1981-07-07

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Chris Speyer (Cambridge):: Madam Speaker, in view of increasing concerns and fear in Poland about the possibility of Soviet invasion, concerns and fears which are causing thousands of Polish people to flee to Austria where they can seek refuge in the west, and given that the Canadian quota of refugees from eastern European countries for the current year has almost been exhausted and that the next few weeks will certainly see an even greater number of Poles fleeing their homeland, I move, seconded by the hon. member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath):
That the government announce immediately that it will raise its quota of refugees from eastern European countries to take into consideration the worsening situation in Poland, and that it not leave such a critical decision in the category of merely looking at the possibility as the Minister of Employment and Immigration indicated in the House last week.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Whereas the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), by statements in the House yesterday, appears to condone the lawlessness and irresponsibility of the CUPW leadership with Parrot promising defiance of any back to work directive from the House; whereas the current disruption of postal service in Canada only adds to the already heavy economic burden the government has heaped on all Canadians; and whereas it is time the federal government finally took a
firm stand with the militant union CUPW, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid):
That this House direct the President of the Treasury Board to seek assistance immediately from the Armed Forces to open and run the Post Office to move the mail and to defy the leadership of CUPW.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Vince Dantzer (Okanagan North):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Whereas a minister of the Crown has recently indicated that by the year 1985 it will be necessary to ration railway cars in western Canada and the government has offered no solution to the problem; and recognizing the fact that the handling by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) of the Dubin inquiry into air safety and the Grange inquiry into the transportation of dangerous goods has lost him the confidence of the industry; and since it has been reported that to fly a scheduled airline in Canada is twice as dangerous as to fly in the United States, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields):
That this House calls on the Prime Minister, for the safety and welfare of the Canadian public, to request immediately the resignation of the Minister of Transport and to appoint someone who comprehends the importance of transportation to the economy of Canada.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Mark Rose (Mission-Port Moody):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Despite the fact that the energy crisis first appeared some eight years ago,

July 7, 1981
the National Research Council of Canada continues to devote roughly 11 per cent of its budget to energy research and development. In spite of a recent all-party House of Commons report recommending increased R & D funding for alternative energy projects, some $750,000 originally earmarked for solar research has been "immobilized" and transferred to space research. Therefore I move, seconded by the hon. member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie):
That the minister responsible for NRC instruct the manager to return or replace the funds immediately to solar research.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


POLITICAL PARTIES
Mr. W. Kenneth Robinson (Etobicoke-Lakeshore):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43. In view of the recommittal of the New Democratic Party to the policy of withdrawal from NATO and NORAD which, if implemented, would leave Canada susceptible to expansionist pressures from unfriendly nations, I move, seconded by the hon. member for London-Middlesex (Mr. Bloomfield):
That this House condemns the New Democratic Party for continuing to accept a policy which could destroy the national integrity of Canada and severely weaken the western alliance.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed


Some hon. Members:: No.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Len Gustafson (Assiniboia):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn):
That this House condemn the government for not making a positive move on high interest rates which are bankrupting home owners, farmers and small businessmen and having a serious economic effect on the entire country, and call on the government to take some positive direction on high interest rates before the House recesses for the summer.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


RAILWAYS
Mr. Bill Yurko (Edmonton East):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Whereas railway lines interlace urban areas throughout Canada, often occupying extensive land surface areas in the downtown or core areas of cities; whereas the air rights and the subsurface rights above and below railway rights-of-way in urban areas have become extremely valuable and useful for high rise structures as well as for underground or subterranean structures; whereas much of the surface land for railway rights-of-way was deeded to Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways through federal government action, and ambiguity exists as to the ancillary rights of such deeds, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker):
That the government move to establish a joint federal-provincial-municipal task force to inquire into the matter of air rights and subterranean rights associated with railway rights-of-way in urban areas and subsequently make appropriate recommendations for government action.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


ST. LAWRENCE SEAWAY WELLAND CANAL BOTTLENECK-MOTION UNDER S.O. 43
Mr. Joe Reid (St. Catharines):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. As ship owners in anticipation of demand are today confidently investing some $440 million in the construction of ships for the Great Lakes Seaway, and whereas the Great Lakes Seaway Task Force has called for planning and design to begin at once for a major enlargement of the Welland Canal, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gustafson):
That this House instruct the Minister of Transport to commence action immediately-even short-term action if long-term action is repugnant to the government-to eliminate the Welland Canal bottleneck so that it can cope with present and future increased shipping demands.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: No.
July 7, 1981


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION
Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East-Revelstoke):: 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 the CBC has been on strike for over two months and that the people of Canada have been denied Canadian content in the field of broadcasting, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Beaches (Mr. Young):
That the government instruct the CBC management to meet with the NABET workers to settle this dispute without further delay.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


POST OFFICE
Mr. Otto Jelinek (Halton):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Yesterday, when urged to introduce back-to-work legislation which would end the damaging postal strike now in its second week, the Prime Minister replied that Mr. Parrot, head of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, "made it clear that, if legislated back to work, he would disobey the order." Therefore the Prime Minister said he was "at a loss to know what would advance negotiations for a settlement in this area." In view of the fact that in making this incredible statement the Prime Minister as much as conceded any sense of legal responsibility to CUPW and has, in fact, sanctioned their veto over parliamentary authority, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Lisgar (Mr. Murta):
That this House condemn the Prime Minister for abdicating his responsibilities in this regard and, further, that it instruct the government to introduce immediately back to work legislation and, further, that this House not adjourn until full postal service is restored in this country.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
Oral Questions


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43. Whereas the burning of coals of high sulphur content aggravates the acid rain problem, and whereas Alberta has vast deposits of coals with a very low sulphur content, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Medicine Hat (Mr. Hargrave):
That the Government of Canada initiate some incentives to replace the high sulphur content American coals being used in Ontario with low sulphur Alberta coals, thus preventing some acid rain and giving work to Canadians.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Stan Schellenberger (Wetaskiwin):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Given the problems with the Micmac Indians and the Quebec provincial police, and now another incident of citizens raiding a reserve in Quebec, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Moose Jaw (Mr. Neil):
That the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, the Quebec minister in charge of native people and the native people in the region meet immediately to solve this situation before it gets out of hand.


Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister who is aware, I assume, or must be aware of the direct and indirect costs of the postal strike or mail strike. After all, the government was extremely

July 7, 1981
Oral Questions
eloquent about these costs in 1978. Reliable estimates to date are that between 1,000 and 1,500 small businesses will go bankrupt each week, that 6,000 to 9,000 jobs will be lost each week, that the direct mail business people will lose some several millions of dollars every day that the strike goes on, not to mention those who are dependent on mailed cheques, and also the costs to government of lost revenues. Can the Prime Minister therefore confirm to this House whether, in fact, the statements of the President of the Treasury Board yesterday, to the effect that the government is prepared to see this strike go on all summer, are government policy?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member does not ignore that any strike anywhere is bound to hurt someone. A strike against the government is more serious than other strikes. The basic question is: do we recognize the right to strike of public service unions or not? If one recognizes the right to strike, whether it be in the private or public sector, the way the strike operates is by effecting damage on one or other of the parties, and sometimes on third parties. I have not heard the Conservative party come out clearly and suggest that we abolish the right to strike. If they do, that will be more consistent with the position which they have been taking in the past few days.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


STEPS TO ARRIVE AT SETTLEMENT
John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, the Conservative party has not heard the government indicate that it even cares whether these people go back to work. The government's position, I take it, as again expressed by the Prime Minister, is that the government would prefer a settlement at the bargaining table. That has been his position all along. At the same time the government has clearly indicated that it refuses, in any way, shape or form, to modify its offer. That suggests one interpretation, and one only, that there is only one settlement acceptable to the government, and that is the government's offer itself. Can the Prime Minister, in face of that, therefore indicate to this House and to Canadians how we would expect to get such a settlement without legislation?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is quite wrong in the premise of his question. We have not said we would not discuss or we would not modify. We have said that that should be done at the bargaining table. Surely, if it is to be done at all, the other parties should come to the bargaining table and begin bargaining.
Some hon Members: Hear, hear!


TIMING OF PARLIAMENTARY SUMMER RECESS
John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, we have this strike because for three days there was hard bargaining at the bargaining table, and the government's negotiators
were given a mandate not to move one penny, one inch or one jot on a clause. The only credible way in which one can interpret the Prime Minister's answer to this House is to assume that the Prime Minister and the government in fact, are planning an initiative which they have not yet announced. Therefore my question to the government is this: does the government, in fact, intend to adjourn this House before the strike is settled?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, we do not know when the strike will be settled. We do know that the House leaders are talking about adjournment days. The opposition House leader mentioned possibly next Friday. I believe the House leaders are discussing matters now. Therefore the two events will happen, one before the other, or the other before the one, depending on whether-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It might happen simultaneously, depending on whether the CUPW union negotiators want to come down and sit at the table.


INTRODUCTION OF BACK-TO-WORK LEGISLATION
Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Madam Speaker, I would like to address my supplementary question to the Prime Minister. After the rather gobbledygook answer he gave to the previous question, perhaps he could give some clarification to the rather ridiculous proposition that he put forward yesterday, in terms of the fact that legislation was not contemplated because Mr. Parrot would not obey any law which was brought before Parliament and passed by Parliament. It was not bad enough that the Prime Minister said that, and I thought that maybe it was a joke on his part, but the Liberal headquarters in Toronto are now giving that answer to people who are phoning in to ask why the government is not taking any action. The answer given is that it is because Mr. Parrot will not obey any law which is passed by Parliament. I want to ask the Prime Minister whether it is government policy that it will not bring in any legislation until Mr. Parrot is satisfied with the law which will be passed by Parliament.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, if the hon. member refers to my answer yesterday, he will see that I was pointing out the rather, I believe, unsustainable position of the union leaders. Mr. Parrot, on the one hand, does not want to sit down and negotiate, which, as the hon. member's colleague argues, should lead us to want to legislate; but on the other hand Mr. Parrot says he would not obey the legislation, if I understand him to be reported correctly.


An hon. Member:: Throw him in jail.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Therefore I think that this indicates that the union leadership is somewhat inconsistent with its logic. I wish the hon. member would attack that question rather than the position that I explained in the House yesterday.

July 7, 1981


REQUEST FOR COMMITMENT TO ACTION
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Madam Speaker, the position of the Prime Minister is completely irrelevant to the whole issue of whether Parliament should have the right to legislate as it sees fit and as is appropriate under the circumstances. What the Prime Minister has done, in effect, is to give Mr. Parrot a veto over whether Parliament is going to act and to take its responsibility.
Negotiations between CUPW and the government are paralysed. The Prime Minister seems to be paralysed by a fear of Mr. Parrot. I want to ask if he has no compassion for the average citizen of this country who is bearing the brunt of the postal strike, and will, if we listen to the President of the Treasury Board, bear the brunt over the course of the summer until Parliament is reconvened, at least until next fall. Has he no compassion? Will he not give an undertaking that, unless there is some movement forward before Parliament adjourns, he will take legislative action? We on this side are prepared to stand and take our responsibility and to stay here until the matter is resolved.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I wish the hon. member opposite had not referred to the fear of the government of union leaders. If my recollection is exact, it was during the 1980 election that the party opposite, when it formed the government, settled with the LCUC at an unconscionably high rate. It did that because it was afraid either of the union leaders or the electorate.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Bob Ogle (Saskatoon East):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs and it concerns the question in El Salvador which is continuing to do damage to the people there. Recent reports in The Globe and Mail indicate that the people in the elite, who one would think would support the present junta, are saying, and I will read a small paragraph quoting a person interviewed there as follows:
He regards elections for a constituent assembly, scheduled for next March, as "a gimmick" to cement the Christian Democrats' hold on power. "Nobody else is going to campaign," he says. "They'll be killed the first day."
In light of this situation, I wonder if the minister is now prepared to reconsider his position regarding conditions in El Salvador.


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member quotes some people from the press who were interviewed in El Salvador. There are many people interviewed by the press about the situation there. It is not our role to pass judgment on the daily events in that country in that respect. Having profound faith in
Presence in Gallery
democracy, we believe the best way to resolve the problem of that country is through free elections.


METHODS TO ENSURE RETURN OF PEACE
Robert Joseph Ogle: Madam Speaker, my second question would be along a similar line. I, too, believe that the question should be solved in a democratic way if that is possible. It would also seem, and again I take my information from journalists going into the country, that now the peasants likewise see no possibility that there can be free elections. I would ask the minister again if he is prepared to look at other ways in which the problem can be faced, so that peace can return to that land.


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, our interest is certainly in peace, and in a political settlement. We retain an open mind on the best way in the future to proceed toward that. We have not lost our confidence that the democratic process and the process of free elections can bring about a resolution to the problems in El Salvador.


REQUEST FOR HOLDING OF MINISTERIAL TALKS
Robert Joseph Ogle: Madam Speaker, I should like to ask the minister if he would be prepared to go and talk to his counterparts in the different countries neighbouring El Salvador, the ministers of external affairs for Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Canada still has a role to play and has a very good image in that part of the world. Would the minister be ready to make such a move to see if there is a better way to solve this than waiting for elections?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, to the best of my knowledge our policy is the same as that of the other countries the hon. member mentioned. Since I will be meeting the foreign ministers of most of those countries this weekend, I will certainly undertake to discuss that issue with them.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF THE HON. CHIEF ETENG OKOI-OBULI, MINISTER OF STATE FOR COMMUNICATIONS, NIGERIA
Madam Speaker:: I should like to greet in our gallery the Hon. Chief Eteng Okoi-Obuli, Minister of State for Communications, of Nigeria.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

July 7, 1981
Oral Questions


NEGOTIATION OF AGREEMENT WITH PROVINCE OF ALBERTA
Hon. Michael Wilson (Etobicoke Centre):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. It is very clear that the lack of an agreement with the province of Alberta on energy policy as well as the many other aspects of the Liberal energy program, including the Fina purchase, increased imports, etc., have resulted in a large outflow of capital of approximately $10 billion over a one-year period, with a consequent increase in interest rates of at least 3 per cent to 4 per cent.
Is the government conducting any studies on the cost of this 3 per cent to 4 per cent increase in interest rates to the Canadian economy, whether it is to small businessmen, home owners, large business, governments themselves, all of whom must pay these high rates directly as a result of the Liberal energy program, and are these costs related in any way against any possible benefits that might be gained from these protracted negotiations?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the hon. member's question seems more rhetorical than real. I have no way of challenging these figures which he brings forward. They are of a statistical nature. He asked if studies are being done. I am sure that if the hon. member sends me the basis of his calculations, I could have them verified. But in so far as the issue itself is concerned, the hon. member knows that there have been meetings, even quite recently, between officials and ministers of the government of Alberta and the Government of Canada, and both sides have stated that they very much want to reach a settlement satisfactory to both sides.


REQUEST THAT PRIME MINISTER ENTER NEGOTIATIONS
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I am very surprised that the government is not conducting any studies on the cost of high interest rates to the Canadian economy-


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I did not say that.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: -because it is clear, according to many observers, that these are as a result of the National Energy Program. The three to four percentage point increase in interest rates, the deadlock with the province of Alberta, the high imports of oil, the loss of 40 per cent of Canada's drilling rigs, are all the result of the failure of the minister of energy to reach an agreement with the province of Alberta. The cost to Canadians in the form of these high interest rates, the $6 billion increase in tax that has taken place, plus the lost opportunities, is immense. Will the Prime Minister now accept his responsibility, replace the minister of energy in the negotiations and take part himself directly with the Premier of Alberta, and try to reach some resolution to this stalemate after 16 months of failure?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the hon. member could talk about more than 16 months of failure because I think he should add to that the eight months when the government of which he was a member failed to reach an agreement with Alberta.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: We got an agreement.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: In view of the fact that the Tory government was brought down without having reached an agreement with Alberta, it seems to me that the Tories should more realistically than others be aware that to reach an agreement you need two parties to agree.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Sixteen months?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Sixteen months. But the same time span ran against the government of Alberta as against the people of Canada, Madam Speaker.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Sixteen months.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Sixteen months ran against both parties. I repeat, whether it is six months or 16 months, you need two people to reach an agreement.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Replace him.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: It is beyond me why the hon. member on the one hand complains about inflation and the high cost of living, and on the other hand wants this government to sign an agreement at any price with the government of Alberta. That is not our position.


NATIONAL ENERGY PROGRAM
Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. In recent weeks some U.S. administration officials and a number of congressmen have warned about the possibility of U.S. retaliation against Canada because of various aspects of this country's National Energy Program. What specific official representations have been made to the Canadian government regarding possible retaliation against Canadian interests arising out of Canada's energy policy?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, the United States Congress is a very turbulent place, perhaps even more so than this House. We do not follow a policy of taking every comment made in Congress as an indication of an intention on the part of the U.S. administration. To the best of my knowledge there have been no representations of any kind by the U.S. administration except those that were made some time ago, to which we responded, concerning the National Energy Program.
July 7, 1981


POSSIBILITY OF RETALIATORY ACTION BY UNITED STATES
Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, my final supplementary is to the same minister. Surely he will recognize there is more than one way for the United States to skin the Canadian cat. In light of that, does he appreciate that United States reprisals against Canada over energy could be direct in the form of tough action against oil companies, or indirect through a lesser commitment by the U.S. administration to address other bilateral concerns between the two countries, for example, acid rain? In light of what I just said and what he just said, either through specific representations, through public statements or other avenues, has U.S. pressure on Canada been in the form of direct retaliation against our oil industry, or of indirect retaliation like the clear lack of support for such bilateral concerns as acid rain?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, there is no indication of retaliation of any kind on the part of the United States government. Generally speaking, both the U.S. and Canadian governments follow the policy of not linking issues in various fields, in other words not retaliating in one field for what happens in another field. I believe that still to be the policy of the U.S. government as it is of this government. We have no indication of any kind of indirect retaliation of the kind spoken of by the hon. member.

[ Translation]


THE CONSTITUTION
Mr. Andre Maltais (Manicouagan):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Considering that the relations between the Indians and the Quebec government have now taken a turn for the worst, that the salmon issue has gone far beyond salmon fishing as such, directly affecting as it does the Indians' way of life, their property rights as well as their habits and customs, would the Prime Minister agree to propose a meeting with the Indian chiefs with a view to taking a closer look at the whole native question in the light of the amendment made to his constitutional proposal?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member is right when he states that this problem goes far beyond the sole issue of fishing, about which indeed the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans said in the House that it was of great concern to him. But, first and foremost of course, it is also a matter for the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. I heartily welcome the suggestion of the hon. member that perhaps those two ministers might consult each other to arrange a meeting with the Indian chiefs if they feel that it might promote better understanding. I for one have already indicated to the Indian
Oral Questions
leaders of Canada, including those of Quebec, that I would be prepared and willing to meet with them this fall to discuss the whole question of native rights. In my opinion, the suggestion of the hon. member is therefore worthy of consideration.


SEARCH AND RESCUE
Hon. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Defence. It concerns the sinking of the Canadian vessel Arctic Explorer and the tragic loss of 13 lives. The commanding officer of the Canadian Armed Forces rescue co-ordination centre said late last year that he did not have the manpower or the equipment to fulfil his mandate. He went on to recommend:
We need fixed-wing support out of Gander, Newfoundland. We have requested it but perhaps someone will wait until we have a tragedy and then suggest it.
Why has the minister not responded to this public plea of the commanding officer of the rescue co-ordinating centre for more men and equipment and for the deployment of fixed-wing aircraft in Newfoundland?


Hon. J. Gilles Lamontagne (Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, I read very carefully the question asked yesterday by the hon. member of my colleague, the Minister of Transport. I believe that the minister gave two answers which were quite adequate in the circumstances. The hon. member should know that, since 1978, we have been implementing improved programs in all areas of search and rescue. We have increased the budget. At the same time, we have developed a satellite program. Moreover, we have established a program to improve the facilities and material available in search and rescue operations.
Like all my colleagues, I am terribly sorry there was loss of life yesterday when the Arctic Explorer sank. According to the preliminary reports I have received, there does not seem to have been any negligence on the part of the officers or of the search and rescue team. On the other hand, as we are always aware that this whole issue must be fully looked into since it is often a question of life or death, we shall request a complete report on this incident in order to determine how we make the system even better.


STATIONING OF FIXED-WING AIRCRAFT IN NEWFOUNDLAND
James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, the question is a very simple one. The commanding officer said the centre just does not have the type of resources that can respond to a mid-ocean tragedy. They do not have the resources to respond to a tragedy in the northwest Atlantic, on the 6,000 miles of Newfoundland coast and/or the coast of

July 7, 1981
Oral Questions
Labrador, because of the time required to get an aircraft from Prince Edward Island or Nova Scotia to the scene. It has to refuel in Gander. That takes anywhere from four to six hours. Would it not help to cut down on the lead time and reduce the incidence of tragedy by having fixed-wing aircraft deployed in Newfoundland? Why does the government not follow this simple yet very important recommendation of the commanding officer of the rescue co-ordination centre?
[ Translation]


J. Gilles Lamontagne: Madam Speaker, I find the request of the commanding officer of this station quite normal. He would like to have the facilities and equipment required to respond to every possible accident or incident. However, as the hon. member has just said himself, it is obviously impossible to have the resources and equipment required to guard against all possibilities along
4,000	miles of coastline both on the Atlantic and on the Pacific coasts. We try as much as possible to centralize our equipment and resources in locations where most incidents happen. Everyone knows that we try to station most of our equipment on the west coast for spring fishing and we do the same in north eastern Canada at the time of the seal hunt. However, it would be absolutely impossible-and I believe that the hon. member realizes it-to cover 4,000 miles of coastline with all the equipment and resources required to be able to respond within 10 or 15 minutes. We have all sorts of programs in this regard, and I mentioned earlier our participation in the SARSAT program which is a satellite program that might allow us to respond more quickly. However, with the resources and the equipment now at our disposal, we make every effort to save lives, and I believe that rescue operations were most satisfactory in the case of the Prinsendam, for instance. And even in this most recent instance, I believe that our team showed much leadership and that if lives were saved, it was because our search and rescue operations were very effective.


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Mark Willson Rose: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Science and Technology. The minister knows full well that very little R & D money in the National Research Council budget goes into energy research, I believe about 11 per cent. The manager of the NRC has admitted that over $1 million of R & D funds has been diverted from solar research to other programs. In the past ministers of the Crown have suggested that alternative energy is a priority among Canada's research and development projects. In view of the fact that this diversion has taken place, will the minister demand that these funds be replaced immediately so that Canada can maintain a lead in solar research and technology?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of State for Science and Technology and Minister of the Environment):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member is correct. Certainly we are extremely interested in alternative energy sources and are conducting considerable research into that area. Perhaps he may not have noted that recently I appointed a task force on alternate energy uses. It will be reporting to me, I hope fairly promptly, with useful suggestions as to how we might remodel our research efforts in this area. There is much that is done outside the National Research Council to which he specifically referred. I will look into the question the hon. member has raised and report back to him.


APPORTIONMENT OF FUNDS
Mark Willson Rose: Madam Speaker, 1 am sure the minister would be quick to admit that whatever the task force reports in terms of recommendations, it would be very difficult to accomplish this task if $1 million were missing from the R & D till. Is the minister aware that $750,000 was tranferred from solar to space research? Another $350,000 went into fusion which is still in the energy bag, admittedly a long way down, and there was no consultation at all with EMR, according to the reports I have, at a time when I think it is essential for Canada to develop its technology and strength in those various alternative fields. The ground rules have been broken in terms of transferring energy funds to another fund not directly related to energy, without consultation. Will the minister look into this and develop some ground rules so this kind of transfer, the old shell game, will not be permitted in future?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, the member is incorrect in asserting that somehow basic rules or guidelines have been broken. There is considerable flexibility in the allocation to the National Research Council's resources. I doubt that the hon. member would want me to supersede the National Research Council in those legitimate functions. I have said that I will examine what the rationale is for any transfers of funding that have taken place. The hon. member should recognize that there is in Canada's research efforts a major emphasis attached both to energy and alternate energy sources, and those projects, not all of which by any means are within the National Research Council, do go before the energy panel for assessment which involves all relevant departments and government institutions.
July 7, 1981


HOUSING
Mrs. Therese Killens (Saint-Michel):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. The Minister of Finance announced yesterday in Vancouver that the minister's department would provide special allocations for 2,500 additional housing units. Can the minister tell us where these low cost housing units will be built and whether he plans to include housing for the handicapped?


Hon. Paul J. Cosgrove (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to respond to the question of the hon. member and to her concern for the handicapped. Yes, the Minister of Finance indicated that CMHC had announced an additional 2,500 starts this year to serve co-op and non-profit organizations, with special preference and attention to those people having special needs, the handicapped. I might indicate that in making the announcement the minister also indicated it was a modest response, bearing in mind inflation and the need for government restraint, but I think the allocation will be received well by the municipal representatives who have indicated the very tight markets. I am thinking in particular of the 1,000 increase in unit designation in Vancouver, the increase in the designation in Calgary, and similarly in metropolitan Toronto as well as in Halifax.


THE JUDICIARY
Mr. John McDermid (Brampton-Georgetown):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General. On July 2, 1980, I wrote the minister requesting an extra complement for a judge in the judicial district of Peel. At that time he passed the buck to the Ontario Attorney General who did make a request for that extra complement in September, 1980. When might we expect that extra complement in the judicial district of Peel?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Social Development):: Madam Speaker, very soon.


TIMING OF APPOINTMENT
John Horton McDermid: That is good news, Madam Speaker, but I have heard that for about a year now. Since the senior judge has literally gone on strike at the court and refuses to assign any more cases until another judge is appointed, will the minister give us a specific date so that Judge Shapiro can start assigning cases again? He has quit assigning them out of sheer frustration.
Oral Questions


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, 1 said I will be making an appointment very soon.


COMMUNICATIONS
Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Communications who is currently behind the curtains. I wonder whether he could be encouraged to return to the House. The Minister of Communications recently announced that two senior officials of his department will be leaving the employ of his department to join Norpak Limited which is the sole licensee of the Department of Communications technology for Telidon. Those senior officials were involved in the development of Telidon. Has the minister satisfied himself that those job transfers from DOC to the private sector meet the terms and conditions set down by the Prime Minister in the conflict of interest guidelines in 1978, and in particular the guidelines which were sent to each senior member of the Department of Communications by Bernard Ostry, the former deputy minister, on August 2, 1978?


Hon. Francis Fox (Secretary of State and Minister of Communications):: Madam Speaker, one of the challenges that faced this government with the Telidon project was the taking of this technology which was developed within the government, within the government laboratories, and getting it out into the hands of industry so it can be promoted in a way that only business can accomplish that kind of promotion. One of the side effects, of course, is that a whole new industry was launched in Canada, and a number of people with the Department of Communications, particularly those associated with the development of Telidon, were asked to join some of these new ventures.
As to the specific question raised by the hon. member, there is also a proviso in those guidelines whereby an application can be made to the Public Service Commission for an exemption from the guidelines. We are in the process of requesting that exemption. That exemption can be made when the public interest is better served by the people leaving the government to join the private sector.


DATE OF PUBLIC SERVICE COMMISSION DECISION
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, are the two officials in question still in the employ of the Department of Communications, and when is a decision expected from the PSC?


Francis Fox: I would have to check, Madam Speaker. My understanding is that at least one of those two individuals involved is still with the Department of Communications but

July 7, 1981
Oral Questions
will be leaving in the near future. As for the decision requested from the PSC, we hope to obtain it as soon as possible.


