1982-02-23

ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Madam
Speaker, 1 rise on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity under the provisions of Standing Order 43.
Whereas the Right Hon. Prime Minister's (Mr. Trudeau) election promise to ensure that Canada would be self-sufficient in energy by 1990 will not be kept, and that starting in 1987, Canada will have to import nearly one-half million barrels of oil per day; whereas the budget deficit for each of the two past years has been $3 billion, in other words almost 30 per cent more than what it would have been under a Progressive Conservative government; whereas the Right Hon. Prime Minister and his Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) have lost control of the economy, I move, seconded by the member for Assiniboia (Mr. Gustafson):
That this House unanimously condemn the government's economic policies, and that it adopt a motion to censure the Prime Minister for his abysmal economic performance.


Madam Speaker:: The House has heard the motion moved by the hon. member. Under the provisions of Standing Order 43, this motion requires the unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Yes.


Some hon. Members:: No.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Mr. Joe Reid (St. Catharines):: Madam Speaker, almost 5,000 laid off auto workers in St. Catharines have been waiting since January 10 for their unemployment insurance cards of entitlement which must come from Belleville. Local unemployment insurance personnel are working 20 to 40 hours
overtime per week trying to cope with a record number of applications. I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Hamilton-Wentworth (Mr. Scott):
That the Minister of Employment and Immigration take immediate steps to eliminate this time delay by either adding sufficient staff to do the job required, or by eliminating this unnecessary bureaucratic bottleneck of requiring the applications processed in St. Catharines be routed through Belleville.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


METRIC CONVERSION
Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Madam Speaker, in view of a statement on CBC Radio by an official of the Metric Commission that metric is coming to Canadian football in five years' time, when the regulation Canadian Football League field will be transformed to 100 metres long by 40 metres wide, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Simcoe North (Mr. Lewis):
That the minister responsible for the Metric Commission issue a statement at once saying how and when the Metric Commission will touch down on Canada's football fields, and further, how this conversion will affect the records of Hamilton's Football Hall of Fame.


Mr. Nielsen:: Metreball.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


FISHERIES
Mr. Dave Dingwall (Cape Breton-East Richmond):: Madam Speaker, I rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of the fact

February 23, 1982
that the House of Commons passed a unanimous resolution on February 9, 1982, confirming its support for the harvesting of harp seals in the province of Newfoundland, and furthermore, on Friday, February 19, 1982, the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), in the company of other Canadian parliamentarians, had an opportunity to discuss, promote and defend the harvesting of harp seals by fishermen of Newfoundland before members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, and that instead that hon. member and his Conservative colleagues chose to partake in blatant and partisan political mischief by secretly leaving their hotel rooms in the middle of the night-


Some hon. Members:: Shame, shame!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


David Charles Dingwall: -to return to Canada, thereby failing to stay and defend the seal hunters of Newfoundland, Madam Speaker, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Mississauga North (Mr. Fisher):
That this House condemn such grade school behaviour, that the hon. member for St. John's West resign as external affairs critic for the Progressive Conservative Party-


An hon. Member:: If you cannot stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.


David Charles Dingwall: -and either apologize to the people of Newfoundland, particularly the fishermen, or tender his resignation forthwith.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


TRANSPORT
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Madam Speaker, 1 rise under the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. In view of a recent accident in Kamloops, British Columbia, when a semi-trailer truck transporting sodium cyanide lost its brakes, killed one person, injured others, and threatened the lives of many more with cyanide gas when it overturned near a large hospital, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Spadina (Mr. Heap):
That this House express its concern for the inadequacy of federal and provincial regulations governing the movement of dangerous goods on public highways, and calls for immediate action to prevent any similar accidents.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


THE SECRETARY OF STATE
Mr. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Madam Speaker, in the Toronto Star of February 22, with respect to transfer payments, the Secretary of State (Mr. Regan) is quoted as follows:
The question is whether Ontario's priority is education or operating an office so that Chinese girl can be in Paris. What's her name? Adrienne Clarkson.
The comments of the minister show him to be sexist, racist and dangerously ignorant of the importance of exports to Canada and to Ontario. I move, seconded by the hon. member for Waterloo (Mr. McLean):
That the Prime Minister immediately demand the resignation of the Secretary of State, since his remarks show him to be very clearly unfit for his office.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


FISHERIES
Mr. Thomas Siddon (Richmond-South Delta):: Madam Speaker, whereas the government plans to purchase 287 fishing vessels from British Columbia Packers Limited for $10 million, and to give these vessels to the native bands of British Columbia in spite of the fact that one third of these boats have been leased for years by non-native fishermen who would lose their livelihood by this plan, I therefore move, seconded by the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friesen):
That the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development immediately suspend any plan which would deny non-native fishermen, including many of Japanese ancestry, living in the Richmond-Delta area, the access to fishing boats which they have leased for many years, and that he assure these fishermen of their continued right to operate said vessels until their retirement.


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
February 23, 1982


THE SECRETARY OF STATE
Mr. Terry Sargeant (Selkirk-Interlake):: 
Madam Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.


POLITICAL PARTIES
Mr. Jack Burghardt (London West):: Madam Speaker, I rise pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 43 on a matter of urgent and pressing necessity. Whereas the controversy surrounding recent remarks by the hon. member for Winnipeg-Assiniboine (Mr. McKenzie) continues to reflect adversely on the dignity and the honour of the House of Commons as a whole, and whereas there are reports of an occurence of a brawl at the member's constituency meeting last weekend and the riding association's president resigned, I move, seconded by the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine East (Mr. Allmand):
That the House call upon the hon. member to apologize for his racist remarks which lend support to the apartheid policies of South Africa, and failing that, that the Leader of the Opposition confirm his party's opposition to the policy of apartheid and expel the hon. member from the Progressive Conservative caucus.


Mr. Mazankowski:: Mind your own business!


Mr. Andre:: We will do that if you do the same thing about martial law in Poland!


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.
Oral Questions THE PRIME MINISTER


MOTION UNDER S O. 43
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, a front page story today in the Montreal Gazette quotes the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) as saying that he hopes to be remembered as "having won the economic Olympics for job creation".


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Jarvis:: Say it ain't true!


Gordon Edward Taylor: Canada today has some 1,096,000 unemployed, amounting to about 7.5 per cent, while the unemployment rate for Italy is 7.4 per cent; for the United Kingdom, 7 per cent; for the U.S.A., 6.3 per cent; and for France, 3.1 per cent; but, on the other hand, when the Prime Minister took over in 1969 the number of jobs in the Public Service was 369,000 and today it is 510,000.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Gordon Edward Taylor: Therefore I move, seconded by the hon. member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper):
That this House place the Olympic crown on the head of the Prime Minister for: (1) having more unemployed in Canada than any other industrial country; and, (2) for increasing the Public Service by some 140,000 jobs, more than most, if not ail other prime ministers of Canada all added together: and for this terrible-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Paproski:: Go ahead!


Gordon Edward Taylor: -I mean terrific record.
-the House presents the Prime Minister with a pair of celluloid shoe laces.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


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


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some hon. Members:: No.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. The minister will realize that uncertainty is probably the greatest danger to business, particularly the uncertainty surrounding

February 23, 1982
Oral Questions
the sales tax provisions that were alluded to in the minister's budget of November 12. One particular company, for example, that normally produces a catalogue on July 1 must put that catalogue to bed for some 745 items. The items have to be quoted as tax included. Will the minister tell this House, and perhaps give that particular manufacturer some idea whether he should produce a catalogue including sales tax or not including sales tax. What should that particular manufactur-er/distributor do?


Hon. Allan  J.@: Madam Speaker, 1 believe the hon. member would find it unusual for me to give advice to individual businessmen on the orders of the day. That has never been the purpose of the question period, nor has it ever been used in that way.
1 would tell the hon. member that it is my intention, as 1 indicated in the budget speech, to release draft legislation on the sales tax, hopefully within a short period of time. At that time, as I indicated earlier to the hon. member for Edmonton who asked a similar question, I will indicate whether there will be a change in the implementation date. As was indicated on that occasion, quite a number of businessmen and persons potentially affected by the sales tax have asked for additional time to consider the provisions, and I will give careful consideration to those representations.


Mr. Clark:: Cut and run MacEachen.


ANNOUNCEMENT OF IMPLEMENTATION DATE
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, the minister knows that he has left the business community out to dry for over two and a half months with respect to this issue and a whole host of other issues. To suggest that he may make a change in the date only adds to the confusion. The rumours abound of September 1, January 1, maybe July 1 next year-


Madam Speaker:: Order. 1 can see the hon. member is launching into a speech. I would like him to stick to a question.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: With due apology, Madam Speaker, I was as short as I could be. When is the minister going to come clean with the business community? He has left it hanging out to dry on July 1 perhaps, September 1 perhaps, January 1 perhaps. When is he going to come clean with this House? When is he going to say it is going to be January 1, or July 1, 1984, or what is he going to do? When is he going to do these things? He has promised them for weeks now. When is he going to come forward with an announcement?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, the hon. member misstates the situation completely. There have been considerable consultations between businessmen and officials of the department. The business community has a much better understanding of the potential effect of these proposed changes than the hon. member would indicate in his question. When the draft legislation is made public, if at that time any change
is made in the implementation date it will be to accommodate the request of the business community which would like more time. 1 am quite prepared to proceed, but I am ready to give consideration to legitimate requests along those lines.


QUERY RESPECTING INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION
Donald Alex Blenkarn: The answers are not satisfactory, Madam Speaker, but we cannot account for that. The minister ought to know that the uncertainty, as well as the uncertainty in his answers today, are leading to a loss of jobs. When businessmen do not know what is going on with respect to taxes, they do not employ people and they do not expand. Yet the minister continues to make statements that he will some day do something, perhaps. When will the minister give us a date? Will he give us a date today, a week today, Friday, next Friday, a week Friday, or March 1, on which he will produce the legislation so that we know where we are going?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, there is no doubt about the dates. The dates with respect to the implementation have been announced in the budget. That is the certainty that exists. If there has been any uncertainty brought into the situation it has been as a result of the question that was asked by a member of his own party, suggesting that there might be need for some delay in the implementation date.
I would suggest that hon. members on the other side get together and decide whether they want to assist certainty or create uncertainty.


Mr. Wilson:: You have created it.


AIR SAFETY
Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Transport 1 would like to direct my question to the Prime Minister. It may very well have to do with uncertainty about a matter which is very vital and fundamental. I am sure the Prime Minister has not had a chance to assess and digest Mr. Justice Dubin's report on aviation safety which was filed yesterday, but since the matter involves aviation safety at airports now and there are important recommendations in that report on search and rescue changes to help consolidate and co-ordinate activity, would the Prime Minister assure the House in a very serious way that whenever the Minister of Transport comes back-because he will be out quite often as he charges across the country on issues that he has created-he will give top priority to the question of air safety affecting Canadians travelling in the air,
February 23, 1982

and also to the search and rescue provisions so that the recommendations of Mr. Justice Dubin that do not require legislation can be acted upon immediately and those that do require legislation can be introduced before the Easter recess?


Mr. Robert Bockstael (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, in response to the hon. member, the Minister of Transport is taking the recommendations of Mr. Justice Dubin very seriously and has already acted on Volumes 1 and II and has already taken steps in proposed Volume III. When it comes to search and rescue, he has every intention of abiding by the recommendations. There is a task force already working at co-ordinating search and rescue to transport and they are studying this in the administration and will be coming forward with a report.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Madam Speaker, that is an incredible answer from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport and reflects what little priority the Prime Minister has on something so fundamental like air safety and/or co-ordination of search and rescue facilities in Canada. I will calm down like the Prime Minister asks, Madam Speaker, when he takes an interest in aviation safety.


Madam Speaker:: Order. The hon. member simply must ask a question and not make speeches.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: The fact of the matter is that it is very difficult to ask a short, succinct question when the Parliamentary Secretary has misstated the facts.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh! Order!


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: My question, Madam Speaker-


Madam Speaker:: If the hon. member continues I will not recognize him for a supplementary question. Some order must exist in the House. When I feel questions are too long and make remarks to that effect, I would appreciate it if hon. members would co-operate.


An hon. Member:: How about the answers?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Madam Speaker, I think the record will show that you have been on your feet almost as long as I have during this question.


Madam Speaker:: Order. The hon. member for Comox-Powell River.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


MANAGEMENT OF AVIATION SAFETY BOARD
Mr. Ray Skelly (Comox-Powell River):: Madam Speaker, maybe it is appropriate that the Minister of Transport is away today, but the important issue today is in terms of the Dubin report in which there are three important aspects. Could the Prime Minister pick up on a couple of these aspects? In terms of the departmental reorganization recommended by Mr. Oral Questions
Justice Dubin, independent bodies have been recommended for departmental reorganization replacing search and rescue.
Is there any indication that as one of the procedures in departmental reorganization we will see the removal of the senior management of that department whom, I think, Mr. Justice Dubin identifies implicitly as part of the problem?


An hon. Member:: Say yes.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Transport had reported earlier that he is preparing legislation to have an independent commission examine aviation safety and accidents. He is busy and he has submitted a compliance-


Mr. Crosbie:: Don Quixote.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: -an enforcement manual that has been published for safety in the air.


John Carnell Crosbie: What about the radar? Never mind the manuals.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Emergency locators are being made mandatory by April 1, 1982. Radar systems are being upgraded in a program. Under search and rescue there is an interdepartmental task force-


Some hon. Members:: Order, order.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: -studying search and rescue. They abide by the recommendations and should be co-ordinated by transport.


Some hon. Members:: Order, order!


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


REQUEST FOR EARLY INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION
Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, we do need information on that Canadian aviation safety board and a new and vigorous enforcement procedure quickly.
There is a second aspect to this very important piece of legislation, and my question is directed to the Prime Minister once again, since ultimately, I suppose, he will direct the course of legislation in this House. Will there be very quick action on this and separate pieces of legislation implementing such recommendations as a Canadian aviation safety board and new delegated authority with respect to enforcement, or will we have to wait forever and a day until some comprehensive piece of legislation is developed in the future and brought before Parliament when the schedule permits?


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Madam Speaker, the Canadian aviation safety legislation is expected to be ready later in the spring.


Mr. Epp:: Just pick it up and read it, Bob.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: The enforcement manual and legislation are being developed under the Aeronautics Act and will be brought forward in the next session of Parliament.

February 23, 1982
15282_______________________________________
Oral Questions


FUNDS FOR EQUIPMENT AND FACILITIES
Raymond John Skelly: Madam Speaker, in the desperate hope for a satisfactory answer 1 will ask one last question of the Prime Minister. It involves the tremendous financial implications for taxpayers, small aviation operators and the private aviation community, of the safety recommendations of Dubin. There will need to be very large increases in expenditures of capital funds, training programs and person-year allocations. Is the government prepared to move forward in order to right this system by allocating the resources necessary, and will the government provide us with some kind of plan for the next five years which shows that those expenditures are committed to this very important aspect of aviation safety?


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Transport is committed to aviation safety and expending money for that purpose. In the next few weeks there will be tenders called for $217 million of expenditures to improve radar in Canada.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
 * *


FINANCE
Hon. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. Despite assurances to the contrary from the Minister of State for Small Businesses and Tourism, the effect of the combined increase in taxable benefits for employees is not offset by the lower marginal tax rate. Figures show that the budget measures concerning taxable employee benefits have a progressively negative impact on employees earning less than $40,000. The lower and middle-income wage earners in the work force are the ones who are feeling the impact. Would the Minister of Finance give serious review to the taxable benefit issue in his budget and bring this measure into line with his stated objective of equity and fairness?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I believe the comments made by the Minister of State are fully justified. The total new liability on taxpayers as a result of the tax on these benefits in the range, for example, of the average industrial wage in Canada, is more than offset by the other tax benefits flowing from the budget, and I believe when we get into committee we will be able to demonstrate that to the satisfaction of the hon. member.


REQUEST THAT MEASURE BE REMOVED
Arthur Ronald Huntington: Madam Speaker, the average industrial wage has nothing to do with the fairness and
equity I am talking about with regard to employees who need their taxable benefits.
It will take a pay increase of at least 4 per cent to maintain the pre-November 12 spending power of employees affected by the taxable benefit rules in the minister's budget. At a time when the Prime Minister is asking us to restrain wages and tighten our belts, the Minister of Finance is forcing employees to demand more from employers. Will the Minister of Finance remove this inflationary and counterproductive measure which hits employees least able to afford it?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the hon. member has made another error in asserting that these particular benefits are applied basically to low-income employees. The fact of the matter is that the higher their income the greater will be the taxable benefit flowing from this particular provision of the tax system. The hon. member will have an opportunity to examine the details of this and other tax measures when they are dealt with in the ordinary way in the House of Commons.


IMPACTOFTAX ON SALESMEN
Mr. Chris Speyer (Cambridge):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue and it pertains to the increased taxation of employees who utilize a company car. The minister is aware that what is known as the standby charge, that is, the value of benefit added to a taxpayer's income, has increased by a whopping 150 per cent. For an Ontario salesman who earns $22,000 per year, will the minister confirm that it is going to mean about $1,000 in additional taxes for him?


Hon. William Rompkey (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, it is true that the standby charge was increased but for those people in that situation who feel that the benefit to them is less than the standby charge, there are alternative arrangements that can be made. My department has been working with the business community and a statement on that will be issued in the very near future. There are alternatives for people who feel that the standby charge is more than is their due.


REASONS FOR MEASURE
Chris Speyer: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is for the same minister. The minister continues to exhibit his vast ignorance of the implications of this budget. Why does the Liberal government continue to punish the salesmen and women of this country with this disastrous tax measure?


Bill Rompkey: Madam Speaker, the answer is partly, why does the opposition try to raise questions based on false premises?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
February 23, 1982


Bill Rompkey: 1 repeat my answer, that for those businessmen who feel the standby charge is more than they should be paying, there are alternative arrangements that can be made with my department so that they can be treated fairly.


PROGRAM TO EXPAND DISTRIBUTION OF NATURAL GAS
Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources and it concerns government assistance for the extension of natural gas pipelines into communities that do not have this service now. This distribution system expansion program was to be launched early this year. Natural gas companies and municipalities are anxiously awaiting the announced beginning of the program for this much needed extension. Will the minister tell the House the exact date when this program will begin?
Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Energy, Mines and
Resources): Madam Speaker, the utilities have already been advised of the amount of money that each would be entitled to and they are now in the process of examining which extension they would like to propose with the additional money that would be provided by the federal government. That program is due to start on April I.


