert Canada to metric; ignore the cost; ignore the public and their feelings; ignore the inconvenience and ignore the fact that the United States, our largest trading partner, is moving to the metric system only with extreme caution. The government said to the Metric Commission: Push metric through at all costs. And this is exactly what the commission has been doing. They set up sector committees, around 100 of them according to an hon. member on the other side, and in my opinion they named to those committees people who were committed to metric, people who had preconceived ideas and who undertook to sell the metric system at all costs rather than to determine whether it was in the best interests of the sector or whether the people in the sector wanted to go metric.
The Metric Commission also "conned" the civil service in the various provinces to change their land title system. Saskatchewan is a prime example. In that province on April 20, 1976, an order in council was passed amending the regulations under the Land Titles Act and changing the land measurement system from acres to hectares. The hon. member for Hum-boldt-Lake Centre (Mr. Althouse) did not seem to understand this. He was accusing the federal government of making these changes. But the changes were made by the NDP government in Saskatchewan replacing acres with hectares. As I said, it was done by order in council and without any input from the MLAs or the ministers. When we found out about this order in council, we telephoned some of the MLAs in Saskatchewan and they could not believe that the regulations had been revised by order in council, so as to change acres into hectares in the province. So here we have a situation in which the NDP members are complaining about the metric system being imposed upon Canada by the Liberals in Ottawa while the NDP in Saskatchewan is doing exactly that.


An hon. Member:: Shame!


Douglas Charles Neil: Mr. Speaker, the cost of metrication to the end of 1979 has been some $27.7 million with an additional million dollars for the Metric Monitor, that newspaper, that propaganda organ which is shipped out to various people around the country on a fairly regular basis. It is also estimated that a further $27 million will be spent in the next three years-the Metric Commission will be spending that amount. If hon. members look at the May 22, 1980 issue of Hansard they will find these figures laid out in detail in response to a question
showing what it has cost year by year to bring in metrication. Those figures refer to the cost of operating the Metric Commission alone.
It is interesting to recall what took place during the proceedings on Bill C-23. Members of the opposition, particularly those from western Canada, strenuously debated the changes provided in the bill-acres to hectares, bushels to tonnes-in the federal field covering the Canadian Wheat Board Act, the Western Grain Stabilization Act, the Prairie Grain Advance Payments Act and the two-price wheat system. It appeared to us that neither the government nor the Metric Commission understood the west and in particular they failed to understand the survey system which is based on the mile. I shall not go into the details of our survey system; the hon. member for Humboldt-Lake Centre has already done that. I am suggesting that hon. members on the government side did not understand the situation in the west. They did not understand that farm machinery was built in sizes conforming to the imperial system, that it is calibrated for bushels rather than for kilograms and tonnes. It is very difficult, when one has to make three or four calculations, to be certain that in applying fertilizer, or chemicals for example, the right amount is getting to the ground.
In that debate on Bill C-23, the first time Parliament was given an opportunity to discuss metric, members of the Official Opposition pointed out to the government that farmers in western Canada along with the people there generally were opposed to the metric system. We understood the feelings of the farmers. We understood the feelings of those people because we were out there and we talked to them. We communicated with our constituents, because that was our job, and they told us what their feelings were. By contrast we found that the Liberal members from western Canada, such as there were, completely underestimated the depth of feeling on this topic among western farmers. They would not listen. And that is nothing new, because they have never listened. To me, the statement made by the then hon. member for Assiniboia, Ralph Goodale, on January 26, in the debate on C-23 was completely unbelievable. This is what he said in the House:
I want to deal with a few of the aspects of metric conversion affecting grain which may not be fully appreciated but upon the basis of which I believe this measure is not only supportable but is also in the best long-run interests of all segments of the grains industry, including producers in the prairie region. First, it should be noted that this change has a broad and virtually unanimous base of support in the farm community.
He went on to say that he had visited his constituency and that the people there were all in favour of metric. This was not so. When we got into committee on Bill C-23 representatives of various farm organizations appeared before us. Some of them were members of the sector committee but most of them were either paid employees or executives of the farm organizations and they said the same thing Ralph Goodale, the member from Assiniboia, was saying-that all their members were in favour of the metric system. Nevertheless, at that point in time the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton), myself and others were getting petitions from the locals of the various farm organizations opposing metrication.
June 10, 1980

Those petitions and those motions were passed over to the government so that it could understand the opposition to metrication in the west. But the government paid no attention whatsoever.
Then the minister responsible at the time tried to convince us that converting bushels to tonnes and acres to hectares would mean a saving of $1 million to the grain producers of western Canada. He was never able to explain this in committee, because there was no proof that such a saving could ever be realized.
As a matter of fact, there was no saving. It was going to cost the farmers of western Canada many millions of dollars to convert to metric.
I see that my time is almost up. As far as Bill C-23 is concerned, when we found we could not convince the government to make any change, we suggested to the government that it bring in an amendment to allow a dual system; to allow the metric system and the old imperial system to operate side by side.
This, Mr. Speaker, was turned down by the then Liberal government. Fortunately, when the hon. member for Vegre-ville (Mr. Mazankowski) became the minister of transport and the minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board, he insisted that the Canadian Wheat Board and the grain commission report using the dual system in order that those young people who understood the metric system could make use of it and the older people who understood the imperial system could make use of that. This is a sensible approach, Mr. Speaker. This is an approach this government has refused to take because they say it is voluntary.
Any time you are forced to do something by legislation it is not voluntary, it is a taking away an individual's democratic rights. This is what that government did in bringing in metrication. It brought in, in effect, legislation requiring the people of Canada to do certain things which they did not want to do, and it was brought in without any debate in this House of Commons except for Bill C-23. This is a disgrace and a sad commentary on the way the government across the way operates today.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my comments this evening by saying that in spite of the caricatures which are often used in respect of debates about the metric system, it is important to take the debate about the metric system seriously, and I hope to be able to reflect a bit with hon. members this evening about just why we ought to take it seriously. It is not just a question of dinosaurs versus progressives, although indeed we have had many dinosaurs speak against metrication this evening. Here is another case of the Conservatives being right in some respects but for the wrong reasons, where they have a sort of half decent instinct, but it only manifests itself in inarticulate groanings.
Metric System
I would like, if I could, to articulate some of the resistance to the metric system this evening. Basically, the resistance is there because it is a basic conceptual change from a human system of measurement to a rationalized system; from a measurement system related to the human body to an abstract creation. The difference in how we perceive this question crosses party lines and crosses idealogical lines. I think it is important to acknowledge that. And it cannot be explained away in terms of generation gaps either. I recall, in my first election campaign that I got the most enthusiastic response ever from a group of junior high school students when I said something critical of the metric system.
So the resistance we have to the metric system is not something that is a generational thing; it is something which is very much imbedded in the way people perceive reality and I think we should acknowledge that.
Now, in addition to this conceptual change, which stirs up resistance to the system I think we need to say it has been resisted because it is a change which is seen, and rightly so, to have been imposed upon the public without adequate political debate, without adequate debate in Parliament and without adequate public debate about whether, in fact, this was something that we wanted to do. There was no consensus. From a democratic socialist point of view, Mr. Speaker, this is a very serious thing because the metric system is partly responsible for people having a very negative view of government, and in the view of our party it is very important that people have a positive view of government. We regret that the metric system has been imposed in the way that it has, because it has helped to create a negative view of government.
Human health, I believe-and I mean this in the broad sense of the health of the community-depends on people having a feeling that they are actively and creatively participating in their own reality. Robbing people of this feeling through these false bureaucratic and technocratic imperatives is very dangerous. Humans, I submit are created in the image of an active and creative God, and they will, therefore, quite appropriately resist any attempt to violate their nature in this way, whether their control over their own lives is threatened by a bureaucratic initiative, whether it is threatened by multinational corporations-no matter who happens to threaten control over their own lives.
What we have here is an example, Mr. Speaker, of how too many things are outside the pale of political debate in this country, and of how our consciousness of those things which we perceive to require political debate is too narrow. The metric system is perceived as some sort of a value neutral evolutionary imperative that really does not deserve to be talked about in any sort of political or public way.
I must give credit where credit is due, as I mentioned at the beginning when 1 referred to the Conservatives as dinosaurs. They acknowledged that some of these questions needed to be reopened, when they were in government, by suggesting a parliamentary inquiry into another issue which has proceeded in the same way as metrication, and that is the development of nuclear power in this country as if it were just part of the