POST OFFICE
Hon. Jake Epp (Provencher):: Madam Speaker, I should like to direct my question to the Postmaster General. In view of the fact that in many of the rural areas of Canada CUPW workers and members of the postmasters' union are keeping our rural post offices open, delivering that mail which has been posted locally, distributing it primarily to individual mail boxes, would the minister, in a positive vein during this time of the strike, now that the government appears to want to allow the strike to continue for some time, allow those people in those rural areas who have kept these post offices open, and providing a service, to take the mail in given regions from one post office to another, allowing distribution locally so that at least within a given region we can continue the mail service there? These are rural areas where we have small businesses, without the electronic transfer of money or telex, and the post office is so essential to the business community.


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and Postmaster General):: Madam Speaker, we are aware of this situation and, indeed, as the hon. member will understand, this situation could create some pressure on union negotiating teams to go back to the table to settle through negotiations. Quite clearly there are a number of individuals who belong to this union who did not vote when the vote took place, who are dedicated to the postal service, and who are indeed very much eager to work and perform.
If every member of the House of Commons understands that the best place to negotiate is at the table and not on the floor of the House of Commons, and if everybody takes this responsible approach the hon. member just took, rather than the one taken previously by some colleagues of the hon. member, this would enhance our chances of a negotiated settlement.


TREATMENT OF EMPLOYEES WHO REMAIN ON DUTY
Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Madam Speaker, I would still appreciate if the Postmaster General would answer the question as to whether he will authorize that inter-post office exchange of mail, because it would obviously help in rural areas. I agree with him that there are many union members, at least in the rural areas, who want to stay on the job, and in fact are doing so. Having said that, would the Postmaster General give us one other assurance, that those members of CUPW who are manning the local rural post offices, if the strike continues for some time, will not be issued unemployment slips and will not be locked out, as in fact happened in previous strikes of this nature?


André Ouellet: The hon. member will understand it is too early at this stage to have an exact reading of the situation. I think we have to monitor the situation, and look at it very carefully. Indeed, in consultation with Treasury Board, the Post Office will take the appropriate steps as the strike evolves and as chances of bringing the parties back to the negotiating table are foreseen. I would rather wait to see how things evolve before giving any specific assurance one way or the other to the hon. member.


STATUS OF RURAL MAIL CARRIERS
Hon. Walter Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Madam Speaker, my supplementary is to the Postmaster General, given his answer that it is too early to make a decision with respect to the matter raised by the hon. member for Provencher. It is unfortunate the government will not legislate the postal workers back to work, but that is a decision ministers have made. However, it has not been too early for the government to make a decision with respect to rural mail carriers. I have heard from several of them that the government has exercised its prerogative to reduce their compensation because of inactivity and, as a result, those people, who are also anxious to work, are being penalized. Would the Postmaster General investigate that situation to see whether that order, which incidentally was delivered by courier, to one I spoke to, could be rescinded so these faithful employees do not have to bear that burden?


André Ouellet: Yes, at the request of the hon. member I will investigate this. His representations clearly indicate the difficulty we are in; there is pressure on everybody. When the hon. member indicates it is regrettable we have not decided to legislate, I think he is wrong in saying that, because clearly at one point union leaders will have to realize they also have to suffer the pressure of calling the strike. If they could always run for cover, thinking that Parliament will immediately act and pass legislation, I think that would be a very bad process. The hon. member should appreciate that it is important that everybody suffer the pressure for a little while, including the union leaders who called for a strike.


Walter David Baker: The question of the public interest is always involved in matters of public service strikes. It is not the right to strike; it is a question of the public interest.


DELIVERY OF INCOME TAX REBATE CHEQUES
Walter David Baker: My supplementary is to the Minister of National Revenue. He indicated on Friday a plan was in place to deliver some 600,000 or 700,000 income tax refunds, and there had been some complaint about the system previously in place. Could the minister enlighten us
July 7, 1981

as to whether or not a scheme has been arranged, or rearranged, in order that all those Canadians, not just the hardship cases, can get the money owed to them by the Government of Canada?


Hon. William Rompkey (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, we are presently making arrangements to transfer refund cheques from the offices of my colleague, the Minister of Supply and Services, to our 28 district offices across the country. This process will take several days, but they will be sorted and made available to people in those district offices. I am further consulting with my colleague to see if indeed we can go even further than that.
I should say that some of the cheques are indeed in the Post Office now and it will be impossible to get them back. As the cheques are sorted by computer on an ad hoc basis and not a regular basis like other transfer payments, it is not going to be as simple to effect the distribution. I would also say we have to be careful here because of the way these cheques come out of the computer, and also because of the amounts involved. We have to bear in mind not only making the money available to people but indeed making sure that the right money gets to the right person. We are putting a system in place, Madam Speaker, which I hope will be effective.


MARKETING OF BABY FOOD BY DUMEX COMPANY
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Health and Welfare. The Canadian government took a very commendable stand at the WHO conference when it supported the international code of marketing of breast milk substitutes. However, it has been reported by International Baby Food Action Network that Dumex, a company controlled by the CDC, is in repeated violation of the code in Asia and Africa. These violations, including posters advertising Dumex products, the distribution of samples, and milk nurses, continue to this day.
In view of the harm done by inappropriate use of breast milk substitutes which the government has recognized by its stand at the international conference, will the minister, along with the government appointed members of the CDC board, approach the chief executive officers of the CDC and Dumex and ask them to make sure Dumex is conducting its activities so that they conform to the code of conduct which the government supports?


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, neither at the officials' level nor at my own level in the ministerial office have I received any complaint against any specific Canadian companies on that topic. However, I have requested my officials to look into the matter of Dumex and report back to me as soon as possible. I will then consider the appropriate action.
Oral Questions


QUERY RESPECTING FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL ACTION
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, Canada has a responsibility and an opportunity to follow up on its support of the code of conduct by moving in Canada to eliminate inappropriate use of breast milk substitutes and the promotion used by the formula companies to increase this use.
Is the minister working with the provinces to negotiate a joint plan of action to stop infant formula promotion, particularly in the hospitals, and would she be willing to enlist Canada as one of the countries in which adoption of the code is monitored by WHO, as requested by INFACT Canada and other groups interested in promoting breast feeding?


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, the answer to the first part of the question is yes, we have started working with the provinces. I am very happy to say that the province of Quebec has now stopped distribution of free packs of infant formula by way of promotion in any hospital of that province. In addition, federal hospitals do not permit this practice. I count on the other provinces to join the group, and I am sure the hon. member will help me to obtain Saskatchewan's approval as soon as possible, as well as Manitoba and a few other provinces where he could be very useful in making sure these packs are not distributed.
As to the plan for monitoring compliance with the WHO code, that plan will be presented to the executive of WHO in January, at which time we will study it to see how it can apply to Canada.


IMMIGRATION
Hon. Bud Cullen (Sarnia-Lambton):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Media reports this morning indicate the province of Manitoba and the federal government were working on an agreement to permit disabled persons to enter Canada who otherwise might not qualify under health requirements. If this is in fact taking place, it is commendable. Is the minister taking any initiative to encourage other provinces to take similar action?


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, with respect to the proposed acceptance of disabled refugees, last October I wrote to the minister in Manitoba and we have drafted an understanding or agreement on that matter. We have now submitted that draft to other provincial governments and we hope they will follow the lead of Manitoba and join us in this co-operative venture.

July 7, 1981
Oral Questions POST OFFICE


GOVERNMENT POSITION ON POSTAL STRIKE
Otto John Jelinek: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Prime Minister. As he knows, the Liberal government under his leadership legislated striking postal employees back to work in 1975, and again in 1978 after a one day illegal walk out. In view of the fact the present strike is now into its second week at a time when our economy is already being devastated by high interest rates, inflation and so on, can the Prime Minister explain the inconsistency between his government's past actions and its present stubborn position of refusing to legislate CUPW back to work?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Surely, Madam Speaker, I do not have to explain what the hon. member calls inconsistency. He must know that when the right to strike exists there is no determination that one or the other party must cave in on a certain day.


Otto John Jelinek: Madam Speaker, I do not have to say that the Prime Minister did not answer my question at all.


SUSPENSION OF RIGHT TO STRIKE
Otto John Jelinek: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is a different one but on the same subject. Earlier in question period the Prime Minister said that one of the reasons he will not legislate the posties back to work was because he has not heard anyone suggesting that the right to strike in essential services should be suspended. That does not really make sense from one to the other, but that is what the Prime Minister said.
I have before me a questionnaire which indicates that 83 per cent of my constituents want us to suspend the right to strike in the essential service sector of the economy, and by all indications so do the majority of Canadians. Why does the Prime Minister and his government consistently refuse to act in accordance with the wishes of the majority of Canadians on this matter, and others in the past as well?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the hon. member misquotes me. I did not say no one wanted to take away the right to strike. I said that it was not, to my knowledge, the position of the Progressive Conservative party.


An hon. Member:: It is.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If it is, they would be listening to the 83 per cent of the constituents of the hon. member.


Otto John Jelinek: You are the government; you are the government.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Thank you very much.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

[Stage Direction]
TABLING OF TASK FORCE REPORTS ON LABOUR MARKET DEVELOPMENT AND UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE IN THE 1980s
['Agreed.']
Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, under the provisions of Standing Order 41(2), I have the honour to table in both official languages the report of the Task Force on Labour Market Development in the 1980s and the Task Force on Unemployment Insurance in the 1980s, as well as copies of the relevant public affairs material.



Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, I have the honour today to present a petition on behalf of a number of residents of my riding of Etobicoke Centre. It arises out of the concern they feel respecting the effects of the postal strike and the anticipated duration of the strike as a result of statements made by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and others in the government. In effect, the petition calls upon the government to seek a resolution of the strike immediately because they believe the country cannot survive another period of postal disruption.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. D. M. Collenette (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today; Nos. 1,328, 2,481, 2,488, 2,504, 2,566, 2,607, 2,609, 2,615 and 2,617.


Mr. MacKay: 1.	For the fiscal year (a) 1976-77 (b) 1977-78 (c) 1978-79 (d) 1979-80, under the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and its regulations, how many members of the RCMP have been required, as part of a disciplinary action, to appear before internal service courts without the aid of legal counsel?
2.	(a) For the same years, how many members of the Force were convicted of an offence by the service courts using Sections 36 to 38 of the Act and how many convictions fell in each of the various categories of punishment (b) did any of the trial officers act without benefit of legal training and, if so, how many?
3.	For the same years, how many appeals were forwarded by the commissioner to the board of review as established under Section 43 of the act?
4.	How many appeals were forwarded to the commissioner for the attention of the officer in charge of discipline pursuant to administrative bulletin 290 of May 23, 1975, entitled "Grievances and Appeals" or its successor?

July 7, 1981

5.	With reference to regulation No. 33 respecting the organization, discipline and administration of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, established under the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act, does the regulation deny members of the force legal counsel and, if so, is consideration being given to its revision?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General):: 1. The following figures represent the number of members required to appear before internal service courts during fiscal years 1976-77 to and including fiscal year 1979-80. Regulation 33 and force policy prohibited representation by professional counsel:
(a)	1976-77	31(b)	1977-78	20(c)	1978-79	15(d)	1979-80	52.	(a) Of the 71 service courts convened, 39 were for minor service offences (RCMP Act, Sec. 26) and 31 convictions were registered as follows:1976-	77 7 members were fined (Act, S. 36(2)(b))
3 members were reprimanded (Act, S. 36(2)(e))
3 members received a fine and a reprimand (Act, S. 36(2)(b) and (e))
1 member was fined and recommended for discharge (Act, S. 36(2)(b) and S. 38))
1977-	78 5 members were fined (Act, S. 36(2)(b))
1	member was reprimanded (Act, S. 36(2)(e))
1978-	79 5 members were fined (Act, S. 36(2)(b))
2	members were reprimanded (Act, S. 36(2)(e))
1	member received a fine and a reprimand (Act, S. 36(2)(b) and (e))
1979-	80 1 member was fined (Act, S. 36(2)(b))
2	members were reprimanded (Act, S. 36(2)(e))
The remaining 32 service courts were for major service offences (RCMP Act, Sec. 25) and 29 convictions were registered. Following are the punishments imposed during fiscal years 1976-77 to and including 1979-80:
1976-	77 7 members were fined (Act, S. 36(1 )(b))
1 member was reprimanded (Act, S. 36(1 )(f))
1 member was fined and demoted (Act, S. 36(1 )(b) and (d))
1	member was demoted (Act, S. 36(1 )(d))
2	members were fined and recommended for discharge (Act, S. 36(1 )(b) and S. 38))
1977-	78 6 members were fined (Act, S. 36(1 )(b))
1 member was reprimanded (Act, S. 36(1 )(f))
1 member was fined and reprimanded (Act, S. 36(l)(b) and (f))
Order Paper Questions
1 member was fined and required to pay restitution (Act, S. 36(1 )(b) and Act, S. 37))
1 member was demoted and recommended for discharge (Act, S. 36(1 )(d) and S. 38))
1 member was demoted and required to pay restitution (Act, S. 36(1 )(d) and Act, S. 37))
1978-	79 1 member was reprimanded (Act, S. 36(1 )(f))
1 member was fined and required to pay restitution (Act, S. 36(1 )(b) and Act, S. 37))
1 member was recommended for discharge (Act, S. 38)
1 member was required to pay restitution (Act, S. 37)
1979-	80 1 member was fined (Act, S. 36(1 )(b))
1 member was reprimanded (Act, S. 36(1 )(f))
(b) Of the 54 trial officers involved in the 71 service courts convened, 53 acted without the benefit of formal legal training.
3.	During fiscal years 1976-77 to and including 1979-80, five (5) appeals were forwarded by the commissioner to the board of review as established under section 43 of the act.
4.	The following figures represent the number of appeals of cautionings and warnings forwarded to headquarters of the force for determination by the deputy commissioner (Administration) or the commissioner pursuant to administrative bulle- * tin 290 of 75-05-23. No figures are available for 1976-77.
Cautionings	1977/78 6	Warnings	16Cautionings	1978/79 4	Warnings	12Cautionings	1979/80 3	Warnings	215.	RCMP regulation 33 and force policy currently prohibits representation by professional counsel. Forthcoming amendments to the RCMP Act will provide statutorily, the right to representation by counsel.


Mr. Greenaway: 1.	In each fiscal year 1978 to 1981, how many loans were made by the Export Development Corporation to foreign countries?
2.	For the same period, by year, which countries received loans and (a) for what purpose (b) in what amount (c) at what rate of interest?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of State (Trade)):: In so far as
the Export Development Corporation is concerned: 1. Export Development Corporation does not make loans to foreign countries as such but it lends to borrowers abroad to finance sales of goods and services sold by Canadian exporters. In the

July 7, 1981
Order Paper Questions
years in question the numbers of loans and allocations under lines of credit to provide financing for such sales are as follows:
Year	No. of Loans
1978	27
1979	53
1980	94
2. (a) and (b) During the years in question for the loans made, purpose thereof and amounts, please refer to the corporation's annual report tabled in the House of Commons for 1978 on October 16, 1979; for 1979, on April 17, 1980; and for 1980, on March 26, 1981.
(c)	As to the rates of interest charged on such loans, in view of the intense competition that prevails among countries in foreign trade, it is not in the public interest for the Export Development Corporation to discuss its participation in export transactions or proposed export transactions. Such information would assist an exporter's competitors both foreign and domestic. Since information on bids, participation or negotiations is given by companies to EDC in confidence, the corporation, to respect that confidence, refrains, until the sale arrangements are final, from discussing a deal or even from indicating that it has been approached in a transaction. EDC makes public its participation in direct lending transaction when the financing agreement therefor is signed, and, on request, in credits and foreign investment insurance cases where the exporter or investor consents to publication. If the exporter or investor has not given its consent the reply will so state. When EDC makes public its participation in direct lending transactions it does not, because of the intense competition above mentioned, publish the rates of interest it charges, for the reasons mentioned.


Mr. Crosby;: 1.	On what date was the storage shed in the port facility at Gros Cacouna, Quebec completed and operational?
2.	How many tons of cargo were handled at the facility (a) through the shed (b) over the adjacent open area in each year since the shed was operational and what was the tonnage for each commodity included in the cargo?
3.	How many cargo ships docked at the facility during each year it was operational and what was the dead weight tonnage of the larger ships docked?
4.	Does the government receive revenue from assessments of cargo handled at the facility and, if so, in what amount for each year?
5.	What was the cost of constructing the (a) storage shed (b) quay wall related to the storage shed?
6.	What is the estimated amount of revenue that must be generated annually to recover the capital and operating costs associated with the facility?
7.	Will the facility be placed on a cost recovery basis and, if not, how will the capital and operating costs be recovered?
8.	What amount was spent on access roads connecting the facility to the main public highway and will the cost of the roads be recovered through charges to the users of the facility?


Mr. Robert Bockstael (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: 1. The storage shed was completed on January 28, 1981. Transport Canada assumed operational responsibility from Public Works Canada on March 30, 1981.
2. (a) 4,540 tonnes of paper products since March 30, 1981.
(b) 21,988 cu.m, of wood products since March 30, 1981.
3.	Seven vessels since March 30, 1981. Tonnage of largest vessel: 15,000 T.
4.	Charges are assessed in accordance with regulations under the Government Harbours and Piers Act and the Canada Shipping Act. Revenues since March 30, 1981, total $14,855.59.
5.	(a) $1,176,082.
(b) $6,639,597.
6.	Full cost recovery over the useful life of the asset at a discount rate of 15 per cent would necessitate an annual revenue of about $187,900 for the shed (20-year life) and $999,600 for the wharf (40-year life).
7.	Those project costs which can be ascribed as being for transportation purposes will be recovered.
8.	The access road was built in 1965-66 at a cost of $461,141.00. User charges will contribute to recovery of the cost of the road.


Mr. Cossitt: Does a representative of the Department of National Health and Welfare visit Brockville in the constituency of Leeds-Grenville approximately once a week to deal directly with persons who have old age pension problems and, if so (a) what is his/her name and what is a complete record of his/her career in the Public Service (b) is the government satisfied with the service being rendered to the public by the representative (c) does the government consider the representative is demonstrating sufficient compassion and concern to people with problems (d) did the representative receive training in public relations?


Mr. Doug Frith (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Health and Welfare):: (a)	Mr. Kenneth Ziebell, a field officer of the Kingston district office of income security programs, National Health and Welfare, is in charge of the Brockville local office located at 35 Church Street, Room B-17. This office is open each Monday and Wednesday from 9:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Mr. Ziebell has been a field officer with the Department of National Health and Welfare since September, 1967.
(b)	Mr. Ziebell's performance has always been and continues to be fully satisfactory.
(c)	Mr. Ziebell has always demonstrated concern and compassion in his dealings with the income security programs clientele and the general public.
July 7, 1981

(d)	The officer concerned had special training in interviewing and counselling and has had extensive experience in public speaking both in the public and private sectors.


Mr. Crosby: Did the Minister of National Defence authorize a raid by officers or men of the Canadian Armed Forces on the offices of the Public Service Alliance of Canada in Halifax on or about May 13, 1981, and, if so, what was the purpose of the raid and under what authority or direction was it conducted?


Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: No. On May 13, 1981, the military police under the authority of the base commander CFB Halifax conducted a search of a DND filing cabinet, on DND premises, a drawer of which was used to file Union of National Defence Employees' (UNDE) material. This search was conducted following allegations that Mr. Ryan, president of local 407 of UNDE, was improperly using information which he had obtained in the course of his duties as a clerk in central registry. The military police seized 46 documents which had been originated by management. Further investigation has resulted in Mr. Ryan being accused of improperly acquiring, and using a total of 26 management originated documents, three of which were classified as confidential.


Mr. Lawrence: Is there a 44 per cent increase in the Privy Council estimates for professional and consulting services for next year as compared to the estimates for this year and, if so, what is the explanation for the increase?


David Michael Collenette: The following explanation applies to the 1981-82 (current) estimates to which it is assumed the question refers since the estimates for "next year" (1982-83) have not yet been tabled: Main estimates as tabled in the House of Commons for 1980-81 provided for a total of $2,169,000 for professional and consulting services. Main estimates for 1981-82 provided for an amount of $2,683,000 in this expenditure object or an increase of 23 per cent. Approximately half of this increase, an amount of $231,000, is attributable to price increases required to maintain the same level of services in the current year from the previous year. The remainder represents increased funding to cover new requirements for internal audit and management consultant services, a new classification plan for governor in council appointees and miscellaneous studies related to the work of the Privy Council Office and Federal-Provincial Relations Office.
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Lawrence: What is the number and what are the names of the employees of the Privy Council Office whose functions include security and intelligence matters?


David Michael Collenette: There are 24 employees of the Privy Council Office whose functions include at least in part security and intelligence matters. By name they are:
Officers
Mr. P. M. Pitfield, Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet
Mr. G. S. Smith, Associate Secretary to the Cabinet
Mr. T. D. Finn, Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet-Security and Intelligence
Mr. G. H. Craven
Mr. G. F. Frazer
Mr. J. T. Gannon
Mr. J. R. Godfrey
Major W. J. Hackett (secondment from DND)
Mr. Arthur Katona (secondment from EA)
Major P. A. Lemieux
Col. J. C. Upton (secondment from DND)
Mr. Peter C. Cameron Mr. Alisdair MacLaren Mr. John Graham
Insp. Ernie Boyd (secondment from RCMP)
All secondments are charged against the PCO budget and person-year allocation.
Support
Louise Lascelles-Bigras Lesley Hilyer Therese M. W. Hobart Muriel Kauffeldt Diana Larkin Constance Merle McCann Lillian Mulligan-Roy Linda Farevaag Michel Leroux

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2


Mr. Stewart: Did the Department of Employment and Immigration award a $34,000 contract to Contemporary Research Centre, Ottawa, and, if so (a) what are the names of the principals of the centre (b) what services were provided?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: awarded a contract to Contemporary Research Centre, on behalf of the Department of Employment and Immigration, for an amount of $34,000.
(a)	Mr. E. Lacy, president.
Mrs. S. Mahta, manager, Ottawa branch.
(b)	The services provided were for a post evaluation of an advertising program conducted in support of a program entitled "Non-Traditional Job Training for Women".


Mr. Stewart: Did the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources contract with McConnell Advertising Co. Ltd. for $295,625 for advertising services and, if so, what services were performed?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: awarded a contract, on behalf of the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources, to McConnell Advertising Co. Ltd. for the amount of $295,625. The contract was for the provision of creative advertising services in support of the Canadian Home Insulation and the Canadian Oil Substitution programs.


David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, I ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed, from Monday, July 6, consideration of the motion of Mr. Axworthy that Bill C-67, to amend the Adult Occupational Training Act (No. 2), be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration.
Jack Wendele Shields: Madam Speaker, once again I should like to reiterate what I was saying last night when the
House adjourned. I think the minister and his departmental officials are to be complimented for bringing forward Bill C-67.
As I said last night, under the present legislation there is little incentive for an individual to enter an apprenticeship or training program in the adult area because, as things presently stand, people who are unemployed can go on unemployment insurance and remain on it and they have absolutely no incentive to go for retraining or training.
I have a couple of suggestions for the minister regarding the legislation. Hopefully he will be able to incorporate them in the legislation. It provides an extra $25 per week above the unemployment insurance figure which an individual would draw if he goes into adult occupational training. I find this provision to be particularly good because some incentive is offered to an individual to go into training.
One area amended by the bill which I feel is good but does not go quite far enough is that extra benefits will be given to those people entering employment training in certain skilled areas or trades. Currently these are targeted at tool and die makers, welders and boilermakers, these very specialized areas designated by the governor in council. Somehow a mechanism must be put in place in the various regions of our large country for an advisory committee appointed by the Department of Manpower and Immigration to evaluate at a very local level the kinds of occupational training which are essential for an area.
Nowhere do we see in the legislation as a skilled area the requirements of the hotel service industry or the food service industry. Yet these industries in certain localities within our great country are hard-pressed to find trained employees. Employees working in the hotel and food service industries need intense training, perhaps not for as lengthy a period but certainly as intense as the training of a tool and die maker.
The legislation itself is narrowing down too quickly and zeroing in on only those areas where in the past shortages have occurred to such an extent that employers have gone to the Department of Employment and Immigration and requested permission to seek workers elsewhere in other countries and bring them in as landed immigrants.
I am particularly pleased that the legislation will lift the one-year ceiling on government assistance to trainees. We all know that many programs go beyond one year; some last two years and some even three. Also I am pleased that the legislation will abolish the requirement that trainees must be out of school for at least a year. The current legislation is very discriminatory. It really causes a great deal of hardship for young people who are not functioning academically in the school system and want to enter training programs. The only training programs being offered are those supported by manpower assistance. Manpower arranges the training place in junior colleges and technical schools. These young people have actually been denied admittance into the schools. This is being addressed in the legislation; again the minister should be complimented. Previously if a course was not offered in Canada and students had to go outside the country for train-
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ing, the government offered no support. Now it has recognized this need and included it in the bill.
The government is primarily amending this piece of legislation so that the department of manpower will be able to sign contracts. They then propose to sign training contracts, but they aim primarily at unions with the thinking, of course, being that unions are in a position to know their manpower requirements. If unions do the training, then those unions in the specialized trades in particular will be more prone to accept a trainee into its ranks and, therefore, offer employment.
One area which I think is not being addressed clearly enough is the employment of native people. If one goes to certain bands, particularly the ones I am familiar with in northeastern Alberta, one will find that the need and requirements of the band may be something very nebulous. An official sitting in Ottawa might not consider that training programs are needed. I direct the attention of the House to basic life skills training programs. Many of the enlightened bands in northeastern Alberta have attempted to train their men and women in basic life skills.
These programs cover a myriad of topics which we in urban society take for granted and expect everyone to understand. I am talking about banking, immunization programs, public health programs for children which we take for granted, and basic housekeeping. After years of living in shacks without running water admittance is suddenly gained to more modern housing. It takes skills to go into these homes and run them in a way which we all take for granted since we were raised in those kinds of homes. I am afraid the minister is missing something here by not putting into place legislation to sign contracts with the unions for training programs and contracts with various bands throughout the country on the basis of a suitable training program to develop the skills necessary to survive in our Canadian communities. I would like to see the minister add a clause to this legislation which would clearly indicate the intention of this government, through the Department of Manpower, to address this very serious problem.
Another aspect of the legislation which is before us that I thought was particularly good is that dealing with the negotiation of fixed rate training allowances with employers. There was no such provision in the old legislation. In other words, you can negotiate fixed rate training allowances with employers.
Although the legislation is long overdue, and although it is good, I must point out to the minister the sense of futility which is felt not only by the people in the Department of Manpower but by members on this side of the House in respect to there being no forecasting facility to pinpoint areas which need employment incentives in skilled labour training.
I would like to expand on this point. Legislation is brought in to deal with the retraining and training of people for employment opportunities which are developing in the country. Later on another minister will introduce legislation, for exam-
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 pie the National Energy Program, which will destroy an industry to the point where the people who hold skilled jobs move to another country. I am talking about the drilling industry. It takes two to three years to train good drillers, good floor men and good derrick men in the drilling industry. But what will happen when the government finally comes to its senses and enters into an energy agreement with the producing provinces? All the skilled labour will have left the industry, along with the rigs. Each rig employs 20 to 30 people and each is like a small factory.
I would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that one megaproject in northeastern Alberta, and I am referring to the Alsands plant in Fort McMurray and the Cold Lake plant, causes a secondary spin-off into the Ontario economy which will affect training programs geared for Ontario. Can you see the inconsistencies, Mr. Speaker? On the one hand is a minister who brings forward what I consider to be long overdue and good legislation, while on the other we have a minister who brings in legislation which counteracts the first.
One $10 billion plant in northeastern Alberta will create $800 million in business for Ontario's iron and steel industry. What will happen when the iron and steel industry slows down, as it is doing today? Trained employees will be lost. When the plant starts up again it will have to fill the positions which have been vacated in order to meet the capacity and requirements of the megaprojects. Training will have to be targeted in these areas. This cannot be done in a vacuum, nor can it be done under the present legislation without there being a coordination of legislation.
Bill C-67 does not complement what is happening as a result of the National Energy Program. That same $10 billion plant will create $370 million in business opportunities for Ontario's metal working industry. As a matter of fact, one should double these figures since there are two plants which have investors waiting to spend money to the tune of $20 billion to $22 billion. It has been forecast that there will be five or six plants like these developing in northeastern Alberta.
That same plant will create $325 million for the Ontario transportation industry. Today the transportation industry is sagging. It is losing its trained employees who are moving to other parts of Canada where they feel they can find a job. Some of these people are taking retraining. Imagine trained men in the industries in Ontario and Quebec leaving their jobs and taking retraining because the market has sagged. Legislation is now brought forward which would enable these men to be retrained for another job.
Once an energy agreement is reached with the producing provinces, the activity in central Canada will increase and then we must retrain other people to fill the jobs which have been vacated. This concept staggers the imagination. There is no apparent co-ordination between government departments, at least co-ordinating the legislation, so that we are not duplicating or wasting our resources, which in the main is our manpower.