AMOUNT OF GOVERNMENT FUNDING
Stan Darling: Madam Speaker, 1 have a supplementary question for the minister. There was indication from the government last year, and the minister will be aware of this, that the amount set aside for this program was $300 million. Will the minister confirm that funds in that amount will be made available this year and, if not, will there be any reduction? There should be an increase because of inflation. If there is to be a reduction will it be significant?
Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Energy, Mines and
Resources): Madam Speaker, I would refer the hon. member to the National Energy Program in which we indicated that $300 million would be allocated for extension lines for gas consumers over the period of the National Energy Program, until 1986. That budget remains the same. I hope there will be enough demand from utilities to meet the budget that has been allocated for this particular purpose as this is quite useful.


DISASTERS
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources on a matter which is of great concern to the country, that is, the disaster that took place with the Ocean Ranger.
Oral Questions
I think there is a great deal of sympathy all over the country for the people of Newfoundland. Perhaps the minister or even the Solicitor General could answer my question.
There have been reports from Newfoundland this morning that a man identifying himself as an RCMP officer has been investigating the disaster. Can either minister confirm that there is an RCMP investigation in progress and that it is of a criminal nature?
If the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources answers the question, could he give the House any information he may have about a report-a secret Mobil report, apparently-that the supply ship of the Ocean Ranger may have rammed one of the life boats which had live men inside it?
Could either minister answer the first part of the question, and could the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources give us any facts he might have on the second part?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, 1 have just checked with the Solicitor General and neither of us is aware of any investigation being carried on by the RCMP at the present time.
As far as the second point is concerned, I am sure many rumours will be circulating. Indeed, there have been plenty of rumours in the last week, and there will be more in the future.
1 hope that the inquiry we are trying to set up jointly with Newfoundland will start very soon and that all those allegations will be fully investigated. In the meantime I do not intend to discuss or speculate on all the rumours that will be circulating in the days and weeks to come. I think the best way of resolving those issues is through the inquiry that we have set up. I hope it will be a joint inquiry by Newfoundland and Canada.


POSSIBILITY OF JOINT INQUIRY
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Madam Speaker, I think there is great concern that a joint inquiry be set up and get under way soon. In a rather cooler manner than the shouting match that took place in the House yesterday, could the minister tell us what is happening in regard to that joint inquiry? When does he expect that it will be set up? This is a matter that falls under his responsibility, as he indicated when he tabled what I call those conservation reports made by his inspectors on the Ocean Ranger.
Could the minister also table a report on the safety meeting held on the deck of the Ocean Ranger on February 6? I brought this matter up in the House last week when he was away. I believe the minister is required to do this and that, under the oil and gas regulations, Mobil is required to file it.
Therefore, can the minister tell the House what stage arrangements for setting up the joint inquiry have reached and when he expects it to get under way? Also, is he prepared to table further reports under the oil and gas regulations?

February 23, 1982
Oral Questions


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the sermon given by the hon. member. I would also have appreciated it had he used cooler language in the House last week in my absence when he referred to criminal responsibility in this particular case. I welcome his more responsible attitude today and I can assure you, Madam Speaker-, that I am ready to co-operate with him in all respects.
As far as the allegation about a possible report is concerned, 1 must say that all reports will be submitted to the inquiry and examined by it. Regarding the possibility of a joint inquiry, 1 have to inform the House that I sent a telex today to my colleague in Newfoundland indicating that the government welcomes the principle of a joint inquiry. We will try to work out an arrangement satisfactory to both governments in the shortest possible time. 1 would remind the hon. member, however, that in the meantime the two governments have set up commissions of investigation or commissions of inquiry. 1 hope they will be joint, and we should know about that very shortly.


ROLE OF HALIFAX AIR-SEA RESCUE CENTRE
Hon. James A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Madam Speaker, 1 have a supplementary question for the Minister of National Defence. According to the same leaked Mobil report of the series of events on the radio transmissions, the rig Ocean Ranger was able to accept a helicopter at 2.55 a.m., almost two hours after the Mayday signal was received from the rig and more than an hour after evacuation. Furthermore, there is evidence that at 3.30 a.m. Mobil was giving instructions that the helicopter should not land on the Ocean Ranger.
Since the Mayday signal was received by the air-sea rescue unit in Halifax, and since at that time it was assumed to have taken responsibility for the air-sea rescue operation, why did it not take command of this rescue operation and all ships in the area? According to the evidence, instructions were being given by Mobil and not by the air-sea rescue unit in Halifax.


Hon. J. Gilles Lamontagne (Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, I think the hon. member should know that the co-ordination of all air-sea rescue is done by our coordination centre in Halifax, by both the Department of Transport and the Department of National Defence. As far as the detail of this particular incident is concerned, I think that the inquiry or the investigation will show who was wrong, and who was right, and only then will we have the answer to the hon. member's question.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
Mr. Maurice Harquail (Restigouche):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport. It concerns recent Canadian National
lay-offs in the northern New Brunswick area that used to be known as the Chaleur area. Could the parliamentary secretary inform the House of any further moves? They have taken out the accounting division and now they are moving the engineering division to the Atlantic region office.
Could he also inform us as to the status of the replacement for the president of CN who indicated his resignation, and also of the retirement of the vice-president of the Atlantic region, Mr. David Blair, of Moncton? Could he give us some assurance that some decisions will be taken to protect jobs in northern New Brunswick and to protect the area, so that we will not see an even greater loss of jobs in Campbellton, New Brunswick?


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Madam Speaker, 1 should like to tell the hon. member for Restigouche that I am certainly sympathetic to his question and to the employment of people by CNR in the maritimes. I will have the Ministry of Transport make inquiries of CNR as to its future plans in the maritimes.


PUBLIC SERVICE
Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. A constituent of mine, Mr. Neil Fraser, of Revenue Canada in Kingston, has been fired after being harassed for several weeks by the federal government for speaking out against the mandatory introduction of the metric system. This is a serious matter of which Canadians should be made aware, when the muzzling of public employees takes away their freedom of speech, making them second-class citizens. On what grounds is an off-duty public servant being deprived of freedom of speech or rights which have been taken for granted by fellow Canadians?


Bill Rompkey: Madam Speaker, Mr. Fraser is a relatively senior official with the Department of National Revenue.


Some hon. Members:: He was!


Bill Rompkey: First of all, he publicly spoke against the metric system.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Bill Rompkey: I hope, if hon. members opposite treat this matter seriously, that they will try to listen to my answer. He was suspended; he was counselled.


Charles Joseph Clark: Counselled!
February 23, 1982


Bill Rompkey: He persisted in his actions by then criticizing the Constitution and official bilingualism.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Bill Rompkey: It is quite obvious that Mr. Fraser did not want to desist from that course of action. It seems to me, particularly in this department where we collect taxes which fund all government programs, that a particular sensitivity is required. It seems to be ironic that a man would collect taxes on the one hand, and criticize the programs on which those taxes are spent, on the other.


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Bill Rompkey: It seems to me that there is a particular sensitivity to be maintained here. In view of that, Mr. Fraser was dismissed this morning.


Mr. Hnatyshyn:: Would you call him a traitor?


POSITION OF GOVERNMENT
William John Vankoughnet: Madam Speaker, my question does not concern the collection of taxes; it is a matter of freedom of speech.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William John Vankoughnet: I think this is a precedent which could reflect upon the rights of all public servants-federal, provincial, municipal, Crown corporations, people on government pensions such as the Canada pension, veterans and so on. Where does the government consider that it should draw the line?


Bill Rompkey: Madam Speaker, there is another principle to be remembered here, that is, the right of an employer to fire an employee who publicly speaks against the organization-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Deans:: What is the matter with you?


Bill Rompkey: -whether that organization is public or private. There seems to be an adequate body of evidence in law to support that position. It was based on that position that Mr. Fraser was dismissed.


QUERY RESPECTING RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister on this firing of a public servant. My first question concerns the answer just given by the Minister of National Revenue when he said that because an official of the Department of National Revenue is involved in collecting taxes, that official should be deprived of the right to criticize any program on which taxes are spent. Is that the position of government and, consequently, is every employee of the Department of National Revenue from this point forward to be deprived of his or her rights as a
Oral Questions
free Canadian citizen to express himself or herself on questions of national policy?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, I must confess that I do not know the details of this particular case, but I certainly support the position the minister took in the House in his answer just now. It seems to me a pretty well-established principle of government that public servants working for that government are not free to espouse publicly a political situation which is contrary to government policy.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: It had nothing to do with his job.


John Carnell Crosbie: What about cabinet ministers? They can do it.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: That is a well-established principle of democratic and parliamentary government, and we do not propose to change it.


QUERY RESPECTING ORGANIZATION'S RIGHT TO DISMISS EMPLOYEE
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister has already changed it, because the rule has not been that a public servant was denied the right as a free citizen to speak on matters outside his responsibility as a public servant and to speak on his own time. The rules have already been changed, and democracy has suffered as a consequence.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Charles Joseph Clark: The Minister of National Revenue just said that any organization, public or private, has the right to fire any individual who speaks publicly against that organization, including the Government of Canada. Is that the official position of the Government of Canada?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, just a few days ago the Leader of the Opposition was criticizing what he alleged to be division within cabinet. I believe he recognizes that cabinet government operates as a whole and that officials who work for a government-


An hon. Member:: What about Monique?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -are not free to enter into political actions critical of established policy of that government.


Mr. Beatty:: There are two standards-one for politicians and one for everyone else.


REQUEST THAT PRIME MINISTER TABLE RULES GOVERNING SPEAKING RIGHTS OF PUBLIC SERVANTS
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, this is a very important principle. We clearly have a

February 23, 1982
Oral Questions
double standard here-one which applies to the Minister of National Health and Welfare and the Minister of State from Quebec who are able to criticize freely public policy and suffer no consequences, and the other which applies to at least one public servant, and perhaps to all public servants who, if they speak critically of a public policy outside their responsibilities, and on private time, will be fired from their jobs. That is the principle which has just been established and articulated by the Minister of National Revenue.
Will the Prime Minister of Canada interest himself in this case of public servants being fired for their private views? Will he table in the House a detailed statement of the rules which will henceforth govern the rights of public servants in their capacity as free and private citizens of the country to express their views on questions outside their official responsibilities as public servants?


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, 1 would be happy to remind the Right Hon. Leader of the Opposition that these rules are established and are well known, particularly as they apply to the rule which permits officials during election periods to detach themselves from their roles as officials, to espouse contraviews to those of the government, and indeed to run for opposition parties. But apart from election periods 1 know of no rule which permits officials, particularly high ranking ones, to espouse positions which are contrary to those of the government they serve.


An hon. Member:: What about freedom of speech?


INDUSTRY
Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. In response to a question by the hon. member for Yorkton-Melville last Friday, the minister stated words to the effect that because of the findings of the Anti-Dumping Tribunal our Canadian shoe industry is not seriously affected by imports from offshore countries. This position is directly opposed by the Canadian shoe industry which has come out publicly stating that indeed this policy is killing its industry and has directly contributed to the loss of some 6,400 jobs. How can the minister equate the claim that by raising the quotas of imported shoes and imposing no quota on others this is not adversely affecting our ailing Canadian shoe industry?


Hon. Herb Gray (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Madam Speaker, I believe I said last week that the policy announced by the government for the footwear industry was consistent with the findings of the Anti-Dumping Tribunal which concluded that our footwear industry was able to meet
competition from developed countries, including state trading countries, these being the main source of imports of leather footwear. Therefore the government's policy was that the quota would not continue on footwear. The existing quota on non-leather footwear would continue, and we would extend that quota to cover the kinds of non-leather footwear that were not previously covered. In addition, we created a fund of $17 million to aid our industry to restructure and modernize. We are certainly concerned about the prospects of the industry and we are acting in a way that is intended to serve the best interests of the industry and its workers.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Lyle S. Kristiansen (Kootenay West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs, although he may want to defer the answer to the Minister of State for International Trade. New and alarming developments in the United States international trade commission investigation into alleged dumping by Canadian lumber exporters constitute a serious and growing threat to our number one export industry.
Two U.S. forestry giants, International Pulp and Paper, and Louisiana Pacific, have now joined the list of western politicians and independent companies arraigned against us at the ITC hearings which are slated for one week from tomorrow in Portland, Oregon. Is the minister, on behalf of the government, planning to intervene in these hearings, or will the minister make direct representations to Washington in view of the escalating danger of the situation?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of State (International Trade)):: Madam Speaker, we have already made representations to Washington with respect to this situation. We also made representations to the state governments on the west coast. I have personally visited the state of Washington, because the west coasts of Canada and the United States are experiencing similar problems in the forest industry and we do not think resorting to protectionist measures is in the best interests of the forest products industry in North America, either in Canada or in the United States.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker, I know that was the prevailing view, but the rules of the game have now changed since the intervention of two of the majors in the international industry. Now anything goes.
Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the minister responsible for the Canadian forest service. Would the minister give a short lesson to his colleagues in the Department of External Affairs on the impact on the Canadian lumber industry if tariffs were to be imposed as a result of next week's hearings in Portland, Oregon, and the possible loss of Canadian lumber exports, or a large portion of them, to the
February 23, 1982

United States which would flow from such a regrettable step and which we hope will not be the decision to which they will come.
To clarify perhaps, Madam Speaker-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of the Environment and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, I would be happy to have the question clarified, but I can report to the hon. gentleman that we will be following these meetings very closely which will take place next week. There will be observers from the Canadian forestry service at those hearings, so we will be fully informed as to what is said. We will take appropriate action to support the representations being made by the lumber industry.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Marcel Roy (Laval):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion. In view of the economic situation in Quebec, a situation that has become alarming in the areas of job creation and investment, and in view of the unwillingness of the sovereignist government to take advantage of various federal programs, and its habit of boycotting federal-provincial conferences since November 5 and of referring to sovereignty as its priority since the Parti Quebecois' referendum-although the House is aware that Quebecers much prefer to discuss jobs and investment instead of sovereignty-my question is as follows: Does the minister intend to meet with his provincial colleagues in order to establish an economic recovery program as soon as possible, so as to meet the objectives of Quebecers which centre on getting the Quebec economy out of its recession?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to inform the House that I intend to go to Quebec next Monday with my colleagues, the Minister of Industry and the Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism), for meetings with some of our provincial counterparts, and we intend to discuss various ways of working together to help stimulate the province's economy. We in the federal government have a real interest in assisting this recovery and in creating more jobs for workers in the province of Quebec.
Oral Questions INDUSTRY


FOOTWEAR-INCLUSION OF LEATHER FOOTWEAR IN OPEN MARKET
Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Madam Speaker, after listening to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion who is prepared to go to Quebec next week, my question deals with the footwear industry. Industry representatives have made a very clear recommendation-I feel that the minister's answer should be at least as clear-the association recommends that leather footwear be included in the over-all quota. In view of the fact that the association has proved that his policy is incapable of correcting the present situation, is the minister prepared to reassess his decision and to include leather footwear in the over-all quota?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, our policy is the result of a government decision which I announced a few months ago. My colleagues from Quebec, in caucus and in the cabinet, have had very useful discussions with spokesmen for the footwear industry, and I shall be happy to receive their advice on this matter, to find out whether it will be helpful in implementing the policy we announced a few months ago.


Roch La Salle: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary. It is of course very useful to know that the association met with ministers and members from Quebec, but I doubt their recommendations will be made public after our recent experience; can the minister give us the assurance today that he will make public the recommendations made by the Quebec caucus, and once again, is he himself willing to reassess his decision, in other words, to include leather footwear in the over-all quota? The association is anxious to know whether or not the minister is prepared to negotiate reinclusion of this item.


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, of course we can consider the suggestions made by the footwear industry, but I have no policy announcement to make in this regard today.


HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCES
Geoffrey Douglas Scott: Madam Speaker, last night the United States government issued a nation-wide ban on urea formaldehyde foam insulation, which raises anew the health concerns of UFFI home owners in this country. My question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs who said in Montreal on the weekend that UFFI victims have not heard the last word from the federal government in terms of compensation. Will the minister be specific

February 23, 1982
Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs
on what this means in dollars and cents terms of compensation, or is the minister still simply trying to pry money out of the provinces? Is compensation dependent upon the minister and the federal government getting the provinces to agree to compensation?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Madam Speaker, clearly the decision made yesterday by the American authorities shows that the Canadian government acted wisely in prohibiting sales here in Canada a few months ago before any other country did so. It is true that 1 announced yesterday that we were awaiting recommendations from the Canadian Review Board before considering other alternatives for providing more direct assistance to home owners and victims of this product. I wish to emphasize today the importance of greater co-operation and more generous assistance by the provinces. I hope that the provincial authorities will show as much concern for assisting UFFI victims as the federal government has done by announcing a program with a budget of over SI 10 million for UFFI victims.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, last Thursday the government House leader announced the business of the House up until today and made passing reference to the possibility of an allotted day on Thursday or Friday. Would he tell us what the business of the House will be for tomorrow, Thursday and Friday of this week, please?


Mr. Pinard:: Madam Speaker, it will all depend on the progress we make later today on the National Housing Act. Whether or not we vote today on second reading of that bill will influence the order of business for the remainder of the week. In any case, I intend to invite the House leaders to a meeting tomorrow or Thursday to discuss the calendar of business for the coming days and weeks.


FINANCE, TRADE AND ECONOMIC AFFAIRS PROPOSED REFERENCE TO STANDING COMMITTEE
[Stage Direction]
On the order: Government Notices of Motions:
February 19, 1982-The Minister of Finance:
That the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs be empowered to review the profit situation of the chartered banks.
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, I wonder if I might return to a question I asked yesterday. I provided the government and opposition House leaders with
the terms of reference which we felt would be more appropriate for the reference of the question of bank profits to the standing committee. Contained within those terms are a number of standard clauses which will guarantee that the committee will be able to pursue its work both diligently and expeditiously.
I wonder if the two House leaders might be in a position to indicate whether those terms of reference would be acceptable. If they are, I would be quite happy to give the necessary unanimous consent to proceed with the establishing of the committee and reference of the subject matter.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I think it might be best to leave that for the meeting of House leaders which the government House leader has indicated he is prepared to have. I might indicate to my friend that some of the matters he has listed in his suggested terms of reference are not necessary because they are already in the Standing Orders. Those matters can be straightened out at the House leaders' meeting.