June 10, 1980
Metric System
natural course of events and did not have anything to do with conscious public discussion, with opponents being made out to be members of the flat earth society.
I think in this area, as in others, Mr. Speaker, we need to expand the parameters of political debate in this country so that more and more of what we decide to do as a nation, whether we disagree with each other or not, will come within the parameters of political debate. This would be a very healthy thing, but what we are talking about here tonight is an example of just the contrary.
1 would be remiss, Mr. Speaker, not to point out, as a final reflection on this issue, the economic side of things. I say "reflection", because 1 see this debate as an opportunity to debate, really in retrospect, what has already happened. There may be some debate about the scheduling of things. There may be ways that we can talk about how we want to, and what is the best way to implement the final stages of metrication. But in a sense we are really reflecting on something that is already taking place, whether we like it or not. We have to see it as an opportunity to learn, therefore, about what kinds of mistakes not to make in the future.
As I said, 1 wanted to talk about the economic side. The Liberal government has, as usual, acted in a way that is supposedly-at least if you listen to the rhetoric-in the interests of the Canadian public but, in fact, they have acted in a way that is actually extremely insensitive to the needs of farmers, insensitive to the needs of small businessmen and insensitive to the needs of workers who never asked for metrication in the first place. But it is something which fits, as usual, perfectly into the global profit strategies of multinational corporations. It fits perfectly into the profit strategies of these global corporations, in their kingdom building aspirations, in whose long-term interests it is to create the standardization and uniformity that will result from metrication, not to mention the short-term profits they receive from smaller units for higher prices.
Global profit strategies, Mr. Speaker, by definition, require increasingly homogeneous markets and a built-in disrespect for local and traditional customs and values. My friends on the right here, who are so fond of defending these sorts of things, ought to contemplate that reality the next time they get up to defend their multinational friends. Unfortunately for the multinationals, Mr. Speaker, the human spirit, it appears to me, will prevail against all efforts to destroy our particularity and the ways in which we express ourselves in differentiated ways as human beings. Our humanity will thus prevail. This will be true of all efforts to reduce us to passive receivers of our reality and to unconscious consumers of metric hamburgers.
May we learn therefore, from the arrogance and the disembodied intellectual approach, which has characterized metrication, a new respect for the dangers of trying to change reality by undemocratic means in a democratic society.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker, for the second time in as many months 1 rise to make my case on behalf of many millions of Canadians who have been metrified by this government.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: This time I am speaking on behalf of the Canadian consumer; not only in my official role as opposition critic for consumer affairs, but as a consumer myself and one who has been in direct contact with several thousands of consumers across Canada about this government's wholesale conversion to metric.
Let me put on the record the basis for my intervention in this debate which, 1 am delighted to note, is the first full-blown discussion on metrication, save one hour last month when I introduced a notice of motion to make metric conversion voluntary. This is the first opportunity to register the views of all parties in the House of Commons on the specific subject matter of metric conversion.
My professional interest in metric conversion first arose in my election campaigns over the past year and a half. For reasons which I thought were peculiar to the Hamilton-Wentworth region alone, I was forever questioned about metric conversion at coffee parties, at shopping centres, on front verandahs. The vast majority of my constituents were pleading with me to do something about this metric nonsense, as they kept describing it.
Why was this an issue only in my riding? Neither Ancaster, nor Dundas, nor Waterdown, nor even the city of Hamilton itself, were test centres like Sherbrooke or Peterborough or Kamloops. Why the consumer furor over metric in Hamilton-Wentworth? After researching the history of Canada's metric conversion program, dating from the mid-1960s and culminating in the government's white paper on metric in 1970, 1 was amazed to learn how totally Canadians had been force-marched into metrication by the Liberal administrations of the 1970s, by stealth, as has been so thoroughly documented by my colleague, the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington).
So, like any responsible reporter who turns politician and tries to sample public opinion before arriving at a definitive position on an issue affecting peoples' lives such as this one, 1 went on a Hamilton radio station open line program to invite the views of listeners on metric. 1 also requested the people of the entire southern Ontario area served by radio station CHML to write to my office on Parliament Hill regarding their position on metric, for or against. 1 believe the "Open Line" host, Mr. John Hardy, can testify that my question was absolutely straightforward: Are you in favour of metric conversion or not, and why?
I am still not certain, Mr. Speaker, how many letters arrived in my office postmarked Hamilton and a myriad of other
June 10, 1980