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One plant creates $740 million for other manufacturers and processors in Ontario. That is a secondary spin-off. It creates $370 million for Ontario financial enterprises and $750 million for the Ontario trade and service sector. Those are the kinds of matters we have to address. It is just too bad that there is no co-ordination. This means $1.8 billion in extra Ontario household income which, in turn, generates again.
As I said, the legislation before us is good. I am sorry it does not go further. I am sorry that the government does not seem to be co-ordinating and trying to bind together the legislation so that there is a complete understanding. I do not know what ministers do at these cabinet meetings, if they do not talk about the legislation they are bringing forward. This is good legislation. It is legislation which is long overdue. However, it is being completely undermined by legislation which we are receiving from the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde).
It would appear to me that an industrial strategy for Canada must be put in place once and for all, and very quickly. We have been hearing about this industrial strategy for a long time. But how can one department, manpower and immigration, operate in isolation when we do not have an industrial strategy? There is coal development; there is oil development; there are resource developments; there are manufacturing developments. All these developments will take place, not because of the present government, but in spite of the present government. It has to happen. But there must be some co-ordination or we destroy the effects of Bill C-67.
We are setting up manpower and immigration as a reactionary department. In other words, it will react to the alarm bell. The department will react like firemen. There will be a sudden employment crisis or lack of skills in one area, and the department will rush to try to overcome this. Then another one will pop up and it will rush to try and assist in that area. But what it needs is a common industrial strategy so that it can focus all the way through.
I would like to suggest to the minister one way this can happen. If he cannot get co-operative legislation from other parts of the House, what he should be doing is setting up very distinct regional advisory groups, small ones, two, three, or four in each province, which will come together with their recommendations to the minister at least every four months. Since the minister is not getting co-operation now, there is no reason to think that he is going to get it in legislation from other departments. Therefore, he must try and do it himself. The only way he can do this is to try to get forecasts from individuals living in various areas, because they know what is happening and what will be required. That is my major concern, and it is one suggestion I would like to make.
There is a lack of co-ordination in legislation, on the whole. This is a good piece of legislation. I would like to see it passed. I would personally like to see third reading given practically immediately so that the minister and his department can get out there and address the needs which are there. I remember I did suggest that he could amend a few areas, particularly as
they relate to native communities. He should address the energy sector because there is the potential for a real emergency situation coming, because skilled employees are moving south of the border with their rigs. At last count, there were 185. Another 150 rigs will have moved by fall. Skilled workers are going with them, which means we are not going to entice them back. When an energy agreement is reached, they are not coming back because they have signed contracts, some for two years and some for three years.
We will have to retrain in that energy sector again in the western basin, covering the prairie provinces and Alberta. We will have to retrain, so the minister should be targeting in on that. There is a real potential for jobs there; but as I said before, they are being discouraged by the National Energy Program. However, the national energy policy will be changed, I am confident.
Those are the remarks I have. I do hope that I have been able to contribute in a very positive way to this debate. I know the minister is not in the House. I do know, however, that the minister will have his assistant, and so on, reading the remarks which are made when he is not here. I hope that that assistant will take my remarks and put them in front of the minister, because I think they are positive suggestions, and I feel very strongly about them.
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Mr. Speaker, this bill deals with one of the most important questions this country will have to deal with in the eighties, and that is: How do we ensure that our Canadian population, all Canadians, will be trained to do the many complex jobs that will be opening during the eighties and the nineties as a result of the new technologies of energy developments and so on?
As hon. members know, during the past year I had the pleasure and the honour of chairing the parliamentary Task Force on Employment Opportunities for the '80s which heard hundreds of Canadians on that subject. We heard people from all parts of the country, from Victoria to Newfoundland, and from Windsor to the Northwest Territories. I must say that, in general, the recommendations of those many witnesses have been taken up, to a certain extent, in this bill. This bill does go in the direction that Canadians want to go, but it does not go far enough and it does not cover a wide enough area of reform.
In his remarks last night, the minister said that the goals of this bill, first of all, were to simplify the administration for occupational training in this country by removing much of the paperwork, the red tape and so on. That is an excellent goal and I think would have great support in the country.
The second goal is to make the adult education training programs more flexible. That was a theme we heard over and over again. Very many individuals and groups appearing before our task force complained bitterly about rigidity and inflexibility in the adult education training programs and the manpower retraining programs. That criticism came most often from those parts of the country where unemployment was highest, from the Atlantic region, the Gaspe, the more
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remote parts of Quebec, northern Ontario and the northern parts of the prairie provinces. They said that many of these programs for retraining and upgrading were probably based on data which came out of the great population areas of the country, such as the Golden Horseshoe around Toronto, the lower mainland of British Columbia and the Greater Montreal area.
1 think that is true to a great extent. Our economic analysts who sit here in Ottawa and carry on their research, for the most part carry out what is called macroeconomic analysis. That macroeconomic analysis deals with the total population figure and national trends, and ends up with solutions which might deal with those national trends; but they do not help very much in many of the slow growth areas of the country. In these slow growth areas of the country the people ask for more flexibility so that the retraining and upgrading programs of the government will suit their needs, be it in northeastern New Brunswick, Cape Breton, the west coast of Newfoundland or northern Manitoba. If the bill achieves that, Mr. Speaker, it will certainly be a step forward.
The minister also said that one of the main objectives of the bill was to deal with the effects of industrial dislocation; that is, where large industries are put out of business or are forced to reduce their manpower needs due to world conditions, such as is the case at present in the automobile industry in southeastern Ontario. When that happens there is a great need to retrain workers who are laid off for new jobs opening up in communities near them or in other parts of the country where great developments are taking place.
I applaud the three goals of the bill, Mr. Speaker. With respect to the specific provisions, the minister said that one of the greatest needs in this country is for more on-the-job training. At the committee hearings we found that less than 20 per cent of Canadian manufacturing industries provided on-the-job training. That is a deplorable figure compared with France, West Germany, Holland and other countries of western Europe where 80 per cent to 85 per cent of manufacturing companies provide on-the-job training. Industries and employers there look upon on-the-job training as an investment in the future, while many Canadian companies look upon it as a cost, not an investment. Consequently, we have a very poor record.
One reason that we have such a poor record is that immigrants were easily available to Canadian companies over the last half century. Whenever trained tool and die makers, welders or machinists were needed, it was easy to take a recruiting team to Europe and pick them up in England, Holland, Germany, Belgium or wherever, rather than spend the money to train native Canadians who, by the way, have remained unemployed because they did not have that chance to be trained. Whether the "carrot" measures, as I will call them, contained in this bill and in present government programs are sufficient to get Canadian companies to provide more training, I do not know. Perhaps we will need "sticks" in
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 addition to the carrots, and our task force will make some recommendations in that respect.
It was agreed by employers and employees, students and educators that the best type of training they had seen in this country was what we call co-operative education based on the University of Sherbrooke or the University of Waterloo model. This is where the student spends approximately four months in the educational institute and then four months on the job. He alternates back and forth throughout the entire educational process and then when he has obtained his degree or certificate or diploma, he has logged a lot of hours of practical training to go with the academic training. An employer is usually willing to hire him right away. He is not faced with the common answer, "I am sorry, I would like to hire you but you have no experience and I need someone with experience". The co-operative educational model of institutional training combined with on-the-job training will deal with that problem.
There are certain measures in the bill which are laudable and which members of the committee support, although we think the minister could go further. It is, of course, necessary to provide training programs beyond the 52 weeks. Time and again witnesses told our task force that it is impossible to train people for certain skill trades in 52 weeks. The ordinary apprenticeship program in this country is for four years. I think that is too long and in Europe it is two to three years. It is unreasonable to expect to train a man to become skilled in 52 weeks and the measure to extend training beyond 52 weeks is long overdue.
Second, under the present federal legislation a young person had to wait for one year after getting out of high school before he could be financed for an industrial training program. That restriction was harmful to many young people. Many got into trouble or went off and did something else because they had to wait one year, and never returned for skills training. This amendment, which will allow them to go into industrial training even though they have not been out of school for one year, is a good amendment.
Finally, the amendment that will provide for training contracts with other than provincial governments and employers is also good. Provincial governments, through their educational systems and employers, are not the only bodies, that have good training programs. Unions have good training programs and there are non-profit voluntary groups with good training programs. Private schools also have good training programs. We found that some of the best secretarial schools in the country are private schools and some of the best schools for electronic and computer education are private schools. The amendment will allow the minister to conclude training contracts with the unions, with non-profit voluntary groups and with the private schools, associations and groups that provide industrial training or want to provide it.
The other important amendment provides for increased payments for companies that provide the training. Existing industrial training allowances are much too low and give no encouragement to people to come off unemployment insurance or welfare and seek training. If we want a skilled labour force,

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we must finance people through their training period. 1 do not think the measure goes far enough but it is certainly an improvement.
I have said that what is in the bill is laudable, but if we are to deal with this massive problem of skilled-trade shortages in the country and the mismatch in the Canadian economy where high levels of unemployment exist side by side with serious shortages in skilled trades, then much more will have to be done.
When the minister appeared before the committee I asked him whether the bill was the last word and he said that it was not. He said he felt he had to get it through this month or before the summer recess in order to be able to deal with some immediate problems, but that he certainly intended to bring in much wider-ranging amendments to the Adult Occupational Training Act next fall or winter after he had received the report of the task force or the report of the Dodge committee which he tabled in the House today.
I want to mention a few of the other things that have to be dealt with if we are to cope with unemployment and skill shortages in this country. We need a better defined industrial strategy. Representatives for many companies told us that they would be glad to provide more money for on-the-job or industrial training if they knew what the government's approach to their industry was going to be. Spokesmen for the shipbuilding industry told us that if they knew the government's long-range plan for their industry, they would invest much more money in training young people. The same was said by people in the mining industry and other industries. They told us that they had to know the government's industrial strategy before they would invest in very expensive training programs. I urge the government to come forward with a comprehensive industrial strategy program so that we can get on with the training that is needed in this country.
Anyone who is going to build a new factory or establish a new industry cannot expect the skilled labour to appear immediately. It takes from four to seven years to train a skilled workman or skilled professional. It takes at least seven years to train an engineer and for a highly qualified welder, tool and die maker or machinist it takes four years. If we want something to be done for Canadian industry within four years, we should start providing the training today. An industrial strategy is very important.
Another thing that is extremely important and which is not dealt with in the bill is the high rate of functional illiteracy in this country. At the hearings we found out that almost 30 per cent of Canadians are functionally illiterate. That means that they are not even ready or qualified to take the training and upgrading programs provided by the government. Before they would be ready to take those programs, they would have to be trained in basic reading, writing and arithmetic. They have to learn how to read plans, how to communicate, and how to compute before they would be able to take these programs. How can you train a man to be an electrician if he does not have these basic literacy skills? I think it is shocking for a country like Canada to have almost 30 per cent of the population functionally illiterate. People who are functionally illiterate are traditionally the ones who are unemployed. This status unfortunately follows generation after generation. However, we will be dealing with that point in our report.
Even if a lot of money were put into training, if training facilities were expanded and companies were willing to do much more on-the-job training, people will not take that training if the support systems are not there for them. While people are being trained they need at least a living allowance to support themselves and their families. If their homes are at a distance from the training facility, people need the transportation costs to get to the facility. If parents of children are in training, they need a place to leave their children during the day. All of these things cost money. Too many Canadians, and perhaps some government officials, look on those expenditures as transfer payments of one kind or another. But they are not transfer payments; they are really an investment in the future of this country. If we do not get these chronically unemployed and functionally illiterate people trained, the whole industrial output of Canada will be affected.
We heard from many companies that they were unable to expand-this is especially true in the west-and had to turn down orders from abroad because the skilled labour force was not available in the areas where they were set up. If we want to get these people permanently off the welfare and unemployment rolls, we have to be willing to put money into the support systems and into the training necessary for them to become productive Canadians.
There is also the problem of the mobility program, which is not dealt with in the bill but must be dealt with. There is the whole problem of flexible work schedules, part-time work, shared work and flexible retirement.
Finally, if we fill those skilled labour shortages, we have to make sure that the many special groups such as women's groups, native groups and the handicapped have a chance to be trained to do any kind of job in this country, whether it is skilled blue-collar work or professional work. Not only does justice demand it, but economic necessity will require it. If we do not train these women, the native and the handicapped for those jobs, we will not have enough trained people to do what this country demands.
Before closing I want to mention that all of these things could be done better. We need a better forecasting and planning system. We need better federal-provincial co-operation, which I do not think we have now. It is not altogether bad, but it needs great improvement.
I mentioned at the beginning that we are entering the 1980s and 1990s which will be a period of technological change even more rapid than the technological changes we saw in the 1960s and 1970s. If we are to have a more rapidly changing technological age, it means that a man or a woman who is trained at 20 will have to be retrained again at 35, again at 45 and perhaps retrained again at 55.
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In other words, we will need an educational and training system which will be an ongoing one where people will be able to enter and leave the educational and training system throughout their lifetimes. It will no longer be the style for a child to stay at home from birth to six years of age, attend school from the age of six to the age of 20 and work from the age of 20 to the age of 65, and after that go home and wait to die. Instead we will have a life and a society where we will continually be in and out of the educational and training system, in and out of the workplace, at leisure, at home, taking a sabbatical or whatever. If we are going to meet the industrial and commercial challenges of the 1980s and 1990s and keep Canada a major industrial and commercial nation, we will definitely need much better training, retraining and upgrading systems. This bill goes in the right direction, but we need more.


Vincent Martin Dantzer: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-67, which is a bill to amend the Adult Occupational Training Act. I am pleased because the contents of this bill and the subject of the main act are something which vitally affect all parts of Canda, from Newfoundland to central Canada, on to the Prairies and right through to Vancouver Island. I am speaking of the lack of skilled workers that we have in Canada, and have had for a number of years.
As previous speakers have pointed out, the whole aspect of our society in the 1980s will be changing. We are now into the technological society with more manufacturing, more megaprojects needing more skilled and trained workers. This need will continually increase as we enter the 1990s.
The present system of training skilled workers has been inadequate for the last 10, 15 or 20 years. That is because we have placed too much emphasis and money, not only at the federal and provincial level but also at the municipal level, on the wrong kind of education at the wrong time.
In my opinion, this problem started just after the Second World War. The government in its wisdom allowed every veteran to attend university or other higher learning institutions, and for those who did, their way was paid. That was a very good thing because at that time the country needed people with higher education. In the 1950s, and perhaps even in the 1960s, a university degree was a passport to a job; any kind of a university degree. Admittedly, in the 1940s and the 1950s one could not get a university degree listening to birds or watching flowers or things of that nature. Nevertheless, in order to get employment, people looked to the universities and the universities became pre-employment schools. In a sense they lost a lot of their research capacity perhaps to impart some knowledge and wisdom.
As a result we continued to rely too long on that particular aspect of our training program. This has resulted over the past few years in too many university trained people who we now find are underemployed. We find them doing all sorts of things, even driving taxis. I have nothing against taxi drivers, it is a very honourable profession. I understand that one of the members opposite who recently went to the other place used to
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
drive taxis. Some taxi drivers make a lot of money, sometimes more money than members of this House. I understand also that during the recess some members opposite will be driving taxis to supplement their income. I have nothing against taxi drivers, but I have a lot against trained university people being underemployed.
We used to say that it cost about $8,000 of public purse money, other than tuition fees, to train a person at university. I do not know how much that figure has gone up, but I dare say it has doubled. It probably costs now $12,000 or $16,000 a year.
This year the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) has predicted that there will be 15,000 unemployable university graduates, or a 10 per cent surplus. We cannot afford that kind of misdirection of public funds. The public will not put up with it much longer.
What has been the history of our source of skilled workers? Previous speakers have pointed out how we have relied almost completely on foreign countries to supply our skilled workers. That was a good thing in the past. Earlier in our history we had neither the capacity nor the knowledge to train the kind of skilled people which this country needed.
After the depression and the last war, we were fortunate to have these people come to our land to help develop the frontier, build our cities, our bridges and provide the high standard of living which we have enjoyed and are enjoying. These people from foreign lands have added to the diversification of our society and have enriched it greatly. I am pleased that these skilled workers came to our country.
We are still doing this. For example, 15 per cent of the registered nurses employed in British Columbia are from outside Canada. A recent survey by the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce showed that some 30 per cent of the skilled workers in that city are from outside Canada. In a report to the committee on employment by the principal of the Pacific Vocational Institute of British Columbia, the largest vocational institute in that province, he quoted figures which are very significant. I would like to read them to the House. He talked about percentages of the Canadian work force. Skilled workers born and trained in Canada amounted to 27 per cent and those born and trained outside Canada amounted to 73 per cent. Almost three-quarters of our skilled workers have been trained outside Canada. What have our federal and provincial governments been doing since World War II?
I wish to place another significant figure on record. Skilled workers in the labour force today who are over 40 years old account for 87 per cent of our work force. Surely that underlines the need for a vast, vital and energetic program to obtain more skilled workers.
The next figure should frighten hon. members most of all. As a percentage of the Canadian work force, presently registered apprentices account for .6 per cent. If that does not indicate the need for drastic action, I do not know what does.
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It is just not good enough in the eighties to rely on foreign countries to supply our skilled worker needs. I say this for two reasons. First, foreign skilled workers are no longer available. It is very difficult for a company in this country to obtain an adequate supply of skilled workers, even by going outside the country and offering very high wages. The economies of Europe, Japan and elsewhere are booming and they need their skilled workers. Second, it is no longer socially acceptable.
The government has estimated that we will need 500,000 immigrant skilled workers in the eighties. When that figure was released, my desk was filled with letters from constituents, mothers and fathers of children who have completed grade 12 and cannot get into a trade school or find employment. These people are up in arms, and I do not blame them. If we cannot train our young people to take the jobs that are available, something is badly lacking. Somebody is to blame. Someone is not doing his job.
One wonders about this tremendous need for skilled workers. Previous speakers have underlined this. Before the national energy policy was announced, it had been estimated that something in the area of $1.5 trillion would be spent on energy and the energy-related field in the eighties. I cannot imagine what $1.5 trillion is other than that it is $1,500 billion. In any event, that is a huge amount to be spent on oil, gas, coal and hydro projects.
The potential is staggering. The hon. member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields) gave some of the figures with regard to the spin-off effects. It is in those fields that we need more highly qualified and skilled people.
The government's National Energy Program should not be called the NEP but the NED, "national energy disaster". That policy is so bad it makes one wonder whether it is a deliberate attempt by the Liberals to solve the problem of a shortage of skilled workers. What better way to solve the embarrassing problem of a skilled worker shortage? The NEP is doing that by depressing industry.
Statistics have been quoted about the effects of the NEP. I wish to place on record some statistics with regard to employment. There have been 154 drilling rigs and 84 service rigs leave Canada. By midsummer the total will reach 200. Of the remaining 400, 200 will be idle. According to my calculations,
20,000	jobs will have been lost. That is certainly one way of solving the shortage of skilled workers. However, it will not be acceptable to Canadians, particularly those in the west.
Even without the megaprojects, the employers council in British Columbia, in calculating the needs in that province for the next 20 years by surveying 46 major firms, calculated that 1,338 tradesmen will be required. There are only 577 apprentices in training.
1 wish to quote some of the figures which are relevant and extremely interesting. In the years 1980-81-82, 82 diesel mechanics will be required in British Columbia. Only 16 are presently in training. There will be a requirement for 556 heavy duty mechanics, but only 174 are in training. Fifty-eight electronics technicians will be required and only three are in
training. Surely those figures indicate how short Canada is of skilled workers. At the same time we have an unemployment rate of 7 per cent, 8 per cent or 9 per cent. These people are unable to find jobs.
We have failed badly to solve what should be a basic right in our society. We can fault the unions, the employers, industry and certainly the government. However, often the technical schools have produced the wrong product. For example, they have produced electricians when electricians were not needed. In other words, they were unable to keep up with the requirements of industry. This will probably be even more true in the future when requirements change more radically.
Unions, too, often are at fault for demanding full wages for those people who are under training. Certainly the employer bears a large responsibility for failure to train and to provide training programs for the industry in which they are involved. Most of all, probably governments are at fault, both provincial and federal. They foul up the whole process with bureaucratic red tape.
Let me give one example. In my own constituency we have complaints about the Unemployment Insurance Commission sending people to technical schools to take up the seats they have there in order that they can continue to get their unemployment insurance. They must do this in order to continue to get their benefits. Many times the people who are sent there are not the least interested in training in the jobs they have. They are merely taking up valuable seats which are in short supply in these technical schools, thus preventing people who are interested in getting an education from becoming skilled and getting out into the work force. Certaining the complexity of the problem is immense, and I think I would be the first to admit that.
I have quoted from this study before but it contains some interesting figures. It shows just how wrong governments have been in the past in the kind of approaches they have taken. Companies were asked in 1980: "Has your company an on-the-job training program?", and 71 per cent said they had. The companies were asked: "Has your company ever been in a position of not having sufficient or trained skilled workers?" and 76 per cent said, yes, that was true. They were also asked: "Do you believe your company or your particular industry could benefit from an on-the-job training program?", and this figure is most significant because it confirms what the chairman of the committee who just spoke before me said; 73 per cent said that on-the-job training was the best.
Here is another significant question: "Do you feel the education available from educational institutions could properly train employees in your business?"; 61 per cent answered no. They felt existing educational technical institutions were not capable of training the kind of people they wanted. That says a great deal for the lack of direction and the inability of our existing institutions to move with the times.
I have no objection to Bill C-67. It is a good bill and I think we should pass it. I do not treat it with the same enthusiasm as
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my seatmate did, the hon. member for Athabasca. I think it is a band-aid approach that is typical of this government. We have a very large problem, but I suppose when your leg is cut off and you are hemorrhaging it is better to have a band-aid than nothing at all.
I feel sorry for the chairman of the Committee on Employment Opportunities for the '80s who spoke ahead of me. Why is the government not paying attention to that committee? Why is the government not waiting until that committee reports? Why is the government not making a comprehensive plan to solve what obviously is one of the worst problems we have to face presently and in the future?
I think those are the kinds of questions that should be answered by the government. It is not good enough for the minister to say: Fine, we will deal with those problems later when the committee reports. He seems to be ignoring the committee and already downgrading what it is going to say by that process of bringing in this bill which deals only with part of the problem. There are obvious areas that have to be looked to and I do not understand why the government has not moved in those areas.
First of all, there should be better reporting and forecasting on both the supply and the demand side. Certainly the federal government is in a position, with its multitude of bureaucrats, its computers and all the other aids it has, to be able to forecast accurately what the supply is and is intended to be, and what the needs are in various parts of the country, so that we can feed this information to the various technical schools and they can gear up and be able to train and provide skilled workers at a time when those skilled workers are required.
What about the target groups that were mentioned earlier, the women and native people? Surely that is where we are going to get most of the additional skilled workers in our labour force. That is where the supply is and certainly the government should be able to move on that. This is nothing new. I have only been in this House for a short time but we have been talking about that since I came here. Does it take 18 months for the government to lay out a simple or a complex plan in order to involve these people, the women and natives who are very anxious to get into the work force and make a positive contribution to this country? I think not, if the government was at all interested, and 1 suggest it is not.
Finally, I think this government should remember that education and training is a provincial jurisdiction. The government would be very unwise to proceed with some of the powers it has under this legislation without the full and complete co-operation of provincial governments. Certainly provincial governments met recently and complained, as previous speakers have said, that there has not been enough consultation and co-operation between the various authorities, and too often the standards the federal government imposes on these training programs are in addition to and often in conflict with those placed by provincial governments.
As the previous speaker said, and I certainly agree with him, there has to be more company-employer involvement. He said 20 per cent of our skilled people are trained by industry as
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opposed to some 80 per cent in Europe. That is something we can no longer tolerate in this country. Industry will have to solve this problem. If it does not solve it, governments will have to help solve it, either with a carrot or a stick. One of the things I am sure industry fears, being involved in these programs, is the lack of confidentiality. Certainly no company is going to tell their competition what they expect in terms of required employees for the next five or ten years unless they can be assured that this is confidential information.
Those are a few of the things I wanted to speak to in reference to the bill. Again I say I will certainly support it but I express the hope that this government will treat this only as a very interim measure and get on with the problem of finding skilled people to fill the very many opportunities this country will present in the 1980s.