Yvon Pinard: Under the circumstances, Madam Speaker, since there is a notice of motion on the Order Paper we will ask that it be stood until we have our meeting, probably on Thursday. I agree with the opposition House leader that we should discuss that in our meeting because most of what is proposed by the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans) is already provided for in Standing Orders and is covered by the broad terms which appear in the motion, notice of which we have put on the Order Paper, except for the right to travel. I do not see why the committee should travel, but I have an open mind on the matter and we will discuss it.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order arising out of question period on February 1, 1982. I would appreciate it very much if you would consider asking for a retraction of the statement made by the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mr. Ouellet) on page 14505, where he said that I have:
-apparently urged Canadians to disobey the law.
This concerned the implementation of the metric system.


Madam Speaker:: No, I am afraid I cannot oblige the hon. member. The Speaker has no authority and no desire to ask any member in this House to retract a statement. Hon. members have to stand by their statements and are responsible for them.
February 23, 1982



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


[Stage Direction]
A message from His Excellency the Governor General transmitting estimates for the financial year ending March 31, 1983 was presented by Hon. Donald J. Johnston (President of the Treasury Board) and read by Madam Speaker to the House.
Hon. Donald J. Johnston (President of the Treasury Board):: Madam Speaker, 1 would also like to table on behalf of my colleagues and in support of the estimates, Part 1 of the government expenditure plan, ten booklets on Part III, and a "Guide to the Estimates" of the Government of Canada.


EXPLANATORY STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT OF TREASURY BOARD
Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, as hon. members are aware, the review and scrutiny by Parliament of the government's expenditure plans is one of the fundamental responsibilities of the parliamentary system. Thus, as the plans which are being tabled, and for which authorization is requested, are within the expenditure framework tabled by the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) in his budget of November 12, I invite all hon. members to devote their efforts to a full and complete examination of these estimates.
Before highlighting some of the content of this year's estimates I would like to say a few words about the presentation itself.
Last year this government tabled for the first time a Part I to the estimates to provide hon. members with a context for reviewing the estimates, or Blue Book, which contains both the statutory expenditures and the voted items for which parliamentary authority is sought for expenditures to be incurred during the coming fiscal year. It has been agreed by all concerned, I believe, that Part I serves a very useful purpose as it allows for an explanation of forward multiyear plans which could not be incorporated in the Blue Book, and provides a variety of analysis and explanation in a form which is more easily assimilated than that of the formal estimates.
I am tabling Part I, the government expenditure plan, again this year. This volume shows the five-year expenditure plan of the government, including the breakdown by ten "spending envelopes". In addition, considerable analysis and explanation is provided to give members a better understanding of the content of the plan and the 1982-83 estimates.

Further, as part of my project to improve reporting to parliament, 1 am pleased to table, on behalf of the responsible ministers, ten program expenditure plans, or separate volumes of a new Part III of the Estimates. Members will recall that it was my intention to table nine such plans this year, but in fact ten are available. This is the first time that these program
Main Estimates, 1982-83
expenditure plans have been tabled with the Main Estimates, although last year I tabled a number of pilot projects based on the Estimates for 1980-81, simply to serve as examples and to invite comment from members. The purpose of the Part III booklets is to provide members with a much more detailed explanation of the management plans and systems of individual departments than is presented in the Blue Book. These program expenditure plans are prepared by and are the responsibility of the individual departments and are intended to provide members with additional assistance in their scrutiny of individual programs. The tables repeated in these volumes from the Blue Book have been verified by the Treasury Board Secretariat. I am working to a schedule which will see all departments submit their expenditure plans for the year 198586; in the interim, there will be an increase in the number tabled each year.
There has been considerable discussion in this House and in committees of the difficulties that members have in understanding the expenditure proposals of the government through reviews of the content of the Blue Book. As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, I fully appreciate the problems involved. The Public Accounts Committee has conducted a thorough review of the government's proposals on the Estimates. As well, discussions on these documents took place with some 25 individual Members of Parliament. The recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee and the members have resulted in a number of changes to enable these expenditure plans to better meet Parliament's needs. In addition to these consultations and recommendations three distinguished former parliamentarians, the Hon. Otto Lang, James Gillies and Douglas Fisher, were invited to review last year's pilot projects and to offer their comments. I am most grateful for their co-opeiation. I would also like to thank all members of the House and others who have made such a constructive contribution to the development of these departmental expenditure plans. The tabling of the first ten plans today is indeed a landmark in the evolution of the accountability of government to Parliament, and as members will know, in keeping with the recommendations of the Lambert commission and the Auditor General, as well as the Public Accounts Committee itself. I believe that these program expenditure plans go far toward fulfilling the information needs of Parliament. As a cautionary point, it is also important that Members of Parliament recognize that additional improvements in the expenditure plans will occur over time. This is a major undertaking by individual departments, and thus will be developed over the next few years as underlying information systems and procedures are expanded or improved.
In the context of our consultation with hon. members, other options were explored for providing additional assistance in

February 23, 1982
Main Estimates, 1982-83
reviewing the estimates. Therefore, today I have also made available to hon. members a short "Guide to the Estimates". This document explains the nature of the current revisions to the estimates and briefly outlines the manner in which hon. members can obtain information through the various estimates documents.
I do want to emphasize the importance which this government attaches to the project being managed by the Comptroller General to improve the presentation of estimates to Parliament. This will help each and every hon. member of this House to carry out his or her fundamental and democratic responsibility of ensuring that taxes paid by Canadians will be used for the benefit of all Canadians. The preparation and tabling of Part I and a further stage of Part III, plus the "Guide to the Estimates", I believe, is tangible evidence of the effort this government is making to facilitate the carrying out of our parliamentary responsibilities. Our purpose is to provide full disclosure and to encourage rigorous scrutiny by all hon. members on behalf of the people of Canada.
I would now like to describe certain specific aspects of the information in these documents. First of all, may I point out that the updated expenditure plan to 1985-86, set out in Part I of the estimates, provides for the same total spending level in 1982-83 and future years as was envisaged by my colleague the Minister of Finance when he tabled his budget on November 12 last year. In other words, the estimates are entirely compatible with the information tabled by the Minister of Finance. The numbers set forth in the estimates are destined and designed to proceed upon the presumptions underlying that budget.
I would like to draw the attention of hon. members to two adjustments which must be made in reconciling the total estimates to the planned total spending level of $76.3 billion as set forth in the material of the Minister of Finance; that is to say, as set forth in the budget.
First, total estimates must be adjusted downward for repayment of loans from previous years which are not offset by new loans. The current estimate of these repayments is $480 million.
Second, since the government cannot legally spend more money than Parliament authorizes, and in fact always spends less, an adjustment for this lapse of expenditure authority must be made. The current projection of the lapse for the year 198283 is $1.23 billion.

I wish to emphasize to members that the expenditure plan reflects our intention to continue imposing a high degree of restraint on spending for the currently approved programs of the government. While recognizing the difficulties involved in making precise forecasts of costs for more than a year ahead, the Treasury Board's most recent review tends to indicate that it will take careful planning and determined management by all ministers and departments to carry out the operations of government within the limits of these envelopes. My colleagues
are aware of the need for continued prudence and restraint in light of the particular difficulties and uncertainties facing us in the planning years beyond 1982-83.
And now, Madam Speaker, I would like to comment on the result of the $100 million reduction in overhead expenses of the government which was included as an item in the November budget. As part of the review leading up to these Main Estimates, every program of government was required to substantiate the price increases it has experienced over the past year. In many cases, these numbers were based on actual invoices or contracts for the provision of goods and services. However, it was felt that the operating costs of government should not be fully protected from the effects of inflation, and as a result, the price increases included in these Estimates have been substantially reduced from the levels that would otherwise have been allocated to departments. These reductions were applied to virtually all programs of government in order to effect savings in areas such as transportation and communication expenditures and in the purchase of materials and supplies. While these savings may not be significant in terms of total government spending, they are substantial in relation to those expenditures related to the overhead of government and reflect one additional measure in the continued struggle for efficiency and restraint.

The creation of the Canada Post Corporation has also had a significant impact on the level of resources that are being requested in the 1982-83 Main Estimates. As a department, the post office required appropriations in order to finance all of its operating and capital requirements with most of its revenue not being used to offset its expenditures. The 1981-82 Main Estimates included over $1.7 billion for this purpose. The government is only required to provide for Canada Post's net operating deficit, now that it is a Crown corporation and retains the postal revenues, and consequently no appropriation requirements are included in the 1982-83 Main Estimates. However, the total spending levels for 1982-83 included in the budget have a provision for a $400 million deficit, and Parliament will be asked to approve an item for this purpose through a supplementary estimate in 1982-83.
The comparisons between fiscal years included in Part I of the estimates have been adjusted to treat Canada Post as if it had always been a Crown corporation. The conversion to a Crown corporation has also had an effect on other aspects of the Main Estimates. As a Crown corporation, Canada Post is now required to pay for certain services which were previously provided without charge by other departments and, conversely, departmental appropriations must now include provision for services provided by the new corporation. The most significant example of this arrangement is the inclusion of $220 million in the arts and culture program of the Department of Communications for postal subsidies on cultural-related mailings that were previously calculated as part of the operating requirements of the old post office department.
February 23, 1982

Main Estimates, 1982-83 REFERENCE TO STANDING COMMITTEES
In addition, the size of the public service has come to be measured by the number of person-years subject to Treasury Board control, and with the conversion to Crown corporation status the person-years of Canada Post are no longer considered in this category.
1 would like to turn for a moment to this question of person-years. After making the adjustment for Canada Post and another similar technical modification, I am once again pleased to announce that, despite the continued pressure in the system for the provision of more and more services, growth in the size of the public service has been kept to less than 1 per cent. The 1982-83 Main Estimates provide for 255,322 person-years, which represents an increase of 2,152 or .8 per cent over the comparable figure for 1981-82.
[ Translation]
One important perspective related to the growth in person-years that is often overlooked involves the fact that many of the government's services provided to the public are actually cost-recovered. The total direct costs associated with over 19,000 person-years are completely paid for by fees and charges resulting from activities provided to the public. Obviously, increased resources, including person-years, for services that are essentially cost-recoverable, should be treated differently from those that merely increase the general overhead of the government. In fact, a significant portion of some of the largest cost increases over the 1981-82 levels is recovered through the provision of services. Many of the 434 additional person-years for the RCMP will be used for policing at the detachment level which is recoverable through the recently renegotiated contracts with the provinces and municipalities. In the Department of Transport, almost one half of its total increase of 375 person-years will be used for air traffic control and systems that derive revenues from various sources related to the use of airports and Canada's airways.
It should also be pointed out that all operating and personnel costs are recovered for a further 20,000 person-years related to the administration of the Unemployment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan programs.

Finally, I would like to point out that the 1982-83 Main Estimates do not reflect the recently announced reorganization which primarily affected the Departments of Industry, Trade and Commerce, Regional Economic Expansion and External Affairs. Quite simply, there has not been sufficient time to work out all of the adjustments that will be necessary. Once the details of the resource reallocations of the new department of regional industrial expansion, the enlarged responsibilities for External Affairs and the other adjustments have been finalized. Parliament will then be provided with an opportunity to review these proposals through a special 1982-83 supplementary estimate.


Yvon Pinard: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I have talked to some of my colleagues on the other side and it seems there would be unanimous consent to allow me to deal with two procedural matters at this time. I thank my hon. colleague from Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker) and the House leader from the Tory party who have agreed. I suppose my colleagues will have no objection. I will be very short.
If I am allowed, I would like to move the usual motion to refer to the appropriate standing committees the different estimates that were tabled today. I have circulated and given to the House leaders of the two parties copies of that long motion. There is a small correction. There is a vote, which is Public Works Vote L85, which had been omitted. It has now been added to this list.


Erik Nielsen: Page?


Yvon Pinard: See "Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works". It should be on page three, the middle of the page; to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works, just add "L85". That was a pure omission.
Therefore I would, pursuant to Standing Orders 58(14) and 59, move, seconded by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston):
That the Main Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1983, tabled earlier this day, be referred to the several Standing Committees of the House as follows:
I would ask that we dispense reading the long enumeration since the motion has been circulated.
[Editor's Note: List referred to above is as follows:]
To the Standing Committee on Agriculture
Agriculture Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 50 To the Standing Committee on Communications and Culture
Communications Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, L25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85 and 90
Secretary of State Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45 and 55 To the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence External Affairs Votes 1, 5, 10 L15, L20, 25, 30, 35, L40, 45 and 50 National Defence Votes 1,5, 10 and 15 To the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs Economic Development Vote I Finance Votes 1,5, 10, 20 and 25
Industry, Trade and Commerce Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, L30, L35, L40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75 and 80
National Revenue Votes I and 5 Privy Council Vote 20
To the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry Environment Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 Fisheries and Oceans Votes I, 5 and 10 To the Standing Committee on Health, Welfare and Social Affairs Consumer and Corporate Affairs Votes 1 and 5
National Health and Welfare Votes 1,5, 10, 15. 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 Social Development Vote 1
15292

February 23, 1982
Ways and Means
To the Standing Committee on Indian Affairs and Northern Development
Indian Affairs and Northern Development Votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, L50, L55 and L60
To the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs Justice Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40 and 45 Solicitor General Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 To the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration Employment and Immigration Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 Labour Votes 1,5, 10 and 15
To the Standing Committee on Management and Members' Services Parliament Vote 5
To the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates Finance Vote 15 Governor General Vote I Parliament Votes I and 10 Privy Council Votes 1,5, 15 and 25
Science and Technology Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 Secretary of State Vote 50 Supply and Services Votes 1,5, 10 and 15 Treasury Board Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 To the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works
Energy, Mines and Resources Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, L35, 40, 45, 50, 55,60, L65, L70 and 75
Public Works Votes I, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, L65, 70, 75, 80 and L85
To the Standing Committee on Northern Pipelines Economic Development Vote 5 To the Standing Committee on Regional Development Privy Council Vote 10
To the Standing Committee on Regional Development
Regional Economic Expansion Votes I, 5, 10, LI5, L20, 25, 30 and 35 To the Standing Committee on Transport
Transport Votes 1, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, L40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70. 75, 80,85,90, L95, 100 and 105 To the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs
Veterans Affairs Votes 1,5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, could the government House leader simply inform me that the vote he has added, L85, appears nowhere else in that motion?


Yvon Pinard: No, Madam Speaker, not to my knowledge.


Madam Speaker:: Does the House give its unanimous consent to this motion?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Yvon Pinard: I have another point, Madam Speaker. In accordance with Standing Order 60(1), I wish to table a Notice of Ways and Means Motion to amend the Petroleum Administration Act.
In accordance with Standing Order 60(2), I also ask you to designate the order of the day necessary for the consideration of this ways and means motion.


MAIN ESTIMATES, 1982-83 EXPLANATORY STATEMENT BY PRESIDENT OF TREASURY BOARD
Hon. Walter Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Madam Speaker, this is a very interesting day. I want to delve back into history just a little bit, if I might. The last estimates that were presented in this House of Commons by the Diefenbaker government in 1963 totalled $7 billion. At the beginning of the reign of the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) the estimates, which I have here in this little slim volume for 1968-69, totalled only $12.4 billion.
The estimates that we are dealing with today for the year 1982-83 which come in this large volume, which takes a healthy, well-fit man to carry around for more than twice the length of the Parliament Buildings, and that includes me, amount in total to $74.2 billion. That is a 500 per cent increase in government expenditures in that period of time, or an increase of approximately six times.
That ought to strike fear into the hearts of those who look at the state of the economy, the height of the interest rates and a host of other things in considering the government's record. The only people who can feel joyful and happy about that kind of increase are those who do not fear continuous government intervention in the economy. I would be the last to suggest that it could cease, but I would be the first to suggest that there has not been the appropriate watch placed on it, the pragmatic approach to government. As time goes on, given the policies of this government, I think one will see the continuation of that kind of increase in an equally short period of time.
I would like to pay tribute to my friend, the hon. member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens). It was the hon. member for York-Peel who, when he was president of the Treasury Board during the Clark government, brought into play in terms of government expenditures the envelope system for expenditure. It was something quite new in terms of expenditures.
What that system managed to do was to place responsibility for finding the wherewithal to fund government programs on ministers and departments which came up with those programs. That is putting it very simply, but I think very clearly. 1 am very pleased to see that that system is being carried on by the present government because it is sound. It is important that the public know where it began. It did not begin with the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) who has just finished speaking. It began under the leadership in Treasury Board of the hon. member for York-Peel.
The second point that is important to remember is that all of these programs, the program expenditure plans of government, those ten programs which the President of Treasury Board referred to, came out of the work of the Public Accounts
February 23, 1982