centres in Ontario-1 think we received 700 in the first week and upwards of 2,000 within the next few days. That was, however, only a cross-section of the listening audience of one of several Hamilton area radio stations.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: If you fellows would listen, you might get a little information on this whole metrication program. Listen to the input from the people. There followed a constant stream of requests from similar programs across Canada. I spent an average of eight to ten hours a week for a solid month on radio talk programs, discussing metric with Canadian consumers from Vancouver to Halifax. For the record, Mr. Speaker, these are the broadcasting outlets which devoted up to two hours on this subject: In Hamilton, CHML; in Vancouver, CJOR; in Ottawa, CFRA with Mr. Hal Anthony; in Halifax, CJCH; in London, CFPL with Mr. Bill Brady; in Edmonton, CJCA with Mr. Ron Collister; in Winnipeg, CJOB with Mr. Peter Warren; and in Regina, CKCK. That one was a live debate with the Saskatchewan minister of highways, Eiling Kramer. The point 1 want to make is that flowing from these many hundreds of telephone conversations with Canadians came thousands of letters to my office-my staff and I have lost count, but I have here, not a box full of letters, but two files, of about 14 in my office-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. The Chair appreciated the comments of the hon. member, but since 1 did warn another hon. member earlier about using exhibits, I think it would be improper of me not to warn the hon. member. I would ask the hon. member to remember that there is in fact a rule against exhibits in the House of Commons.


An hon. Member:: He is an exhibit himself.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am in total concurrence with your admonition. The only difference between previous displays and this one is that I am going to quote from some of the letters that have arrived in my office, and I would beg your indulgence for a few moments.


An hon. Member:: Read them all.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: These files testify to the very strong feelings of Canadian consumers about the changeover to metric. As I said, I will go through those letters at random. These letters come from Highland Grove, Ontario, Halifax, Burlington, Victoria, Montreal, London, Lynden, Ontario, in the beautiful riding of Hamilton-Wentworth, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Indian Head, Saskatchewan, Ottawa, Killam, Alberta, Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. Let me pick any one of them at random. Here is one from Snowflake, Manitoba.


An hon. Member:: Wow!
Metric System


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: It reads.
I am definitely against metric. I am a farm woman and I don't see why farmers should be put to the awful inconvenience of hectares, litres and all the rest.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: It goes on to read:
For myself I think recipes, dress patterns, temperatures and the whole mess is so totally unnecessary to change to metric-
Why wasn't the whole country consulted before it was started?
That comes from Patricia Robinson in beautiful downtown Snowflake, Manitoba.
Many of these letters are from proponents of Canada's conversion to metric. The vast majority are very much against what they constantly refer to as "metric madness." The most interesting aspect of the individual Gallup poll I have conducted is that nearly all radio hot line calls and these letters are thoughtful ones, not hysterical or emotional appeals to stop progress and turn the clock back 100 years.
That is what bothers me most, Mr. Speaker, including some of the comments made by the hon. pterodactyl from Win-nipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie). Because some of my colleagues on this side, and I have the democratic responsibility to check with our people, and because we dare to raise publicly the awful possibility that this Liberal government may indeed have moved too fast, too bureaucratically, too dictatorially, on a matter as profoundly important to Canadians as metric conversion, we are branded as anti-progress neanderthals living in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, as people afraid of progress, afraid to take a different stand from our largest trading partner, the United States.
Of the several thousands of letters in my office, the major problems faced by consumers fall into seven areas. They are: First, metric packaging rip-offs; second, retooling costs; third, the costs of new scales; fourth, land measurements; fifth, construction standards; sixth, safety problems with conversion; and seventh, other conversion problems, the latter being an umbrella category with which almost any one of us can identify.
My hon. friend, the hon. member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid) just told me a recent horror story about a tornado that touched down in Bramalea about ten days ago. It tore away great chunks of aluminum siding and roofs, and now the insurance companies are complaining that the tornado is costing them a fortune because all aluminum siding and shingles have switched to metric, and much of the reconstruction has to start from scratch. I am sure the insurance companies can afford it, but it is the home owner who will be paying for metric conversion through higher premiums in the long run. You do not need an act of God to demonstrate potentially devastating costs to home owners. An electrical contractor in my riding recently warned me about what will happen when your fluorescent lights go hard metric. Many households will need to be rewired to accommodate the shorter metricised length of your fluorescent lights over the kitchen and bathroom sinks or in the playroom.

June 10, 1980
Metric System
During this sampling of opinion on metric, I have welcomed all points of view. Sometimes I have received very thoughtful flaying of my position on this subject. I want to read into the record part of one such excoriation, the most recent one published last week in the Dundas Star Journal. I hope Mr. Speaker will not mind if I display the paper in which this article was published.


An hon. Member:: It is a good paper.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Yes, it is a good paper. The lady who authored the prominently displayed letter to the editor signed herself simply as Jane Neysmith. Presumably she was a Dundas constituent. She maintained that the only reason I am harping on the metric question is for my "political security". She further went on to state:
In his weekly letters to the folks back home Scott wrote "I resent the way the previous Trudeau government force-marched us into metric conversion without consulting the Canadian consumers".
Certainly I still stand by that statement.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Miss Neysmith continued, "Does he", meaning me-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: She continued:
Does he also resent those Canadian consumers who freely and overwhelmingly voted Trudeau and his government back into power?
I want hon. members opposite to listen closely to this. She continued:
It was a democratic way of failing to demonstrate real discomfort with metrics.
In short, the lady is suggesting that the return of the Trudeau government is a vindication by the majority of Canadian consumers that metrication is an all right thing. I can only assume that all hon. members opposite who support the Liberal government's imposition of metric will agree with Jane Neysmith, that the Liberal victory indeed was a indication of the Canadian consumers' approval of the switch to metric. 1 know all hon. members on the government benches will be thinking of their constituents when they vote on this metric motion later this day.
I have here Parliament's infallible diary, Hansard of March 17, 1975, page 4180. 1 will not hold it up because it will be constituted as another display. This will probably be the one and only time I quote a prominent member of the Liberal government so extensively to support my case. I am delighted to see the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) here this evening. I should like to quote that hon. member for Windsor West because his comments cry out for a rerun in the public record on metric. It reminds me of the story going around about Ronald Reagan wondering if, at his age, he can last eight years in the White House, if elected president next November. The answer is: yes, he will do the first four years and the next four years will be reruns. I am
delighted to have an ally such as the hon. member for Windsor West as a rerun or, in Windsor parlance, as a retread. I should like to quote the memorable utterances of the former minister of consumer and corporate affairs on metric. If one does not think metric was imposed, listen to the hon. member for Windsor West.