Ursula Appolloni: Mr. Speaker, tomorrow will mark the seventh anniversary of my entry into this House.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ursula Appolloni: For much of that time I have been looking forward to speaking in this House on this very subject that we are dealing with today, because it is a subject which has very high priority, if not the highest priority in my own riding; that is, adult occupational training.
Last night the minister was good enough to refer to me in his speech. He said I was not too happy with one of the references in the bill, perhaps even more. I do very much welcome this bill; I think it is a step in the right direction. I am even more pleased to note that the minister recognizes it is only one step, because in order to get to a solution to the problem facing Canada today, particularly the problem of unskilled workers, the road is going to be very long indeed, and many steps will have to be taken.
My initial query about this bill can be found even in the title, or more particularly in the definition. The bill now defines an adult as a person whose age is at least one year greater than the regular school-leaving age in the province in which he resides. I shall refer only to the province with which I am most familiar, Ontario, where the school leaving age is 16. Therefore, according to this amending bill, a young adult would have to wait until he is 17 before taking advantage of occupational training. That is my main concern about this legislation.
Why do I stop at the age of 16? Mr. Speaker, a couple of months ago I was fortunate enough, with the tremendous co-operation of the Department of Employment and Immigration and my own local board of education, to initiate a program called the High School Dropout program, which I believe is the first of its kind of Canada. I did this because, like the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand), I was personally extremely disturbed about what seems to be an increasing number of functionally illiter-

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ate people begging for jobs. Perhaps not just jobs, but jobs which would pay enough to keep them and their families. Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I looked at them and I could not blame the employers for not paying the wages they needed because they did not really merit them. They had nothing to offer the employer, and it was a tragedy.
Looking back over their past histories I realized that more of them in this category had left high school. So we started this high school dropout program in York South-Weston. In essence it is a very simple program. The beauty of it is that it hardly costs anything. What it does involve, though, is very special counselling, and this perhaps is a point which has not been stressed enough in the debate I have heard so far. It is one thing to train people, but before you do that I think the counselling has to be perfect. We can no longer afford to put square pegs in round holes. It has happened too often in the past. Only the counsellor can help find the trainees' real aptitude, so counselling must be absolutely excellent. There are many excellent counsellors in the department, but unfortunately they do not get the recognition they deserve.
The second thing I think we have to be careful of is the attitude of the trainees themselves. I am sure every member of this House has heard complaints from their corporate constituents to the effect: I do not want to hire any more of these people, they do not stay. Perhaps there is a little justification in that complaint.
However, what do you find on the other side of the coin, Mr. Speaker? Well, as an example, we had a youngster in my riding, aged 18, I think, who had been accepted for an on-the-job training program through the Department of Employment and Immigration. His desire was to be a carpenter and his aptitude tests showed he would make an ideal carpenter. He had a tremendous artistic streak in him, too. He would have made an excellent carpenter. So the government helped him with on-the-job training as a carpenter. What happened to him? The first day on the job he was given a finished table leg and told to screw it on the top of a finished table. That was his job on the first day, the second day and the third day. By the end of that week he could not stand it any more and quit.
Now, luckily we were able to help him there, too, because another project in my riding is called the York Home Repair Service, which I started. What do we do? We have three unemployed but skilled workers who teach their skills to six unemployed and unskilled workers, skills such as carpentry, painting, home decorating and minimum repair services. Once they have learned those skills they go out into the community, to senior citizens and low income workers, and they repair their homes free of charge. The home owner has to bear only the cost of materials. The experience these young people gain is terrific. So the youngster who was attaching finished legs to finished tables now makes his own tables and chairs. He can make doors and put them up. We have to give the youngsters this kind of incentive and train them properly.
As to the quality of training, the bill makes reference to this in clause 6(3) where it says there will be consultations between
the commission, the employer and the person, group or association to decide the kind of course to be given. That is a good idea, Mr. Speaker, as far as it goes. However, is that all? Is there going to be a follow up? I am afraid of the abuse which can happen because it has in the past. We have had employers who have accepted incentives from the government to train or hire young people and they have used them as cheap labour without any thought of the consequences for the person involved. I gave you the example already of the youngster and the table legs and tables. This kind of thing has happened too often in the past and I think we have to be very careful to monitor the program so it does not happen in the future.
We should also be careful in the rationalization of this training. There is a Chinese proverb which says if you give a man a fish, you will feed him for one day; if you teach him to fish, you will feed him for a lifetime. That makes an awful lot of sense. However, I think we have to be careful to make sure there is enough water around for him to fish in. Here again there have been pitfalls. I believe on the east coast we trained hairdressers and barbers, too many to look after the population of a given town. This is what I mean when I talk about rationalization of these programs.
I also very much welcome the extended period over which the training program can be held. I have not heard in this debate one particular facet of the extension of this program, perhaps because the members who have spoken so far do not have the same kind of experience I have in Toronto. I have a riding which is blessed with constituents from about 61 different countries. Obviously not all of them are fluent in English or in French. I suppose in Toronto the most important language would be English. However, many of these people who come to Canada have a tremendous aptitude for the very skills we need. Our employment counsellors have verified that the aptitude is there. They perhaps know enough English to get by in a social environment. They can go to the supermarket and converse with their neighbours and what not, but what they are lacking so often, Mr. Speaker, is the jargon of the trade.
It has happened on countless occasions that people who would have made good electricians, mechanics and what have you, were stuck because they did not know the particular words in English for the machinery they were using. People in the medical profession experience a similar situation. They are trained in other countries and come here. Their scientific knowledge is perfect but their language requirements hold them back. When it comes to the definition of occupational training, as in clause 1 of the bill, I hope that the minister agrees to use the broadest possible definition so that people who would otherwise be perfectly willing and able to work in the trade would not be held back because of a lack of knowledge of the jargon of the trade.
Another project was recently started in my riding. I am delighted to say that it is being spearheaded from York South-Weston. It is a project to train women in non-traditional jobs. If I may, I should like to spend a little time on this. It is a
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subject which has not been discussed sufficiently in the House or perhaps even in the country at large.
When we speak of women in non-traditional jobs, we do so from a very pragmatic point of view. Up to now the government has spent a considerable amount of money training women-and I will stick to my own area because it is the one I know better-for traditional jobs, such as secretarial ones. This is fine. The women are well-trained, they learn, but many of them are single mothers. Unfortunately, at the end of the course the going wage for them will be the minimum wage. There is no mother who can afford to keep herself and her child in Toronto on the minimum wage. Therefore there has been a large attrition rate in this particular field. Women who have been trained in secretarial skills such as typing or whatever have had to abandon their skills at the end of the course when they found that they could not literally afford to work and had to go back to welfare. This is one problem we must face when we speak particularly of single mothers.
What is the solution? In my view there are two. One solution has been referred to very frequently on the west coast in Vancouver. It is a type of phased-in period so that the welfare payments would not be automatically cut off the moment the woman graduated from her training course. It would be phased in until such time as she earned enough to keep herself and her child, particularly for necessities such as medicines and so on which, as we all know, are covered at the moment by welfare. This is one idea. I brought it to the attention of the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin). She was most sympathetic and promised to discuss it with her provincial colleagues.
However, I believe in most cases there is a better solution, and that is to train women in non-traditional jobs. Here again we are being very pragmatic because once they graduate from training in non-traditional jobs they will earn very much more than the minimum wage. Once we have said that, let us think of what is really happening.
As I said, the Department of Employment and Immigration agreed to start this pilot project in my riding. Obviously I wanted to help as much as possible. A few months ago I spoke with the area manager who told me that she had a little difficulty with a certain firm in the aerospace industry which, by the way, is doing rather well in Ontario at the moment. She told me that the difficulty was one of attitudes. She did not feel that the company was very co-operative or even very sympathetic to the idea of hiring women who would be trained by the federal government for non-traditional jobs in its plant. This struck her as shortsighted on the part of the company because it is dependent upon the government for its contracts.
However, I telephoned the manager of the company. I asked him if what I had heard was true, that he and his officials had been less than co-operative with the officials of the Department of Employment and Immigration. He blustered, he denied things for a long time, and eventually he said, "Of course, we must not practise inverse discrimination". We will have to tackle this point because it is one of the lamest excuses. It is a new one but it is still lame. Ever since the inception of
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 this firm, even of the industry itself, discrimination has been practised. Only men were assembling aircraft until the Second World War, when men went out to shoot at others and women had to assemble planes. Is it not funny that no one complained at that time that women were making the planes?
Apart from that, inverse discrimination bothers me because it is so illogical. It is similar to complaining that the pendulum moves only to the right but never to the left and therefore the pendulum is discriminating whichever way it goes. The pendulum will have to swing again to the left in order to get back in the centre where it should be. If this is called inverse discrimination, then I welcome it because it is necessary.
I have heard other hon. members imply that we need the women because we do not have enough men. I do not think women would be too pleased to hear that kind of comment. We need women because they are a wealth of ability and capability. They are a rich resource which we have not tapped enough in the country. I do not want to hear "Yes, we will put women in the assembly line because we do not have enough guys". No, it would not do justice to women. Certainly it would not do justice to the calibre of work we want. It must be first-class all along.
This is the attitudinal problem which we face, sometimes in women themselves. It will take a tremendous amount of public education in order to get over it. But there is another problem when it comes to women in non-traditional jobs. I know some of my colleagues on both sides of the House have already referred to this fact. If we are speaking of women with family responsibilities, no woman I have ever met in my life can take training or do a proper job if she is not first convinced that her child is being properly looked after. Daycare is essential. It is not a hand-out. It is essential that the future generation of Canadians be properly looked after while infants.
I wish the minister were in the House. Perhaps he or his officials could reply to me later in writing. Clause 7 refers to the training allowance. It reads as follows:
The Commission may pay to any adult who is being trained in an occupational training course described in section 5 a training allowance related to the family circumstances-
I would very much hope that these family circumstances would include the serious circumstances of children who need to be looked after while their parents take training.


John William Bosley: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to rise to speak to Bill C-67. As I make my remarks I would like to relate to the House a number of experiences which have taken place in my riding in the last few days in this area.
Before I do that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by complimenting the previous speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence (Mrs. Appolloni). It is not my desire to congratulate members opposite, but in this case I believe the parliamentary secretary has made points which any member of this House should pay attention to. I respect and applaud her for having made the points she did

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about daycare centres and about counselling, which I would like to come back to in a moment. I hope she has more luck in persuading her government of the wisdom of the daycare argument than opposition members have had up until now.
I suspect that she would not mind if I said to her, through you, Mr. Speaker, that one of the measures by which we will judge backbenchers in the Liberal party on this question is how effective they are in encouraging the government in the area of daycare.


Monique Bégin: It is up to provinces to take the initiative.


John William Bosley: Ministers of the Crown are already leaping to the defence of their backbenchers. After paying a compliment I receive hostility.
The parliamentary secretary was very careful not to name de Havilland. I take it from her remarks that it is the firm she was referring to. As she will remember, some of us raised that issue in the House about a year ago on behalf of one of the unions which was petitioning the government with regard to de Havilland's practices. The parliamentary secretary is not saying no to de Havilland, nor is she saying yes. Rather, she is laughing behind her hand and, therefore, I take it that de Havilland is the firm in question. I urge her to raise this issue again with other ministers, such as the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) who has some direct involvement with the employees of that company and who took almost no action at the time this issue was raised.
What happens in that company is a shame. To go even further than the hon. member has, the company appears to have a very direct and deliberate policy of steering women to secretarial jobs and away from jobs on the floor. I have said outside the House, and I will say it inside the House, that it is a most regressive and unfortunate policy.
We raised this issue in the House a year ago and, to my knowledge, nothing has been done about it directly by this government. It is a company which is largely funded by the government. I think the goverment has a major responsibility to demonstrate within companies it owns or funds what it believes should be good practice that all Canadian companies and employers should follow. If it will not set the example then it is in some difficulty when it criticizes others. I say this because I agree with the parliamentary secretary that this issue needs clearing up. I encourage her to continue pressing this issue, if only because we raised it.
I would like to come back to the valuable points made by the parliamentary secretary regarding special counselling by the department of manpower and relate a couple of stories which took place in my riding, since they reflect the difficulties which underlie this act. What seems to happen if you are good at counselling, which is an area quite distinct from training as the hon. member knows, is that you either have to leave the field because you are good at your work-and the only place you can find a substantial promotion is in the private sector-or you are promoted to a position where you are not really able to continue with the direct counselling of people who come to the department for help.
There does not seem to be the other kind of counselling in the department which is critical, which is the counselling of those who will do training assessments. That is a very important hole which needs to be filled. It does not make a lot of sense to have people who want to help the unemployed and those people who need help if they have not been given the proper tools and training in the counselling aspect of the job.
This point came home to me most clearly on Saturday morning when I was in my constituency office and met with a constituent of mine who is currently trying to gain entrance to one of the government's training courses. She knows the problem better than any of us since her career background is in social work, for which she holds a Bachelor of Arts degree. She now has the problem of trying to obtain work in the child care area, after six or seven years of working in that field, only to find that she has been passed over in favour of people with masters' degrees in social work-called MSW's in the trade. Therefore she must pursue a new career, which is unfortunate but which is also a reality.
Thus, she approached the department to see what was available to her and in order to obtain some assistance to determine what she might best be suited for. With her background in the area of counselling you can imagine her shock when she found that the counselling being offered her was inadequate. She related this to me at length, not because she felt the people in the department are poorly motivated or because their intentions are less than honourable, but because she believes that they have not been adequately trained to deal with people in her circumstances.
I now come to the second part of her dilemma. Having decided that she would like to pursue a second career in the area of secretarial sciences which is called word processing, she took the manpower tests for that course and completed them extremely successfully, as one would expect, only to discover two months later that the department was cutting back the program she had applied for. It would appear that, having been accepted into the course, she would have to wait an additional four months to receive the training which the government said it was trying to give her.
It is frustrating to be standing before you, Mr. Speaker, speaking to a bill which has the stated intention of improving training opportunities in Canada while knowing our constituents are having trouble gaining access to existing training programs. While the government says it is taking this course of action to improve the situation, at least in my riding in metropolitan Toronto where unemployment is substantial, it is cutting back on the available retraining programs. It is taking away seats from one of the approved community college courses, at least in the case I have referred to.
Further, it says that once you have chosen the college where you wish to take a course, if the seats are cut back at that college you may not reapply and be reassigned to a different college where seats are available because you have indicated your college of preference. Therefore, you must now wait to receive the training. Where this bill says that what we need is more flexibility, the practice is to create more inflexibility. The
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good words in the bill would appear not to be met on the ground that the people who are trying their best to deliver programs cannot do so because the strictures placed upon them by departmental rules are inflexible.
1 would like to make this plea, through you, Mr. Speaker. I ask that these representations be taken into consideration by the committee at any time it is dealing with this measure. As a member of the committee I can certainly make a commitment that 1 will be raising these issues. I see the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Dawson) is nodding that he might be interested in these areas. That is terrific.
As 1 indicated earlier, on the face of the bill there are a number of matters which are quite exciting and useful. As members will know, for some time one of the problems with retraining programs has been the effect that the payments under retraining have been roughly the equivalent of payments made under unemployment insurance. The bill proposes to increase the allotment for retraining. Let us assume that what seems inevitably to happen with this government will not happen in this case. Let us hope that next year the government will not introduce a bill to increase the unemployment insurance allotment because this year it increased the training allotment. Let us hope that the spread between training and being unemployed, which is presumably to produce an incentive to undergo training-if one believes the government's press releases-will be continued. I believe that is an important point. What is before us is good.
The bill proposes to grant more flexibility to the government in choosing who will be eligible for training and benefits, and in what areas and industries. It reintroduces the usual problem in that at least areas and industries will be designated by the governor in council and not by Parliament or a parliamentary committee. If you look at those areas and industries which qualify, it is amazing the resemblance they bear to ridings held by certain Liberal cabinet ministers. There does seem to be this parallelism which goes on whenever the government brings in this kind of a program, and that is a problem. The idea of the act is to help. We would hope that the help in the act is available across the country where there is a need, and is not simply based on whether one's representative is in the cabinet.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John William Bosley: Equally, the bill proposes, significantly, to end the limitation which has existed whereby the training programs have only been available for one year. Those who have been involved in this know that sometimes it is necessary to go on longer than a year simply because, as we become an increasingly complex world, the training program takes longer than a year; and that is welcome.
Having described what I think is relatively good, and having indicated that I do believe the bill, while cosmetic in its actual impact, is nevertheless a move in the right direction, there are
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some matters I want to put on record as being worrisome in the sense that the bill still does not get at them.
Most significantly, as has been previously mentioned, hon. members will know there is a task force meeting now called Employment Opportunities for the '80s. Its members, I gather, to a man and a woman, are opposed to this legislation at this time, and I can understand why. It is because the whole argument about training relates ultimately to the ability of the government to forecast well. There are very real reasons to criticize the government for its forecasting in the past, and yet we are faced with a bill to enter into the training area at a time when the task force on what we ought to be training for has not reported. Therefore, I suspect we will have to see a complete revamping of the government's ability to target for training purposes as a result of that report.
It might have been better if the initiative had waited so that it could take into account all of those things, since the track record in this area is that it takes a long time to get the government to move in training areas. It would, therefore, seem to me that the government is likely to use this initiative as an excuse. What it will say when it does implement the task force recommendations quickly will be, "It is okay, we did a little for you last year with these changes". If that becomes an excuse or is used as a reason to justify not proceeding with what good recommendations do come out of the task force, then we will be back on our feet to say, "We told you at the time that this does not replace a good training program", which we hope will be recommended.
Equally significant is that we continue, as far as I can tell, to have in this bill a provision which allows the government to announce its training initiatives and programs without automatic or necessary resort to consultation with the provinces. The possibility continues to exist that a program will be announced and implemented, and the province consulted after the fact as to whether it was useful. That is a shame. Indicative as it is of this government's attitude toward provincial consultation, which is more evident in other areas which are before this House or may be before this House shortly, it is still, in this case, a shame.
If I can again cite an example of the kind of quandary one gets into when there is not the kind of adequate consultation which should go on, I have a constituent who is desperately attempting to find someone to help him in the particularly innovative area of spot welding. The provincial government has advised the federal government, I gather, that that area should be one of the areas subject to training funds. It is not but should be.
The case could most easily be put this way. This particular constituent applied through manpower for someone to fill this job for eight weeks, as is his right and as is his obligation before he can go anywhere else to find someone. Having done that, having indicated that there was someone from outside the country who could fill the job and do the work which needs to be done in our area, having tried to find a Canadian, the department said, after the fact, "No, we are not going to let you bring anyone in to fill your job need, which may produce

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Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 more wealth in your area; we would prefer that you train someone." When this man turned around and asked whether there is one of these subsidies to train, the answer was no. The federal government says that that is not an area of need.
That is the kind of problem one runs into when one is dealing with the government and its forecasting ability. When employers take to the government specific areas of job need for which they cannot find people, there seems to be some reluctance to accept what the private sector says is a job need as opposed to what the statistics say is a job need.
I might point out an example found in Toronto. I use this example gently because I do not want to offend any of the people in the florist business. However, one of the programs which is currently regarded by the department as being in demand, and therefore subsidizable, is one which shows up on the form as "floral design". I should say that when I first saw it on the list it reminded me of those of us who went through college in the last 15 or 20 years in the country, which is what the government told us we ought to do in order to get a job. Even if we did so by taking courses in basket weaving or other things, that was okay. A degree was going to get us a job. That was the government's forecast 15 years ago, and it is now showing up as being disastrous. I am therefore suspicious whenever I see a government list of occupations there will be a demand for, so I called. No one can tell me where that demand is; no one can yet tell me how many people are needed in it; and no one so far has been able to tell me why it is on the list. That is a little worrisome when one is being asked to support this kind of program.
Therefore, I believe that while we may not have the perfect system when we rely on provincial forecasting, at least it is a component of the forecasting system which is somewhat closer to the ground, in real need, than Ottawa. I hope we will see a reliance on provincial forecasting rather than the apparent ability in this bill to get around it.
If I might put on the record some of the problems which exist in that area, probably a report which would be of interest to anyone concerned with this subject is an Economic Council report called the Betcherman report, which deals with these figures and lists some of the existing situations where the government has said it knows what we need to spend money for and what the realities are. Perhaps some hon. members might be interested in some of these numbers.
Effectively, what the report would seem to say is that in the past funds have been spent in a relatively haphazard manner and not targeted to specific skills which are needed in certain locations, which is what should be done. For instance, the most critical shortages are in product fabricating and repair, machining and science engineering, but training is seldom targeted to meet those needs.
These are some examples. Product fabricating and repair accounts for 22.3 per cent of the shortages in Canada, but only 19.4 per cent of training programs, and only 27 per cent of those programs are government funded, according to that report. Equally, according to the report, machining personnel, who account for approximately 32 per cent of the government
assistance today, account for 13.4 per cent of the shortage in Canada, and only 8.8 per cent of the training programs. Science and engineering workers, the third highest need group, account for 12.2 per cent of the shortage and yet only 5.9 per cent of the training programs, and less than 17 per cent of the total government aid. In other words, as the Betcherman report pointed out, groups for which we actually have a shortage are not adequately perceived by the government, and we do not get a proper response to the facts of the real world.
Sometimes-and this is a matter that the bill does not address-we find we are training in the wrong skills, or we are not even training enough in the skills which are needed. That, unfortunately, often winds up with lowering the employment standards for workers already in the force, and therefore often puts people in a position whereby they are competing for jobs which are already filled as opposed to filling jobs which are vacant in industries which need help; and a whole series of problems can arise from that.
Finally, let me return to the view which I think many of the hon. members on this side of the House will be presenting, which is a view which most of us hold. I believe we will be supporting this bill, from everything that I can see, not because it is a major initiative in the area, and not because it solves the training problems of the adult unemployed in Canada, but because it goes a little way toward producing some more flexibility if the department chooses to implement it. This is critical-if the department chooses to implement it. It would give some more opportunity and incentive to those who are unemployed to choose to take training work.
However, we hope-and this will be the plea, I believe, of those of us who have been in this area for some time-that the government will take seriously its stated goals toward employment development and that it will take seriously the recommendations when they come from the Employment Opportunities Task Force. As I said earlier, I hope that we will not, as I fear, receive any claims from the other side, here or in public terms, that the government has provided, through this bill, a major and sufficient initiative in the area of adult training. Because it clearly is not that. It is an important but small matter. I hope it is understood by hon. members opposite and by the minister that it is in that vein that those of us who rise to support the bill do so, in order to remind him that we expect better from the government. We will continue to press for that.


Mr. Bruce Lonsdale (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak in this debate on the amendments to the Adult Occupational Training Act. As a member of the task force on Employment Opportunities for the '80s, I had a unique opportunity to travel across the country and listen to the views and concerns of many Canadians with respect to the manpower training programs, the employment programs in the Canada employment centres that have been established by the government to assist unskilled and unemployed individuals to find better jobs and get better training.
July 7, 1981

As a result of the hearings, I have become aware of the importance of these amendments to our training policies. As the task force nears the end of its mandate, all its members have arrived at a deep interest in any changes in the policies that provide Canada with the skilled workers necessary for the continuation of our economic advancement into the next decade.
The task force has heard from hundreds of concerned groups of employers, workers and educators over the last year. Most have called for changes in the way which the federal government funds and oversees training programs now in existence in Canada. This experience has made me aware of the pressing need for fundamental revisions in our educational and training programs.
These experiences have made members of the task force aware that the present Adult Occupational Training Act is inadequate. There has to be more flexibility in the program to allow employers and employees to benefit from training programs with a minimum of red tape and administrative hassle. This bill now before the House represents a good beginning in the process of reform.
With the determined and co-operative efforts of all parties in this House and our provincial counterparts, we will be able to provide all Canadians with a secure and prosperous future. We all know that the supply of skilled workers is fundamental to our national economy. No one can argue against that point. We are all aware that the apprenticeship and training programs now in existence do not adequately meet our present demands, let alone those of the future.
In order for the economy to expand, we have to stress the importance of new technologies. These advancements will require skilled workers to see them carried out. We must have skilled workers in order to become more competitive in the marketplace; we must manufacture better products and be able to supply, to sell, and create new markets which will expand our economy and make more job opportunities. We have to be able to provide the manpower necessary for an adaptable economy, and therefore we have to have a labour pool which has the basic skills for any job as well as the skill levels to be readily adaptable to new employment requirements and opportunities. We cannot continue to rely on temporary solutions and catch-up measures in our employment policies and we certainly cannot continue to rely on offshore workers. Therefore, we must have a comprehensive skills training act which will eliminate the double-edged problems of high unemployment and skilled labour shortages.
There has to be a strong national manpower policy which will begin to eliminate regional manpower imbalances. This policy has to have clearly defined goals, aimed at ending shortages in some fields and surpluses in others. What is needed is a flexible set of solutions. The federal government has to lead the way.
1 concede, Mr. Speaker, that many of the problems have arisen as the result of poor planning on the part of the government and its inflexibility in the past. Problems have also arisen because of the approach of provincial government edu-
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
cational institutions to higher education and their emphasis on post-secondary education. Wherever the fault lies, it is clearly indicated that the federal government must take the lead.
The bill under consideration today is but one step in this direction, and I believe it is a step in the right direction. The basic aim of Bill C-67 is to provide the federal government with the flexibility necessary to increase access to, and availability of, training programs. Any new program has to account for the fact that not all skilled trades can be learned in 52 weeks. Therefore, Bill C-67 provides for increased allowances for courses which last over one year. Not all training programs will last this long, as some skilled trades can be learned in the period now allowed by old regulations. This new extended length provision will allow Canadian workers to train for skills which demand more comprehensive training programs and training time.
Another welcome provision which has been included in Bill C-67 is the one where, under certain conditions, funding can be made available for training programs not available in Canada. This will allow a number of Canadian workers to train outside the country and then return home with the knowledge to implement these learned skills in national production. Our training policies and programs will then have the ability to reproduce newer technologies in Canada.
It is very important in the field of resource development that as new and innovative approaches are taken in other countries, Canadian industry, particularly in the forestry and mining sectors, is able to send abroad some of their better workers to be trained in new technologies for processing and timbering. The companies would then have better trained workers and this would raise productivity levels. This change, to allow employees to go outside the country for upgrading and higher skills does not question the capabilities of our Canadian schools; rather, it broadens our capabilities, which are presently footed on a strong base, to meet the needs of the future.
One of the major criticisms of the training programs that we heard as we travelled across the country concerned our young people having to wait a full year after leaving school before they qualify for training programs. Bill C-67 includes provisions whereby funding schemes will become more responsive to the needs of Canadian industries. With this provision, the employment commission could waive this condition and allow a number of young people to enter the training system without a long wait. As a result, skilled workers will enter the job market earlier and this will provide the incentive for more pre-employment training in our schools.
Another example of this bill's flexibility is the fact that it allows the employment commission to channel funding to areas where there is a demonstrated skill shortage. This is the kind of flexibility that a great number of submissions to the task force recommended. Not all of the new amendments deal with young people. In order to eliminate the possibility of older workers losing their jobs because of plant shutdowns and redundancy, Bill C-67 allows the commission to fund training programs to update their skills. This will eliminate one of the major problems the economy faces with respect to loss of

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 skilled workers or not having them available for better training or being unable to train our young people.
The most important aspects of Bill C-67 are the provisions which will eliminate some of the red tape which until now has stopped a large number of firms from beginning training programs. A recent survey showed that only 20 per cent of all firms have training of any sort. In that same survey it was reported that only 15 per cent of all employees in Canada have received any training at all. This tragic situation has to be eliminated.
This bill will eliminate to some extent the red tape which caused some smaller firms to create an administrative job just to fill out the forms required to receive grants. I believe the bill will reduce this bureaucratic red tape and create incentives for smaller companies to apply for grants under the act so that they may provide more training opportunities for their workers and thus supply more skilled workers.
By providing for flat-rate payments to industries and fixed-rate payments to the provinces, most of the guess work has been taken out of the system. All the small employer has to do is ensure that the programs meet the criteria set out in the regulations and apply for reimbursement. This is especially important to the smaller firms which cannot afford the administrative costs required under the old regulations.
Besides allowing for less administrative work for companies when applying for funds, the act allows the commission to enter into contracts with persons other than employers for the creation of training programs.
As we travelled across the country, we heard that some private businessmen are better able to train individuals than the local institutions or the local major employer. I think the new provisions will give some skilled people who want to go into the private marketplace the opportunity to sign contracts at Canada employment centres to train individuals where and when they are needed. It will not always be necessary to rely on the local employer to do so. This will enable Canadian workers to train for new jobs in areas where there is a demonstrated shortage.
Therefore, these amendments provide the federal government with the flexibility to meet the changing employment market. Companies will have greater incentive to begin training programs, employees will see the benefits of learning new skills, and our young people will begin to have a clearer picture of their future in the Canadian job market.
In conclusion, I believe these amendments are a good start. They open the door to a serious re-evaluation of our total training programs. I know that some members opposite have some concern that this bill should be delayed until the employment task force has an opportunity to present its report and to have its recommendations embodied in the amendments to Bill C-67. Indeed, the hon. member for Don Valley West (Mr. Bosley), who spoke before me, presented that very argument; he did not want to see the government use Bill C-67 as the excuse to put an end to its proposed changes to the Adult
Occupational Training Act. For the benefit of the hon. member for Don Valley West, I shall quote from the speech made by the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) last night. As reported at page 11239 of Hansard, we read:
Some hon. members have asked me for the assurance that passage of this legislation will not close the door to further changes in training legislation after the studies have been considered. I am pleased to offer those assurances. As far as I am concerned, Mr. Speaker, the amendments introduced in debate on second reading are simply the prelude to a much wider range of changes that must take place.
I intend to take the minister at his word. I hope that this bill will receive third and final reading. But I want to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that the passage of Bill C-67 will not, and should not, be considered the end of the government's initiatives in manpower training policies. Other members of the Task Force on Employment Opportunities for the '80s and myself will continue to push for changes once our report is released some time this summer. That report will include a wide range of recommendations. Some of those recommendations will be simple administrative changes that will be necessary and will have to be implemented by the department. Other changes will be more drastic, and perhaps even of an alarming nature. I think I can speak for many members of the task force in saying that we intend to see that those recommendations are listened to and carried out by the government.
Therefore, I welcome these amendments. But I wish to remind this House that these amendments can only be considered as a preliminary step towards a total re-examination, and re-evaluation of programs as well as a complete redirection of Canada Manpower programs and human resource planning in this country.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski)-Aviation safety-Curtailment of air traffic control services at Calgary International Airport (b) Shortage of air traffic controllers; the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn)-Post Office-Timing of Parliament taking summer recess-Effect on postal strike (a) Effect of strike on small business (b) role of Postmaster General; the hon. member for Winnipeg-Birds Hill (Mr. Blaikie)-Health and Welfare-(a) Status of Robertshaw study of child fatalities caused by parental neglect (b) responsibility centre for children.
July 7, 1981