Committee, chaired from time to time by members of the opposition parties. It was chaired for a period of time by the President of the Treasury Board, the member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), the member for Vancouver Quadra (Mr. Clarke) and a host of other people who brought forward those plans, drawing upon the learning and experience of Mr. Lambert and the fresh view of controlling expenditures which he and others like him have brought into government.
I am concerned about one aspect of the minister's statement, and I think it important that we set the record straight. If one takes the minister's statement, which 1 have in front of me, at face value, he said at page three:
Based on the assumptions of the November budget, total forecast spending of $76.3 billion in 1982-83 is 11.7 per cent higher than the forecast for 1981 -82.
That is dealing with forecasts, Madam Speaker. Those forecasts are wrong. In fact, the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) has refused to table forecasts or give any credence to forecasts-even the ones he has given in his own budget.
If anyone in the country believes that the total government expenditure in Canada will increase by only 11.7 per cent from the previous year, I suggest that they are wrong. The only solid basis on which to chart the increase in government expenditures is to go from Main Estimates to Main Estimates. If we take the figures from the Main Estimates we have just seen and relate them to the Main Estimates for the previous year, we find that the government expenditures in that area do not increase by only 11.7 per cent, they increase by 15 per cent. That is the first statement I would like to make.
The second matter I would like to point out is that from time to time the government has said that it would keep its rate of increase in government spending below the rate of inflation. That has not happened because although the rate of inflation is high enough in Canada, it is not 15 per cent. In that respect the estimates which have been tabled today do not fall within the content of former statements or statements of purpose. They fall by the wayside like so many other statements made by this government.
I will deal briefly with some items which I think people should know about. First is the item of advertising. The advertising program is up by 14 per cent from the previous year. It amounts to approximately $70 million. There is $1 billion yet to come in supplementary estimates to be tabled some time in March. Salaries and wages for public servants will have to be examined very closely because the numbers do not coincide with existing contracts or probable inflation. After adjusting for the post office changes, the total salaries from last year's Main Estimates to this year's Main Estimates are up only by 7 per cent in spite of an increase in the size of the public service. These figures do not add up. Inquiries will have to be made into that aspect.
According to these estimates, public debt charges are up by 14 per cent this year. Government borrowing accounted for 44 per cent of the money raised in the financial markets last year.
Main Estimates 1982-83
Imagine the impact on interest rates if the government would reduce its level of borrowing. Can you imagine that impact, Madam Speaker, and what it would mean for home owners and small business people?
There has been no change in the estimated cost of servicing the public debt since the November budget. The government surely must know by now that its revenues will be less than it expects which will result in a larger debt and a larger debt service cost.
The figure for equalization in the estimates reveals quite a substantial increase over the 1981-82 figure. However, during today's briefing government officials told our officials that this represented a continuation of the existing formula, not the new Ontario standard which was proposed in the budget or the five provinces standard which was proposed during the first ministers' meetings. Also, the estimates for transfers to the provinces do not take into account the census estimates of revised population which may result in pay-backs for previous years for some provinces to Ottawa. So it becomes evident that there are many concerns.
I would like to remind the House of what Ray Buxton, President of the Canadian Real Estate Association, said in a statement on February 15 about the size of the government's borrowing and its impact upon interest rates. He said:
The federal government could open the gates to more widespread home ownership if it reduced its heavy borrowings.
He estimated that this would reduce interest rates by 1 'A per cent to 2 per cent:
-thereby increasing the number of families who would qualify for mortgages.
There is nothing in the estimates, Madam Speaker, to attack the great problem of housing in Canada.
I do not want to be unkind to the minister but I do want to be truthful with him. There is a great deal of skepticism in Canada about the ability, and indeed the will, of the government to control its expenditures and act in a businesslike fashion. Recently the member for York-Peel brought a document to the public's attention which detailed improvidence in the government in the great computer caper. Improvidence in the government, Madam Speaker. The Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion (Mr. Gray) said that the government learned a lesson. They sure did and we sure paid for that lesson!
If we review the estimates, we see that the estimated cost of the Guy Favreau project in Montreal has jumped from $44 million to $83 million. Perhaps the President of the Treasury Board can indicate why there is such a leap. There has been a history of understating and overstating the estimates and the truth with regard to estimating programs, which has been, as far as Canadians are concerned, something completely different from the statement by the minister, whatever sugary language he manages to use.
You will remember that I raised in the House the report of the Auditor General. His report indicated that the net debt of the government is understated by $9 billion. For the first time in Canada's history there had to be a qualified certificate on

February 23, 1982
Main Estimates 1982-83
the operations of the Canadian government. That is why we are somewhat skeptical about these pronouncements.
There have been some incredible examples revealed to us about the government's inability to manage the public's money. 1 have a couple of examples to illustrate our skepticism and wonder about these estimates, which make us want to examine them very, very closely. For example, there was $110,000 paid for metric cooking lessons. Two television chefs, Bruno Gerussi and Madame Benoit, have been given a six-week television contract worth $110,000 to promote metric cooking.
There is the case of interest free loans to Michael Phelps, the executive assistant to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde). Fie has received two interest-free mortgages from Petro-Canada totalling $35,000. At current interest rates, the annual cost of these mortgages to taxpayers would be in the range of $6,000 to $7,000, even if they are justified or authorized in the first place. Another example are the cost overruns at Place du Portage, the C.D. Howe Building and the Montreal postal plant.
Do hon. members remember the JetStars? This is what makes me wonder about the government's honest intention to control expenditures.


Mr. Smith:: The pilots live in Nepean-Carleton.


Walter David Baker: They do. That is how 1 heard about it. We could not believe that three ministers would fly in formation in three government JetStars to Winnipeg. It is a rerun of "The Captain of the Clouds" except it is no longer James Cagney in the starring role; it is the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion, with two other supporting roles. Is it any wonder there is some question about the whole process with which we are dealing?
However, I commend the government, and I believe the Public Accounts Committee did well. The Lambert commission on accountability did well in bringing about some changes in the process, but we are just half way there.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, the
minister took about 20 minutes, and I think I should have at least equal time.


Madam Speaker:: I will give the hon. member equal time. The minister spoke for 17 minutes and I am willing to allow the hon. member 20, but that would be all. I am just signalling that the hon. member has three minutes left, if I do not give him 20 minutes.


Walter David Baker: Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I appreciate your consideration.
This minister is the same minister who is charged with the responsibility of bringing in legislation with respect to Crown corporations and accountability. The House has not seen that
legislation yet. Two years ago the minister said he would be the master of regulatory reform. We have not seen any processes for regulatory reform. I know regulatory reform is being worked at by the bureaucracy, but it is not out here in public.
This is the government which two years ago said it was committed to openness of government so that people would know. Freedom of information was the watchword. Just a few days ago the round-heeled Minister of Communications (Mr. Fox) was blown over by a blast of wind from the attorneys general. We are not likely to see freedom of information.
Let us look at the unanswered questions on the Order Paper with respect to government expenditures. The whole process of accountability will not work if it is the view of the government that the senior people in Crown corporations will not even have their salaries revealed. How can we judge their accountability? These are the things Mr. Lambert talked about, and if we are going to close the ring on expenditure management in government, we have to have some parliamentary reform. That was another watchword of the government two years ago, but there has not been one proposal.
When the minister is musing over the Blue Book, as thick as it has become, he should reread the last section of the Lambert report, which talks about improving the processes in Parliament so that the people of Canada, through their elected representatives, can find out what goes on within government. Until that is done no member of this House of Commons ought to be content with bland statements by the government or mere changes in the Blue Book process, as far-reaching as they are.
1 urge the President of the Treasury Board to do his duty, light a fire under the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard) and get him going, because we have a long way to go in order to complete the ring of accountability Mr. Lambert spoke about in his report.


Mr. Doug Anguish (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Madam Speaker, I am pleased to be able to respond on behalf of the New Democratic Party as our Treasury Board critic and as a member of the Public Accounts Committee.
The revised form of the estimates has changed the package quite substantially since I became a Member of Parliament some two years ago. Originally the Blue Book was a very difficult document to understand. It was difficult for the Parliament of Canada to get a grasp on accountability for expenditures by the government, and I would like to compliment the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) and the office of the Comptroller General for making this package of documents much more understandable. It is now easier to get a grip on the expenditures of government or at least what its plans are.
I would not want the government to be satisfied with that, however. There are other improvements I think need to be made. An example which comes to mind is that the information on the plans and objectives of the government and the objectives of the different departments, the Blue Book and the
February 23, 1982

guide with which to use it which make up the four parts of the revised form of estimates, must be consistent with the public accounts at the end of the year so that we can actually compare the results of the year's spending with the projections put out in the revised form of the estimates.
In talking about the estimates this year I have some confusion yet as to what the actual amount of the expenditures have been. According to fact sheet No. 1:
Total forecast spending of $76.3 billion in 1982-83 is 11.7 per cent higher than the forecast for 1981-82.
According to fact sheet No. 4:
The 1982-83 Main Estimates tabled today provide for $72,935 million in budgetary expenditures, an increase of $9,503 million or 15 per cent over the 1981-82 Main Estimates.
I suppose in terms of actual dollars, we are talking only about $4 billion, which may not be much in terms of federal government expenditures, but many Members of Parliament have a hard time grasping what is actually happening when there are contradictions like that. The information has to flow in a way which is a bit more fluid and consistent than has been the case up to this point in time.
As I say, progress has been made by the office of the Comptroller General under the direction of the President of the Treasury Board. It has been good up until now, but it must continue.
I am very concerned about the amount of spending which is being undertaken to service the public debt. The public debt accounts for some 23 per cent of the total expenditures placed before us today, and that is a phenomenal amount of money. I think about one dollar of every five raised in revenue goes back to servicing the public debt. I think repayment of the public debt is of great importance to Members of Parliament, but the government goes about the repayment of that debt in a strange way. 1 am concerned that responsibility for that public debt is being placed on the backs of provincial and municipal governments.
The total accumulated public debt brought about by this government is now about $81 billion, and this government is going to address the reduction of that debt by transferring certain responsibilities to provincial and municipal governments. Established programs financing comes to mind. Over the next five years those transfers to the provinces will be reduced by some $5.7 billion. There is evidence of the transfer of that responsibility. The community services contribution program was cut some 18 months ago, and that created a real hardship for many municipal governments across the country. With respect to policing costs, a heavier burden was placed on provincial and municipal governments, and that put the federal government in a better-looking financial position. Another part of this is that the federal government is trying to get away from statutory payments associated with the Crow rate.
The situation in relation to person-years is somewhat deceiving. The reduction of federal government person-years appears to be large. Some 60,000 or more jobs have been removed from the authority of the Treasury Board and transferred to Crown corporations, and this raises the very serious
Main Estimates 1982-83
point to which the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker) referred. There is a need for a Crown corporations act because more and more responsibility is being transferred from the authority of Parliament, and even away from the authority of the government to some extent. That responsibility is being assumed by Crown corporations. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, the last I heard was that there were some 464 federal Crown corporations under the four different schedules A, B, C and D. This number is growing all the time.


Erik Nielsen: We do not know how many there are.


Douglas Keith Anguish: I suppose some of these might be called agencies which are set up in such a way that the federal government is a shareholder, but these agencies do not appear as Crown corporations and there is a real need for a Crown corporations act. We must establish whether Crown corporations are instruments of public policy. Do they reflect the wishes of the government and the wishes of Parliament, and how do we as parliamentarians scrutinize the activities of a large number of federal Crown corporations? More are being created all the time. Two new Crown corporations are being formed for the post office and the museums. It has been announced that $185 million will be spent on creating two new museums in order that artifacts which are presently deteriorating can be preserved. In fact, some reporters have called the museums a national disgrace.
I would not want to make a judgment on whether Crown corporations will be good or bad; time will tell. They will certainly not be accountable to the public, however, if the government keeps on the course it is embarked upon now.
I was shocked when the new chief executive officer of Canada Post appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts at a time when the Auditor General was also present. Testimony revealed that the Auditor General, along with a private firm, will be co-auditor of that particular Crown corporation for a two-year period. It also came out in evidence that a letter had been sent to the Auditor General by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). I am paraphrasing somewhat but it was to the effect that the Auditor General should not expect to be reappointed as co-auditor to Canada Post when his two-year appointment expires.
I think that demonstrates that the government is interfering in the responsibility that parliamentarians have toward the great expenditures made on behalf of the Canadian taxpayer. There is provision for scrutiny of such expenditure by a Crown corporation. It makes the person-years of the government look good and it makes government expenditures look good, but we as parliamentarians do not know what is happening in many of the Crown corporations. We do not know whether they are instruments of public policy or whether they are embarked upon some course of their own. They may be doing a good job but then they may not, and we do not have access to the information that would allow us to make that judgment.

February 23, 1982
Main Estimates 1982-83
1 urge the President of the Treasury Board to address the problem of the accessibility of information from Crown corporations. There should be an improvement in the amount of information that is available to parliamentarians so that they do not have to wrestle with the estimates, although 1 do agree that the package has been improved. The expenditure plans submitted by each department will be a great help. Until now opposition critics for certain departments or agencies of government only had the Blue Book to go by, but now an analysis is submitted by each department of its ojectives and goals for the coming year. That information will be very useful to the critics in the official opposition and in the New Democratic Party.
I would ask the President of the Treasury Board to consider well the comments and recommendations made by Members of Parliament. 1 hope that in days to come we will not be deceived by the information we receive. Perhaps I can hope for a Crown corporations act so that the Auditor General, who is really an officer of Parliament, can act on our behalf and give us information on money being spent out of the public purse. I do not believe we have full control of the public purse yet but the more information we have, the better chance we have of getting it under control.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, 1 gather that the convention is that Members of Parliament with questions for the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) are entitled to ask them following the
statements.
I have a question for the minister regarding the information he tabled in the House about the advertising management service. 1 am perplexed by the figures which indicate that in the fiscal year 1979-80 the government spent roughly $35 million on advertising and that this will grow to roughly $70 million this year which, according to the minister, is an increase of some 14.8 per cent over last year.
When I had responsibility for Treasury Board my information indicated that in 1979-80 the government spent between $64 million and $65 million. Is the minister prepared to table a breakdown of both the $35 million figure for 1979-80 and the $70 million figure for this year? It is more likely that the figure will be over $100 million if the same criteria are used.


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I do not have that information for the House at the moment. In any event, the hon. member will have ample opportunity in committee to examine any number of issues which arise in the estimates. Specific departments can be dealt with in detail.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, I wonder if the minister is aware that questions about government expenditures on advertising have been on the Order Paper in my name for over a year and a half. To date they have not been answered. As well, I wonder if the minister is aware that last fall when 1 put questions to the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais) on his estimates in committee requesting a breakdown of the
advertising budget, the information was promised but has not been forthcoming. If we cannot get it in that context, then will the President of the Treasury Board undertake to provide Parliament with the information that is requested?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, it is not the function of the President of the Treasury Board to answer all questions with respect to the spending of various departments, whether they are questions on the Order Paper or are questions asked in committee. I will be pleased to raise the hon. member's question with the Minister of Supply and Services.


Henry Perrin Beatty: I should like to ask the minister about another aspect of his responsibilities. My colleague, the critic for Treasury Board, noted that for two years the minister has been incapable of coming to Parliament for legislation to improve the financial control and accountability of Crown corporations, notwithstanding the fact that in the brief nine months the Clark government was in office such legislation was tabled in the House. On numerous occasions the minister had indicated that he intended to take urgent action to present such legislas-tion to Parliament. This relates directly to his responsibility and to control of expenditures in the estimates for those Crown corporations. Can he tell the House why he has failed so dismally to keep the commitment that he made to the House, and will he indicate when he will keep it?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the hon. member's interest in Crown corporations. I share with him and with all hon. members a concern about the accountability of what has grown to be a very large part of the public sector. Bill C-27 was tabled, as you will recall. I have stated in the House a number of times that it contained a number of defects which were pointed out by heads of Crown corporations, officials in departments, people outside government, the audit community and others. As a result, we have undertaken a very extensive review of the legislation with a view to better achieving accountability, direction and control of Crown corporations.
Because of the assets involved, however, and because of the ongoing impact of this legislation or the reorganization that we may introduce to accomplish the specific purposes which I am sure we all share, I have not been able to put every matter to rest. I can assure the hon. member, however, that a great deal of progress has been made and I hope that in the near term action will be taken with respect to the whole area of control, direction and accountability of Crown corporations. 1 know this matter is of great concern to him, as it is to me.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, it is two years since the minister was appointed and he has given those assurances on several occasions during the time. I wonder if he could give us a time frame today-to the nearest month even-on when he will introduce that legislation.
I wonder if the minister would also confirm to the House that he was called by the Clerk of the Privy Council, Mr. Michael Pitfield, last fall and instructed that the project was dead and that it was only after that, in discussions with the
February 23, 1982

Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), that he was able to resurrect it.
Can he pin down to the nearest month when he will introduce that legislation, and will he keep the commitment this time?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, usually the hon. member's information, via brown envelopes or otherwise, is somewhat more accurate than the ridiculous declaration he has made to the House. The project is far from dead. It is one of continuing and great concern to the Prime Minister. After all, back in 1976 it was the Privy Council that developed what 1 believe was called the blue paper at that time with respect to Crown corporations. Everything I have said in the past stands; the commitments stand, the concern stands and action is being taken.
I would expect hon. members to recognize, however, that this House has had a fairly heavily charged scheduled of activity in the past year that I have been in this portfolio. That does not detract in any way from the importance of the Crown corporation legislation. Great progress had been made and I hope that when action is taken I will have the full co-operation of the hon. member to put through the House the legislation that is necessary to establish the direction, accountability and control that we all want.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, let me in my last question ask the minister, if he will not pin it down to the nearest month, whether he will commit himself to the House to introduce that legislation before summer. If he will not do so, will he give the House the commitment that the legislation will be introduced this year, in 1982?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, commitments can only be as effective as is the House in dealing with legislation when it is brought down. The most I can say to the hon. member today is that I am anxious to proceed with this matter as soon as possible. If it is within a month I would be delighted; if it is within several months I would still be delighted. I certainly hope it is within the time frame of which the hon. member is speaking, but I refuse to stand in the House at this point to say that we will have this legislation by June 1, July 1 or April 1. The fact is that we are moving ahead steadily with it, and I hope to have further announcements to make in the very near term.


Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, I have great difficulty understanding how a minister can rise in his place and give an answer such as the one the President of the Treasury Board just gave respecting a matter which has been outstanding for two years.
Also the government indicated that it is generally in favour of the report of the Lambert commission on accountability of government. In that report there are provisions whereby Mr. Lambert and his colleagues recommended that committees of the House of Commons have tabled before them on an automatic basis the reports of all Crown corporations, agencies and
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departments of government, that they be given complete scope in order to examine the operations of government, and that it would be an appropriate arrangement for parliamentary reform.
As the minister responsible for the Lambert report, what is his view with respect to that provision? What advice is he giving to the President of the Privy Council, if he can tell me, respecting the parliamentary reform package which was promised for an equally long time by the government and has yet to see the light of day?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, let me clarify my mandate. I am the minister responsible for co-ordinating the government's response to the report of the Lambert commission. I have already tabled in the House a publication entitled "Accountable Management", with respect to which I received some very complimentary comments from the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton, for which I thank him. I know he recognizes that we have made enormous progress in a wide variety of areas across government in achieving the kind of accountability which Mr. Lambert and commission members suggested and recommended. We have also moved ahead in the personnel field or in the area of human resource management pursuant to the report of the D'Avignon Committee. All of this was pulled together in the publication "Accountable Management", with which the hon. member is familiar.
In addition, during my budget speech back in November I updated the House on where we were with respect to various outstanding issues concerning the responses to Lambert and D'Avignon. I agree with the hon. member that there is a further area which must be addressed. I look forward to hearing his contributions in the House with respect to the issue of parliamentary reform which is within the jurisdiction of the President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard). He and I have discussed the issue of parliamentary reform and will continue to discuss it. I believe the minister indicated the other day that he would be bringing forward some proposals and that he had already undertaken some discussions with the other House leaders respecting the question of parliamentary reform. I share the desire of the hon. member to close the loop of accountability which he mentioned earlier this afternoon.