An hon. Member:: Watch his hair go up on end.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: 
Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: In conclusion, I should like to again-


Some hon. Members:: Order, order.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. It has been an interesting experience. I am sorry to have to cut off the hon. member, but I will recognize the hon. member for Kitchener (Mr. Lang).


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. In view of the immense interest expressed throughout this debate in the report of the metric overview board, I wonder if I could seek the unanimous consent of the House to table this report.
June 10, 1980


Charles Lapointe: We made an agreement, let us stick to it.


Geoffrey Douglas Scott: I would simply like to table the report so that it will be available and accessible to all people of Canada and all members of the House of Commons. May I have that unanimous consent?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. In the first instance the hon. member has come to the end of his allotted time. There is relatively strict order today. Because so many members want to speak, the Chair is obligated, on behalf of all hon. members, to give every member an opportunity to speak.
I understand that this is a motion; and the hon. member wants to table some papers. I could rule against the request of the hon. member simply on the grounds that he has now exceeded his time. Aside from that, if in fact he is making a motion to table some papers he must seek the unanimous consent of the House. As I understand it, he does not have the unanimous consent of the House. That being the case, I recognize the hon. member for Kitchener.


Mr. Peter Lang (Kitchener):: Mr. Speaker, the point that strikes me most about this non-confidence motion of the official opposition is that they have chosen the issue of metric conversion to try to bring the government down.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Peter Joseph Lang: Does this mean that metric conversion is the highest concern and priority of the official opposition? If so, 1 suggest their priorities are out of whack.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Peter Joseph Lang: The second point I should like to make is that I find it quite ironic the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) is the member who brought this motion before the House. On November 14, 1979, when that member was the minister of state for small businesses and industry, he said in response to a question of the hon. member for Ottawa-Carle-ton (Mr. Pepin):
The fact is, the whole process has been handled very well by the Metric Commission, who are engineers, who have been dealing with sectors of industry and associations, who have had time to sit down and study the various implications and problems involved.
The hon. member for Capilano seems to have changed his tune.
It is apparent to me that the issue of metric conversion has become an emotional issue. To get some perspective on this problem, let us look at the facts and the history of metrication. The Weights and Measures Act of 1871 established the metric system for legal use. The Canadian government policy that metric conversion was inevitable and in the national interest was established by the House leaders of all parties. On Janu-
Metric System
ary 16, 1970, the House leaders from all parties supported the white paper on metric conversion in Canada.
It is well worth noting that the white paper resulted in a response by the Canadian government to representations from diverse segments of the nation, an example of democracy in action. These representations came from groups which include the Consumers' Association of Canada, the Canadian Home and School Association, the Agricultural Institute of Canada, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Pharmaceutical Association and the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers. Does the opposition party say that all those people have no relevance?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Peter Joseph Lang: These learned groups, after great consideration, were convinced of the practical benefits to be derived from a system with advantages that range from simplifying the learning process in school to improving and consolidating Canada's position in world trade.
We should also keep in mind the voluntary nature of metric conversion. There are some 102 voluntary sector committees with over 2,000 volunteer representatives from industry, labour, consumer, and governmental bodies. Metric Commission Canada has had the over-all strategy of involving every sector from every region of Canada as soon as possible in planning for metric conversion. Sector plans are developed through a consensus process. These groups take the responsibility for monitoring the implementation of their plans. Thus, the voluntary participation approach is characterized by plans which are developed by those who will have to implement them.
After consulting with industry, labour and consumer groups, a program of guideline dates for metric conversion, recommended by Metric Commission Canada, was approved by the Canadian government and debated in the House of Commons on March 17, 1975, contrary to what the opposition has said. The Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs, an all party committee, studied this matter at length and voted unanimously in favour of it. It reported back to the House on December 17, 1976, with the recommendation that the House consider the advisability of adopting this program and also of introducing additional legislation for metric conversion.
Subsequently, the Metric Conversion (Statute Law Amendment, 1976) Act was passed by the House of Commons on July 25, 1977. This was debated in the House over a period of nine months. It gave the governor in council the power to set dates in any sector of the economy, after which the customary imperial system would be illegal. Out of a total of 33 sectors which have published metric conversion plans, there are only three sectors for which regulations have been issued under the Weights and Measures Act. These regulations establish cut-off dates for the sale and advertising of goods in other than the metric system.

June 10, 1980
Metric System
With regard to these three sectors, regulations were requested by the working groups on scales in the retail food industry, by the home furnishings and piece goods industry and by the petroleum refinery wholesalers and gasoline service stations- they were requested, These groups or committees had consumer and industrial representatives on them. The moves to make metric conversion mandatory in these three sectors were therefore initiated by the industries concerned, and not by Metric Commission Canada. The regulatory action that was requested was to bring about an orderly conversion without unfair competition, reducing the possibility of consumer confusion to a minimum.
As I stated before, the House leaders of all parties spoke in 1970 in favour of the policy for metric conversion. They stated it was inevitable and in the national interest. The white paper was quite specific about some of the economic advantages of conversion.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: What are they?