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Axworthy that Bill C-67, to amend the Adult Occupational Training Act (No. 2), be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration.
Mr. Neil Young (Beaches):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to participate in this debate on Bill C-67, to amend the Adult Occupational Training Act, which proposes a number of amendments to this act that are very much needed and have been a long time in coming.
The Minister of Manpower and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) in his opening remarks on this bill yesterday said, as reported on page 11239 of Hansard'.
The bill we are studying today has three basic goals. The first is to simplify the administration of the Adult Occupational Training Act and to eliminate much of the unnecessary paper work that small businessmen in particular must face in developing industrial training on the shop floor.
That particular amendment is welcomed by me and I am quite sure it will be advantageous to small businessmen in the administration of this act. The minister went on to say:
Second, we want to make the act more flexible so that it will respond to the variety of needs in the training area.
As I read those words of the minister, I see as usual he is full of hope that these measures will go a long way to solve not only our skills problems but also our unemployment crisis. I was rather interested to hear the previous speaker say, once again on behalf of the government, that this program is not a program to end all programs in terms of job creation, but is simply just the beginning in a long process.
I have been here for some 18 months and I followed the debate in this House rather closely prior to coming here. It seems to me the government is always making statements like that but it never does anything in a concrete way about any job-creation programs, at least in the long term.
While the minister was on his feet yesterday, in recognizing the changes in our society being brought about by technological change, he said:
While service work-work in the areas of public administration, clerical, management, health services, education and others-was the major stimulus for growth in the last two decades, it will increasingly decline as a supplier of jobs in Canada.
In the next paragraph the minister said:
We must promote the integration of women, native people and disadvantaged workers in a larger field of employment. We must train more workers in skilled trades and occupations. We must help the workers already on the labour market to learn new skills without undue difficulties.
While amendments to this act have been a long time coming and are welcome, I think the minister is dreaming if he believes that these amendments will solve both our unemployment problem and the lack of skills training in our work force.
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
Approximately 7.1 per cent of our population, or over one million Canadians, are unemployed. Close to half a million young people under the age of 24 are without work, and it is estimated that 50 per cent of those have less than a grade 10 education.
In the over-all scheme of things, the most that can be said of this bill is that it will improve the present inadequate legislation, but without additional policies it is simply a continuation of the government's cosmetic approach to these deep-rooted problems.
I find it interesting that the minister can wax so eloquently about the virtues of these amendments in terms of doing something concrete about the serious lack of skills training, when he knows, as do the unemployed, that there are simply very few jobs available in the marketplace. I would have been much more impressed had the minister come forward and told us that he recognized the very real problems we have and that he would present to the House an over-all strategy to solve them. But the minister has not done that. All he has done is forward some improvements to an inadequate piece of legislation which, even though welcome, do very little to treat the whole problem.
Surely the time has come for the government to recognize that we cannot seriously discuss the present lack of occupational skills training without talking about a full employment strategy. I suggest, as some members on the government side have suggested, that you cannot at this time in our history continue to ignore the needs for integrated strategies to treat the serious problems we face as a country and as a nation. In my view, you cannot talk in a serious way about job training without talking about industrial strategy. You cannot talk about an industrial strategy without talking about an economic strategy and a social policy strategy. I say that for a few reasons.
Earlier in my remarks I spoke about the general unemployment problem. However, the hidden unemployment figure is closer to 1.25 million. We do not include in this group of Canadians out of work another element in our society. I am referring to people who are considered to be disabled or handicapped in our society. They are not regularly included in the unemployment figures, neither the seasonally adjusted nor the actual figures.
I was a member of the Special Committee on the Disabled and Handicapped which recently tabled its report in the House. The report itself points out that while we have something like 2 million Canadians who are considered to be disabled or handicapped, or 10 per cent of the population, out of that group there are 700,000 disabled Canadians who are considered to be employable. In that particular segment of the population there is an unemployment rate estimated to run between 70 per cent and 80 per cent. The committee viewed this so seriously that, out of the 130 recommendations it made in that report, 19 centred on the unemployment problem.

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
While there are numerous problems faced by disabled Canadians that able-bodied Canadians are faced with, such as housing, education, transportation, recreation, communications and unemployment, none of these problems can be separated from the others. One is synonymous with another. If you want to provide people who are disabled and presently in institutions with adequate accommodation, transportation and access to educational facilities, you have to provide them with the means to do that. That is why the committee placed such emphasis on employment opportunities. Even with the special employment program which the minister brought forward earlier this year that was supposedly directed toward disabled Canadians, it is generally recognized within the disabled community that that program will do very little, if anything, to provide those who are disabled with jobs, particularly those who are physically handicapped.
The minister talks about the amendments to this act doing something in a very real way to provide employment opportunities or skills training opportunities to disabled and handicapped Canadians. He is kidding the troops, he is kidding himself, but he certainly is not kidding the disabled and the handicapped, and he is not kidding me. The amendments in this bill will not do anything for those who are disabled and require an upgrading in skills training. For the minister to make those kinds of statements is, as I said earlier, kidding the troops.


Mr. Orlikow:: He is good at that.


Neil Young: As my friend from for Winnipeg North (Mr. Orlikow) says, he is good at that, but he has not been so good recently, especially among women's groups, which is another area I want to talk about.
While the minister seems to recognize that society is changing very rapidly in terms of skills as applied to traditional jobs, there is an area that will change even more rapidly than it has up to this point. This is the area of clerical work, which will change rapidly as a result of electronic applications. For example, the impact of the microchip on the industrial work environment will have major repercussions on the structure of the work force as we presently know it. There is justified concern that those most likely to bear the brunt of the inevitable change will be those working in information processing occupations, and particularly in service industries. A West German study predicted that 40 per cent of office work could be eliminated within ten years. A French report forecast that 30 per cent of bank employees could be redundant within the same period. In Britain, a study predicted 25 per cent unemployment by 1990.
How fast the changes impact are a source of disagreement, but most experts agree that certain jobs will become redundant as new, relatively inexpensive machines with computing functions, such as word processors, do the work faster and more efficiently than the people now holding the jobs.
There is no consensus on whether more jobs will be created or lost, but women will probably face the brunt of it more quickly. Women are concentrated in clerical, sales and service jobs involving the straight handling of information, and it is these jobs that will be transformed. About 80 per cent of Canadian working women are in the service-producing sector of the economy. One and a half million women-34 per cent of working women-are employed in clerical jobs alone. In federal government secretarial work, the percentages go as high as 90 per cent. Therefore, jobs traditionally held by women are expected to suffer disproportionately from the microelectronics revolution.
The problem is predicted to be not so much displacement as much as a tendency not to hire the additional person. Attrition will also play a part. For example, with the introduction of the electronic switchboard, the number of operators on toll boards in Toronto dropped to 664 in October, 1978, from 1,048 in September, 1977. I understand that that work force has been reduced even more dramatically from the 1977 figure. But there were no lay-offs as such, partly because the turnover rate of operators is extremely high.
The changes are almost certain to create a skills gap. Some existing jobs will be downgraded as machines take over computing and sorting functions. When word processors were introduced in a large Calgary firm, the secretaries were freed of 50 per cent of their usual workload. At the same time, jobs created by the new industry will require more skill and aptitude.
Extensive retraining may be necessary for women if they are to get their fair share of the new employment. Without retraining, women may well end up in the lower paying jobs. For example, women tend to fill the minimum wage production line jobs in the high technology firms in the Ottawa area. Women are underrepresented as computer progammers, analysts, accountants and engineers, among other occupations where computers are expanding employment opportunities.
Observations noted in "Women and the Chip" included the fact that, at the clerical occupation level, labour requirements are seemingly being reduced in the following ways. First, there has been a reduction in the clerical steps involved in handling, processing, storing and distributing information. Second, there has been an erosion of the labour component of clerical functions. Third, there is a telescoping of the supervisory and low level administrative requirements.
At the specialist and professional occupation levels, labour requirements are seemingly being intensified in the following ways. First, automation of the clerical and administrative detail content of the job; and second, escalation of the job's scope and potential with computer aids, such as computer modelling and data processing.
Several dangers were identified in "Women and the Chip". Among them were the following. If women continue to be concentrated in clerical positions and if these continue to be usurped by automation, by 1990, if present trends continue, they could contribute substantially to the unemployment rate. The skills difference between clerical and technical-profession-
July 7, 1981

al occupations could widen to the point of certain discontinuity between the two levels if present trends continue. If women are not able to bridge the occupational gap, industry could face a severe skills shortage in the specialist-professional occupations.
There is a need for immediate policy action on a number of fronts, such as training programs and educational leave opportunities, to enable women to acquire the necessary understanding of computer technology and the skills to make computers enhance their work and employment opportunities, instead of the reverse.
We need occupational bridging and other mobility programs, preferably giving legal clout in affirmative action agreements, which are necessary to ensure that women gain access to occupations being enhanced by computer technology. There is a need for health and safety concerns, such as stress, eye strain, back problems and the possibility of radiation exposure.
The federal government has been very slow to respond appropriately to the coming crisis. Most women taking manpower training courses continue to be slotted into secretarial and clerical classes, the very occupations which are going to be hit hardest by technological change. Entrance rates by women into non-traditional courses have been very slow and sparse, and part of the problem is the stereotyped bias of manpower counsellors who need some counsciousness-raising courses. The present training allowances, in my view, are a joke. As of August, 1979, the dependant care allowance of $10 per week per dependant was limited to a maximum of $40 per week.
In my view, manpower training courses must expand their shopping list to reflect predicted job vacancies and must offer incentives so women represent at least half the enrolment in these courses. Ancillary amenities, such as the training allowance, must more realistically reflect real cost so they do not serve as a deterrent to women trying to upgrade their job skills.
The federal public service should offer retraining to its employees, free of charge and during working hours. Women who have to pay for a class and daycare, plus add a third job to the two they already hold in the paid labour force and in household tasks, are unlikely to pursue more responsibility.
Affirmative action must be expanded throughout the federal public service and should be enforced through contract compliance with the private sector. The federal government does $11 billion worth of business with private firms. It should use this clout to ensure the removal of barriers to career development for women and to systematically ensure better access to employment possibilities.
Finally, the number of women's Outreach projects should be substantially increased, since they focus on the particular needs of women. Only by careful planning can the impact of microtechnology on women in the work force be cushioned. Retraining and occupational bridging can mitigate the coming skills gap if programs are started today. The federal government must start concrete action now to ensure that the wave of
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
new technology does not break on the backs of women in the labour force.


Stanley Kenneth Schellenberger: Mr. Speaker, I rise to make a few comments on Bill C-67. I listened with interest to other speakers and I will not be able to speak with the eloquence of members who were on the task force. I listened to the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace (Mr. Allmand), the hon. member for Timiskaming (Mr. Lonsdale), the hon. member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid) and the hon. member for Beaches (Mr. Young) who were on the committee. They made some very important comments regarding this legislation.
I also think it is important that we deal with something that in our brief period of government we wanted to encourage and use more than had been used in the past. That was a system of encouraging members to be part of a task force. Members of Parliament could use their talents to study important issues in this nation, to build upon those studies recommendations which would be presented to Parliament, not just to the minister for his use or non-use, but to Parliament, so that members of Parliament would have these words of wisdom through a study done by members of Parliament elected by the people of this nation to assist in their government.
What we see happening with this bill is that it is before us before the parliamentary task force has reported to Parliament. This, in my opinion, does not make a lot of sense. If we place some value in the report that is coming forward, surely this type of legislation should wait for the advice of that task force. Then the measure could be altered in those areas where recommendations are made.
We started the procedure. We had four task forces set up. They were passed by Parliament, given a chairman and members to work on a number of topics, including volunteers, the disabled. We anticipated something on nuclear policy. We had task forces on branch line abandonment and emergency grain movement legislation. Two of those committees were able to report and those reports had a significant impact on what government did in those areas. This gave us as members of Parliament some encouragement that we had some value in this place. When we participate on standing committees we often find, more often than not, that the minister and the government are not prepared to accept any amendments from members of Parliament from other parties, or even their own party. They decide that the bureaucrats who advise the minister, and the minister who has put his stamp of approval on a bill, know all and there shall be no changes. That is why we get so frustrated as we participate in the standing committees and witness our inability to improve legislation; and it is why we have to move many amendments in this House at the report stage. We do not feel we have been given adequate hearing at the committee, or adequate hearing in the country through the only means many of us have, and that is the news media.
I heard the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard) stating on "Question Period", I believe, a television show on Sunday, that he was concerned about Bill C-57 which came before the House with over 100 amendments. I say we are all

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 concerned about that, but this concern results from a feeling, on the part of opposition members in particular, that we are not given an adequate hearing in committee, that the government is too inflexible and, therefore, we have to bring these amendments to the floor of the House, putting them before this chamber so we may get a little assistance from the people of this nation as a whole. That is why the system of task forces is so important to this House of Commons.
As I read the excellent reports on the disabled and handicapped, on North-South relations, the proposed trading corporation and hopefully soon in this area-I understand the task force will report some time this summer-I note adequate studies have been done with very important recommendations being made. These are recommendations the government should be encouraged to accept, maybe not in whole but in good part. This would serve the country well.
I remember serving on a task force on emergency grain transportation and the government accepted the majority of the recommendations. That was the only light we have seen in western Canada regarding grain transportation for a good number of years. I would like to encourage the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) to begin to deal with that very quickly as we see a very good crop being produced on the prairies, but no initiative being taken by the government to obtain hopper cars and other rail facilities to move that crop.
That is an example, and we had the example of the branch line abandonment study, which was accepted by this government, put into place and which served the farmers of western Canada very well. We now come to this task force which will be reporting this summer, but we have before us a bill to deal with the very subject that committee is studying and are without its advice. I really think that is not advisable and actually is flying in the faces of members of Parliament who are serving on that task force.
The previous speaker spoke of the need of the governments of this nation to deal with the decades of the 1980s and 1990s. We are moving rapidly into the era of the computer and the robot, which have the capacity to displace people from the work force. It has been said in a number of studies I read recently that many people in the next two decades will have to change their occupation, some as many as ten times. A wage earner with one skill becomes a little apprehensive of this kind of study because he is concerned that maybe he will not have the kind of skills necessary if his job becomes redundant or is lost to new technology or competition. That is why this bill or one like it is important, because we have to encourage our people to train and retrain.
It is also important that the provincial and federal government co-operate in providing the kind of education which will prepare our young people for retraining and for accepting new challenges beyond what they can now envision. Movie theatres are doing an excellent job of showing what is ahead of us. Some of it is very speculative, but I think it shows that the computer and space technologies, which have provided a tremendous number of innovations to the industrialized world, really can influence the work habits and jobs available to our citizens.
Now, I look at my province of Alberta which has just announced that a $100 million training centre will be built. The two centres we have, one in Calgary and one in Edmonton, which teach skills to young and old alike in the technical trades, are inadequate because of the demand in western Canada for skilled labour. We also have a community college which is doing an excellent job. So this announcement is an excellent initiative, but obviously even by the time it comes on stream it will probably be inadequate to meet the demand for the kind of projects envisioned in western Canada. In the past, when megaprojects such as the Syncrude project have been proposed, labour had to be imported from across the country to meet the need. Well, this time, if we approve two additional projects larger than Syncrude, will we be able to supply the skilled labour necessary and at the same time supply the petrochemical plants and the needs of the rest of the nation? I speak only of the needs of industry in Alberta because I am familiar with it. I refer to the pipelines, the new types of welding and the new types of skills needed for deep drilling which are much different than in the past.
What I am attempting to say is that not only does our province need to provide this kind of assistance, perhaps other provinces do as well, and the federal government must co-ordinate and assist in areas such as secondary education and on the job training. Members have stated that in the nations of Europe which have had more experience in this area about 80 per cent of job training is done by the companies. They consider it an investment in the future. Here in Canada only 25 per cent of our skilled trades people are trained here. I suppose in the past we have been dependent a good deal on immigration. We have stated a need; if we could not fill it here, we went abroad and tried to attract people. Often this was done to the dismay of these countries because many of them could not afford to lose these skilled people.
So far as training of our own people is concerned, there are two groups we have really overlooked. Those two groups are native people and women. I think women could be very much affected by new technology. Whether we like it or not, many women in this nation are employed in secretarial and clerical jobs which in the future may largely disappear.
Now, these two groups can benefit from retraining and we must prepare ourselves for that. When I looked at this bill in preparation for speaking on it, I was not very encouraged. When I look at my constituency in Alberta, and when I look at a government bringing in reasonably good legislation, 1 see the same government bringing forward legislation which, at the same time, is driving skilled people out of my constituency and my province. My constituency happens to produce a good amount of Canada's conventional oil. When things were going well a couple of years ago, many Canadian entrepreneurs, people who had learned their skilled trades from the large oil companies-which seem to have such a dismal image at the present time, companies such as Imperial Oil, Shell Canada,
July 7, 1981

Gulf Canada and so forth-decided it was time to grab hold of this industry. They went out and expanded industrial parks, built their own facilities and began to challenge these companies or to work with them in a farm-out type of operation. In fact, for many of them their life's blood was a farm-out to a large oil company so the land they bought for the province could be drilled. Then along came the NEP and the government destroyed 40 per cent of the budget of these companies and literally killed many of those struggling new entrepreneurs in my riding who were attempting to make their way in this industry.
As of June 17 we have lost 150 rigs to the United States with a resulting 20,000 unemployed. We have 221 rigs working in Canada and 237 which are not. I was talking to a friend of mine on the weekend who is involved in the trucking industry. He said that basically in the last two months he has hardly moved anything at all. His whole business was trucking rigs into the northern part of the province. What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that here we have a bill to retrain individuals, yet we are sending our skilled people to the United States, those who were learning their trades and teaching others. I am sure the United States are very pleased. They realize how important it is to have energy self-sufficiency and not be at the whim of some foreign government. They are very encouraged by our sending people down there.
This bill says that areas and industries have also been designated by the governor in council for increased assistance of up to 70 per cent of income for individuals entering apprenticeship. They listed the automotive assembly industry in Windsor, primary metals in Sydney and the shipbuilding industry. We may well need that in our province, if we ever get the two governments together, to retrain individuals in the oil industry because we are losing them to the United States.
I should like to refer to the numbers of people who are being lost in my own constituency where a study of 41 companies was undertaken. They conducted a poll to which 41 companies responded. The summary showed that total sales for 1980 dropped from $225 million to $218 million. This was in 1980 when the budget was first announced. Approximately $38 million was lost in that little area. It is forecast that in 1981 there will be a drop from $277 million to $174 million worth of work. This is a loss of $102 million in a few companies in my riding. This can be projected because in that area there are some 300 or 400 companies involved in this business. Also the study indicated a loss of 255 jobs because people had moved with the rigs to the United States, as well as a loss of 173 jobs in branch and field operations.
If this is projected to other areas of the province such as Drayton Valley, Brooks, Red Deer and so forth, it is a phenomenal amount of lost expertise, skilled labour and capital, all of which we need desperately in the country. They have been lost to other countries because of our policy-because of the Liberal policy.
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2


Mr. Cousineau:: You were doing all right but then you had to change it.


Stanley Kenneth Schellenberger: It is important that the citizens of the nation know whose policy it is.
I should like to speak for a few moments about a specific group of people. When the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) brings forward bills, I feel this group is left out. Again they are left out of Bill C-67, which is so important to that group of people. They, above any other group in the nation, learn and benefit more from on-the-job training, much more so than from secondary and technical schools. I suppose the reason for this is that the record of getting these people through our educational facilities has been very poor. This bill will not benefit this group of people.
I do not know how many times I have quoted the native unemployment statistics in the House. I wonder whether the government listens. The government tabled its own report last year, but I think it is important to give the statistics repeatedly so that members will be aware of the problem. The unemployment rate of natives in the summer is as high as 50 per cent and rises to as much as 90 per cent in the winter. There is a great dependence upon social assistance because of this.
1 should like to refer to the study on Indian conditions which indicates that in 1970 federal government social assistance to native people amounted to $34 million. In the 1978-79 fiscal year, it rose to $104 million. Turning to the area of child care, there is the problem of broken families and families unable to keep their children because of unemployment. In that event the provincial foster care people come in and remove the children. To a large extent they are placed in non-native homes.
I believe the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (Mr. Munro) is addressing this problem. It is very important because once these children are removed from their cultural background-and historically they have no choice because they are enclosed in reserves-they become additions to the statistics as they grow older. The costs for child care have doubled from approximately $11 million to $24 million. The cost of trying to cure alcoholism, which is a very desperate problem among native people, rose from $167,000 in 1970 to $5.5 million in 1978. Even today that sum is inadequate, and it has probably risen by another couple of million in the last two years. The expenditures for other social services have risen from $1 million to $10 million, that is, adult care and welfare aid. The cost of medical services has risen from $36 million to $94 million.
The problem is that most of the Indian social assistance or medical assistance is not directed toward prevention; it is directed toward dealing with the after effects of the problem. Many of the things that we as citizens of the nation take for granted are not available to most native people. The expenditure on preventive measures such as sports and recreation rose from $97,000 in 1970 to only $2 million in 1978. This is something which should have risen faster; in fact it has not risen at the same rate as inflation.

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
The report also indicated that the cost of native people living off federal government social welfare has increased from $84 million in 1970 to $242 million today. This means that the economic development, job training and preventive service programs in many areas are failures. They are not working. They are not providing the type of assistance the government should provide to deal with these problems. It is only one statistic with which we must deal.
I should like to turn to the number of jobs which need to be created. The only way to have any success would be through training, not retraining because most native people do not have or have not been able to acquire any skills because of the situation in which they live. The government creates approximately 3,000 jobs a year for status Indians, but we need an additional 4,000 to 6,000 jobs for those coming on to the job market. I am not referring to those natives who have lost their jobs for some reason or those who have only been able to obtain one or two month jobs through LIP and LEAP. This is considered a man year, if they are all added together. These are the types of jobs which must be created.
If we build an economic development type plant, it may cost from about $30,000 to $60,000 fo create one job. We are looking at many millions of dollars which would have to be spent to meet the needs of the young people coming on the market. It is a challenge for members of parliament and the House of Commons.
Returning to the report on Indian conditions, the estimated net increase in the Indian working population in the next ten years indicates that between 50,000 and 60,000 people will be coming on the job market. That is a great many people. And when I look at the reserves in my riding, I see that almost two-thirds of those people are under the age of 20, which shows the great baby boom which is taking place in those areas, probably because the job-creation program has not dealt with this problem, nor have our social programs.
How could this bill deal with that problem? As I mentioned before, if we want to meet the technology and the advances in job creation in Canada, there has to be education. One must have a basic education before dealing with the kinds of jobs which are available. The record with regard to native people achieving high school standard is abysmal. Thus, when one considers retraining these people, one finds they do not have a basic level of literacy. The bill does not deal with this problem. A new type of innovative program must be established to deal with this situation. This is why I suspect on-the-job training could be an important tool, since in many cases literacy would not be a factor in learning such trades as carpentry or construction work which a great many native people would find attractive.
Another problem with the bill before us is that it lacks provisions which would make it relevant to Indians living on reserves. We tend to forget that most status Indians live on reserves which are away from population centres. On-the-job training programs are situated in population centres. The kind
of assistance which is offered in the reimbursement of living expenses is not adequate to allow these people to move into the cities. There is a natural feeling among native people that they do not wish to move to large cities since they are not comfortable there. Surely we should deal with this problem. Perhaps some on-the-job programs could be mobilized and moved to areas of high unemployment. Some kind of mobile on-the-job training programs could be set up when a company is building in the vicinity of a reserve. Surely this is the time to set up these kinds of programs which would create employment. Yet this bill does not deal with that aspect, nor does it deal with the problem which is very important when it comes to addressing unemployment in this country.
Another problem which has been mentioned before deals with the co-operation of the provinces. Some hon. members who have spoken before have said that there has not been any consultation with the provinces and that they hope that when the bill is passed it will meet some of the requirements of provincial governments. Most of the provinces are not dealing with the native unemployment problem. Because of our history, it has become a federal problem. If we are to deal with it then we must consult with the provinces to see if the kinds of jobs being created fit in with what the province is doing. This should be an important and crucial aspect of the bill, yet it is not dealt with at all.
I mentioned earlier the tremendous growth of our Indian population. We have had a difficult time coming to terms with the problems faced by Indians who move off the reserves. Employment is the major obstacle. When you live on the reserve and want to work but have no skills, you must move to the city to try to find a job. You cannot find a job if you are not skilled. Thus, you are left in the position of not being able to deal with the essentials of life-housing, food and clothing. Many social problems arise as a result of this situation. When we look at our jails, we see that over 50 per cent of them are inhabited by native Canadians. That is a problem which must also be addressed. Our adult training programs in city centres must address native Canadians who have moved to that area out of desperation. At the present time they are receiving no assistance. I hope these problems will be dealt with by the task force and that when it reports we can add points to this bill to overcome these difficulties.
I want to mention an excellent study which was done by Albert Cameron, who is principal of the Saskatchewan Indian Community College in Prince Albert. He made some recommendations which I hope will be dealt with by the task force and which I hoped would have been placed in this bill. In his recommendations he stated the following:
The training should take account of the unique cultural and learning styles of Indians (e.g. courses must be flexible enough to accommodate different levels of education of the Indian students).
The government should locate training facilities at or close to the reserves to allow adult participation and to eliminate relocation and its attendant problems.
When the above is not possible, the government should set up a mobile training program for trade training, with complete facilities to circumvent the relocation problem.
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I think these are three excellent proposals which should be considered. I hope the task force looks at them very seriously.
I want to conclude this portion of my speech by saying that when the government deals with this problem, it not only assists the native people of our nation but assists all Canadians. We cannot continue to shovel this under the rug, because the situation will just get worse. The statistics I have just enunciated prove that.
In conclusion I want to say that I have a difficulty in my own constituency with a pipeline company which needed trained individuals. It was unable to find any place in Canada where people could be trained as service technicians, so it had to send them to Houston, Texas for that training. Of course, the company received no assistance to do that. In effect, this meant training citizens of Canada to work in Canada. But not having the training facilities here, the company had to send them out of Canada where they could receive the necessary instruction. This problem is being addressed in this bill, Mr. Speaker, and I appreciate that very much. I know that while it will not assist the company which I have mentioned, since they have already spent their money, it will certainly assist it in the future if it must train new service technicians outside the country. That is one of the better aspects of the bill.
I want to summarize by saying how important I think it is to use the services of the parliamentary task force, to wait for its advice and to pay attention to what it has to say.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Is the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton rising on a point of order?