Walter David Baker: Madam Speaker, I have one further question. As co-ordinating minister, would he tell the House what advice he tendered to the President of the Privy Council concerning the questions of closing the loop and changes in parliamentary practice which were envisaged by Lambert and many others? As the minister knows, I have filed a paper which dealt with the question of committee reform. What is his attitude, as a member of government, to the recommendations of the Lambert commission? What is he doing about them as the co-ordinating minister in terms of the advice he is tendering to his colleage?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, cabinet colleagues give each other advice on a daily basis, which clearly is not a matter for public debate. Exchanges between privy councillors

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and cabinet are not something which I am about to reveal or declare in the House of Commons. I am certain the President of the Privy Council will be coming forward, in due course, with an expression of his views and the views of government on the subject.


Douglas Keith Anguish: Madam Speaker, I should like to direct a question to the President of the Treasury Board concerning the $5.7 billion reduction in the established programs financing to provincial governments over the next five years. The 1982 report of the Economic Council of Canada entitled "Financing Confederation" indicated that the council sees little merit in reductions in federal-provincial transfers which would, in effect, merely shift part of the burden of a declining federal deficit to less fortunate provincial governments.
Also 1 should like to refer to the report of the task force on federal-provincial fiscal arrangements, which reads in part:
We are agreed that the programs examined in the course of our work are serving vital social needs and merit undiminished support. Over-all funding of these programs should, in our view, be maintained at no less than current levels.
Did the President of the Treasury Board take any of this information under advisement before giving approval to the estimates for this year and the coming year? It seems as if he has totally looked away from it.
Also I should like to refer to the report of the task force on regulatory reform. I sat as a member of the task force and we have heard nothing about its recommendations. What does the minister do with the information recommended to Treasury Board? He so often overlooks it or seemingly does nothing with it.


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I take any advice we receive in Treasury Board, which falls within matters of my jurisdiction, most seriously. I hope hon. members recognize the extent to which Treasury Board has responded by preparing a new form of the estimates, and a guide for the estimates, in tabling "Accountable Management", and in keeping members informed of the wide variety of reforms which have taken place across government over the last several years.
With respect to established program financing, the estimates are designed to reflect the policy and financial requirements stated by the Minister of Finance when he tabled the budget on November 12, 1981. It is not for the estimates to change the policy established by the Department of Finance. The estimates simply reflect the policy for 1982, 1983 and ongoing years.


Mr. Charles Mayer (Portage-Marquette):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) concerning the western development fund. Almost a year ago when he tabled his estimates, I had an opportunity to ask him what moneys were allocated in the estimates for the fund and, without becoming specific, what kinds of programs we could look forward to if there were supplementary estimates to take care of moneys allocated under the fund. The Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) referred to it. Recently the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) announced in
Winnipeg that some $1.35 billion would be made available over the next four years to finance some additional rail capacity. Could the minister give us some idea whether that money will be made available from the western development fund? What other programs can we look forward to and advise our constituents of, so that they may apply and make use of the western development fund?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, again that is not an appropriate subject for me to respond to in tabling the Main Estimates of the government for the year 1982-83. The expenditure plan in Part I sets forth various envelope levels. It is clear that there are policy reserves in each of the ongoing years, but the hon. member will simply have to await announcements by responsible ministers as time evolves.


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, I should like to ask the minister a more general question. A year ago he replied to me by saying that $2 billion in total over a period of three years to 1983-84 would be made available under the western development fund. Also a year ago he mentioned that $350 million will be brought forward through supplementary estimates. Could he give figures this year similar to the ones he provided last year, so that we have some idea what level of expenditure the government plans on using through the western development fund and at least some idea of the broad-brush expenditures the government plans as far as the western development fund is concerned?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I repeat my earlier answer. I think this is a matter which should be addressed by the responsible minister. The hon. member will have ample opportunity to question the responsible minister both in committee and in the House, whether it be the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) or the other ministers who are charged with these areas within their respective jurisdictions.


Charles James Mayer: Madam Speaker, I have another general question. First, has the minister allowed for any expenditures in his estimates as far as the western development fund is concerned? Could the minister also give us some idea which ministers will be bringing forward supplementary estimates which would provide for the expenditure of funds under the western development fund, if in fact such a fund exists?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I cannot go on repeating myself all afternoon. It seems to me it is obvious that there are ministers with responsibility for other economic sectors and, therefore, I have no intention of giving a detailed analysis of expenditures in areas that fall under the jurisdiction of my colleagues.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I have two questions for the minister. Having taken a quick glance through the estimates which have just been tabled, I notice that there are a number of references to items referring to
February 23, 1982

accommodation provided by the Department of Public Works. How far into the revenue dependency plan is the government? Is the plan wholly implemented as yet? If not, how far along the road has the government proceeded? When might we see the completion of the full implementation of revenue dependency so that we will see reflected in the estimates the cost of accommodation provided to the various departments of government by the Department of Public Works?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I can understand the hon. member's interest, being a former minister of public works. I trust and hope that he is supportive of the principle of revenue dependency. As hon. members will recall, my colleague the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cosgrove) and I announced last year the experiment in revenue dependency in the Department of Public Works, which was a simulated model. In order to establish a means whereby revenue dependency could be made to work in the area of the Department of Public Works accommodation, a simulated model was established opposite the other departments. I understand from my colleague, the Minister of Public Works, that we would hope to see the results of that simulated model some time in spring, 1982.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, the minister may be assured that I am indeed an ardent supporter of the theory of revenue dependency. I would like to see it implemented as quickly as possible because it will do nothing but increase efficiency in government and effect cost savings.
My second question has to do with the retionalization of real property services, which is a matter fairly closely allied to the first question. As the President of the Treasury Board is aware-and I see his colleague the Minister of Public Works sitting beside him-Canada's Department of Public Works is probably the biggest landlord in the world with well over $40 billion of property, real and other, in its list of assets. Indeed, I always thought it rather disgraceful that the Government of Canada was not able to ascertain with any accuracy just what the precise value was of the property it did own.
When is it anticipated, if at all, that the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) will be submitting a proposal to cabinet, which would at least commence an experiment in or bring about a program for the rationalization of real property services in the Government of Canada?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, 1 am pleased to advise the hon. member that again he has touched upon a matter that we regard as a very high priority in terms of the management of government assets. Proposals have been brought forward for cabinet consideration in that area. I am also advised that if the government could obtain some co-operation from the hon. member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen), as opposition House leader, with respect to Bill C-91, which facilitates the use by the government of certain techniques in terms of asset management, such as lease purchase agreements and so on, which in many instances are in the interests of Canadian taxpayers at large, that, in turn, would give a real boost to our efforts in that direction, and we look forward to his co-operation.
Main Estimates 1982-83


Mr. Cosgrove:: We must have his agreement.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, the minister will certainly get all the co-operation he deserves, certainly as much co-operation that he and his colleagues provided us during the closing months of 1979 when they took seven and a half days to debate the mortgage interest credit legislation that we put forward. I believe we have been on Bill C-78 for three or three and a half days now. Certainly the minister will get that kind of cooperation. If I can have the attention of the President of the Treasury Board for a moment, he said, if I heard him correctly, that such a proposal for the rationalization of real property was being put forward or was being considered. Am I to understand it is in fact being considered at cabinet level at this time?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, a great deal of work has been done in the area. It has been considered by cabinet colleagues.


Erik Nielsen: It has or has not?


Donald James Johnston: It has been considered by cabinet colleagues. It is a matter that affects not only the Department of Public Works, as the hon. member knows, but also a large number of real property assets which are held in departments other than the Department of Public Works. I am sure the hon. member for Yukon is aware of assets that are held in such departments as the Department of National Defence, for example. I can assure this House that we are very much cognizant of the necessity for and the desirability of having better asset management across government and better utilization of those resources.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I have one brief comment. As the Minister of Public Works will know, I would assure the President of the Treasury Board of the full support of this party in the implementation of that kind of program, which might perhaps fill the great gap that is left in the Department of Public Works now that the post office has left under the aegis of a new Crown corporation. It would give the department a challenge and keep them busy as nothing else would.


Madam Speaker:: This question period has gone on for quite a while. I will recognize two members who have not yet had a chance to put a question. I would ask the hon. members not to go beyond two questions because this session is really being prolonged.


Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Madam Speaker, I want to follow along on the questions asked by the hon. member for Portage-Marquette (Mr. Mayer) regarding the western development fund. My understanding is that the estimates are indicative of all the money being spent by the government in this particular year. I have looked in vain for any mention of the western development fund. Could the minister please advise me where I might find the western development fund in the estimates right now?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Dire straits.

February 23, 1982
Main Estimates 1982-83


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo) will not find any specific item in the Main Estimates entitled western development fund. Perhaps 1 could take a moment to explain how these estimates are made up as against the expenditure plan.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Tell us about the western development fund.


Donald James Johnston: If one looks at the chart on page 7 in Part I of the government expenditure plan, one will see that the total outlays predicted for 1982-1983 are $76.3 billion. On the other hand, total estimates, in other words the estimates that appear in the book, are considerably less than that, namely $74.1 billion. This number of $76.3 billion is the estimated total outward expenditure after providing for reserves and for the customary lapse, which, as I recall, is estimated in 1982-83 to be something in the neighbourhood of $1.23 billion. So there is an area in there, Madam Speaker, with respect to policy reserves. When programs are brought forward and announced by ministers which do not appear in the Main Estimates, I will be bringing forward on their behalf, supplementary estimates detailing the appropriations required to support those programs.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: That is very much a smokescreen, Madam Speaker. The western development fund is a mirage. The minister's officials explained very carefully to us exactly what the extra reserves were for. They are not for long-budgeted items such as the western development fund, so that smokescreen type of explanation does not follow the minister's officials' position.
I would like to know whether it is possible to move moneys into the western development fund. Is that the process, or is it just a mirage? Could he tell us exactly what the western development fund is since it was budgeted so long ago?


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, there is not much that I would add to the answers I have already given on the subject. Obviously there is a margin, there is a reserve, there are programs that will be tabled here in the House by our colleagues-I am here today to answer questions on the estimates. I have not mentioned the western development fund in my speech nor in my comments nor in the analysis 1 have given in the House today. I should like such questions to be put to my colleagues who are responsible for such matters.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Madam Speaker, I have listened to my colleague the hon. member for Portage-Marquette (Mr. Mayer) and the hon. member for Prince Albert (Mr. Hovdebo) trying to find out about a matter which has been touted and promised by the Liberal government ever since the last Speech from the Throne. To then find out that the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) does not even know what the western development fund is all about is a
matter which causes a lot of concern and chagrin to those of us in western Canada.
The only question I want to ask the minister is if he would confirm-this will, of course, get a great laugh across western Canada-that there is nothing in the current estimates dealing with the western development fund as such.


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, it is not a question of confirming that there is nothing in the current estimates regarding that fund. The estimates are there for programs and for the ongoing operations of the government. They are divided into the voted programs and statutory programs. The Main Estimates are deposited to be referred to committee and will subsequently be the subject of an appropriation bill in this House. The hon. member will have ample opportunity to examine those programs in committee.
As I pointed out, the estimates are only part of the over-all expenditure plan which provides for reserves, for programs such as the western development fund, which programs, whatever the details may be, will be announced in due course by the responsible ministers. They will be the subject of supplementary estimates, and the hon. member, who has been in this House a great deal longer than 1 have, will then know that he can in turn go back to the responsible minister, examine him in committee, and in turn the programs will be the subject of further appropriation bills in this House.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: What concerns me, Madam Speaker, is that the last time the minister tabled the Main Estimates there was a provision for $350 million for the western development fund. That has evaporated. Yet we have had statements by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin), the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) that this in fact will be forthcoming and is a firm commitment of the government.
I would simply make the comment that the government has again failed western Canada and it is no wonder the Liberals are doing so poorly politically out there.


Donald James Johnston: Madam Speaker, I can understand the hon. member playing politics when the President of the Treasury Board responds to questions on the estimates, but surely any objective assessment of the programs committed to during the last two years by this government to western Canada development is enough to allay the fears of any westerner that the government is not committed to western programs.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, the following question will be answered today: No. 3,483.
February 23, 1982


Mr. Halliday: Were any studies done which established a scientific basis for the contention that an increase in marine mammal population would damage over-all fish production and, if so, what were the names and who were the authors of the studies?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: A scientific consultation on marine mammals convened by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Bergen, Norway in 1976 agreed that interactions of various kinds between marine mammals and fisheries were significantly affecting some sea fisheries; mostly adversely, apparently. A subsequent review of this matter by the IUCN interim committee on marine mammals led to the holding of a workshop on marine mammal/fishery interactions held at La Jolla, California in 1981.
This workshop, attended by eminent specialists from the U.S.A., Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Australia, Norway and the U.S.S.R., considered several aspects of the biotic and other interactions between marine mammals and fisheries, with emphasis on fisheries of commercial importance.
Studies and case histories considered under those aspects which would result in damage to over-all fish production are listed below:
Loss of fish production through damage to the catch, to gear, or through interference with the catching efficiency of fishing gear:
Losses to Canadian Atlantic herring and cod production attributable to whales, were reported on by E. D. Mitchell, P. F. Brodie, J. Lien, B. R. Mate, also in: Mate, Bruce R. 1980.-NTIS report to the Marine Mammal Commission PB80-175144, 48pp.
Losses and net damage on the west coast due to sea lions were reported in: Matkin and Fay. 1980. Report to the Marine Mammal Commission 78/07. 71 pp.
Losses and gear damage attributable to harbour seals, harp seals and grey seals on the American west coast and on both sides of the Atlantic were reported on by:
Everitt et al, 1980. Report of the Washington Department of Game. 120 pp. Oritsland, T. and A. Bjorge. Seals on the Norwegian coast from Stadt to Lofoten and their interactions with inshore fisheries.
Ultang, 0. Harp seals in the Barents Sea (White Sea harp seals) and the fishery for cod.
Miller, D. J. 1981. Marine mammal fisheries interaction study. Annual Report 1979-80. Southwest Fisheries Center, La Jolla, California.
Mate (1980) op. cit.
Harwood J., and A. R. Hiby. Competition between British Grey seals and fisheries.
Mansfield and Beck. 1977. The grey seal in eastern Canada Technical Report No. 704, Fisheries and Marine Service, Environment Canada. Schaughnessy, P. D. Interactions between fisheries and Cape fur seals in southern Africa.
De Master, D. P., J. R. Henderson and J. C. Coe. Conflicts between marine mammals off the coast of California.
2. Loss of fish production through predatory interaction is considered in several of the foregoing studies and also in:
Beverton, R. J. H. The grey seal/fishery problem in the U. K.: science in the cross-fire.
Bowen, W. D. Harp seals and their foods: how do they interact?
Order Paper Questions
Greenwood, J. J. D. Grey seals in Scotland: the management controversy. Parrish, B. B. 1979. Notes on the scientific basis of the fisheries case. Appendix 5 in Lister-Key, J. 1979. Seal cull, the grey seal controversy. Penguin Books Ltd.
Parrish, B. B. and W. M. Shearer. 1977. Effects of seals on fisheries. ICES CM 1977/M:I4.
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea 1978. ICES working group on grey seals, second report. ICES CM I978/N:3.
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. ICES ad hoc working group on interaction between grey seal populations ICNAF Res. Doc. 76/X/125 Sergeant, D. E. 1973. Feeding, growth and productivity of Northwest Atlantic harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) J. Fish. Res. Bd. Can. 30: 17-29.
Harwood, J.-Fisheries conflicts and the Pacific walrus population.
Lowry, L. P. and K. J. Frost. Feeding and trophic relationships of phocid seals and walruses in the eastern Bering Sea and: Frost K. J. and L. F. Lowry. Foods and trophic relationships of cetaceans in the Bering Sea.
The eastern Bering sea shelf: Oceanography and resources. D. W. Hood., editor.
Hiby A. R. and J. Harwood.-Killer whales and herring in the North Atlantic.
Kasuya T. and Y. Izumizawa. 1981. The fishery-dolphin conflict in the Iki Island area of Japan. Marine Mammal Commission Report No. MMC-80/02. Washington, D.C.
Holt, Susan. Economic impacts of sea otter migration.


Madam Speaker:: The question enumerated by the parliamentary secretary has been answered.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, if questions Nos. 1,795 and 3,197 could be made orders for returns, these returns would be tabled immediately.


Madam Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that questions Nos. 1,795 and 3,197 be deemed to have been made orders for returns?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. McKenzie: 1.	Are private organizations receiving federal grants for research and development into alternate sources of energy and, if so (a) how many (b) which organizations (c) what arc the types of programs currently being pursued by the organizations (d) what was the amount of each grant (e) what was the total amount of grants awarded for each year since such funding began?
2.	Is the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources involved in programs for the development of alternate sources of energy and, if so, what arc the names and types of programs?
3.	How many other ministries give grants for research and development into alternate sources of energy and what is the total amount?
4.	Were steps taken by the government to implement the findings of (a) the department (b) other organizations for research into alternate sources of energy and, if so, in each case, what were such steps?
Return tabled.

February 23, 1982
Order Paper Questions EASTERN ONTARIO SUBSIDIARY AGREEMENT 
Question No. 3,197-Mr. Cossitt:
1.	Since the signing of the Eastern Ontario Subsidiary Agreement between the Government of Canada and the government of Ontario (a) what was the amount contributed by the government to various projects (b) what is a list of all projects and the amount of federal funds contributed in each case (c) in which constituency is each project located and how many projects were located in the constituency of Leeds-Grenville?
2.	Are there any projects planned which have not yet been processed and, if so (a) what amount will be contributed by the government to these projects (b) what is a list of the projects and the amount of federal funds to be contributed in each case (c) in which constituency will each project be located and how many will be located in the constituency of Leeds-Grenville?
Return tabled.