Peter Joseph Lang: I will give them to the hon. member, and 1 will quote from the white paper.
Important benefits of conversion are to be found in the ability to maintain and expand Canadian trade with nations in the metric sphere.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Peter Joseph Lang: If hon. members would cut down on the noise they might be able to hear better. The quotation goes on:
Because of the vital importance of foreign trade in Canada, especially the need for growth in exports of manufactured goods, there must be serious concern about damage to Canada's competitiveness in world markets as a result of the pace of change-over to the metric system-
This is particularly important for Canada. In 1978, 26 per cent of our GNP was in exports, compared to only 7 per cent in the U.S.A. 1 quote again from the white paper:
The view is held in certain sectors of industry that Canada should not attempt conversion independently of the United States. The Canadian automobile industry, with its close ties with the United States involving common designs, production and the marketing programs, is cited as an illustration.
It appears generally the practice of the larger automobile companies to design in the measurement system of the different countries in which they manufacture. Metric or non-metric design may be translated and adapted as occasion demands. The same companies in their international operations arc conscious of the great practical advantages of common, standard stock sizes of metal materials, common standard fasteners and common designs for production and maintenance spares.
That was the situation in 1970. Today, some Canadians have a misconception about metric conversion in the United States which, of course, is our major partner.
In early 1980, a statement by President Carter in the report of the U.S. metric board to Congress reaffirmed the U.S. federal government's support for metric conversion. The United States passed a metric conversion act in 1975. With confirmation by the Senate of the United States metric board in March, 1978, and the steady conversion of United States industry and services to metric, all of Canada's trading partners either operate in metric units or are converting to them.
It is true that about 70 per cent of our exports go to the United States. The automobile and parts related manufacturing sector in the United States is leading metric conversion in North America. Over 70 per cent of manufacturing and orders for parts are already in metric units. The General Motors X-Model, 1980 cars are now 90 per cent metric, and they have stated publicly that they intend to complete the conversion of their operations by 1982.
These developments are significant for employment and production levels in over 200 companies with over 100,000 employees in southern and central Ontario and southwestern Quebec. Thirty one per cent of Canada's 1978 exports to the United States were in motor vehicles and parts. This is our biggest single manufactured export to the United States, and it amounted to over $11 billion in 1978.
Canada's third largest export to the United States is newsprint, and the exports in that industry in 1978 amounted to S2.3 billion. The paper mills in Canada have virtually completed implementation of their metric conversion plans. Even in the U.S.A., over 80 per cent of the mills label, ship and invoice using metric units.
A number of sectors in the United States are ahead of counterpart sectors in Canada. For example, Canada exports distilled liquor products to the United States and, by U.S. law, the federal alchohol U.S. administration act, all packages of spirits have been in metric units since January, 1980. At this time Canada has not converted this sector to the metric system. In addition, all new wine packaging and retailing in the United States by the same law has been in metric units since January, 1979.
1 could go on with the various examples of where Canada is behind the U.S. in metric conversion and the importance that we continue on with the metric system. I am also aware of the problems that any new change brings to the population, particularly in the stressful society in which we live today. I am concerned about the stress that relates to the elderly, but with help and understanding from the younger segments of our society the painful transition can be made, and it must be made sometime.
The major point I want to make is the one I established at the outset of my remarks: The official opposition has shown, by using metric conversion as their issue to raise a non-confidence motion to defeat the government, that their priorities are completely out of whack.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arthur Ronald Huntington: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The hon. member for Kitchener (Mr. Lang) was good enough to quote Hansard of November 14, 1979, at page 1302, and to take out of context a few sentences in an answer which I gave to a question asked by the hon. member for Ottawa-Carleton (Mr. Pepin). If he had read on for a few lines more he would have read:
The fact is, the whole process has been handled very well by the Metric Commission, who arc engineers, who have been dealing with sectors of industry
June 10, 1980

and associations, who have had time to sit down and study various implications and problems involved.
This is what he did not read:
What has happened is this: in the process, the people outside have been forgotten and the human element has been completely ignored.


Peter Joseph Lang: A point of order, Mr. Speaker. I do not think the addition of the last sentence changes what the previous paragraph stated-there was confidence expressed in the Metric Commission.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Thank you for your wisdom, Mr. Speaker. At the outset of my participation in this debate I want to express my particular pleasure in seeing in the House tonight the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) who opened this debate today. I should also like to pay tribute to the hon. member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers) who for many years now has felt that the very important issue of metrication was not getting a fair hearing in this Parliament. He played a big part in organizing this debate today and I know that members of our caucus want to salute him.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arnold John Malone: 1 am glad the Minister for Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) is in his seat. The Minister of State for Small Businesses (Mr. Lapointe) has just stepped out, but I am sure he will return in a few moments.
1 am pleased the two ministers are here because, while it may be the view of the government that it has launched into the metric program to such an extent it cannot back out of it, many Canadians have a different view.
As part of my submission tonight I want to make an appeal for special consideration in at least one area where metrication has not yet become a fact of life. It would have become a fact on January 1 had it not been that this party was the government at that time. 1 refer to the metrication process in the meat industry, which would have included auction markets. Any member of Parliament who has ever been around an auction ring would know there is a significant difference between fixed price buying and bid buying. However difficult Canadians may have found it to go to supermarkets, machinery dealers or whatever market, to buy items at a fixed price, they probably could do so if they worked at it long enough, by making calculations on the back of a cigarette packet or even on a pocket calculator. The situation is very different at the auction ring, however. There are two presumptions that go with auctions: the first is that both the buyer and the seller know the value of the product, and the second is that they know the language of the game.
If I were the gentleman who represented the riding of Lethbridge for some years in this House, that great auctioneer, I could demonstrate what goes on when one bids on products or livestock at an auction. The auctioneer goes into his act and wants to know how much you will give-per kilogram. A split second decision has to be made which calls for judgment.
Metric System
When you start buying livestock at so much per hundredweight, you are actually buying at one-tenth of a cent per pound. Mr. Speaker, it is impossible for the auction industry to survive with metrication because neither the buyer nor the seller will have confidence-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arnold John Malone: I think it is time, Mr. Speaker, to note that the hon. member for Timmins-Chapleau (Mr. Chenier) is interrupting again. He is like that left-wing chickadee, fresh from a feast of fermented chokecherries-always flipping around this House, never making any more sense with his interruptions than he ever does. All he can do is interrupt. Maybe he should become aware that 1 have had a chance to talk to some other members of his party privately. Those members from the province of Quebec who went through the tortuous experience of the referendum a few weeks ago ought to recognize that whatever solution might have come out of that referendum that made Canadians in general happy, the mood in western Canada is not one of happiness. Their unhappiness largely relates to the question of transport and the injustice they feel in that regard. The attitude of this federal government toward the fact-


Peter A. Stollery: A point of order, Mr. Speaker. The opposition was arguing the question of metric conversion. I do not know what the hon. member is going on about, but I wish he would stick to the point instead of going off on fancies which exist in his imagination about the problems of western Canada-


An hon. Member:: Sit down.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. The hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) has the floor. 1 am sure the suggestion that he might make his remarks more relevant to the motion before us has not been missed.


Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, I want you to know that I am very annoyed with the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Stollery) because I was coming, after saying that resources are another question, to the point that on the prairies today one of the greatest reasons for discontent is the move to metric conversion.
I have often risen in caucus to say what the mood on the prairies is regarding metrication. My colleagues will point out that farmers in Ontario feel the same way. But I submit there is a difference, Mr. Speaker. The particular difference is that, unlike the other seven provinces in this country, the prairies were surveyed in miles. If you fly over the prairies you will see the grid pattern of one mile east and west by two miles north and south.
That leads me to another point, Mr. Speaker. We went through a decade of debate in this country from the time of the Right Hon. Lester Pearson to virtually the present day about something called the Canadian identity. Canadians went through that soul searching period, asking "who are we"? Somehow many believe that we are not unique among nations of the world and there is nothing that sets Canadians apart.