Walter David Baker: I was rising to speak for a few moments with respect to this bill. May I call it six o'clock, Mr. Speaker?


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise in the House tonight, with this assembled multitude, to speak for a few moments to such a distinguished group of hon. members-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Walter David Baker: -about a matter which is extremely important to Canadians. As the minister mentioned, because of the change which is occurring in Canada with respect to our work force and its necessities and requirements for education and training, there is a real challenge for young people in the country in the years ahead.
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
I am very pleased to follow in the debate the hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Schellenberger) who made a very thoughtful speech, dwelling, as he did, on matters affecting women and native people for whom he has a particular responsibility in our caucus which he carries out extremely well, marked by a sense of concern and feeling. He raised something during the course of his speech which I think is worthy of comment. He indicated that a task force is presently at work, composed of members of all parties of the House of Commons, with respect to the employment opportunities for Canadians in the eighties. He expressed a concern that somehow or other this bill might be premature because that task force will be reporting within a very short period of time.
Neither the government nor anyone 'else ought to take any steps which would in any way undercut or diminish the work of those very important task forces, initiatives which were begun under the government of the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) when he was prime minister engaging the attention of hon. members in particular areas. I think it is important that that does not happen.
As this debate winds down, and we anticipate this bill going to the committee, I hope it will go there with an understanding from the government. If the minister or his parliamentary secretary is here, it would be nice to have a response from him before the night is over, that the bill will go to the committee with the proviso that it is not the last word in adult occupational training. Out of that report which the committee will give at some later date, which I hope is not too long in the future, I hope there will be some consultation and some ideas which could lead to an improvement with respect to this bill because, as hon. members have indicated, it is our intention to support the bill.
Therefore, I hope the bill is not premature. I hope the hon. member for Wetaskiwin is not proven correct in that the government will attempt to do something in advance with respect to this matter which will ignore or render it necessary to bring in some other legislation in this area, because it is important and that task force is important. The whole question of adult retraining is important.
I think the purpose of the bill is clear. Under our current legislation as it stands, it must be apparent to the minister that there is little incentive for employers to enter into apprenticeship programs to provide training for people who want to work in the trades.
The purpose of this bill is to recognize the changing employment characteristics of the community, the changing technology in the world, and to ensure that there is some way in which we can be on the leading or cutting edge of this revolution in training. There is now little incentive for people to enter the apprenticeship program because the fact is that at present it pays almost the same rate as benefits under the Unemployment Insurance Act. Therefore, there is not that much incentive. Our purpose is to find some incentive.
When this bill extends the definition of an occupational training course to include courses consisting of more than 52 weeks of full-time instruction which would be approved by the

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Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 commission, it is a good provision. When it would permit the commission in certain circumstances to waive the requirement that an adult must be out of school for at least 12 months before he can be enrolled in the occupational training course, I think it is a good thing. Some young people are becoming discouraged with the traditional school system. Even though they have pursued one course of study, they may find it unproductive and they should be encouraged, as the government is encouraging them by this program, to enter other training programs. I therefore think this provision is a good one.
The bill will allow the commission to negotiate payments to a province in connection with occupational training courses, on a fixed rate basis or a basis of costs incurred. The minister did not answer my question last night but I presume that it will allow municipal corporations to become beneficiaries for certain trades and occupations, and that training in them could be provided.
The bill provides a tremendous amount of flexibility for payment. I suspect that the minister is correct and as people are trained to work in the manufacturing industries and the resource industries, the need for their skills will grow.
In the area which I have the privilege to represent in this Parliament, employers in the electronics industry say that they cannot find enough trained people. A great number of people apply for jobs but the employers still cannot find enough who are trained. As a result, they advertise offshore, in the United Kingdom or wherever they can get trained workers. It is important that incentives be provided by the Government of Canada. If one believes that the role of government is to provide leadership, and I happen to believe that is the role of government, then there is a place for the government to take leadership. The effect of this will be magnified one hundredfold as we move into the new technological age.
Many of the occupations that young people have gone into in the past are becoming obsolete. For instance, secretaries are becoming obsolete-not completely redundant but in terms of many of the things they do, obsolete. The word processing machine has invaded the office. The computer has invaded the business world. Some people are required to run those things but not as many as in the past. New opportunities can be created but old opportunities are gone. Women are looking for new occupations, and that is a significant change. As wave upon wave of women enter the work force in the years ahead, they will demand educational facilities to equip them for jobs that were never considered available to them in the past.
I think it is absolutely important that there be an element of co-operation in the program as well as flexibility. One of the things that has distinguished a country like Japan or Germany from Canada is the fact that they seem to have a national commitment with respect to both the goals of industry and the goals of government. There appears to be a sense of partnership in all the levels of government, and in Germany in particular there are other levels of government. There is also
the sense of partnership with the business community, with labour on the one hand, employees on the other, and that very important third party, namely, government. That is the kind of joint effort that is needed in Canada.
I hope that as this program develops, we recognize the importance of that joint commitment and the fact that labour, management and government are all part of that one thing, the Canadian industrial, resource, economic complex. All are in it together.
If there was ever an indication of the importance of that sense of togetherness and co-operation, it is in the area that I happen to represent. There are two real growth industries in Canada, in the energy field and in the high technology field. The second one is a very important one in this area.
I do not have to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the trend to government spending restraint at all levels and the decentralization of the federal bureaucracy is of major concern to citizens of the national capital area. It has changed the thinking in this area, the thinking of business people, the thinking of politicians and, most important, it has changed the thinking of young people in the national capital area.
The government-stimulated growth that we took for granted over the years is not going to be with us in the future. The two major political parties of the country have decided that restraint, and one may define it differently from the other, is the order of the day. There will be no more untramelled growth.
In families where young people are looking forward to entering the work force, they find that the ranks of government have closed. Man years not used, are not filled. There is a view that it is important to preserve the positions of serving public servants.
Governments themselves are involved in retraining programs. As programs change and government initiatives change, public servants can be moved from one area to another within the public service. That means, however, that opportunities for people outside the public service have diminished. The trend of untrammelled growth and untrammelled opportunity is at an end, however. Even without this change which would have taken place in any event, forces are at work, aside from the predetermined decentralization, that are decentralizing the workplace.
I refer to advances in communications technology; the trend toward office automation; the advent of electronic mail and distributed data processing. All these are leading us to an era of a distributed workplace. All this is having a direct impact on this local area and, I dare say, on the areas of other members.
In the recent past, alternate sources of employment were not easy to find. This was traditionally a lumbering area rather than a manufacturing area, but that business has died out. There was once a very marked and strong forest products industry here and that has decreased as well. Over the past ten years, for some reason or other, another industry has developed. A high technology industry has developed in this part of
July 7, 1981

Canada which I think foreshadows at least the potential for tremendous growth. It began in the 1960s with the establishment of Bell-Northern Research Limited on the western outskirts of the city, in what was then the township of Nepean and is now the city of Nepean. Outside of government, it is the largest high technology employer in the area with a local work force of about 2,000 people. There are other firms as well. There is Mitel Corporation in telephone equipment; Digital Equipment of Canada Ltd. which makes mini computers, Gandalf Data Communications which makes digital and telephone equipment, Lumonics which is in the laser business, Leigh Instruments which is in avionics and Computing Devices Co. which makes electronics systems. There are many others in the service sector and computer business as well-software houses and consulting firms. All have grown out of the high technology industry.
It is the managers, the owners, the directors and the employees of those organizations who are telling us that they cannot get enough trained people. I think there is a challenge here that may affect other parts of Canada and other industries. But perhaps in the same way there is a challenge for business and governments at the provincial and the federal level to all come together.
Here in Ottawa we have a post-secondary institution in Algonquin College. If we are to meet the needs of our local industries from our own human resources, then the courses of study and the curriculae of that institution and our two universities have to be directed toward creating the solution to that problem. That scenario can be found in community after community across Canada. However, it will take a commitment to develop these courses.
I believe this program properly administered will be helpful in inducing employers and thereby young people who are looking for new challenges, as well as young people out of school looking for their very first challenge, to consider training under such programs. We have to get people into the technological trades which are so important to the development of these industries.
Technological industries are not just important to this area, they are important to the whole country. As I said at the outset, they are one of the two growth industries in Canada. With the proper amount of strategic planning, with the appropriate steps to encourage the right training programs, coupled with some decent incentives in the areas where we are strong, we will be able to contribute to their growth not only for the national good but for the good of our young people's future.
Our technology is the most promising in the world today. The hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans) is the chairman of a committee of concerned members on matters of science and the development of it. I invite that committee when we return after our recess to visit the industries I have enumerated to talk with the administrators about the need for trained personnel and how that need is being met. These exciting, innovative companies rely as well on the federal
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 government for technical support. Perhaps that is the reason why they have settled here.
I am rather pleased with the government of the province of Ontario for the way it has looked to this area. I know that all members in the House of Commons, even those sitting on the other side, regard the government of Ontario as a benevolent and far-seeing government. This part of the province is one of the areas where the government of Ontario would like to see development of a microelectronic development centre, according to statements made. In other words, it is important that we develop and build upon our strengths. It is important as well, when we remember the necessity for trained personnel, that one of the steps in the ladder to building the strengths will, of necessity, be the training and retraining of adults to fill the positions which good fortune and good management have made available, not just here, but throughout the country.
I will not take up much more time except to say that this bill is not the last word. It is the first word. But it is the first word worthy of support. It is recognition by the Government of Canada of the change in the requirements of the nation. I hope that it will not always be a piecemeal operation. We should not look at occupational training today without considering the necessity of a large industrial strategy.
The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) is always talking about bringing forward an industrial strategy. Retraining will be part of that strategy. I would like to see that industrial strategy and where the emphasis is. The problems are immense. The responsibility on government is immense. The burden on Canada as a result of our involvement in GATT, the changes that will occur to our manufacturing complex over the next seven years, along with the necessity to meet those changes, will make the responsibility on government immense.
I do not want anyone to think that this is the last word. It is a small step but an important one in meeting the requirements of our country as we move into the latter part of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Part of the proposition is that a country is best built on its strengths and not its weaknesses. With respect to that thrust, I say this is a sound beginning.
I want to add that the government should not ignore the findings of the parliamentary committee. It was an initiative taken from the administration of a former government and translated into action by this government in which it asks members of Parliament from all parties to look at employment opportunities in the eighties. This bill is part of the machinery. I hope there will be nothing in the minds of the minister or the government to indicate in any way that the report of that all-party committee will be ignored. This report will likely be unanimous. I hope this bill will be looked at from all points of view when that report is brought down.


Mr. Douglas Roche (Edmonton South):: Mr. Speaker, if still waters run deep, this is a debate which no doubt has gained much attention across the country. This is one of the most important debates we have had in this Parliament. It is not my

July 7, 1981
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2 intention to delay the proceedings tonight. I believe the parliamentary secretary wants to speak, and I encourage him to respond to the points that have been made.
I shall take only a few moments to outline three points concerning this bill. I believe it is, as the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker) who preceded me has said, a way in which we look at our own future in Canada with respect to the development of our human resources. Not too many things that we have talked about in this Parliament are as important as the development of the people who are able to respond to the technological challenge that we all face in this changing society.
The hon. member for Wetaskiwin (Mr. Schellenberger) made quite a point in his intervention today, and it was also my understanding that the task force on Employment Opportunities for the '80s was about to bring in a report which would have taken a comprehensive look at the employment situation and the problems with respect to adjustment and the strategies necessary to that adjustment, as well as the training consequent to that.
Suddenly we find ourselves with a bill on which we are all in favour. I understand we will give it speedy passage at second reading because we are in favour of it. However, it does not do nearly enough to respond to the challenge of the technological age in which Canada has entered.
First I ask the parliamentary secretary to tell us in clear language why the government felt that it had to proceed with Bill C-67 before the task force report has been presented to the House. I believe that members of Parliament are to be encouraged, as I felt I was encouraged when dealing with the North-South task force report, a subject I will return to in a moment. If we are to be encouraged to take a good, hard, deep, comprehensive look at the problems that have been mandated to us for study, I do not believe that piecemeal legislation is an adequate response.
Second, I have to note with some irony that we are being asked to consider in Bill C-67 measures to help the technological training of people in the new society we have entered. At the same time another aspect of this government is driving out of Canada the very people who are technologically trained. They have been trained by many corporations and companies, particularly oil companies.
I would be remiss in my duty if I did not point out that the so-called energy policies of this government are having a deleterious effect not only on the national economy, but on the human capacity in my province to respond to the technological aids. It is driving people out of the country. It then comes along with piecemeal legislation and says, "Let us do a better job of training". There is a contradiction here in these two points.
I see I have the minister's attention. If he was here a moment ago, let me remind him that I made the point about the use of task forces. Conjoining my first point, I say to him very sincerely: if we are genuinely sincere in our efforts to help
Canadians respond in the development of their own human capacity to plug into a technological society, the government has to speak with one voice and one concern. That would be met by parliamentary support.
I am not going to load on the minister tonight a great big harangue about the energy policy. He has heard plenty about it from my colleagues. I dare say he has heard about it from his own colleagues, probably in more private conversations. Nonetheless, I believe it proper to point out that if the government is serious about training people and helping people to respond to the need to find a place in the new technological society, we have to get together.
I now come to the principal point. I am glad I have the minister's attention. I assure him I will not belabour this point, but I do want him to hear me. One of the reasons that this is piecemeal legislation is that the government does not have an industrial adjustment policy.
I take the minister back to the North-South task force report which was tabled in the House on December 18, 1980, a report of some 38 recommendations. I am sure the minister is familiar with that report. I will focus on one recommendation in the trade section. In my judgment, this was the single most important recommendation in the trade section of the North-South task force report. It had to do with the recommendation that reads as follows:
The task force recommends that the government immediately launch a major public inquiry of the industrial sectors that are likely to be at a long-term competitive disadvantage in relation to developing countries, with a view to adopting effective adjustment measures.
That is a lot of very heavy thinking. The task force said it is necessary for us to eliminate obsolete industrial capacities in our country in such a way as to encourage firms to invest in new and more promising areas or discouraging further investment in declining industries. The report goes on to read:
Assistance given to individual firms should be aimed at improving their efficiency and over-all international competitiveness.
I emphasize that our concern and the long and objective study, and the hon. member for Labelle (Mr. Dupras) can attest to this, represented the thinking on all sides of the House. If we are going to be serious in our approach to the North-South question, and that takes us into the areas of finance, development assistance and energy-I leave all that aside for the moment-and in our trade relationships, we have to figure out a way to respond to what in international terms is called the international division of labour.
We now have 250 million people in the world who are unemployed or underemployed. Before the turn of the century, we will have 500 million people unemployed or underemployed. That is not all Canada's responsibility, but it is a subject to which Canada has to respond because these people are in countries that are industrializing and that need to find new markets. If we are going to have some sort of aid program or relationship with North-South, there has to be a quid pro quo. We have to find ways in which we can live together on this planet. One way to do that is not to move adversely against the textile industry in Canada.
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I hope the minister will not interpret my argument as one that is adverse to the interests of the textile workers. No sane politician in this country will stand up and say we should fire the textile workers. Not at all. The North-South task force emphasized that we are not interested in taking action that would hurt the textile workers who are caught in a situation that is beyond their control. However, it is not beyond the control of the government to phase Canada into a situation through an industrial adjustment strategy that will respond to the needs of Canada to become more technologically oriented in our industrial capacity and to phase out low-level technology, as many countries of the world can fill that void. There is a balance that needs to be attained. The minister is probably quite anxious to see Canada participate in finding a way to achieve that balance.
The task force report certainly was not anything revolutionary. It is not a document that says we have to do something overnight. It stated:
The task force recommends that the government immediately launch a major public inquiry of the industrial sectors that are likely to be at a long-term competitive disadvantage-
Naturally we had the textile industry in mind along with others. What did the government do? It gave a response to the task force report on June 15 during the foreign policy debate which was held for two days in this House. It was the official government response. Responding to that very recommendation, this is what the government said:
The difficulties of the Canadian industrial sectors which are most affected by the competition of developing countries are well known to the government.
The government claims all this is well known.
Measures to help the competitiveness of these Canadian industries in the present international trading environment are already being taken or in the course of being formulated. Public inquiries concerning these industries have recently been conducted by the textile and clothing board and the anti-dumping tribunal. The government will be taking decisions shortly.
In other words, the government is rejecting the recommendation of the task force for a major public inquiry that would last for some time and go into some real detail and depth on industrial adjustment, which we claim to be necessary, saying it has the answers. The government certainly does not have the answers or it would have been bringing forward some comprehensive legislation.
I listened to the minister's speech last night. It was well received in the House. I heard the minister say there were future plans, there is more coming down the line. This is something to get us started. That is why this bill is going to achieve reasonably easy passage. However, I am disappointed, not just personally but on behalf of industrial adjustment in the country, that the government has rejected that principal recommendation of the North-South task force report.
Subsequent to that, a few days after the government gave its official response, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Gray) brought in a new textile policy which, to be proper, was a continuation of the present textile policy, which is a shoring up of a declining industry. He announced that
Adult Occupational Training Act, No. 2
$250 million would be allocated by the government over five years. The Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) has, of course, a share in this decision, since it is a government decision to put $250 million over five years to establish new employment in communities affected by industrial adjustment, to help displaced workers take advantage of new employment opportunities and to assist the modernization of viable firms in the textile industry. That is what the government is doing.
The people who have been following the government's textile policy and its response to the need for an industrial adjustment strategy that the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton was outlining a moment ago, all those people are very concerned today that the government is continuing to drift its way into this technological future that the minister has been trying to summon us into with Bill C-67.
I feel so strongly about the government's inadequate response to the North-South task force report and the government's announcement of the continuation of the textile policy that I am going to read some excerpts into the record tonight from an editorial from the Winnipeg Free Press. I do not think the minister will reject this out of hand because this is an editorial that appeared on June 23, 1981, under the heading "Propping up Textiles". The reason I am going to read some excerpts from this editorial into the record is that I believe the minister and his officials may very well want to take a good, hard look at the argumentation which has been put forward. Indeed, I would certainly recommend this argumentation to them.
So you will not think, Mr. Speaker, this is a partisan argument I am giving, let me say that I am giving the minister a reflection of what I think is a well-considered, objective view of the government's non-policy on industrial adjustment to which Bill C-67 only opens the door.
Let me quote the editorial as follows:
Five years ago, when the federal government imposed strict and costly quotas on foreign imports of clothing and textiles, Canadians were assured that this was the last chance for the Canadian industry. It was to be given five years to modernize, to become efficient and capable of coping with foreign competition. After that, it was to be forced to stand on its own feet without further government help.
The latest announcement at least abandons the pretence that protection for the industry is temporary. The government will continue the quotas for a further five years. It will provide the industry with $250 million to expand and to modernize. But this time there is no suggestion that, five years down the road, the industry will be any better placed to meet foreign competition than it is today. The clear assumption is that the Canadian textile industry will remain protected and subsidized, to the cost both of Canadian consumers and the people of the Third World, for all time to come.
I interject into my quotation from the Winnipeg Free Press at this moment to review for a minute with the minister the report of the North-South Institute which gave a very detailed report showing how the Canadian consumer is paying about $100 a year extra for clothing because of the protectionist policies the government is continuing. I resume my quotation from the Winnipeg Free Press:

July 7, 1981
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The textile policy, of course, conflicts with two of the most ballyhooed aspects of the present government's policy-the national industrial strategy and the support of the new world economic order.
The industrial strategy is supposed to encourage a transfer of manpower and resources to the industries of the future. The textile policy, at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars to the taxpayers and about $100 a year in higher costs for every Canadian family, encourages expansion of an industry which is largely unable to compete on the world scene and which will always pay relatively low wages.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. With all due respect to the hon. member I would call to his attention the bill before us which is an act to amend the Adult Occupational Training Act. The hon. member appears to be straying from the subject matter of the bill.


Douglas Roche: As you know, sir, I never quarrel or argue with the judgments of the Chair. I have great respect, indeed, but I have been trying to advance an argument, that will only take a few more moments, as to why Bill C-67 is not meeting the very objective which it seeks to achieve, that is retraining for industrial adjustment. If you will bear with me, Mr. Speaker, I would ask for your indulgence, and I think I have the minister's attention and only intend to speak for a few more moments, but I think I am putting forth a case for the need for the government to take seriously an industrial adjustment policy that was laid out very clearly in the North-South task force report and which the government in its own response said it was not going to do. I think that is an argument to be presented with respect to Bill C-67. To continue this very short quotation, it reads:
There is an area in which Canadian textiles can compete in world terms and some Winnipeg firms are doing so successfully. But most of the industry survives only because of massive protection and continuing that protection into the indefinite future will only add one more roadblock to the modernization of the Canadian economy.
That, sir, is the modernization of the Canadian economy the minister stood in his place last night and said he wanted. I have said, and my colleagues who have spoken on this bill have said, including the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton and the hon. member for Wetaskiwin, that we are going to support Bill C-67, but we are calling to the attention of the government as surely as we can the inadequacies of Bill C-67 in attempting to meet the very challenge it opens up.
Resuming my quotation from the Winnipeg Free Press, and there is only a little bit more, it reads:
It is particularly ironic that the new quotas should be imposed just a month before Prime Minister Trudeau plays host to the leaders of the world's most economically advanced nations at the Ottawa Summit. Mr. Trudeau plans to lecture the world's leaders on the duty of the rich nations to help the countries of the Third World break out of the cycle of underdevelopment and poverty.
He will no doubt point out to them that fairer terms of trade are every bit as important as aid in achieving that end. He will presumably not point out that Canada's textile policy is the exact opposite of what he is preaching.
We have all said that fairer terms of trade are every bit as important as aid.
The article continues:
Even if he does not, the message may still get through. A week before the Ottawa Summit, a conference in Geneva will begin renegotiation of the international multifibre agreement.
That is also something we paid attention to, sir, in the North-South task force report.
The article continues:
Spokesmen for the textile-exporting nations of the Third World have already served notice that they will go to that meeting seeking better access to the markets of the economically-advanced nations.
I now come to the final paragraph of the Winnipeg Free Press editorial and I ask the minister to take note of this:
They will campaign against the restrictions imposed by the rich countries in North America and Europe against their exports. Canada can expect to come in for its share of criticism. It may be, as Employment Minister Lloyd Axworthy claims, that Canada's quotas are more lenient than those of most other industrialized nations. On the other hand, most of the other nations do not have leaders who continually proclaim their dedication to the interests of the Third World. We are not any worse than the others, just more hypocritical.
That is the end of the quotation and almost the end of the argumentation I wish to present to the House tonight since I said I did not wish to unduly delay the processing of this bill.
I ask you to consider, Mr. Speaker, that if we are to be serious on two counts, first that we are really going to modernize Canadian industry on behalf of Canadians-some very good speeches were made in the course of this debate about how Canadians coming on-stream today are going to have to change their careers two, three and four times in the period of their lifetime because of the speed of technological change today-if we are serious about meeting the needs of Canadians in a rapidly changing, evolving high technology society-my friend from Wetaskiwin pointed out the opening of the third facility in Alberta; we have one in northern Alberta, one in southern Alberta and now there is to be a third one to give technological training because of the demand for high technological skills-and if we are to be serious about responding to the needs of Canadians, we must have a comprehensive industrial adjustment strategy on which to build a continuing training program.
That is the first point I leave with the minister. The second is that if we are to be serious in our response to the North-South dialogue, if we are to be serious in responding to the international division of labour, if we are to be serious that Canada will play a proper role in international development in a world in which we are becoming technologically one society and to which Canada has to respond responsibly with a comprehensive and unified policy for international development where we do not hurt countries to which we are ostensibly giving aid and then refusing to buy products from them so they can industrialize in their own way because we are protecting low-level technological interests in our country, then I ask the minister to think seriously in his capacity to lead the government and this House with policies which will be truly aimed at job creation for Canadians and those people Canadians want to relate to in the interests of a sane world order.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Before recognizing the minister who moved the motion, I must inform the House that if he speaks now he will close the debate on second reading.


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.
July 7, 1981


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, I will not take much of the time of the House because I believe I was able to express my interest in the passage of this bill, and 1 appreciate the comments and good wishes of members opposite in enabling us to bring this to a reasonably speedy and effective conclusion on second reading.
I would just like to say that many of the comments we have heard in this debate have been particularly helpful and useful in setting out the proposals, solutions and ideas about how we can improve the performance of training skills in Canada. I think it also indicates something perhaps far more important and essential, which is that there is an underlying agreement, regardless of party, region or whatever, that this is an objective which must be served by this national government. The improvement of the skills and talents of Canadians to meet the demands of the labour market of the 1980s is something to which there is underlying acceptance and agreement from all members of this House.
While we may differ on the details and the particulars, and while we may have particular tangents we want to follow, it is very gratifying to me to realize as we move forward in this area that we at least enjoy the initial commitment of all members to pull together. Whether we call it an industrial strategy or a labour market strategy, there is a common acceptance of a need to change and reform our institutions of training, education and our efforts at job employment and adjustment so that we can match the skills and aptitudes of Canadians to the jobs of the future.
Many speakers in this debate have indicated they wish this bill had more detail, was broader in its range and comprehension. I, too, wish that, but the timing was not there because we were just not ready for that. Any good idea has a certain gestation period. I believe we are still at the beginning of that process. I hope members of this House will take the time to read the report tabled this afternoon which my department produced, which I believe put forward a lot of new information concerning the changes taking place in Canada's labour markets. It sets forward some ideas which I hope will stimulate their interest and reaction as to how we change policies in unemployment insurance, job training and job creation.
I also look forward, as do other members of this House, to the tabling of the report of the special parliamentary committee which has had a large scale consultation with the Canadian public about the need for changes, and which will provide a very important contribution to an understanding of this very important area. It is my hope, Mr. Speaker, that this will again take place in a short period of time. I want to assure hon. members, because many of them raised the question, that those reports are simply the opening of a debate, the commencement of consultation, and we do not intend to act in this very critical area without some degree of acceptance and accord on the part of trade unions, business organizations, members of Parliament and the provincial governments.
The bill itself is an indication of agreement by provincial governments on the measures in this bill, and that we did
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spend time talking to provincial governments. They do agree with these measures and are looking forward to them because they give us the ability to begin changing our adult occupational training programs. These programs cost the federal government close to $800 million a year, one of the major investments we make in economic and social development. The provinces want extension of the time in which they can provide educational training, they want the ability, when necessary, to sign agreements not only with provincial institutions but with employer groups, trade unions, native organizations and social agencies, which this bill will allow us to do.
So there are very important innovations in this bill which are the first step towards the kinds of changes members have asked for. However, I do want to assure them that this is really only the beginning. There is the old saying that a journey of
1,000	miles begins with a single step. Well, this is one step we are taking in this House tonight. It is certainly my hope that this step will be completed before we adjourn this House this summer, that we will have a complete package of legislation so as not to lose the time to begin putting in place some of the training initiatives required.
While this country goes on to debate many of the major policy changes which will take place over the following year, we can also start working in a practical and expedient way to make changes beginning this summer so we can start training hundreds and thousands of Canadians this fall for new opportunities in the rapidly changing industrial and economic landscape of Canada.
So I thank members for this debate. I hope they will continue to support us in the committee hearings and third reading so we can come forward with a package for which I believe all Canadians will applaud this Parliament because it is an important first step in an area where we all agree action is required.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is the House ready for the question?