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


Madam Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I want to raise a point of order concerning the answering of questions on the Order Paper. Some questions have been on the Order Paper for eight to ten months, with a great many having been there longer than six months. Some of them are quite simple and could be answered with little or no effort. It is obvious to me, in looking at the Order Paper, that there are a great many questions which the government has made no effort to obtain answers to. In my submission this can only be by deliberate intention since in the normal course they would be answered automatically.
My colleague the hon. member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker) referred to the difficulty opposition members have in getting information out of the government. The hon. member for Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe (Mr. Beatty) referred to his inability to get information from officials in committee and ministers in the House. The result is. Madam Speaker, that the practice of putting questions on the Order Paper is rapidly becoming a time consuming and rather pointless exercise. The fact is that there are close to 250 pages of unanswered questions on the Order Paper after a session which has gone on for more than 280 days. In fact, there has only been one session longer than this one. It is an indication and an indictment of the government's indifference and arrogance with regard to this institution and the rights and privileges of its members.
If the government, Madam Speaker, does not intend to answer questions on the Order Paper, such as the one the hon. member for Leeds (Mr. Cossitt) has had on for five years and God knows how many weeks and days, if it intends to treat Parliament with such indifference and contempt, then there is little point in putting questions on an Order Paper which grows every Monday.
In my submission, this is something, which hon. members will have to take under advisement. I am not quite sure what the government is trying to do here. Many Canadians are wondering about that. I know we are not here to go through futile exercises at the behest of a government which is in one of
its longest sessions on record and has very little to show for the time that it has spent.
1 make the point that if it is the government's policy not to answer questions on the Order Paper, or only to answer the ones with which it is comfortable and which will not embarrass it, then there is little or no point in carrying on with the practice. Perhaps it will be necessary that we have recourse through orders of the House for everything we get. These have already reached an unprecedented number of unfilled orders. If we continue in that way, we may have to seek an opinion from the House on this government's laxity and its contemp of the institution.
It is not surprising that a government which cannot bring down a budget cannot answer questions. That does not surprise me at all. The House is entitled to know whether or not this policy of inaction is a deliberate policy, whether it will continue, or whether hon. members can look forward to receiving answers within a reasonable time limit of a week or two instead of six or seven months or, indeed more than five years.
There was a time when hon. members could indicate the importance of a question by placing an asterisk beside it, a starred question. That practice has fallen into disuse, because it is being ignored by the government. Hon. members placed a star beside a question to indicate its urgency and to require an oral answer. At one time that was a respected practice of this House.
It does no good for the parliamentary secretary to tell us how well he has done in answering over 2,000 questions. The fact is that since this practice commenced, the number of hon. members of this House has substantially grown. That is one of the reasons more questions are being asked.
Another reason more questions are being asked is this government's obsession with secrecy and its resistance to providing information of any kind to hon. members. If this continues much longer, we in the opposition will have no recourse but to ask that Your Honour exercise your discretion in favour of upholding the rights of hon. members, and to entertain with favour a question of privilege which will have to be posed if we are to be continually refused by the governe-ment. The whole matter will have to be referred either to the Standing Committee on Procedure and Organization, or to the Standing Committee on Privileges and Elections, because the logjam must be broken. The government must change its attitude and adopt one of providing information to the people of Canada, through their representatives on all sides of this House, to which they are entitled.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, I happen to think that the alleged point of order which the hon. member for the Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) has just raised is totally spurious.
A couple of facts should be pointed out. First of all, as of today the government has answered over 2,793 questions, taking considerable time and at considerable expense to the government. For example, today the answers to two questions were made orders for returns because the answers were so
February 23, 1982

voluminous that they were each about one and one half inches thick. The compilation of the answers took a considerable amount of time, and all of those questions were placed by members of the official opposition.
The hon. member said that the practice of answering starred questions in the House has fallen into disuse. That is not correct. Since the House returned from the recess, a couple of questions have been answered-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


David P. Smith: -which were starred.


Erik Nielsen: At least two!


David P. Smith: Well, we only answer ones which are starred, to begin with.
With regard to the hon. member's comments as to what constitutes a reasonable period of time, of course, the previous government, the Clark government, was in office for over nine months. With regard to the question placed on the Order Paper, I believe No. 30, standing in the name of the hon. member for Leeds-Grenville (Mr. Cossitt), that question was not answered by the Tory government either, even though it was in office for a period of nine months.


Erik Nielsen: This government has been in for two years.


David P. Smith: Therefore, I suppose it is a rhetorical question to ask what is a reasonable period of time. It depends on the nature and complexity of the question asked.


Madam Speaker:: Before the hon. member raises a question of privilege on this particular question, I will read a quotation from Beauchesne's fifth edition, Citation 363, whereby it is very clearly stated that in no way can the Chair oblige a minister to answer a question. That also applies, of course, to the questions on the Order Paper. Citation 363 states:
(I) A minister may decline to answer a question without stating the reason for his refusal, and insistence on an answer is out of order, with no debate being allowed. A refusal to answer cannot be raised as a question of privilege, nor is it regular to comment upon such a refusal. A member may put a question but has no right to insist upon an answer.
That is quite clear. Answers to questions are left to the initiative of ministers and the government, and the Chair can in no way help the hon. member to insist upon a reply.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, let me make it quite clear. I was not, I repeat not, asking the Chair to insist on an answer to a question being given. I was not asking that at all; nor was I insisting that members have a right to have ministers reply. I was merely raising the point to focus attention on the abuse-


David P. Smith: Abuse?


Erik Nielsen: -which has been the long-standing practice in the House with respect to the answering of written questions which, I submit, are treated quite differently from oral questions.
Housing
1 simply flag the matter now. It may well be, Madam Speaker, that it will meet with your pleasure if I can frame a motion in such a way that the matter could be examined by one of the standing committees. Because if we are not going to receive answers to these questions, why should we burden the taxpayer with the expense of printing a huge Order Paper comprising several hundred pages every Monday when we could at least save this cost? All the government has to do is to come clean and say that it will not answer questions which tend to be embarrassing to it or to any members of the cabinet, if that is to be the government's policy.


Madam Speaker:: Just in case the hon. member does pursue what he announced in his statement, that is to say, that he might raise a question of privilege concerning this matter, 1 just warn the hon. member this may not be the subject of a question of privilege.
Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, February 22, 1982, consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-89, to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works.
Hon. Alvin Hamilton (Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, last evening I put forward what I considered to be a fundamental proposal to the minister that treatment be given to people who want to own homes or those who rent which is equal in benefit to what I think the farmers will get under a previous bill. I say, by way of background to what I said last night, that what we are really discussing is interest rates. It is my view, I believe I can substantiate on a quantitative basis, that the biggest cost-push inflation today is the long-term interest rate. This primarily applies to housing, for probably several hundred million dollars are out at any given time. Actually, it amounts to billions. I would like to repeat what 1 said yesterday so that it is absolutely clear to the whole House and, hopefully, to the country, namely, that there is a way out of this problem.
We should put ourselves into the shoes of the Governor of the Bank of Canada. For a year he has been pleading with the federal government to do something on the fiscal side on

February 23, 1982
Housing
interest rates, because he knows that those interest rates are destroying the very industrial and economic fabric of the country. The human suffering is uncountable. However, he feels constrained by the fact that he is trying to play the game of international monetary matters in order to protect Canada as well as he can. Therefore, he must ask the government to take the lead.
A year ago people on this side of the House put forward a series of proposals as to how this could be done without costing the government anything. We put these proposals forward in connection with the Farm Credit Corporation, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation on housing, the export agency and the small business agency. It we took those sectors of our economy and used the principles of the Small Business Development Bond and other principles, we could get interest rates down on these long-term ventures that we need for the development of our country to about half without any cost to the Government of Canada and without interfering with the Governor of the Bank of Canada in the international monetary crap game that he is in.
I want to conclude by saying that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, although as I mentioned last night it has made a lot of mistakes, has a distinguished record of accomplishments on the research side and in providing help to get a lot of types of homes and shelters for the people of Canada. I want this agency to have the same privileges under this government that this Parliament is giving to agriculture.
I want to repeat this again for the sake of those members who were not here last night. In Bill C-88, which precedes Bill C-89, the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) was able to get in this clause with the consent of cabinet. Parliament approved it and it is now in committee. I will read it again. Referring to the Farm Credit Corporation, Clause 13(1) reads:
The corporation may, with the approval of the Minister of Finance, borrow money by any means, including issuing and selling bonds, debentures, notes and other evidences of indebtedness of the Corporation.
In addition, I am going to read the third section under this amendment in Clause 8, Section 13(3):
The aggregate amount outstanding of the principal of amounts borrowed by the corporation pursuant to Subsection (I) and the principal of loans made to the corporation under subsection (2) shall not at any time exceed twenty-five times the capital of the corporation.
I say to the minister, in God's name stand up and fight for these people who want shelter, give them the same rights to get it as we are putting into the hands of the Farm Credit Corporation, and put that under Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. 1 know that in agriculture we have constitutional rights in all parts of Canada that we do not have in housing; but under this legislation now before us, Bill C-89, Canada Mortgage and Housing can deal as a corporation with provincial agencies, municipalities and local groups. They are smart enough in that corporation to realize that they, too, can become just like a bank, credit union or trust company and get
money into the hands of those who need it at half interest rates and no one loses. We do not interefere with any other policy.
I think 1 have made my point as clearly as I possibly can. The opportunity is there. We cannot move the amendment at second reading, but the minister or any person can move word for word this whole section that we have in the previous bill and then leave it to Canada Mortgage and Housing to figure out how this "by any means" can be accomplished.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I regret to interrupt the hon. member but his time has expired.


Mr. Robert C. Coates (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, it is somewhat unique that the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton) who just resumed his seat and I both entered this chamber in 1957.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: A vintage year.


Robert Carman Coates: During that 25 years, the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain has come up with many ingenious schemes which have stimulated his chosen field of agriculture in particular and have been of tremendous benefit to the farming community of Canada and the nation as a whole. When he makes suggestions to the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cosgrove) relating to ways and means of assisting individual Canadians to own a home at reasonable mortgage rates, he is putting forward a scheme that has been tried and proven to be effective, especially in the United States.
I know that in the state of New York, the power authority of the state of New York has been raising money since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt through bonds that provide interest rates which are non-taxable. This has proven a godsend to that authority and to those people living in the state of New York. They have been able to enjoy the benefits of power at rates probably better than anywhere else in that country as a result of this special type of scheme.
When we look at our country today, we think of the terrible calamity that has fallen upon people because governments, certainly since World War II, have attempted to make Canadians believe they have a right to own a home. It was a right, not a special privilege. It was part of what we knew after World War II as the reawakening and rebuilding of our country, its coming into its own.
The hon. member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) pointed out in his speech last night that for a very significant period after World War II Canadians could point to the way we were moving up in the world and what was available to us in material wealth. It was the envy of the whole world. It is one reason we became so attractive to many people who came to our shores from other parts of the world. They chose Canada as their land for today and tomorrow. They saw here potential opportunities that did not exist anywhere else in the world, including the United States, so they came here.
Government after government convinced those people as they went out, worked and earned their living that they had a right to a home, a right to expect that governments would put into place the infrastructure to allow them to own homes. I can
February 23, 1982

think of a number of times over the past 25 years that governments in this country have used the housing industry by convincing Canadians with one scheme or another to invest their savings in a home for the future. To get them to invest their savings, they came up with all kinds of special deals, including the most recent AHOP program, one of the worst travesties that could have been imposed on individual Canadians. We led them right down the garden path.
At that time we wanted to meet the required number of building starts to keep our economy functioning. What we did to individual Canadians, we are reaping a whirlwind from today. I do not blame this Minister of Public Works or this government. I am blaming the philosophy that Canadians have a right to a home, a right which has been perpetuated among Canadians.
Suddenly we are withdrawing that philosophy and telling Canadians that they do not have a right to own a home. The government is telling them that it is too bad if they have overinvested in a home which its policy five years ago convinced them to buy. It is part of the malaise which exists in Canada today.
Today, people are trying to understand what Canada is about. They are realizing that it is not the country which it was five or ten years ago. I like to use the year 1967 as an example because it was our centennial. It was a time when the nation was becoming united and working together to feel pride in Canada. I would like to believe that Canadians had a cocky confidence about Canada in 1967 and its future. At that time Canadians thought of the words of Sir Wilfrid Laurier when he said that the second half of the twentieth century belonged to Canada.
Well, it is not the same Canada as it was in 1967. Canada has a sickness and I think the personification of that sickness lies in programs such as our present housing policy. The fact that the government and we, as politicians, are not able to solve a problem which we have brought upon ourselves, a problem which we caused when Canadians were told they had a right to own a home and a right to earn an income which would make houses affordable for future generations to own, forces us to solve that problem now. We cannot do it in a partisan or petty way or through the government developing a program which will only prolong a person's ability to pay only the interest on his mortgage without obtaining any equity, which is often the case now.
We not only have to design a policy for Canadians who are now committed to pay mortgages for the next ten years and are about to lose their homes; we must work out a system which will encourage young Canadians to purchase homes with the expectation of owning them without a fear of losing them in 40 years. Unfortunately, this legislation will not be the answer to any of these problems. Perhaps it is a small aid to a very limited number of people who are in trouble.
I recall the fall of 1979 when we were debating a bill which would have been a godsend to most Canadians who are in
Housing
financial trouble today because of their mortgages. The New Democratic Party was opposed to this bill and the government was opposed to it. The only people who were not opposed to it were ordinary Canadians, the home owners and potential home owners of the future.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: It was a subsidy to the rich.


Robert Carman Coates: I am told by an hon. member from the NDP that it was a subsidy to the rich.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: You know that.


Robert Carman Coates: I will tell you what it was, Mr. Speaker. It was relief to those who need relief today and it would have provided the opportunity for today's Canadians to own a home tomorrow. That is what it was, no matter what garbage the NDP tries to put forward or pump out. The ordinary Canadian perceived that mortgage tax credit plan as just that, the hope to be able to own a home in the future.
As a politician, 1 am committed to this ideal. If Canada is to begin progressing again, we must first convince Canadians that they have a reason to invest in Canada. The best way to invest is to assure Canadians that they will be able to own a property or a home, because that is the backbone of Canada. The fact that Canadians who now own homes have little hope of retaining them and those who do not own homes have no hope of ever owning one is causing the sickness which is evident in Canada today.
Another very real problem Canada is saddled with today, which is also causing its sickness, is the breakup of the family unit. A great many of those divorces can be directly related to the interest rates being imposed on people who have mortgages. The entire scheme of mortgages has changed before their very eyes. Years ago when people bought homes, they knew they would be able to get a mortgage for 20 years. It was assumed that you would not buy a home until you knew that the payments were affordable and you could own it in 20 years. However, as government programs developed, those 20 years became 30 and the 30 years became 40 and then up to 50 years. There are no 20-year mortgages, 30-year mortgages or 50-year mortgages any more. The average Canadian home owner today must be able to keep their mortgage afloat for one year. At the end of that year they wonder if the mortgage company will alow them to renegotiate at an interest rate which is unknown to them.
In addition, these home owners are faced with having to pay a larger portion of their total income for the mortgage. You are at home talking to your wife-if you are talking-trying to figure out if you will make the car payment, the mortgage payment, buy food, or if you are able to do all three or any part of those three. Not only are people getting frustrated, they are becoming mentally sick. Now the government tells Canadians that it will freeze their wages, which will limit their income, while interest rates continue to rise-which the government will allow to happen-and the cost of living along with everything else will increase.

February 23, 1982
Housing
Married couples are breaking up because of the stress caused by the difficult economic situations in their homes. It is a sad event and in my view the only ones who are benefiting from this are the drug companies. More tranquilizers are being consumed. It is a sad, sad event. The only people I know of who are benefiting from all this are the drug companies. Probably more tranquilizers are being sold in this nation today than ever before and probably more booze is being sold in this nation than ever before, because all the sicknesses which go with a society which is in deep, deep trouble relate to the purchase of those kinds of commodities.
We parliamentarians are charged with a special responsibility to produce some stability in this country again. There is none right now, and while this bill will help some people and while 1 am quite willing to support it for whatever help it does provide, it is just a drop in the Atlantic Ocean. It will not really bring much solace to anyone, including those who will qualify under it, because a great many businessmen who have been good businessmen all their lives and have proved themselves to be good businessmen are finding that their backs are to the wall and they are facing either closing their doors, or bankruptcy if they keep them open. This is not because of anything they are doing but because of the interest rate problem. They can no longer deal with it and they can no longer survive.
I have before me a chart showing average conventional mortgage interest rates. They have escalated since January, 1978, when the interest rate was 10.32 per cent, to 21.46 per cent in, for instance, September, 1981. We cannot expect people to move forward or even to have any confidence about paying next month's mortgage bills if they know they will lose their homes in five months' time regardless of what they do.
Somehow we must develop a method by which Canadians can see a light at the end of the tunnel. Canadians are not expecting us to produce all the solutions tomorrow, but they are expecting us to give them some realistic leadership and direction to get them out of the mess into which we put them in the first place. I do not see very much coming before us in this session of Parliament which would achieve that objective.
I have great personal respect for the Minister of Public works. During the critical period when all of a sudden people saw for the first time the terrible personal tragedies they were facing in renewing mortgages at probably double the rate of interest they had formerly been paying, I think the minister attempted in his own way to be of some assistance. However, he is a very small cog in a very big wheel and, unfortunately, I must say that this bill is an indication of just how small the cog in that big wheel is.
We must get a great deal more from this government, and we must do it for many basic reasons. We must allow individual Canadians to feel that there is some hope for tomorrow and that we have policies which will meet their hopes and aspirations.
Second, we must try to achieve something here so that we can eliminate, as much as we possibly can, the marriage breakdown syndrome which is developing in this country because of high interest rates and because people are losing material gains they have built up during their married lives. All of a sudden they see them disappearing, and after they finish blaming this government they end up blaming themselves for some of the unfortunate mistakes which, in all too many ways, are not at all their responsibility. We must do this because we want a better Canada tomorrow, but we will have not a better Canada unless we start doing some of the things which were done yesterday and which are not being done today.
I listened to some of the criticisms of the estimates. One of the things I see happening is a restructuring of our country. This government is attempting to withdraw from every federal-provincial program it can and restructure Canada so that the federal government has total command and the provinces will become little more than municipalities. I see no more equal status between premiers and the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) except, perhaps, for the premiers of a couple of provinces which happen to be blessed with the largesse which comes from natural resources. Even in those cases I suppose the federal government will try to take that largesse in one way or another. In the end the federal government will place the provinces in such a position that they will be little more than supplicants coming to Ottawa to see what crumbs they can get off the federal table. That is the way it is happening at this time.
There can only be a better tomorrow for Canadians if there is co-operation between the various levels of government, understanding and a common determination to achieve the greatness Canada has the potential to achieve. We will not achieve that greatness if we fight among ourselves all the time, which is the case right now. The ordinary individual Canadian watches these battles taking place, he sits down at home and looks at the problems he is facing and wonders if it is not better to go somewhere else.


Mr. Cullen:: Not for long.