June 10, 1980
Metric System
I remember a recent election night when the newly elected Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) quoted Robert Frost who said, "Promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep."


Peter A. Stollery: What does that have to do with it?


Arnold John Malone: It has plenty to do with it. The next day as I was driving back to my constituency, on the car radio I heard an advertisement for Superior Ford claiming that their trucks were the best by a country mile.
1 am simply saying that the roots of our system of measurement go back to the roots of our country. This is the land of the mile. The word kilometre simply is not a part of how Canadians think and feel.
The hon. member for Kitchener (Mr. Lang) told us tonight that we have already made temperature conversions, that cars have been converted to the metric system, that boats have been converted to the metric system, bottles of alcohol have been converted to metric and pulp and paper has been converted. What the hon. member does not realize is that the citizens of Canada have not yet converted to metric. This kind of talk that somehow in the higher echelons of industry-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arnold John Malone: Maybe 1 will pause here, Mr. Speaker, because there is nothing but a racket coming from the other side. We gave hon. members opposite some consideration when there was a bit of torture in their hearts about whether the referendum was going to be carried. I point out to them tonight that the disrespect shown to the prairie communities has far more serious implications than they believe. If they continue to show the arrogance they are showing tonight, this country will surely split as it was about to had the referendum been lost in another province.
I want to speak tonight about the attitude of government. As a student going to school I associated with someone from a neighbouring school whom I knew, though not particularly well. That particular person had some difficulty academically and left high school before completing his education. He bought a broken down farm, however, painted it up, planted hedges and trees and in a few years had built himself a real showplace. I drove into his farmyard about two years ago.


Mr. Chenier:: Jack Horner.


Arnold John Malone: When I asked this man how everything was going, the man buried his face in his arms, leaned against the corral fence and burst into tears.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arnold John Malone: 1 hear the laughter on the other side, but it would do members some good to listen. He had just killed a quarter section of cereal crop land because he had made the wrong conversion from metric. Here was a man who was a food producer for Canada. He fed the Canadian people and had surpluses left over. He was a useful citizen. He produced,
and he did things, but by the action of an insensitive government which believed somehow its deadlines had to be met, that there could not be the printing of both imperial and metric, this man lost his self-esteem. Who did that? The Government of Canada. The government that should be elected by the people and for the people made a Canadian citizen feel like he was useless. Members Opposite like to take the attitude that this is lighthearted, that they can laugh it off and chuckle. But I tell them most seriously if that man were here tonight, I know very well he would whip them because he is just so angry and bitter about what this government has done in terms of destroying his ability to produce his own livelihood.
Another constituent of mine is over 90 years of age, and came from Norway. He came here after knowing the metric system. Now he tells me that he did not know what the temperature was, how fast he travelled or how far he had gone. He said that he did not know what his farm production volumes were. He asked what was happening in Canada today.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Walter David Baker: That is why you lost the west with that silly laughing and those stock answers.


Arnold John Malone: For those opposite who treat this matter so lightly this evening, I want to share with them some other serious difficulties that are happening in prairie farm production as a result of the conversion to metric. Farm people become pretty astute in making judgments about their production. 1 doubt if there is a farmer anywhere in prairie western Canada who grows grain and who cannot very quickly estimate within four, five, eight or ten bushels how much his truck holds. He could go to a country elevator and the agent could attempt to cheat him by 50 or 60 bushels, but the farmer would argue with him and tell him that he had more grain than he was suggesting.
Now the measurement is in tonnes. You visually cannot see, nor can a human being comprehend the weight of a tonne because you cannot lift one. What happens when the elevator agent says to a farmer that he has so many tonnes of grain? The farmer has to take him on blind faith. We trust most of our elevator agents. But in doing business we do not trust people to the extent that we trust them irrespective of our intuitions.
Again, members opposite in their insensitivity toward farmers and people in farm production are finding out that this government by the attitudes it has taken has been the source and cause of great discontent.
I do not think you will find members in this party or in the party to my left, or even reasoned Liberals who would take the position that one system is absolutely right and the other is absolutely wrong. That is not the argument. Surely for all of the talk you have heard here tonight, we staged it in and it came in with agreement of certain groups, but we all know in this Parliament that Canadians out there-
June 10, 1980

Mr.Deputy Speaker: I hate to interrupt the hon. member but I must advise him that his time has expired.


Jesse Philip Flis: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise to speak to the motion put forward by the hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) concerning the metric conversion program. 1 would like to make three points tonight on this topic. One concerns my personal experience with metric conversion, another concerns my educational experience, and finally I would like to point out the number of companies and sectors of the economy which benefit from metric conversion.
First let me share my personal experience. Ten years ago I had the opportunity to live in a country that was totally metric. I had my whole family with me including my two sons who were then aged eight and nine. They attended grades three and four in school, and in one year this eight and nine-year-old learned the metric system completely. If my children at those ages could learn the metric system in one year, then surely to goodness hon. members opposite can learn the metric conversion in their lifetimes.


An hon. Member:: I don't think so.


Arnold John Malone: How many kilopascals do you have in your town?


Jesse Philip Flis: I was never exposed to the metric system. When we did our shopping, we bought our meat in kilos.


An hon. Member:: Did you ask your constituents about this?