Some hon. Members:: Question.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to, bill read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration.

Mr. Pinard (for Mr. Chretien) moved: that Bill C-53, an Act to amend the Criminal Code in relation to sexual offences and the protection of young persons and to amend certain other Acts in relation thereto or in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.

July 7, 1981
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Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Is the Minister of Justice (Mr. Chretien) not here to introduce these amendments which have been called for by the government and by women of Canada? Is this the way this Parliament is being treated by the Minister of Justice?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice (Mr. Irwin) has the floor.


Mr. Ron Irwin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Justice and Minister of State for Social Development):: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Justice (Mr. Chretien) was here earlier on this particular bill and we were prepared to speak to it last week. Unfortunately, the time was used up, probably well used up, by the opposition.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ron Irwin: It is a pleasure to make a few remarks with respect to Bill C-53. As its title indicates, it is an act to amend the Criminal Code in relation to sexual offences and the protection of young persons. The Royal Commission on the Status of Women, the Law Reform Commission of Canada and women's organizations across the country have all levelled criticism at the existing law. Many of these criticisms are justified, and it is hoped that not all but most of them will be met by Bill C-53.
To enhance the protection of children, the bill will create new offences against sexual exploitation of young people by adults and against child pornography. In addition, other changes will assist in prosecuting child abuse cases and cases of abduction of young children in custody disputes.
There are four broad principles I wish to address in this bill. First among them is the protection of the integrity of the person. The importance of this cannot be overstated. It is the very purpose for which men and women form governments and enact laws. The principle simply means that every person in our society is entitled to live free from violence and, as much as possible, free from the fear of violence. This clearly implies that no one should be compelled to engage in sexual activity without his or her consent.
The second principle is the protection of children and special groups. The need for this is obvious. Children clearly require protection from the physical and emotional consequences of activities with which they cannot properly deal.
Third, there is a duty upon government to safeguard public decency. Society has the right to expect laws which protect its members from other individuals and to safeguard its public morals.
The fourth broad principle is also of great importance. It is also properly the subject of increasing attention today, that is, the elimination of sexual discrimination in criminal law. Simple equity demands this. There are many rights of those who are charged, and hopefully they will be enshrined in the Constitution. But hand in hand with the rights of the accused must go the protection of those who are victims. Hopefully this bill will strike a balance in that particular area.
In the area of sexual offences, a number of changes are necessary. Above all, the law must recognize the element of violence. At present rape and indecent assault are listed in the Criminal Code under the part entitled "Sexual Offences, Public Morals and Disorderly Conduct". Bill C-53 would place the new crimes replacing rape and indecent assault in the part of the code dealing with offences against person and reputation. This change would separate violent sexual attacks from the concept of sexual morality. Furthermore-and we have received many submissions on this particular point-the bill would eliminate the stigma attached to terms such as "indecent assault" and "rape". There would be two new offences. The first would be sexual assault and the second would be aggravated sexual assault. Using a weapon or causing serious bodily harm would become aggravated sexual assault.
It would no longer be necessary to prove penetration. That requirement in section 143 of the Criminal Code has caused much anguish and embarrassment to complainants. It has done little, if anything, to protect these victims. Moreover, it has unduly complicated and prolonged trial. Also it has created an anomaly in the law. Some brutal and injurious sexual attacks not involving penetration have been charged, out of necessity, as the lesser offence of indecent assault. The Law Reform Commission of Canada pointed out in its report on sexual offences tabled in Parliament in November 1978:
To retain penetration as a distinct element of one of the offences would be to emphasize the sexual character of the proscribed behaviour rather than to stress the aspect of violence or threatened violence.
I should like to add that most women's organizations in Canada strongly recommend the elimination of this outdated requirement. However, upon conviction the judge will be able to and should consider the nature and degree of violence when sentencing the accused.
Next I should like to deal with the question of consent as it is covered by Bill C-53. The question of consent has always been an essential element in the offence of rape. It would remain a central requirement in the new law of "sexual assault". The bill specifies the following:
No consent is obtained where the complainant submits or does not resist by reason of (a) the application of force; (b) threats or fear of the application of force; (c) fraud; or (d) the exercise of authority.
If an accused claimed that the complainant consented, the jury would have to be told to consider whether or not his claim is reasonable. This is consistent with the Supreme Court decision in the Pappajohn case.
Also the bill deals with spousal immunity. Affected by this definition of consent will be the concept of spousal immunity. At present that immunity prevents a husband from being charged with raping his wife on the basis that marriage entitles him to intercourse with or without consent. This is something I would have thought would have disappeared a hundred years ago. Some concern has been expressed about the difficulty of proving lack of consent to sexual relations between married persons. Some also claim that removing the immunity would involve undue interference in the private lives of married persons.
July 7, 1981

However, proving lack of consent will remain a key factor in all cases where the parties have had prior sexual relationship, married or not. It is strange in this day and age that a person involved in a common law relationship, such as a common law wife, has the right to charge her common law husband with rape. Yet a married person who is separated and awaiting a decree nisi in a divorce action does not have the same right. This immunity from being prosecuted for rape persists. It should be noted that under the present law forced intercourse or assault within marriage can constitute grounds for divorce. There is no evidence in the Divorce Act that this involves an abuse of the law or its process. Consequently, by abolishing spousal immunity the government would eliminate this discrimination against legally married women. Equal protection under the law would be granted to all persons. Married women would be given greater protection of their personal integrity than the law now provides.
The matter of consent is very complex. As the law of rape has developed, so have certain rules of evidence relating to the question of consent. I refer in particular to the evidence concerning the character of the complainant and the doctrine of recent complaint. I will not burden hon. members with the history of these doctrines and laws. I should like to deal with the law as it is today. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Forsythe case is a final ruling on procedure whereby an accused may cross-examine a complainant on her previous sexual history and the extent to which the crossexamination may go.
Hon. members will recall that in 1976, Parliament enacted Section 142 of the Criminal Code to restrict this type of questioning of the complainant. As the court pointed out, what we did at the time was to alleviate the trauma, humiliation and embarrassment of the complainant. However, at the same time, the court has ruled that in some cases the accused is still entitled to challenge the character of the complainant by referring to her previous sexual activities with others. In a trial, these questions attempt to blacken the character and are very rarely relevant to the issue at trial.
What is the issue in a rape trial? The issue is: did the accused commit the alleged offence against the complainant beyond a reasonable doubt. I would add that those interested in law reform have objected strongly to this questioning of a complainant's character.
The proposed amendments would clarify Parliament's intent. Simply put, evidence of the complainant's character would only be admissible in exceptional cases. At a closed hearing a judge would have to determine whether the accused had personal knowledge of the complainant's previous sexual character which led him to believe that she consented. That is a very strict and high standard, one which I hope would only be invoked rarely.
Then there is the doctrine of recent complaint. What is the doctrine of recent complaint? I would suggest that it is almost as old as spousal immunity. It goes back to the days when the
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complainant had to raise a hue and cry when she was raped. Failure to complain was held against her. There are many reasons why a woman who has been sexually assaulted would not raise this hue and cry. The foremost reason would be that she would not want to go through a trial, nor would she want people to know. We have looked at the doctrine of recent complaint as an evidenciary rule, and it will be abolished if Bill C-53 is enacted and rightly so.
I wish to make two other points about the proposed changes before moving on to the very important question of protecting children from sexual abuse and exploitation. First, there is the problem of corroboration. The present law requires that the complainant's testimony-and now I am talking about young children-must be corroborated by other evidence before an accused can be convicted. This rule has undergone various statutory changes and is very confusing. Under the proposals before you, Mr. Speaker, corroboration will no longer be required. There is no reason why the law should remain confused in this respect. Sexual offences should be treated the same as other offences.
Second, there is the problem of trial publicity, which is probably one of the most serious problems in sexual, indecent assault and rape cases. At present, in the case of rape or indecent assault, the prosecutor can request the judge to order that the complainant's identity and evidence not be published. Under the proposals before the House now, if a request is made by the prosecution or by the complainant, the court must bar publication of any information which could disclose the identity of the complainant. There is no discretion; once the judge is asked to ban publication he must comply. However, evidence which does not identify the complainant in any way could be published. Along with this provision there is still a discretionary role of the judge to forbid any evidence being published. It is an extra safeguard on what is already in existence.
I would now like to deal with the proposals relating to the protection of children. In February of this year the Minister of Justice announced that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) and he had appointed a committee under the direction of Dr. Robin F. Badgley of the University of Toronto to undertake a very substantial study in the area of sexual abuse and exploitation of children. I might add at this point that further legislation may come before the House after that committee reports. The present law relating to sexual offences against children does not adequately deal with the situation to which young people are exposed. It is characterized by no longer relevant distinctions between the sexes. For instance, there is not equal protection to boys and girls. There are terms like "of previously chaste character", which few judges, let alone lawyers, complainants or prosecutors understand. There is also the term "more to blame", which is difficult to understand. What is done on the "more to blame" test? Are the number of beers which the boy gives the girl tallied up? Or is how much marijuana she smoked taken into account, how much she borrowed, on who went where and did what to whom? It is a very difficult test and I do not know if

July 7, 1981
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this legislation comes to grips with it. I think it is something which the committee will have to look into. We are still into the realm of definition, but possibly at the committee level that particular definition can be restructured and looked at again. But something must be done about it.
It is unnecessary to list the relevant provisions of the Criminal Code concerning sexual offences against children. Rather, I will outline briefly the changes we propose. First, the new law would prohibit any person from engaging in sexual misconduct with a child of either sex who is under the age of 14 years, whether or not there is consent. In other words, the infant cannot give consent. It will not be a defence for the accused to state that he or she believed that at the time the child was over the age of 14 years.
Second, anyone who engages in sexual misconduct with a person between 14 and 16 years of age, regardless of the sex of the complainant, will be guilty of an offence. However, the accused could not be found guilty if he or she was under the age of 16 or was less than three years older than the complainant. The best example I can give, where consent is involved, concerns a girl who is just under 16 years of age while the boy is over 17 but under 18 years of age. The girl could be 15 and the boy 17. In that case, if there is consent then there is no offence. Likewise, an accused would not be convicted if there was an honest belief that the complainant was 16 years of age or more, or if the accused was less responsible than the complainant. Any parent or guardian having lawful care or charge of, or exercising authority over, a person under 16 years of age, engaging in sexual misconduct with such a child, would be guilty of an offence.
As members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs and the House recognized in 1978, sexual exploitation of children for purposes of child pornography is a serious problem. Therefore, a new offence is proposed aimed at stopping sexual exploitation of children under the age of 16. In this bill those who induce, coerce, or agree to use a person of either sex under the age of 16 for purposes of producing visual representations of sexually explicit conduct will be dealt with harshly. This would also include those who print, reproduce, publish, distribute, circulate, sell, offer to sell, receive for sale, advertise, or expose to public view such representations. In other words, anyone who would profit from this filth will be dealt with harshly. Anyone found guilty of any of these acts, or of possessing such material for the purpose of committing any of these acts, would be punished by imprisonment of up to five years. In addition, as is the case at present, the illegal material would be forfeited to the Crown.
[Translation}
I sincerely believe that the proposed legislation with regard to sexual offences would meet the objectives I have just indicated, namely the protection of personal integrity and of children, public decency and even elimination of sexual discrimination. Also, it would clarify and simplify the work of police forces, the courts as well as of juries. I therefore recommend that the House pass Bill C-53 on second reading.

I would like to conclude by urging hon. members to recognize the importance of immediately referring this bill to committee. This will allow for a full discussion by hon. members and for representation by interested groups in Canada which have, for many years, lobbied and presented excellent briefs to make these amendments. I appreciate the interest which the public is taking in these legislative proposals. It is my hope that those who have views to express on them will seize this opportunity to make them known to the committee.


Walter David Baker: Where is the minister?


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier):: Mr. Speaker, I believe there has been consultation between the leaders. I ask for the unanimous consent of this House to return to the item Tabling of reports of standing and special committees in order to table the sixth, seventh and eighth reports of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills and Standing Orders.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, there has been that consultation, and we understand the nature of what the hon. gentleman wishes to do as chairman of the committee, and we are prepared to consent.


Mr. Knowles:: So do we.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Is there agreement to return to tabling of reports from standing and special committees?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of tabling, in both official languages, the sixth, seventh, and eighth reports of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Private Bills and Standing Orders.
[Editor's Note: For text of the above report, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]
July 7, 1981


CONCURRENCE IN SIXTH, SEVENTH AND EIGHTH REPORTS OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Jean-Robert Gauthier: Mr. Speaker, with the consent of the House, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Portneuf (Mr. Dion) that the reports I have just presented be concurred in.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it agreed and so ordered?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Chretien that Bill C-53, an Act to amend the Criminal Code in relation to sexual offences and the protection of young persons and to amend certain other Acts in relation thereto or in consequence thereof, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on this particular important piece of legislation. First 1 want to address a few remarks to the House. When I am saying these things, I do not want the parliamentary secretary to take any personal offence over his participation in this debate. However, I find it passing strange that this particularly important piece of legislation which has been brought before the House and which has received much attention from very significant groups in our country, is not important enough in terms of the priority of the Minister of Justice (Mr. Chretien), who has responsibility in this area, for his own personal attendance in this House in order to introduce this legislation. 1 find it absolutely unacceptable that the minister is not here, for whatever reason, having regard to the fact that the government is in charge and responsible for the timetable of this House. He is not here to introduce, speak on, participate and be in the House with respect to this very important legislation. If he is not really interested in the job, he should submit his resignation to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau).


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: This particular legislation is so important that I think hon. members of this House will understand the intensity of my feeling when I say to the Minister of Justice, wherever he may be and whatever he is doing, that if he thinks so little of this particular bill with amendments to the Criminal
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Code, important as they are, that he cannot find time in his schedule to come forward and speak on it at the time it is brought forward on the initial occasion-even though it is late in the night, even though it follows a number of other pieces of legislation which have been brought forward by the government which, in its own wisdom and judgment, considers it to be less important than such bills as the bill dealing with diplomatic immunity, and bills with respect to the measurement of gold in this country-if that is the attitude the minister takes, then I think it is about time that he decided whether he is really interested in his job, and if not, he should turn it over to someone who is, because that has been the history of this particular piece of legislation.
The priority this government has afforded this legislation is now demonstrated by the absence of the minister in this particular debate. What are the circumstances? This matter has been, in fact, under consideration by the government and previous administrations. It is not a completely novel legislative endeavour on the part of this government. The fact of the matter is that while there have been calls on the government to bring forward the legislation for debate on the floor of the House of Commons-and my House leader has raised this matter in the course of House leaders discussions, asking when the matter will come forward-there have always been other matters with respect to government business which seemed to be more appropriate.
Finally, late at night in the dying days of the session, the government sees fit to bring forward this particular bill. I want the people of Canada to know exactly what we face as far as this particular legislation is concerned. What we face is the prospect of going through this kind of limited debate on the floor of the House of Commons and the matter not surfacing again before this session is ended.
After all, as Your Honour well knows, we have now run since April of 1980 a session which originated after the last election. The custom, tradition and expectation is that there will be a new Speech from the Throne and a new session of Parliament in each year. There is now a lot of speculation in the press that by next fall, after the summer recess, the government will consider its priorities, economically, socially and otherwise, and will prepare and present to the House, very early after our return which will take place some time after Thanksgiving according to the government House leader, a new Speech from the Throne. The effect of that will be that all legislation which is on the Order Paper will then be null and void and we will have to start again from scratch. That will be as a consequence of the delay on the part of the government.
In any event, if we get the bill through now, the House will adjourn within a matter of days; I do not know exactly when. The Prime Minister has not indicated that it will be this Friday, but chances are that it will be either this Friday or possibly a few days into the next week.


An hon. Member:: I hope you are right.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I am not commenting on it. I have indicated today that I for one think that Parliament has a responsibil-

July 7, 1981
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ity to act on a number of important issues; and the postal dispute is one of them.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: I do not think we should be recessing this House when the people of Canada are under the burden of carrying a postal strike on their backs. I also think that there are a lot of other important matters which we should possibly consider bringing before this House. Also the government should consider bringing a new budget before the House. I could go on for a long time about the number of things that I think this House of Commons could usefully be doing. However, the reality is that the recess is upon us.
The government House leader has indicated that he will be putting down the motion. This bill will be referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs which is now considering in some detail and depth the freedom of information legislation. My colleagues will know that that is an important bill and that much good and hard work has been done by the committee to make it the best possible legislation available to the people of Canada. All this takes time, and members are working very hard to try to get the bill into the best possible form. Who knows how long that will take?


Mrs. Hervieux-Payette:: A thousand years.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: The Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General (Mrs. Hervieux-Payette) says that it may take some time-a year, she says. I have no knowledge of whether it will take that long but I can say that members of this party are very serious about that bill and are all acting in a responsible manner to try to get the bill through committee. A great number of amendments have been put forward by the government and opposition parties with a view to improving the bill, and they require careful consideration.
Another important social bill must be given serious consideration, one initiated when this party was in government, the Young Offenders Act.
I just want members of the government to understand where all this puts the bill before us, in terms of priority. The committee also has a bill which deals with diplomatic immunity. All these items must be disposed of before the committee can deal with the bill before us which will require the most careful consideration.
In his introductory remarks, the parliamentary secretary indicated areas about which he had some apprehension and which he said the government will want to examine carefully.
Where is the Minister of Justice, Mr. Speaker? Why is he not here to address this legislation? Is he in Toronto laying charges in the uranium cartel prosecutions? There must be some reason why he is not here. Obviously he was sloughing off that prospect when he was in the House earlier today. Who knows where he is.


An hon. Member:: Perhaps he is in Spadina.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Is he at the Tokyo restaurant in Vancouver? I want to know where the Minister of Justice is. I am very concerned that the minister is not here to lead off the debate on this very important piece of legislation and to tell the people of Canada what his priority is. As spokesman for the government he should be here. Parliamentary secretaries cannot speak on behalf of the government. They simply read the notes prepared by departmental officials. That is their function. The government is represented by a minister of the Crown.


An hon. Member:: Perhaps he has been appointed to the Senate.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: No matter what the reason is, Mr. Speaker, I am terribly disappointed that the minister saw fit to be absent when such an important piece of legislation is introduced.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I know that the heckling and harping from the government benches is an indication of their acute embarrassment that the minister has neglected or refused to appear.
I want to deal with the provisions of this bill because I have a number of observations with respect to it which I think are appropriate.
This bill is the latest development in a full decade of extended discussions about reform of the law relating to sexual offences. It is over ten years since the Royal Commission on the Status of Women suggested changes be made in the law in this area. It is three years-


Mr. Peterson:: Oh, oh!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, if the hon. member for Willowdale (Mr. Peterson) spoke from anywhere but the seat of his pants, he might be noticed more often, not only in the House but outside the House. I know that members have been referred to as nobodies 50 yards from Parliament Hill, but the member for Willowdale is a nobody on Parliament Hill.
It is now over three years since the Hon. Ron Basford, when he was minister of justice, introduced Bill C-52 which proposed substantial revisions to the relevant sections of the legislation. It was introduced during the third session of the thirtieth Parliament and was not reintroduced in ensuing sessions.
Under the bill, sexual attacks were to be classified as two offences, indecent assault punishable by a maximum of 14 years imprisonment, and aggravated indecent assault, punishable by a maximum of life imprisonment.
In November, 1978 the Law Reform Commission of Canada made its contribution to the debate on the issue of revising the law relating to sexual offences. In passing, I would point out that a very strange situation arose because of the government's introduction of Bill C-52 in May 1978. The government knew that in 1978, the Law Reform Commission's recommendations were forthcoming. It knew, of course, what the very function
July 7, 1981

of the commission was, and is; that is, to provide advice on questions of reform. Yet the government went ahead and introduced major revisions to the sexual offences provisions in the code only a few months before the commission was to report. That ridiculous turn of events is an interesting footnote to this debate.
The Commission's report recommended that reform be based on three fundamental principles: protecting the integrity of the person, protecting children and special groups, and safeguarding public decency.
It suggested that sexual assault be divided into two new categories, sexual interference and sexual aggression, the latter offence, needless to say, being the more serious of the two.
The commission also dealt with offences relating to sexual activities with children, with persons in positions of dependence. In addition, it made recommendations relating to spousal immunity for rape, soliciting and loitering and wandering in public places.
The government's next move, subsequent to allowing Bill C-52 to die on the order paper, came in the Speech from the Throne in April, 1980, that ancient document of which I spoke at the outset of my remarks. That speech indicated that the serious problem of violence against women would be addressed in amendments to the Criminal Code. As a result of that promise, the Minister of Justice introduced this bill on Janaury 12 of this year.
Bill C-53 is, without question, a very significant and very important piece of legislation. It has become known as the sexual offences bill. It must be borne in mind at the outset, however, that it is more than just a bill relating to sexual offences per se. It covers a wide range of issues. Not only does it concern issues relating to the substantive definition of sexual offences in the code, but it proposes changes in the law of evidence; it deals with the exploitation of young persons for pornographic purposes; it redefines assault; it proposes changes in the law affecting kidnapping, and it deals very briefly with some aspects of prostitution.
The bill has the appearance of being a kind of sausage factory production by the government. It got so far with respect to certain issues in amending the Criminal Code but did not consider some of the important issues that face us today with respect to sexual offences.
One area which my colleagues and I want to address is the absence of a definitive provision in the code or statement by the government about the problem of prostitution. This is an important problem in many areas of our country, particularly urban areas. It has been avoided except for a brief reference.
We must bear in mind the omnibus nature of Bill C-53 because there is more to it than the provisions which deal with sexual offences. Bill C-53 is an important legislative initiative. It deals with some of the more serious crimes in our society. The issue it raises relate to the most intimate and sensitive aspects of human relationships. It must be considered carefully and deliberately by this House and the committee.
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I have a number of comments to make about the legislation and I should like to arrange them in several different groups or categories.
The first area of concern is offences relating to sexual relations with consenting young people. We all know that as it now stands, the Criminal Code defines several offences based on non-consensual sexual contact. Rape and sexual assault are, of course, the two examples of this type of offence that immediately come to mind. There are a number of other offences which deal with sexual relations that are essentially consensual in nature. Most of these offences are concerned with sexual activity involving young persons. There is a rather bewildering array of offences of this kind.
Section 146(1) of the code absolutely prohibits sexual intercourse with a woman under the age of 14. Section 146(2) prohibits sexual intercourse with a female of previously chaste character aged 14 to 16. Under Section 146(2), an accused may be found not guilty if the young woman was "more to blame" than the male for the sexual contact. Section 151 of the code presently makes it an offence to seduce a woman of previously chaste character aged 16 to 18. Section 152 states that it is a criminal offence to seduce a woman under 21 years of age under promise of marriage.
Bill C-53 promises to wipe away these existing categories of offences and to replace them with a much simplified regime.
With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall read two sections of Bill C-53 that it is proposed should, in effect, replace the present code provisions I have just summarized. There is no proper way to analyse these provisions without first looking at them in some detail. The bill contains two sections that deal with sexual exploitation of young persons. On page 3 of the bill section 166, subsection (1) reads:
166.	(1) Every one who engages in or procures sexual misconduct with or by a person who
(a)	is not his spouse, and
(b)	is under the age of fourteen years, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for ten years.
(2)	No one shall be found guilty of an offence under subsection (1) if he establishes that
(a)	at the time the sexual misconduct took place, he was under fourteen years of age; or
(b)	he is less than three years older than the complainant.
(3)	Where an accused is charged with an offence under subsection (1), it is not a defence to the charge that the complainant consented to the sexual misconduct or that the accused believed at the time the sexual misconduct took place that the complainant was fourteen years of age or more.
Clause 167 reads as follows:
167.	(1) Every one who engages in or procures sexual misconduct with or by a person who
(a)	is not his spouse, and
(b)	is fourteen years of age or more and is under the age of sixteen years, is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for five years.
(2) No one shall be found guilty of an offence under subsection (1) if he establishes that
(a) at the time the sexual misconduct took place he was under sixteen years of age;

July 7, 1981
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(b)	he is less than three years older than the complainant;
(c)	he believed at the time the sexual misconduct took place that the
complainant was sixteen years of age or more; or
(d)	he is less responsible than the complainant for the sexual misconduct that
took place.
There are a number of aspects of those sections that seem clearly meritorious. First, they provide equal protection to both males and females. The code as it now stands reflects nineteenth century attitudes that young women are passive and must be protected from males and that young boys can or should protect themselves. I think we all welcome changes which bring the law into the twentieth century and puts persons of both sexes on an equal footing.
The bill can also be commended, I think, for undertaking to repeal some of the anachronisms that presently haunt the law in this area. I think now of present Section 152 which makes it an offence to seduce a woman under promise of marriage, and Section 154 which prohibits "illicite intercourse" with the captain of a vessel. Again, such provisions reflect the societal values that held sway in the nineteenth century. They are now out of synch with contemporary thinking in Canada and should be modernized. These laws are never enforced, and the rule of law can only suffer if they are allowed to sit on the books.
One can also argue that this bill deserves commendation for the simple reason that it simplifies the law. As my earlier review of the present Criminal Code revealed, there is currently a rather confusing and complex series of offences of which citizens must be aware. Many people argue that simplicity in the law is itself a virtue.
Bill C-53 also abandons the difficult concept of "previously chaste character". For the benefit of the parliamentary secretary 1 point out that "chaste" is spelled c-h-a-s-t-e and not c-h-a-s-e-d. It is a troublesome phrase that is now found in Sections 146(2) and 151 of the code.
In addition, these two sections make some attempt to be sensitive to what might be called the normal sexual activities of teenagers. Such provisions are found in Sections 166(2) and 167(2) as proposed in the bill.
Finally the bill takes what is, in principle, a very sound approach in that it endeavours to protect young persons not simply from sexual intercourse, as is the case with the present code but also to protect them from other forms of sexual interference. The bill prohibits what is termed "sexual misconduct", a term about which I shall have more to say shortly.
On the negative side of the ledger there are some very significant questions and problems that must be addressed concerning new clauses 166 and 167 proposed in the bill. Perhaps the most troublesome aspect of these sections is the use of the term "sexual misconduct," to which I have just referred. Sexual misconduct is a term of imprecision. It carries with it the connotation that there is some sexual activity that is not misconduct. This notion is reinforced if one looks at what would become new Section 168(2). It refers to sexually explicit conduct. It is by no means clear where misconduct begins and conduct ends. Is holding hands sexual misconduct? What
about a kiss, necking or fondling a breast? The criminal law is supposed to be characterized by precision and clear meaning. It is patently unjust to expose people to criminal liability when the nature of that liability cannot be readily determined in advance.
We in this House must look very carefully at the term "sexual misconduct" as it is employed in Bill C-53. We must investigate alternative wordings. The Law Reform Commission for example, defined offences in its report in terms of "touching for a sexual purpose". There are many other possibilities that need to be considered. I know, for example, that one of the reasons proposed by the minister in terms of changes in the Criminal Code involve the fact that the government wanted to get away from imprecision in terms of definition.
In December, 1980 the minister attempted for the first time to table this bill in the House of Commons, and was prevented by lack of unanimous consent, but I will not go further into that. Some other members may have observations to make with respect to the reason why they want to withhold their consent.
On page 13 of the information paper set up by the minister there is a criticism of the imprecision of some of the definitions in the existing code and suggestions that clear definition would be appropriate. There is some concern with the word "indecent". It points out in this paper that "indecent" involves judgments as to what is decent. I suggest to the parliamentary secretary, to members of the government and to the Minister of Justice, whoever he is and wherever he is, that he consider whether the definition of the term "sexual misconduct" should not be more clearly set forth in the Criminal Code.
There are other aspects of those provisions of the bill with which I am now dealing that deserve careful study. For example, certain age groups, and in particular persons aged 16 to 18, would no longer receive any special protection from sexual exploitation. One can argue that in today's society it is not necessary to extend special provisions beyond the age of 16. However, that is certainly a proposition that is open to challenge. We must look at the issue very thoroughly.
Another feature of Sections 166 and 167 that needs thought and investigation is the system of exemptions from liability based on the age of the accused or the age difference between the accused and the other party to the sexual activity.
Under the terms of Section 166, for example, conceivably, a person aged 13 could initiate sexual relations with a person much younger, a young child, and not be subject to any prosecution at all under the provisions of this particular legislation.
While I understand the purpose and purport of the legislation, these provisions must be looked at very thoroughly by the committee. This is not going to be an easy bill to get through. There are a number of provisions which deal with a number of aspects; of sexual offences, other criminal offences and other considerations. The minister decided in his wisdom to bring forward an omnibus bill which includes all of these matters.
July 7, 1981