Robert Carman Coates: Why hang around here?


Jack Sydney George (Bud) Cullen: Not for long.


Robert Carman Coates: I hope the hon. member is right. I hope it will not be for long. I hope we as parliamentarians working together can give Canadians the feeling that this still is the best country on earth and that this is the place to live and work together.


Mr. Daudlin:: Now you are getting there, Bob.


Robert Carman Coates: I think the first thing we must do is give the assurance to the individual Canadian that he has the right- not the hope but the right-to look forward to owning a home if he involves himself in an industrious way in the building of this country. That is something I do not see at the moment. That is something that is not in the minds of most Canadians

February 23, 1982
at the moment. At the moment Canadians are working like the devil to bail themselves out of debt they never should have allowed themselves to accumulate but in which we, by federal programs more than anything else, have convinced them they should become involved.
I remember that at one stage of the game in Nova Scotia we had programs, which were sponsored by our electric utilities, designed to convince everyone to switch to electric heat. Night after night on our television screens we saw people telling us what a smart idea it would be to switch from oil, gas, coal or whatever we were using to electric heat. A great many people opted for that but then the government of Nova Scotia increased the cost of power by something like 150 per cent. All of a sudden those people who had enlisted in government programs for electric heat discovered that it was costing them more per month than their mortgage.
On the federal level we are in almost the same position. Through central mortgage and housing, which is now Canada Mortgage and Housing, we convinced Canadians to invest their money in homes for 40 or 50 years. We also convinced them to build bigger and better homes. The result is that today the average price of a home is out of all proportion to the incomes of most people. We must help them out because we created the situation. While this program may touch a few thousand people in the country, we must work to find a different program that will touch everyone who is in trouble. Until we do we will not really have lived up to our commitment.
The alternative is the type of frustration that results in a separatist being elected to the Alberta legislature. It is one thing to hear of separatists being elected in the province of Quebec; but it is another when a situation develops in western Canada whereby, because of such personal frustrations as high interest rates, someone is elected to the Alberta legislature, with the same objectives but for different reasons, as the separatists elected in the province of Quebec.
That is but another example of the sickness that is in the nation today, Mr. Speaker. We are charged with the responsibility of eliminating that sickness wherever it exists. We can do that only by introducing programs that relate to the problems of the people. It cannot be done by firing a civil servant who happens to speak out because he is frustrated by the introduction of the metric system. That is not the answer to any problem in the country. The principle of freedom of speech must be preserved. A man must have the freedom to speak out on something he does not believe in and must not be under threat of dismissal because he has the courage of his convictions.
Housing
If we want to make this institution work and if we want people to have respect for us, we must introduce programs that show we understand the problems and are working to solve them. 1 do not see that view in this legislation. It will be helpful to a few and 1 will support it for the value it has for the people it will touch; but, Mr. Speaker, it will not touch many people in the country. We need something much better if we are to grapple with the major problems that face Canadians today. It is time we faced the reality of the situation. When we do that, perhaps there will be some hope for a good tomorrow.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 40, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: The hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friesen)-Royal Canadian Mounted Police-Inquiry respecting investigation of convicted murderer Clifford Olson, (b) Statement made by prosecutor; the hon. member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay)-Export Development Corporation-Construction of monument in Algeria, (b) Use of corporation resources; the hon. member for Comox-Powell River (Mr. Skelly)-Air Safety-Management of Aviation Safety Board.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-89, to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on National Resources and Public Works.
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I should like to begin my speech by quoting the latest news report issued by Canadian Press which appeared in today's newspapers. It starts out as follows:
High interest rates will cause housing starts to fall nationally by 9 per cent and will make 1982 another bad year for the housing industry, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. says in its latest quarterly forecast.

February 23, 1982
Housing
Later the article goes on to say:
Builders have seen their industry go sharply downhill between 1976 and 1980. Housing starts reached a record 273,203 units in 1976 but were down to a mere 158,601 units in 1980.
A further paragraph in the article reads as follows:
For 1982, the corporation predicts starts on single-detached houses will drop to 83,000 and starts on apartments, duplexes and row houses are likely to be down to 79,000 units.
That article reminds me of a line from one of John Lennon's songs-"I heard the news today. Oh boy!" We have heard the news today and it is bad!
The views on housing reflected in that news report are of interest to the constituents of Vancouver-Kingsway, Mr. Speaker. 1 want to try to do something a little different today. Rather than giving general views I want to devote a good part of my remarks to quoting the exact words of people in my riding. Vancouver-Kingsway is in the southeast part of the city of Vancouver. It comprises mainly single dwellings occupied by working people, many of whom are new Canadians and others who have been in the area for generations. It is a stable area of hard working, good people.
I received hundreds of replies to a questionnaire which I included with a householder and some of them are quite detailed. I should like to take this opportunity to show the minister the pattern that emerges from these replies. The first is from a woman on St. Margarets Street. This is a fairly typical street in the riding. She writes:
Starting Dec. 1st, 1981, we had to change homes. Two small bedrooms for 2 adult and 3 children was just too much. We now are renting 3 bedroom main floor of duplex for $675 per month. We can just scrape this payment per month. My husband and myself both work, to try and get our own home. With this monthly rent, plus high down payments, and mortgage rates out of sight, it is just impossible. It is very discouraging. We are both in our late twenties, with three small children. We have never collected unemployment, welfare or been in trouble with the law. We were raised to be good Canadian citizens. I wish there was something to give us a little hope.
Another constituent replied:
We rent because we cannot afford to buy; we can just afford the rent. I was born in Vancouver and it makes me very angry that I am being forced out of my own city by real estate people and land owners.
Another one writes:
As a single working parent the fall out of the interest rates has a dramatic effect on myself from $375 per month to $525 is unbelievable.
I asked people about their increase in rent or mortgage payments in their case and this woman writes that her increase in rent is $150 per month.
Another woman replied:
With nowhere to move, i face the choice of giving up my child or moving into the Parliament Buildings which are usually vacant.
Another person said:
I believe everyone should have a right to his own house but feel the answer is in more rental accommodation. The government should make available housing for rent at a realistic rate. This would give tenants a chance to save for a house of their own. When they move out it would be available for someone else to do the
same. Also speculators, etc. who are asking exorbitant rents to cover their mortgage payments would have to reduce rents to compete. (New Canadian)
I just want to pause here. I see the minister across the way. I should like to refer to what he said about housing which was quoted by the hon. member for Vancouver East (Mrs. Mitchell) when she spoke on the matter of housing on this bill the other night. He said that, "Governments do not build houses and that the dynamic force which has made Canadians among the best house people in the world have been the private construction industry and financial institutions." This is a myth. In fact the government agency, CMHC, has been responsible, either directly or indirectly, for the construction of over 50 per cent of the housing stock produced in the country since 1945. When that new Canadian in my riding writes and says that the government should make available some housing, there is some foundation for it. I will write back and say, "Do not believe the myth which the minister is perpetuating".
I can remember coming to Canada as a new Canadian from Scotland in 1947. We moved into a house which I hesitate to say was in Toronto. We had CMHC funding for my parents to get started in a starter home. The minister should not perpetuate the myth that his friends, free enterprise, built everything. There was much assistance from CMHC, and we want this assistance to continue.


Paul James Cosgrove: Why are you holding up 30,000 units by speaking on the bill?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I am not holding up 30,000 homes.


Paul James Cosgrove: You are.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The bill will be through tonight or tomorrow. If the minister will listen to my remarks, he will know all about the housing situation.


Paul James Cosgrove: I heard those remarks in July last year.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: If the minister will not listen to the people of Vancouver-Kingsway, there is not much we can do.


Paul James Cosgrove: I listened to them last year.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The minister is not listening; he is shouting at me. He should listen to what the people have to say. The Liberal philosophy is to do nothing in halves which can be done in quarters, which is what the bill does. I will make some concrete suggestions for the minister, to which he should listen, but let me return to the replies of the people of Vancouver. Another woman wrote:
Although my husband and I are not affected by the current situation-we have our house paid for-nevertheless we are still very concerned for all the people who arc being hurt by this shameful situation. We think the government should do something quickly to correct things and create more affordable housing.
Another man wrote:
We cannot afford to buy what we will eat if we try to pay this present high mortgage rate.
In the questionnaire I asked:
By how much did your monthly payments increase?
February 23, 1982

The answer in this reply was "$450" per month. He continued:
We can't buy school supplies for our four children.
This is not opposition rhetoric; it is written in black and white on the questionnaire. Another person indicated:
We renewed last June at 18.5 up from an 11.75 per cent mortgage we had. Feel banks are totally irresponsible and greedy. Whatever happened to 25-year terms, instead of this headache every one, three or five years.
1 ask the minister, whatever happened to 25-year terms? The reply continued:
I think the government will see a "little peoples" revolt soon over this. These high rates are forcing mothers back to work and I feel it's a main contributing factor in the breakdown of the family unit. Let's see 12 or 13 percent mortgages again! The high fuel costs are very frustrating . .. Hang in there-
Another person said:
How can our so-called leaders, whom we have elected, tolerate this ridiculous situation where banks are allowed to reap their enormous profits and we the people . .. lose our homes. We must be fools to tolerate this-
Another one indicated:
As a single parent, I feel trapped. I'm sick of hearing about home owners when a lot of us are stuck paying rent seemingly forever and can't even save.
This single parent went on to indicate the difficulties in renting. Another constituent indicated:
Next increase we won't be under rent controls.
We must remember that the minister has been going around the country attempting to get people out of rent controls. This person went on to indicate:
I think the price limit for rent controls needs to be raised-nearly everyone must have outgrown it by now, soon we'll all be at the landlords' mercy! How can any of us have a sense of security or plan for the future?
Another questionnaire indicated that the writers had shared their house with another couple for six months and finally were able to instal, although admittedly illegal, a suite downstairs in order to meet the huge increase in payments. It went on to indicate that the renovations were costly, and without the benefit of personal family loans would have necessitated a second mortgage. What about people who cannot instal suites or do not have families to help them? They also indicated that their increase was from $452 to $809, and there was a notation that it amounted to 50 per cent of their monthly wage.
This is not opposition rhetoric; the minister cannot dismiss it. These are direct quotations of the people. Another indicated that he had been renting his present home since the summer and that he had had no rent increases. He said that it was very difficult procuring his place with two small children and one cat, but that he was one of the lucky ones who found a place in which to live. He said, "The housing situation-words are inadequate; let us see some action". One couple indicated that they owned their own home and that their 25-year mortgage was finished at last, but that their children would be seeking homes or rental units in the near future and thus they knew that high interest rates are a serious problem about which something must be done.
Another concern was expressed that with high mortgage rates their three sons have no hope of owning homes. Another person indicated that he purchased a one-bedroom apartment approximately 18 months ago with a payment of $290 per
Housing
month. He indicated that with his renewal for one year his payment went to $540 per month in December and he was told the mortgage would go to over $800 per month. This person also has to pay $100 per month for the manager's fee which has risen, but his wages have never risen to cover such high mortgage costs.
Someone suggested that if economists started making more hopeful predictions they could have a psychological effect upon the public. Another couple indicated that their payment would have increased by $150 if it had not been for a family friend who owed them some money, but that they knew of other people who were in trouble. Another person indicated that he found it absurd, although he had few debts and could qualify for a large mortgage, that he could not meet the monthly payments and thus could not purchase a home. He asked, "What are you going to do for me aside from raising taxes and decreasing deductions?" There is great cynicism out there about politicians, as well as about political and government processes.
Someone else indicated that he lived in co-operative housing, which is the answer to affordable housing for both the young and middle-aged. Another letter on co-operative housing indicated that the writer would like to see lower interest rates and more co-ops for people on lower incomes. Another indicated that he wished the Liberals would unplug their ears and listen carefully to the problems facing the Canadian economy today and deal with them accordingly. Another constituent indicated that he would like very much to own his own home but doubted he ever would because of high interest rates. A couple indicated that they rented because they could not afford to purchase and that these usurious rates must be reduced soon by whatever means necessary. The final questionnaire to which I will refer indicated that something must be done about interest rates. This couple wanted to purchase a home but could not because of interest rates. They said, "Help, do something!"
These were comments of people in my riding which I think display a pattern. I should like to sum them up by referring to the pattern and inviting the minister to listen. The first point is that clearly there are increases in costs and people are paying more for housing. I suppose this is obvious, but these questionnaires give exact details of the increases. 1 would be glad to provide the minister with these questionnaires after my speech, but first let me indicate that people are continuing to rent because they cannot afford home ownership.
1 should like to refer to the statistics about which people are unaware. The average family income in British Columbia is $29,639, which is fairly high when compared with some other parts of the country. If one takes 25 per cent of that income, $617.48 a month is the affordable amount for shelter. If you assume a payment of 25 per cent of the income, ignore all costs of ownership and taxes and assume a 16 per cent mortgage interest rate, which is on the low scale, people can buy a home valued at $46,780. But there are no houses in Vancouver for

February 23, 1982
Housing
that price. 1 have a copy of today's Vancouver Sun. I am turning to the real estate ads for the east side of Vancouver. The average price for a home in greater Vancouver is $140,000. There is a relatively cheap house for sale in my riding. It is situated on a street just about in the middle of my riding. It is a two-bedroom home on a 33-foot lot. It is 24 years old and it is for sale at $112,000. But these people can only afford a home costing $46,780. There are none at that price. Let me make that clear.
The third point which becomes clear from these questionnaires is that there is going to be a squeeze on rents and that rents will increase. People are afraid that rent controls will be removed. The minister is travelling across the country telling people that they may not be able to have two garages and two cars. But it is not a question of two garages or two cars; it is a question of being able to afford to stay in your own home. The minister has been talking about getting rid of rent controls. But these people who wrote to me certainly do not want that to happen.
Fourth, it is clear that wages are not increasing sufficiently to cover the increased cost of shelter. Is it any wonder that people are frightened when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) muses about whether he should or should not impose wage controls? People are afraid.
Fifth, people made reference to bank profits. Bank profits are enormous. Bank profits last year amounted to $1.6 billion. People wonder about these vast profits and wonder what would happen if they were channelled back into affordable housing.
Sixth, the people in my riding, as reflected by some of the statements in these questionnaires, tend to think about other people. There are some very good-hearted statements is response to that questionnaire. It shows up in the responses of people who have paid for their houses, yet they are still worried about the housing needs of others and they are worried about their children. The minister should be worried about these things too.
Seventh, there is a sense of urgency, as evidenced in these questionnaires. I have stacks of these questionnaires which I can send to the minister. People are asking for something to be done now. But what do we get? We only get this inadequate bill.
There are two other concerns that showed up in these questionnaires. I have not quoted them. There have been increased tax assessments in Vancouver. The Social Credit government of British Columbia has really put it to the people on tax assessments. People know their taxes are rising very quickly. There is almost a tax revolt. The cost of fuel is also rising. That, too, was mentioned in the questionnaires. The consumer price index indicated that from January of last year to January of this year the price of energy rose 24 per cent. The price of fuel is continuing to rise. In a letter dated February 5, 1982, Dave Barrett, the leader of the provincial New Democratic Party wrote;
That additional charge will raise individual customer bills between 8 and 12 per cent, depending on usage and rate categories, this year alone. It means that
this province's one million residential customers will pay an average of $28 extra this year to finance minister Hugh Curtis through their hydro bills.
People in my riding are feeling the squeeze with the cost of fuel. It is evidenced at the gas pump because of the National Energy Program and the deal that was made with the province of Alberta, as well as the increase in hydro bills and so on. There was no effort on the part of the provincial government of British Columbia to lessen the impact of these bills. There was no effort on the part of the federal Liberal government and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Lalonde) to redistribute some of the money received from Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia through higher oil prices.
It is often said, "It is all right for you guys to get up and scream about the situation. We know it is bad enough even though it is documented in a new way. What are you going to do about it?" Let me suggest that something could be done about it. We could lower interest rates including a significant lowering of mortgage rates. We could get out of monetarism. We could have a "made-in-Canada" interest policy. We have already laid that before the House. We can require banks to set aside a specific portion of their lending portfolios for longterm mortgages at lower interest rates, primarily for first time buyers. That would help some of the rentalers also. We could restore the presence of CMHC in the housing sector by an infusion of $500 million to the capital budget for social housing. This would provide the needed non-profit co-operative and rental accommodation. From where would we get the money? We would get it from bank profits. We would apply a 100 per cent capital gains tax against property sales, except on principal residences and farm lands sold for residential purposes. Finally, we could make Crown land available on a leasehold basis for affordable housing. Those things could be done. If the minister brought forward a bill with those provisions in it, this party would pass it in a flash. He does not have to look over and say "Please pass a Mickey Mouse bill".


Paul James Cosgrove: Are 70,000 jobs Mickey Mouse?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: If the minister would listen to what needs to be done, and if he would read what the mayor of Vancouver has been writing to him, he would know that in greater Vancouver we need 70,000 affordable housing units over the next five years. The city of Vancouver itself needs an additional
5.000	units per year just to keep up with growth projections. Vancouver is going to trade with the Pacific Rim countries. We hope to be the city that will open up that trade, which will be a jewel on the west coast. We need 20,000 units just to catch up, but I am told that the minister has cut them back by
2.000	this year.

Mr. Speaker, the caucus of the New Democratic Party set up a committee on economic development which travelled across Canada. For instance, we visited Montreal, where we heard private citizens and groups express their views on housing. One tenants' association talked to us about rental organizations, buildings that were being demolished, and their
February 23, 1982

fears that rent controls would be lifted. They wanted a policy on interest rates that would not be tied to that of the United States. They wanted lower rates, made in Canada. They wanted the government to set up new co-operative housing projects. The Ligue des proprietaires de Montreal told us that Quebec was different from other provinces because 62 per cent of the population lived in rental accommodation. In Montreal, most landlords have low-rise buildings, and they are paralysed by the changes in the tax system.