Jesse Philip Flis: I did ask my constituents. I did not receive one complaint from them about this topic.
A member this afternoon criticized the hon. member for Sherbrooke (Mr. Pelletier). He did not receive one complaint from his constituents, so I do not know what all the fuss is about.
We did our shopping in kilos and litres. I paid two zlotys for one litre of mineral water. There was no problem. I emphasize that if children aged eight, nine or ten can convert to metric system within one year, then I do not understand all this fuss about changing a country to the metric system. That outlines my personal experience, Mr. Speaker.
My second experience concerns the educational system. I would like to share with hon. members opposite and with all hon. members of this House the Conservative government's policy for Ontario on metrication. I want to emphasize this; this is the metrication policy of the Conservative government of Ontario. As a principal of a school, I received a directive which I had to implement in my elementary school. First, all schools in the province of Ontario were told that the metric system was to become the principal system of measurement in the curriculum of the elementary and secondary schools of the province.
As 1 said, this is a directive which came from the Conservative government to every school in Ontario. Second, the metric conversion being implemented in the schools was with the
Metric System
expressed intention of ensuring that programs of instruction became predominantly metric by June, 1978. That is two years ago.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jesse Philip Flis: Here is a province that knows the importance of converting to metric and which converted its school systems completely two years ago, in 1978. Yet here we are arguing today whether we should convert or not. That was done two years ago by a conservative government which is twenty years ahead in its thinking over its federal counterparts.
Third, the directive stated that metrication was to be applicable to all areas of the curriculum and that all measured quantities wherever appropriate were to be stated in metric units. This is a directive I received about seven or eight years ago.
Fourth, the units and symbols of the metric system taught in the schools conform to those of the international system of units known as System International, SI, something which the hon. member who introduced the bill a couple of weeks ago was knocking down, yet this was recommended by the Conservative government of Ontario.
Fifth, metric conversion should be accepted as an opportunity to reassess pedagogical approaches towards the topic of measurement as a whole, that students be provided with opportunities to acquire a practical experimental knowledge of metric units through activity that involves comparing, estimating, measuring and related problem-solving and that teachers and students be encouraged to design and construct appropriate measuring devices to be used in conjunction with selected commercial equipment.
Two weeks ago we heard from the opposite side that students should be given the choice whether they want to learn metric or the imperial system. I can see in my grade 7 class one student wanting to learn metric and another wanting to learn imperial. Is this what the opposition is proposing? Someone has to take leadership and it seems that this government has taken that leadership.
Sixth, metric changes in the curriculum should be coordinated with corresponding changes in industry and commerce. Educational authorities saw far enough ahead that they realized our educational training must be co-ordinated with industry and commerce, something that hon. members here cannot seem to see.


An hon. Member:: Tell the truth.


Jesse Philip Flis: If quoting from a government document sent to every school by the government of Ontario is not telling the truth, I do not know what is.
Seventh, metric conversion of learning materials in the schools be carried out on a pre-planned and gradual basis, with due consideration being given to the attrition, modification and
1974

June 10, 1980
Metric System
replacement of materials, as well as to the availability of new learning materials.
This is the metrication policy of the Conservative government of Ontario whose goal was to convert all schools two years ago, and we are arguing about it today.
An article in the Toronto Star just the other day stated that the United States will be selling gasoline by the litre by 1981. Who provided leadership? It was provided by Canada. We now have litres in our gas pumps. A giant country like the United States of America is following our example. That is what leadership is all about.
The third point I wanted to make was the number of companies and sectors of the economy benefiting from metric conversion as it has been approached in Canada. Let me give one example. Intercomp Resource Development and Engineering Ltd., based in Calgary, Alberta, is one of a growing number of Canadian companies operating internationally in the metric system. This is why we are going metric. If I have a manufacturing plant in Canada, I must produce one item in the imperial system. If I want to export that item, I must manufacture it according to the metric system, double the cost. Where is the sense?
Since its formation in 1968, Intercomp has expanded its international operations and now has major offices in Houston, Texas, and The Hague, Netherlands. President R. C. McCul-lock estimates the value of projects requiring the use of SI units has exceeded $1 million annually and states the requirement for providing services and software in metric measurement is accelerating.
I could go on for a full half hour, but I understand there are other members who want to speak on this topic. 1 have emphasized the three points 1 wanted to make. The first was personal experience, second, where we are in education today, 20 years ahead of the thinking of some members opposite, and third, the number of companies in Canada, and 1 will not take the time to list all of them, which have already converted because they have to compete in the world market.


Mr. Charles Mayer (Portage-Marquette):: Mr. Speaker, this is a very important issue to all Canadians. It affects us all whether we like it or not. We all have to deal with physical things and live in the real world. When we talk about what affects the way we measure and what is in the real world, it makes us realize that metrication has an effect on us all. There are a couple of points I want to make. Time is fast disappearing.
It has been a great mistake to talk about bringing in metrication. It was pointed out many limes this afternoon and this evening that metric was made legal for purposes of trade in this country in 1871. Since that time we have had a dual system in this country in many respects.
As a cattleman, I have always talked about this. People in the medical business have always talked about cubic centimetres. That is a metric system of measure. We have alw'ays talked about kilowatts in terms of thousands or tens. When we sell our grain internationally we have people in the terminals
that export the grains acting as arbitrators; employees of the Canadian Grains Commission. They are independent. They have always weighed our grain in metric measure. Therefore, what we have is a system of duality.
We are outlawing an imperial measuring system. That is very sad. It is almost like outlawing an old friend. It is a system of measure that has served this country extremely well. As was pointed out previously, we have a system of surveying, particularly in western Canada, second to none in the world. That system has served us very well.
I find it extremely sad that we should now be bringing in something by order in council, outlawing a system of measures and weights that has served us very well. This is extremely sad.
The hon. member for Parkdale-High Park (Mr. Flis) was castigating us for not being able to learn as quickly as his children, but I challenge the hon. member to go to a service station and tell us how much air he gets in his tires measured in kilopascals. Today I phoned the Metric Commission to ask what is a kilopascal. I would like to read it into the record. It is very interesting. A pascal is the pressure or stress which is produced when the force of one newton is applied to the area of one square metre.
I must confess when I heard the word "newton" I thought they said neuter. I am in the cattle business and neuter means a certain thing to me. I am sure there are a lot of people in this country who would like to see some of those people neutered who are pushing this metric business.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles James Mayer: We go further. In answering the question "What is a pascal?" we end up having to ask the question, what is a newton? Well, a newton is defined as the force which, when applied to a body having a mass of one kilogram, gives the body an acceleration of one metre per second squared. When we talk about pounds per square inch we talk about weight and a system of area, which is pounds per square inch. But we are converting to kilopascals.
Look at the situation around the world. Most of the countries which have gone metric are using a system which involves millibars. It makes no sense to me that we should begin to talk about kilopascals. Back in February I went to an airport and talked to a man there who collects the data from the weather station. I asked him: Why kilopascals? He said: 1 really don't know. I read it in millibars and then convert to kilopasca's. To my mind, that makes absolutely no sense. It seems to me that when we change we should change to something that makes sense. In this case, a kilopascal means nothing. I am sure the hon. member for Parkdale-High Park would have a difficult time reading back to me or remembering what I said when I defined a kilopascal. Whether our children are learning it or not is not the point. My children are learning it and are going to feel comfortable with it. But because they are learning it 1 see no reason why whole generations ahead of them should
June 10, 1980

should immediately be forced to change to a system they are not comfortable with.
1 listened to the hon. member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) making the case about auction markets. There are people in my constituency who have stated categorically that if the metric system comes into the auction markets they will stop bidding.


Some hon. Members:: Oh!