One of the difficulties is that while there are particular issues to be dealt with, it may have been advisable for the minister, if he had given consideration to this legislation in advance, to divide the bill into separate sections dealing with different subject matters. We could then have dealt with it more expeditiously. That was not his decision. He decided to proceed on the basis of an omnibus bill. Knowing how things operate in this House, I can well understand that there may be something more to it than an interest in getting a bill through.
The penalties provided for in the bill also have to be looked at closely. For example, the sanction provided for a violation of Section 166(1) is ten years. The Law Reform Commission recommended a five-year term for an equivalent office. Under the code as it stands today, the penalty is life imprisonment. It will be necessary to look at the very substantial divergence in those options and to consider what is the appropriate sentence with respect to this offence.
Another aspect of Section 166 that I consider worthy of further discussion concerns the fact that it is an offence of absolute prohibition if a person has sexual relations with another person who is under age 14. It matters not that there was a belief that the young person was over 14. Indeed, under the terms of the bill as it now reads, the young person could consciously mislead the party and still that first party would have no answer to a charge under section 166.
Provisions of strict liability such as this do not sit well with the basic tenets of our criminal law system. People are supposed to be punished, particularly so for serious offences, only when they intended to commit a wrong. Therefore, I would suggest that we look at the Law Reform Commission's proposal that a defence of "reasonable diligence" be available. The accused would be found not guilty when, to use the commission's words, "After the exercise of reasonable diligence, proof of which lies upon him, he believed at the time of the offence the person to be older than the age specified".
Finally, I want to refer to Section 167(2)(c) which does provide for a defence when the accused "believed at the time the sexual misconduct took place that the complainant was 16 years of age or more". I simply point out that the wording used in the subsection leaves the door open to another Pappajohn controversy. The bill does not indicate whether such belief need only be honest or whether it must be honest and reasonably based.
Let me now turn to those parts of Bill C-53 which deal with non-consensual sexual relations, the sexual assault provisions. This is of some particular interest across the country. It is this aspect of the bill that is generating the most press coverage, the most general interest, especially from the women's groups across the country.
There is a very good reason for this concern and interest that has been expressed both publicly and by interest groups across this country. Rape and sexual assault are terrible crimes and are mournfully widespread. It has become a part of our way of life unfortunately that women must at all times take precautions against sexual assaults. They must be careful when at home and when in public. They must be alert and
Criminal Code
wary at all times. Because males do not have to live with what is in many cases a very real blanket of fear, it is a state of affairs that is often overlooked.
Let me quote very briefly from a fact sheet prepared by the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women. The fact sheet, entitled "Rape and Sexual Assault", indicates that in 1979 alone there were 3,388 rapes reported to police in Canada. Studies, by the way, show that only one in every eight rapes is ever reported. The advisory council says that a woman is raped every 29 minutes in Canada and a woman is sexually assaulted every six minutes. The other great issue surrounding the question of sexual assaults is, of course, the treatment that complainants receive at the hands of police and in the courts. Trials are genuine ordeals for complainants. We often hear of rape trials described as proceedings that actually put the complainant herself on trial.
This bill proposes a major and fundamental reformulation of the sexual offences in the Criminal Code. The code at present contains Section 143, the section which defines rape, Section 149, indecent assault on a female and Section 156, indecent assault on a male. There are also sections dealing with bestiality and buggery.
Bill C-53 would replace these sections with a simplified regime composed of two offences; sexual assault and aggravated sexual assault. To accomplish this, the bill would create new Sections 246.1 and 246.2. These would read as follows:
246.1	Every one who commits a sexual assault is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for ten years.
246.2	(1) Every one commits an aggravated sexual assault who
(a)	uses a weapon during or at the time he commits a sexual assault; or
(b)	commits a sexual assault that causes seriously bodily harm.
(2) Everyone who commits an aggravated sexual assault is guilty of an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for life.
The Minister of Justice states in his information paper that in making these changes "the law would focus on the violent nature of sexual crimes." The orientation of the offence would certainly be changed because of the fact that penetration, an element of rape that must now be proven, would not need to be proven to establish an offence of sexual assault or aggravated sexual assault. Penetration is not a required element of either offence.
However, we must not be too confident that the amendments proposed in this bill will mean that the sexual element of the crime will be ignored. Complainants will still have to explain specific incidents. Penetration and other details of an intimate nature will be highly relevant to the charge. I would expect that largely the same evidence would be led under the proposals contained in this bill. I say this simply as a cautionary note. It is my personal view that it is wise and advisable for the law to recognize that sexual assaults are crimes of violence and that their sexual character is a secondary feature.
There are some aspects of proposed Sections 246.1 and
246.2	that we need to look at closely. First and foremost is the notion of "sexual assault". While the concept of "assault" per se is defined in Clause 18 of the bill, sexual assault is not defined.


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

July 7, 1981
Business of the House BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I note that you are about to call it ten o'clock. Before you do so, I wonder if I might direct a question to the government House leader with respect to the business that we will be dealing with tomorrow. I wonder if he could be specific with respect to the bills he intends to call tomorrow.


Yvon Pinard: Yes, Mr. Speaker. Earlier this evening I spoke to the House leaders separately about the business for tomorrow. I indicated to them that we will deal with Bills S-10, C-79, C-81 and, if there is time, Bill C-14. We had a meeting at which we talked about those bills at the beginning of this week. It looks as if we will be able to get three of them, and maybe four through all stages with a minimum of speakers. Tomorrow should be a beautiful day for House business and the precise order of business will be S-10, C-79, C-81 and C-14.


Stanley Howard Knowles: Mr. Speaker, it is correct that the government House leader discussed with each of us separately the business for tomorrow. He also knows I registered as strong a protest as one can to a good friend about the business being handled in this way with the result that on this important bill, C-53, there have been statements by the spokesman for the government and the spokesman for the Official Opposition, but our spokesman is frozen out. It could be that if this bill is not called again tomorrow, it will not be called again before the recess, which means that the Liberals spoke on July 7 and the Tories spoke on July 7 but the NDP does not speak until October. There is an element of unfairness in that, and I think at the very least we should continue with second reading of Bill C-53 tomorrow until the hon. member for Burnaby has spoken. Maybe at that point we could conclude the debate and send the bill to the standing committee, but if my friends to the right will not agree to that, the debate could be adjourned at that point. I think in all fairness one spokesman for each party should have the floor at this stage of the debate.


Yvon Pinard: In all fairness to my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, when I spoke to them about the business for tomorrow it was before the debate on Bill C-53 had started. When I spoke about the order of business for tomorrow to both the House leader for the Tory Party and the House leader for the NDP, we were in the midst of debate on C-67. There was no clear indication when we would get second reading of Bill C-67. We got second reading at about nine o'clock tonight. Therefore, we have to stick to the order of business that had been announced last week. We started debate on C-53. I have to respect, in all fairness, the word I gave to both House leaders. If I am relieved from keeping that word and there is an agreement by the House leader of the Tory party on this point, I might consider the request by the hon. member, but if I do not have such an agreement, I am sure he would not want me to go against the word I have given him.


Walter David Baker: Mr. Speaker, I think those discussions we had earlier are important. They are important with respect to planning. As the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre has indicated, there will be other opportunities for the contribution of their critic, which we look forward to hearing. I think the order of business should stand. That was our understanding and our arrangement.
While I am on my feet, there has been a considerable amount of discussion about the adjournment of the House. 1 do not know what the government House leader's intention is with regard to the planning of their individual business both here and in their constituencies if the government House leader could give some indication of the government's intention in respect of adjourning the House.


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, I think it would be useful to have a meeting tomorrow to discuss the possibility of adjourning soon. I might give notice of the motion tomorrow. This is not decided yet but it will be decided very soon, as I told my hon. colleagues earlier. Maybe during that meeting we could discuss the possibility of not debating that motion, and then maybe allow the NDP speaker to say what he has to say on Bill C-53. I do not know, but all this could be discussed at the meeting I propose to have tomorrow afternoon.


Stanley Howard Knowles: I shall certainly be glad to attend the meeting tomorrow where we can discuss these matters. I regret that my friend, the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker), was not prepared to agree at least to have three speakers before we leave this debate. However, the matter is in a sense still open if we can find some opportunity for the hon. member for Burnaby to speak this week. So I have no option but to accept what the House leader has announced, but we can discuss it further when we meet tomorrow.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 40 deemed to have been moved.
AVIATION SAFETY: (A) CURTAILMENT OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL SERVICES AT CALGARY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT;
(B) SHORTAGE OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROLLERS
["Order, please. The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been\nAdjournment Debate\nadopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock.\nAt 10.34 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.", 'Wednesday, July 8, 1981']
Hon. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, the question I wish to raise tonight arises out of the curtailment of air traffic control service at Calgary International Airport effective July 4, between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. as recorded at page 11133 of Hansard of July 2, 1981.
This curtailment has been caused by a shortage of qualified air traffic controllers in Calgary, which is in turn part of a
July 7, 1981

much larger problem, namely a very serious and critical shortage of air traffic controllers throughout Canada. Dealing specifically with the Calgary Internationl situation, there can be no doubt that this curtailment of services will cause inconvenience and disrupt traffic. As I am sure you are aware, Mr. Speaker, notwithstanding the negative aspects of the NEP, Calgary is a very dynamic and active city with a lot of air traffic which will be disrupted. More important, it will impair safety. That is a very important question.
Furthermore, it has been pointed out by the Air Traffic Control Association that it could raise some very serious and important legal implications with respect to the people on duty. To summarize what Mr. Robertson, president of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, said in a press releas'e dated July 2, he indicated the flight advisory services to be put in place cannot provide for positive separation between aircraft, or aircraft and vehicles on the surface of the airport. This is now provided by air traffic control. Despite the fact the advisory services will be provided by air traffic control supervisory personnel, it still remains only an advisory service. Mr. Robertson was also critical of the fact that although some of the personnel were familiar with the Calgary airport, others were not. In addition, none of those selected have been given training for their advisory duty. In addition to the obvious safety hazards of the proposed operation, he noted there are also serious questions of legal liability for both the individual supervisor involved and the Department of Transport in the event of an incident or accident.
Now, Mr. Speaker, at the time I raised the question I asked the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) to kindly confer and consult further with the Calgary Transportation Authority. That authority is indeed a very progressive, responsible and dynamic organization which has done a lot to further the development of aviation services in Calgary, indeed in all of Canada. I hope the parliamentary secretary will give this House tonight an indication of what further consultation and discussions have gone on with that authority in order to resolve this problem because the minister did undertake personally to me that further discussions would take place. It should be noted as well that while there is an over-all shortage and difficulties in staffing control towers with sufficient numbers of qualified personnel, the situation in Calgary is somewhat unique given the high pay scale and other difficulties with respect to the acquisition of adequate personnel. This is a unique situation which should be looked at, perhaps in isolation.
As I said earlier, there is a chronic and very serious shortage of air traffic controllers throughout the country. The Minister of Transport does not agree with the observations of CATCA. I must say that the officials of CATCA have warned the Minister of Transport and Transport Canada on a number of occasions.
In answer to a further question which I directed to the minister on July 3, he indicated:
Adjournment Debate
The problem is not of the magnitude my hon. friend says it is. I observe that he has bought the CATCA figures as to the number of air controllers that are needed.
They are suggesting that we need 250 additional air traffic controllers right now. On May 19, during the appearance of CATCA before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport Mr. Robertson, the president, said that there was a serious understaffing problem at Calgary and that a curtailment of services would take place. It is passing strange that the minister would reject that testimony when in fact during the Dubin inquiry on aviation safety in November, 1980, the Department of Transport, in its report to Justice Dubin, drew attention to the serious problem of understaffing in air traffic control services. In the estimation of the Department of Transport, 1,036 additional controllers would be required by 19851986. Also serious problems were designated in Vancouver where there was a shortage of 22 controllers, 12 in Calgary, 15 in Edmonton, 58 in Toronto, 50 in Montreal, 20 in Gander and 75 in other points.
In his response the minister indicated that they are accelerating the process of turning out controllers and that there would be 120 to 150 controllers processed commencing September of this year. This is an improvement over the 50 to 60 per year which are currently being turned out, but it will not be sufficient to meet the demands of 250 at the present time and it will not be sufficient to meet the 1,036 required by 1985-86.
The minister must accept the magnitude of the problem. He must be prepared to act. It is the government's responsibility to provide the financial and human resources to protect and preserve the integrity of the air traffic control system in Canada.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Mr. Speaker, with respect to the curtailment of the airport control service at Calgary airport between midnight and 6 a.m., the only traffic movements which are being curtailed are those operating under visual flight rules. Approximately 80 per cent to 85 per cent of flights using the Calgary airport between midnight and 6 a.m. do so under instrument flight rules. For those two to three flights per hour, IFR control service is still available as are advisory and emergency services.
The Calgary Transportation Authority expressed some concern that the Calgary airport could not retain international status if full air traffic control services were not available 24 hours a day. This, however, is not true. For example, Windsor is an international airport designated for regular use by international scheduled air transport, as is Calgary. In the case of Windsor, the tower is closed between 10.45 p.m. and 6.45 a.m.
With respect to the broader question of a national shortage of air traffic controllers, currently the numbers of qualified controllers coupled with on-the-job trainees are in accordance with the number of approved positions. However, at any given site a combination of factors such as illness, training failure rate and availability of overtime staffing may lead to periods when normal control services may no longer be possible. In the
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Adjournment Debate
longer term, the predicted shortages of qualified air traffic controllers is a problem which is being addressed on a priority basis.
A realistic estimate of the situation is that approximately 520 controllers will be lost due to attrition over the next five years. In addition, there will be at least 150 new operational air traffic control positions created as a result of increases in traffic and the opening of new traffic control towers across Canada. The new air traffic control training system being put in place later this year is expected to produce between 120 and 150 newly qualified controllers each year.
To restate the situation, for comparison, over the next five years we expect to produce between 600 to 750 controllers to meet an estimated requirement for 670 positions. These figures are intended for planning purposes only. The actual number of controllers trained can be adjusted to some extent to meet the actual needs.
POST OFFICE-TIMING OF PARLIAMENTARY SUMMER RECESS-EFFECT ON POSTAL STRIKE-(A) EFFECT OF STRIKE ON SMALL BUSINESS; (B) ROLE OF POSTMASTER GENERAL


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I was thinking about finishing the speech I started earlier today, but in view of the fact that I have another important issue to raise, I will not do that but, rather, I will continue at another time to speak on Bill C-53.
What I wish to talk about tonight is the peculiar attitude- and one can only describe it as peculiar-taken by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) with respect to the question of the postal strike. Any thinking Canadian or legislator in this chamber must have deep concern about the consequences and effects of a postal strike on the average citizen. I am not talking about big business or medium-sized business, but about the average, so-called well-defined little guy who lives in each and every one of our constituencies. I am talking about the pensioner, the person who does not necessarily receive a government cheque, but many of whom rely on the mails for whatever little income they receive from some trust company or some small investment. I am talking about the little businessman. In an area such as mine, in Saskatoon, which is not a large city, and in the surrounding district I represent, substantial inconvenience is caused to those people who rely on the mails by virtue of a postal strike. I raised this matter in the course of question period yesterday. I tried to bring to the Prime Minister's attention some of the serious consequences which will flow as a result of this strike. I called on the government and the Prime Minister to take some action to deal with this strike before the House adjourns, which has been anticipated to be this coming Friday.
Regular mail delivery is an essential service for millions of individual Canadians, particularly for those in remote areas, for the pensioners and small businessmen I referred to. Pensioners who do not live in major urban centres are faced with the prospect of either a long period without income or a long
and difficult trek to a distant town. I suggest that Canada's senior citizens should not be forced to be pawns in the government's game of chess with the Post Office. Those in remote areas lack the same access to couriers as those in major urban centres. They rely heavily on the mails for communication with the rest of Canada.
I pointed out to the Prime Minister, as has been pointed out to him a number of times before, it is estimated that some
1,000	to 1,500 small businesses will go bankrupt for each week the strike continues. The cost to the Canadian economy will be between 6,000 and 9,000 jobs. The Canadian Direct Mailing Association estimates that its members will lose $2.9 million for each day the strike continues. This matter cannot be allowed to continue to drift without some government action. At the moment the two sides are not even talking, which 1 suggest is primarily due to the failure of the Treasury Board to bargain in good faith.
An interesting article appeared in the Toronto Star last weekend in which the labour reporter John Deverell suggested that on the basis of his information an examination of the attitude of the federal government with respect to the postal strike is one which is a kind of scenario situation. The only similar situation I can liken this to is with respect to the infamous cabinet document which dealt with the constitutional strategy which we all remember so vividly. In the case of the postal strike there was a scenario set down as to how the minister and the government could be perceived as being tough, holding the line and curtailing inflation. In other words, the kind of government cynicism toward the consequences which the postal strike will have on the Canadian people, in effect, turns out to be the second prong of its anti-inflation program. I remind the House that the first prong is the high interest rate factor. The second prong is a sort of facade which it is now putting on to be tough on a high profile union which does not have any popularity in Canada. In fact, it is one of the least popular unions in Canada.
However, this is a kind of facade which I suggest the government is putting up. It says, on one hand, "We will not go back to bargaining. We will not take any initiatives with respect to negotiations. We will sit back and let Canadians suffer through a long strike."
On the other hand, it says it will not take any legislative action. It is not going to negotiate. I suggest it is an obligation for the government to legislate. Either the government must return to the bargaining table to bargain in good faith, or it must take action to legislate an end to this strike. I would be most interested in hearing the views of the government as to why-and it cannot be serious-it is going to have this House adjourn without taking some steps with respect to the resolution of this matter. We cannot have Parliament adjourned, the only instrument which can allow the matter to be brought to resolution, until the middle of October, which is the proposed time for the adjournment according to the government House leader. We have a responsibility as legislators here.
July 7, 1981

I will be interested in hearing whether the response of the government is really and truly serious about its determination to cause the people of Canada the suffering that it intends to cause them by sitting back, doing nothing and taking no action either by negotiation or legislation.
[ Translation]


Mr. Serge Joyal (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, allow me to make a correction. I am not Parliamentary Secretary to the Postmaster General (Mr. Ouellet) but to the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston). I listened carefully to the comments of my colleague from Saskatoon West and I also heard the remark of the hon. member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles). I would ask him to listen, because I think he could agree on some points. The hon. member for Saskatoon West started out by pointing out the disastrous effects of any strike in the public sector on the underprivileged or on those with fixed income which they receive in the form of pensions or proceeds from income they saved throughout their life. It is true that any strike in the public sector has disastrous effects, and they can be more disastrous in some sectors than in others. Let me simply remind the House that strikes in the hospital sector, to name only one, have even worse consequences than strikes in the postal service. Strikes in the education system are also felt very strongly by parents who see their children lose their school days on playgrounds or other public places. Therefore, no strike in the public sector should be taken lightly by legislators. However, when they recognized the right to strike to employees in the public sector, they did so responsibly in the hope that unions would also use it responsibly. Moreover, any union which must continue to serve the public and to negotiate with public support, especially when trying to negotiate working conditions in the hope that they will be extended to all other sectors of public administration, must also do so with public support. This is why an unmotivated strike, which seems without merit or motive called at first glance to challenge a principle, will not find public support, as we can see once again today in this House. Most opposition spokesmen during Oral Question Period urged the government to put an end to this strike immediately. Last week, the hon. leader of the New Democratic Party, the hon. member for Oshawa (Mr. Broad-bent). asked the government to accept all the recommendations in the conciliation report. However, in 1978. the Union of Postal Workers itself turned down the report of the conciliation committee.
Today the same union criticizes government negotiators for not accepting the conclusions of the conciliation report. The hon. member must know that the conciliation procedure is not the same as the arbitration procedure. A conciliation report can be accepted or refused by one or the other of the parties to the negotiations, and no ill will is alleged in such a case. It happened in 1978 when, by refusing the report of the conciliation committee, the union called for a strike and this Parlia-
Adjournment Debate
ment had to legislate the strikers back to work by introducing Bill C-8. Therefore, at this time, in order to reach an acceptable settlement of this dispute while preserving what we consider as a fundamental principle, that of the right to strike in the public sector, exercised with a sense of responsibility, both parties must come back to negotiation. Government negotiators have accepted a great number of the recommendations contained in the report of the conciliation committee. There is a problem with the number of annual holidays, the number of weeks of leave after five or ten years of continuous service and the increase in shift and week-end premiums. I shall be able to reply to the hon. member for Burnaby if he wants to ask me questions during Oral Question Period.
HEALTH AND WELFARE-STATUS OF ROBERTSHAW STUDY OF CHILD FATALITIES CAUSED BY PARENTAL NEGLECT;



William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Mr. Speaker, I am speaking tonight to protest the termination of the federal child abuse study. Initiated in 1978, this study has been conducted by lawyer Corinne Robertshaw, who was seconded to the Department of National Health and Welfare for this purpose.
From the beginning of the study, Mrs. Robertshaw has involved leading human service professionals from across Canada who are working in the child abuse neglect area in the discussion of the issues arising from her research. She has conducted this research by means of intensive study of legislation and relevant literature. She has travelled to major treatment centres for observation and interrogation of child abuse teams and for interviewing related personnel. Professionals in the private and in the public sector have been aware of and supportive of her mandate since its inception and have welcomed her visits and her requests for consultation as the first clearly visible federal interest in the most malignant of the nation's growing child welfare problem.
Following two interim discussion papers, each leading to a meeting in Ottawa of all the involved professionals with the resulting transcripts of their deliberations, the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin), in spite of the overwhelming support expressed by these professionals for the completion of the study, suddenly moved to terminate the child abuse study, thus eliminating the crucial final stage in which Mrs. Robertshaw's findings and the input of the multi-disciplinary groups of professions would have been synthesized by Mrs. Robertshaw.
Out of this was to come a final report with recommendations, the outcome of which the consulting professionals have an understandable considerable investment in terms of time and energy, not to mention the widespread appreciation of Mrs. Robertshaw's research expertise and study methodology, concern for the taxpayer's money and, most important, the hopes that many had about the potential impact of this study on the welfare of Canada's children.

July 7, 1981
Adjournment Debate
On April 21, 1981, the hon. member for Oshawa (Mr. Broadbent) questioned the Minister of National Health and Welfare in the House following the initial announcement of the termination of the child abuse study. The minister insisted that the study was in fact complete. In this she misled the House. The papers produced prior to the minister's statement were simply interim papers marked "For discussion only", and not for circulation because of the sensitive nature of some of the material and the tentative aspects of some of the recommendations which Mrs. Robertshaw expected to be modified following group discussion.
On May 29, 1981, Mr. E. M. Murphy, assistant deputy minister of the Policy Planning and Information Branch of the Department of National Health and Welfare, wrote all the professionals with whom Mrs. Robertshaw has been working, requesting that they sign a release to allow the government to distribute the two interim papers and the transcripts from the two Ottawa meetings convened to discuss them. It was obvious to most of the people contacted that the move was a ploy to get them to sanction government publication of the suddenly complete child abuse study, with the equally obvious result that Mrs. Robertshaw would not thus be allowed to write the expected final paper representing a synthesis and resulting conceptual extension of all the previous documents.
Since it is this final paper that represents the pay-off for all the combined efforts, many of those most closely associated with the project refused to sign the requested releases in protest, urging, instead, that Mrs. Robertshaw be allowed to complete the study, which she had indicated she can do in six months' time, working alone.
We in the NDP want to see this study completed. We will not be satisfied with the Badgley report on sexual offences against children, because it only covers one aspect of child abuse, nor will we be satisfied with a half-hearted release of a handful of background papers such as the minister proposes. There must be a revival of government support for the completion of this study and an extension of the life of the child abuse study to completion. Only this can prevent the demise, the extreme abuse and neglect of an exceptionally important and well executed study which is vital to the welfare of Canada's children.


Mr. Dennis Dawson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, in the absence of the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Health and Welfare, I would like just the same to take this opportunity to clear up somewhat the confusion
about the status of Mrs. Robertshaw's study on some points of the act dealing with child abuse and neglect. The next few minutes will be used to clear up the matter.
As has already been said in this House by the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin), the department agreed to sponsor that important study in 1978. Under the first contract entered into with the researcher, Mrs. Robertshaw, who was seconded to the Department of National Health and Welfare to undertake that work, the study was to extend over an 18-month period. In May, 1980, or at the end of the initial period, a ten-month extension was granted to the researcher to allow her to go on with her work. At the end of that period, in March 1981, two further extensions were granted, the first one to allow Mrs. Robertshaw to prepare the transcripts of the second national consultation held in March 1981, which had attracted the participation of prominent doctors, lawyers, sociologists and other professionals involved in the problem of child abuse, as was the case during the first consultation held in 1980. The second extension was granted to Mrs. Robertshaw to allow her to pursue the question of publishing the transcripts of proceedings of these two national consultations, since the Department of National Health and Welfare had the intention to publish not only the two discussion papers referred to, but also the proceedings of the national consultations themselves. As it happened, a number of participants in the national consultations declined to have their comments made public, pointing out the confidential nature of the meetings. Quite obviously, the Minister of National Health and Welfare went along with that decision and therefore, at their request, the transcripts of the proceedings will not be made public.
However, as the minister pointed out, the House has already been given the assurance that both discussion papers will be made available to all interested parties as agreed. I have been told by the department that the two documents have been translated and that they will be printed as soon as possible. I understand they will be available soon. I must say to all hon. members who have shown their interest in those documents that they will be given copies of them as soon as they are ready.
As the Minister of National Health and Welfare has already told the House, the Department of National Health and Welfare intends to continue working with the public and private sectors, particularly with the provinces, to find ways of controlling and eventually eliminating the very serious problem of child abuse.
The minister intends to urge her provincial counterparts to renew the efforts which have been made within families which are guilty of such offences, and to draw full benefits from the
July 7, 1981

federal cost-sharing program which is available to them for that purpose.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Ethier):: Order, please. The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been
Adjournment Debate
adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock.
At 10.34 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, July 8, 1981