Charles James Mayer: Hon. members over there may laugh but it is a serious business when decisions have to be made with split second timing involving, sometimes, thousands of dollars. It is no laughing matter; it is very serious and it affects the livelihoods of a large number of people in my constituency.
1 should also like to talk briefly about the system of measuring temperatures. We are changing to degrees Celsius-in my area we say "senseless" and we say "so many degrees senseless" because that is about how much sense it makes to us. On this scale there are 100 degrees between boiling and freezing- 100 gradations. On the Fahrenheit scale there are 180 degrees between boiling and freezing. 1 am in the vegetable business and when I store vegetables it is very important to have an accurate knowledge of the temperature at which those vegetables are kept. One degree "senseless" is almost two degrees Fahrenheit. I can stand a variation of one degree Fahrenheit but I cannot stand a one degree variation in terms of "senseless" because it could destroy a whole year's work. So in the process of conversion we have done some very foolish things and 1 urge hon. members opposite to consider some of the effects.
Even this afternoon, in committee, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) was talking about 28 bushels per hectare. This made no sense at all because in western Canada we have been told we are going to keep the acres, so at least he could talk about acres. But he talks about bushels per hectare which is a cross, a hybrid idea-I could use a much more unpleasant word about it, but I won't.


An hon. Member:: A duality.


Charles James Mayer: Exactly. They are both wrong. I turn to the lumber business. We cannot now buy shingles to fit a good many roofs whose shingles were installed just a few years ago. We are told we shall not be able to buy a standard door, a 2 foot 8 inch by 6 foot 8 inch door. If such a door works well on its hinges I do not see why one of a different size should be considered to work better. So in future, if a door wears out it will not be possible to buy a standard size door to replace it; you will have to box in the whole area of the doorway so as to make the new door fit.
A constituent of mine runs a small store. He told me a few weeks ago that he would have to spend $3,000 on a new refrigerator this year and that if, in addition, he is forced to spend another $3,000 on a new scale it will be very hard for him to stay in business in his small town. What really gripes him is that his old scale will be of no use whatsoever. He can
Metric System
only put it in his backyard to let the garbage truck run over it so that it is taken to the dump. 1 would very much like to go on-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. It being 9.45 p.m. it is my duty to interrupt the debate and put forward every question necessary to dispose of the proceedings before the House in accordance with Standing Order 58(9).
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?


Some hon. Members:: No!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: All those in favour will please say yea.


Some hon. Members:: Yea!


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


Some hon. Members:: Nay!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the nays have it.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
And more than five members having risen:


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Call in the members.


Madam Speaker:: 1 declare the motion lost.
It being 10.13 p.m., the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 2 p.m., pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 2(1).
At 10.13 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.
June 10, 1980


APPENDIX
[Stage Direction]
(Seep. 1938)

[Stage Direction]
1.	Review of developments since the Constitutional Conference of February, 1979.
2.	Principles for a new Canadian Constitution.
3.	The process for achieving a new constitution including:
(a)	the subjects to be given priority consideration;
(b)	the arrangements for federal-provincial meetings and other work over the coming months.

[Stage Direction]
We, the people of Canada, proudly proclaim that we are and shall always be, with the help of God, a free and self-governing people.
Born of a meeting of the English and French presence on North American soil which had long been the home of our native peoples, and enriched by the contribution of millions of people from the four corners of the earth, we have chosen to create a life together which transcends the differences of blood relationships, language and religion, and willingly accept the experience of sharing our wealth and cultures, while respecting our diversity.
We have chosen to live together in one sovereign country, a true federation, conceived as a constitutional monarchy and founded on democratic principles.
Faithful to our history, and united by a common desire to give new life and strength to our federation, we are resolved to create together a new constitution which:
shall be conceived and adopted in Canada, shall reaffirm the official status of the French and English languages in Canada, and the diversity of cultures within Canadian society,
shall enshrine our fundamental freedoms, our basic civil, human and language rights, including the right to be educated in one's language, French or English, where numbers warrant, and the rights of our native peoples, and shall define the authority of Parliament and of the legislative assemblies of our several provinces.
We further declare that our Parliament and provincial legislatures, our various governments and their agencies shall have no other purpose than to strive for the happiness and fulfilment of each and all of us.

[Stage Direction]
The time has come for the Government of Canada and the governments of the provinces to join together in the task of drafting a new Canadian Constitution.
As it enters upon that task, the Government of Canada is dedicated to a full review of all constitutional measures now applying to our federation.
The whole task constitutes a great enterprise and will take time to achieve. Not all of it can be accomplished at once, nor can we wait until all of it is done to demonstrate to the people of Canada that tangible progress is being made.
The Government of Canada believes, therefore, that intensive work should now begin on a list of items of particular priority to the people of Canada and to governments, with the understanding that some or all of these could well become the subject of early adoption as parts of the new Canadian Constitution.
The list of proposed items is this:
A statement of principles A charter of rights, including language rights A dedication to Sharing and/or to Equalization: the reduction of regional disparities The patriation of the constitution Resource ownership and interprovincial trade Offshore resources Fisheries
Powers affecting the economy Communications, including broadcasting Family law
A new Upper Flouse, involving the provinces
The Supreme Court, for the people and for governments
The government also proposes that the leadership of the native peoples continue to be involved in the discussion of constitutional changes which directly affect the native peoples, in the context of the joint work on the item "Canada's Native Peoples and the Constitution". In addition, governments would pay special heed to representations from them on the items in the package set out above.

[Stage Direction]
(a) June 17: An organizational meeting of ministers would be held in Ottawa or at some other convenient location. At that time a schedule for consideration of particular items during the summer months would be worked out and agreed upon.
June 10, 1980
(b)	June 18 to July 6: Governments would prepare for intensive discussions.
(c)	July 7 to July 25*: Federal and provincial ministers and
officials would remain in session (except for weekends) for three weeks, and provision would be made to continue for an additional week if necessary.
(d)	July 26 to August 24: Break in negotiations to allow governments to consider or reconsider positions and to prepare for further intensive discussions. The provincial premiers meet in Winnipeg on August 21 and 22.
(e)	August 25 to August 29*: Federal and provincial ministers
and officials meet again.
(f)	August 30 to September 7: Governments consider positions
and prepare for first ministers conference.
(g)	September 8 to 12: An open conference of first ministers in
Ottawa to finalize agreements arising out of work under way, and to put in train a further work program.
*The dates could be altered provided the length of time devoted to discussion remained the same.
[Stage Direction]

Wednesday, June 11, 1980