We have travelled across the country listening to people. In Montreal 1 heard people mention their fear that rent contrls will be removed. There are a great number of renters in the province of Quebec. It is a rather unusual situation when one compares it with other parts of the country. The people there demanded a "made-in-Canada" interest policy.
If the minister really wanted to do something about housing, and we all know what it is, what he should do is to lower interest rates, and that would really move the market.
I want now to say something about co-operative housing, Mr. Speaker, because it seems to me we could make some progress there, as we have done until recently. I spoke personally with Shirley Schmidt, the director of Columbia Housing, a co-operative housing group in my riding. They have been holding orientation meetings for people interested in joining a co-op as one way of getting affordable accommodation. They have had four of these meetings since January in a hall which holds about 250 people. On February 22, last night, they had another meeting which was attended by 350 people. They could not squeeze them into the hall. I am told that there is no chance that any of these people will get into a co-op before at least 1984 or 1985, if they get in at all. The only way we can change this is for Columbia to be given funds to build to their potential. I am told they could build a minimum of 600 units in order to do what needs to be done. If they had 900 units, they could Fill them all.
In Vancouver, Columbia Housing alone has 174 units, one of which is in my riding, and they have had to put on hold 252 units which could go into construction in May. They have had to put them on hold. Mrs. Schmidt was almost crying when she told me that. This is in the province of British Columbia, with its huge forest industry and one third of its work force out of work. We have the trees, the labour, the people and the demand. We know how to do it.


Paul James Cosgrove: And no provincial plan for housing.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: What are you waiting for, Mr. Minister? Oh, you will say it is the provinces.


Paul James Cosgrove: Three thousand units in the plan in front of you.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The minister says it is the provinces. There is a potential for 150 units in Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver right next to my riding, but Columbia has never been able to
Housing
get any funding for Richmond. We also found that the B.C. government is withdrawing from the assisted rental program, which will affect senior citizens. We have found that there are 420 co-op units on hold in the lower mainland of British Columbia. This represents 534,822 man hours of work, or 14,263 person weeks. I thought I would put something in, Mr. Speaker, that the bureaucrats in Ottawa could understand. That is 274 person-years of work, as they say in Ottawa.
What it really means, Mr. Speaker, is that it gives 274 people a year of work, or twice that number six months of work. The total value would be $21 million. There would be four million board feet of lumber used. There are 74 co-op units in Fort St. John, and more needed, for which there is no funding. We had a call from Prince Rupert where they want units but none have been allocated. The demand is there but there is no funding. We would support a bill tomorrow, or even tonight. We will stay all night if the minister wants to bring in a bill to supply funding for those units. No debate, we will support it.
I talked to Glen Hadrill of the Co-operative Housing Foundation and he tells me that across Canada there is a producible demand for 10,000 co-op units. The real demand is far above that. Last year 5,400 units were allocated across Canada. This year it has been reduced to 5,000 units. Mr. Hadrill said that in British Columbia there is a producible demand for 2,000 units. Last year 1,025 units were allocated to British Columbia. It has been reduced this year to 898 units.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I have quoted people from my riding, i will not prolong this because the facts are there. I have tried to set out some of the things that could be done. The hon. member for Vancouver East (Mrs. Mitchell) spoke on the details of this bill and suggested that we should be expanding CMHC, not contracting it. This insurance plan does not really do ordinary people much good, it simply helps the lenders. We heard from the Conservative Party that the answer is mortgage interest deductibility. That is just a subsidy to the rich, Mr. Speaker. You get it, go out and double your mortgage and reinvest the money. It will bankrupt the treasury and it will not help the low and middle-income people. It will help the bankers, but they are not the people who need the help. The people who need the help are the ordinary Canadians whom I have quoted extensively today. I have suggested some concrete solutions. I have given the minister some information about coops and how he could advance that aspect of the industry, and I have set out the general situation in Vancouver.
Now, Mr. Speaker, the difference between us on this side of the House and the minister over there is that we believe housing is a social right and we are not going to bring in crumbs for people. We would bring in a bill which would put the housing industry back to work and which would, in fact, build affordable housing for those people, ordinary Canadians, whom I have quoted in the House today.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity of participating in this debate. I listened with close attention to the last speaker, speaking as he

February 23, 1982
Housing
does for the New Democratic Party on almost every issue which comes before the House in debate. I did so because I remember that he was sitting in his place-


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I would do it again.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -during the time we were in government, at which time he showed his true colours. He speaks now of what the NDP would do to assist the home owner. Well, he had the opportunity to support some very progressive legislation presented by our government which directed itself very much toward helping home owners in Canada, but when the time came, he carried on the great tradition of supporting the Liberals in everything they do on major issues.
So I find it rather interesting to have him now stand up and rail away at the minister responsible for housing, saying that he is in opposition to the policies being brought forward. The fact is the member has demonstrated, as has his party, that they support this government. At all important times the NDP can be counted on to say: "Ready, aye ready. Whatever the Liberals say, we are prepared to follow along." I tell you, Mr. Speaker, that made me wonder about the credibility which can be attached to the speech we heard in the last 40 minutes.
However, Mr. Speaker, 1 was more interested in listening to a couple of my colleagues who have spoken in this debate, the hon. member for Cumberland-Colchester (Mr. Coates) and the hon. member for Qu'Appelle-Moose Mountain (Mr. Hamilton). Those members have been here since 1957, the days of the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker's election as Prime Minister. I say this because I want to give some historical perspective to the commitments of the parties in the House with respect to the right to own and live in single homes in Canada. I was very much taken by the wisdom shown by those two members, and 1 think it is important for us to listen to people who have been here for some time, because experience is a very important commodity in politics, as in everything else.
I recall that at that particular time the Conservative government brought forward a new emphasis to home construction. At that time they resurrected what was a dormant national housing act which had been given very little support by the Liberal government which preceded Mr. Diefenbaker's government. I recall the enormous acivity and the commitment given by the government as a whole with respect to home construction which took place during the late 1950s and the early 1960s. 1 am very proud to be associated with this party which has had the tradition of encouraging and taking positive initiatives on behalf of the home owners of Canada, those who want to become home owners, and those who want adequate and reasonable accommodation in our country. 1 agree with the hon. member who spoke previously to the extent that I believe the right of home ownership should be a part of the objectives of any political party worth its salt in this country.
When we were in government, we made a number of proposals which, I suggest to Your Honour, were very much in the tradition of the policies brought forward by Mr. Diefenbaker. They involved a recognition of the growing burden placed on home owners of this country by virtue of a situation where
inflation had risen to unacceptable levels, and where the expenses involved in home ownership were indeed cumbersome for the average citizen, the average couple, the unmarried couple, and the lower and middle-income earners of our country. 1 look back on that particular initiative which we took, and I commend the kind of thrust we took as a government to the minister responsible for housing.
1 am glad to say and happy to report that the minister is in the House now and is sitting through this debate, which I appreciate. As I direct my remarks today to the effectiveness of the current government policies, I want the minister to know that I appreciate the fact that he has tried to bring forward the proper emphasis and the proper policies with respect to housing in this country, but that he has been fought on every level by his own party, and more particularly, by the government of which he is a member and by his colleagues in the government.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: What I have to say to the minister today is said more out of a sense of sadness than out of any personal vindictiveness toward the minister, who is trying to do his job.
We look at the situation today. What is happening economically? It is reflected in what has happened to our dollar today. We find today that the dollar has fallen below 82 cents. It is on a downward trajectory. It is a reflection of our present economic circumstances. I feel very uncomfortable, as do most Canadians, with respect to our economic prospects. I look at some of the additional costs which are now being placed on the home owner. In the province from which I come, Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Power Corporation rates have been going up to unprecedented levels. I am in receipt of letters from my constituents, from elderly senior women living alone in my riding and from young couples, people who have a hard time making ends meet. They have told me that their heating bills are now putting additional pressure on them with respect to carrying on private ownership. For example, in the province of Saskatchewan, power and heating costs will be increased by 18 per cent this month. When we look at what has happened as a result of the amount of interest which is being paid by the home owner, we can imagine the additional encumbrance resulting from payments of high fuel bills in a winter which has been one of the traditional Saskatchewan winters, as I recall them some years ago, a very cold winter. It has meant an enormous increase in the heating bill to the average citizen in my province. Interest rates are at unprecedented levels. Inflation is reaching record proportions with respect to the costs of home maintenance.
That is the general situation in which we find ourselves today. That is the atmosphere in which we must address this particular piece of legislation. I say to the minister that over the course of the last few months I followed the pre-budget pronouncements of the minister with some interest. Many people were wondering, as it is obvious Members of Parliament and members of the Press Gallery were also wondering, exactly what we might expect from this government in terms
February 23, 1982

of relief and assistance to home owners. It would be interesting to see whether the minister would come forward with policies which would be of true and legitimate assistance to these people in times of very heavy financial pressure. Therefore, we asked ourselves whether this government would do something to alleviate the pressure of high interest rates and high property taxes imposed by municipalities. We wondered whether the government, in effect, would reconsider its previous position and support a policy we brought forward whereby the home owner could, in fact, receive some advantage by deducting interest paid on mortgages and municipal property taxes. I think these questions were legitimate. In budgetary terms, we wondered whether the government would bring forward provisions, as we did, which would allow the poor and the low and middle-income earners to receive some assistance from this government to help pay the increased costs of owning a home, similar to the energy tax provisions contained in our budget which would have given assistance to families. Under this government, increased costs of energy are rising far higher and to a more substantial degree than would have been the case under the energy agreement which we arranged with the province of Alberta. We found that the answer to our questions was "no". We waited for these answers, and we waited for pronouncements on the part of those ministers responsible in this administration, as to what we might expect concerning initiatives.
I must say that I took a random sampling of some of the press reports which have covered the pronouncements of the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cosgrove) who is responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation in particular. 1 do not have to go back very far. I can go back to September 9, 1981, when the headline of the Toronto Star stated, "Mortgage Relief Package is Coming, Cosgrove Predicts". I just want to quote this article, because this was a statement of the minister responsible for the housing policy in this administration, and one which I think we were entitled to take seriously, because we expect that when there are pronouncements by a minister responsible for housing of any government, we can find action which would follow those pronouncements. I will quote from the article as reported by Pat McNenly.


Paul James Cosgrove: Quote it all. Read it all.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, I only have 40 minutes in which to speak, and 1 do not want to embarrass the minister too much by quoting what he said in September, and then by finding that he reversed himself in October. I just want to make a point for the minister. I see a fleeting tinge of embarrassment cross his face, and the redness in his face is increasing. I will be kind and polite and just quote a-


Paul James Cosgrove: Do your worst! Just read it all.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -dispassionate and non-partisan extract from this particular article so the minister can understand-


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Housing


An hon. Member:: Just before the dinner hour.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -the expectations we had of him.
I see the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms is coming because he is hungry, so 1 will call it six o'clock and we can start again at eight o'clock. 1 hope the minister will be present to hear my remarks.


Paul James Cosgrove: 1 want to hear it all!


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: In appreciation of the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn), and in view of the fact that the Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms is hungry, 1 do now call it six o'clock p.m. The House will rise until eight o'clock this evening.
At six o'clock the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 8 p.m.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: When the House rose at six o'clock, the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn) had the floor.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, just before the supper hour, I had started to make reference to the fact that a lot of us in the House of Commons and people across Canada are very much interested and concerned about the direction in which the government is going with respect to its housing policy. It is as a result of a number of things that this has happened. I mentioned these factors. We had unprecedented interest rates which went over the 20 per cent mark, absolutely incredible, usurious interest rates. 1 was moved to observe at the time that the level of interest rates in this country was the rate which the criminal element used to extend to its least desirable clients, 22 or 23 per cent. That is an absolutely untoward, unbearable burden to place on the people of this country.
Also, we are facing an unprecedented rate of inflation. Items of repair, costs with respect to home ownership, the cost of equipping a modest home, are an additional burden to the average Canadian, especially those living on limited means such as senior citizens and young people starting off in life.
Quite apart from everything else, we are also facing a situation where in the context of inflation this government entered into an energy policy for this country which allowed an acceleration in price to the home owner which was absolutely unthinkable just a few months ago. This energy policy extended the energy costs to the home heating fuel of the average Canadian in a way that the government of which 1 was a member would have no part.
I know the minister is very sensitive about housing matters in this country, that he is attempting to prevail among his cabinet colleagues. I say to him in that context and in that battle he is waging with his colleagues and cabinet, that he has

February 23, 1982
Housing
the support of most people on this side of the House. We in this party think that housing is a priority item.
As you listened raptly to me before the dinner hour, Mr. Speaker, I was outlining some of the statements made by the minister with respect to his anticipation and expectations about policies to be brought forward by the government in the budget. I was referring to an article in the September 9, 1981 edition of the Toronto Star headed "Mortgage relief package is coming, Cosgrove predicts". 1 was going to try to quote from it in a dispassionate way. The salient parts of that article and the quotations of the minister should give some idea of the expectations that Canadians have of this government as to what it is prepared to do in the context that I set out at the beginning of my remarks.
The article says:
Federal Housing Minister Paul Cosgrove won't say what his short-term proposals for relief from record mortgage rates are but he is confident the federal cabinet will adopt them because a near shutdown of the multi-billion housing industry is their only alternative.
"The interest rates, where they are now, are a very poor omen for the construction industry," Cosgrove (L-York-Scarborough) said in an interview
yesterday.
He went on to say:
... and if the high rates continue without relief from Ottawa, Cosgrove forecast: "people will not buy, people will not build. The industry tells me that. I believe it."
The article went on to point out:
Cosgrove isn't deterred by Finance Minister Allen MacEachen's recent statement that alleviating high interest rates was not a government priority.
The minister went on. The response was positive. The minister was taking this firm position on behalf of the government, and 1 think that many of us on this side of the House thought the man was trying to do something for Canada and we should support him if we could. We thought we should look forward to the provisions of his new policy which was coming forward.
A headline in The Ottawa Citizen dated September 17, 1981, stated: "Rental building may get boost in next budget". It is an article by Jim Robb, a Citizen staff writer in which he
says:
Major new measures to boost construction of rental accommodation could form part of Finance Minister Allan MacEachen's upcoming budget, a number of federal officials said Wednesday.
Housing Minister Paul Cosgrove emphasized Wednesday that when the government says it will help only the hardest-pressed home owners, it means exactly that.
"The vast majority of Canadians will not be assisted," Cosgrove told reporters after the cabinet's day-long economic planning session at the government's Meach Lake retreat.
You can believe it, Mr. Speaker. That was only September 9 to September 17, a matter of eight days after the minister's first statement. What happened was that the minister considered where he was headed after his very impressive opening statement with respect to what the government would do.
On October 23, 1981, after a month to think about this, he decided to take a new tack and a new initiative. An article in The Ottawa Citizen dated October 23 had the headline "Cosgrove vows personal aid if home in jeopardy". This is an article by Don Butler, Citizen staff writer. He wrote:
Housing Minister Paul Cosgrove offered Thursday to intervene personally if there is "genuine concern" that a home owner may lose his house because of high mortgage interest rates.
That is a long way down from the impressive statement about the government's intentions which he enunciated a month earlier.
On October 24, 1981, the minister decided he should start again and try to petition more impressive aid for homeowners in Canada. An article in The Ottawa Citizen dated October 24, 1981, with the headline "Cosgrove wants emergency mortgage aid" stated:
Housing Minister Paul Cosgrove said Friday he wants the budget to contain even more emergency help for low-income home owners than they now get from Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
The article also went on to say:
The Housing minister told the Commons Thrusday he is prepared to deal personally with hardship cases betwen now and the time the budget comes down if individual MPs can't persuade banks and trust companies to accommodate home owners in danger of foreclosure.
But he admitted to reporters Friday he doesn't really have much clout beyond the moral suasion that his ministerial rank can bring to impress hardnosed bankers and other lenders.
Here is another retreat, Mr. Speaker. If the situation were not so tragic, it would become almost laughable. An article in the Toronto Star on the same day, October 24, 1981, contained the headline "I can't guarantee anything, Cosgrove now tells home owners". It is an article by David Vienneau, the Ottawa correspondant. He wrote:
Housing Minister Paul Cosgrove says he can't guarantee that even his personal intervention in mortgage interest disputes .. .


Mr. Cousineau:: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The hon. member for Gatineau (Mr. Cousineau), on a point of order.


René Cousineau: Mr. Speaker, in the House it is customary to refer to someone by his department or constituency, but never by that person's name. I would refer you to what was said by Madam Speaker, as reported on page 8396 of Hansard, March 18, 1981, the gist of which is that a word that is unparliamentary may not be used even if it is being quoted from a newspaper article or-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please ! do not think the Chair needs to have those explanations. The hon. member may have referred to another hon. member by name, but I have been aware of his contribution to the debate prior to six o'clock and since eight o'clock and there is so little that is objectionable in terms of referring to hon. members by name that I could not find anything disagreeable whatsoever.
February 23, 1982


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, 1 understand the concern expressed by the deputy whip with respect to the decorum of the House. Let me say that I agree with the principle of not referring to hon. members by name during debate except that I think it is a well-established principle that when one is quoting from articles in which the name is used, one can quote exactly. Therefore, I was not using the name, quite apart from reading directly from those newspaper articles in which the minister was reported.
1 hope I did not offend the rules of the House, which 1 understand indicate that we do not refer to ministers or colleagues by name. However, when quoting from newspaper articles, I think the rule is that we can use the name when they are quoted exactly. Otherwise, with the responsibility which the minister has it would take me too long, and I only have 40 minutes, to convey a number of messages which 1 want to get across to the minister.
I will carry on and quote from this article and I will make sure that 1 am quoting the article exactly. I will send a copy to the Chair if it wants to verify the article. The article went on:
Cosgrove said he was doing exactly these things for five of his own constituents ...


René Cousineau: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. 1 do not want to appeal your ruling, but I think-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The hon. member for
Gatineau, on a point of order.


René Cousineau: 1 am not appealing your ruling, Mr. Speaker, but I referred you to a comment made by the Speaker of the House on March 18, 1981, which made it quite clear that even a quote from a newspaper article was not acceptable.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Certainly the principle to which the hon. member refers is perfectly accurate. There is no problem in that respect. However, what is happening is that the hon. member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn) is referring to certain written articles, and while in the process of reading those articles he is referring to certain members of the House. That is perfectly in order and there is no problem with that either.
1 do not think it is a system which ought to be abused, but I also believe the hon. member for Saskatoon West is not abusing that principle. 1 think that we should hear him.
If he continues to a degree that the hon. member finds some difficulty with, I will listen again. For the moment, a reference to a newspaper article in which an hon. member's name is mentioned is not out of order under the Standing Orders of the House.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, 1 have such great respect for the deputy whip who made the interjection that I will try not to offend him by referring to the Minister of Public Works by name. If he does not like to hear the minister's name during the course of debate, I can understand that and I will simply
Housing
say that whenever I intend to talk about the minister, I will just say the "unmentionable minister".


René Cousineau: You are abusing the rules.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: To go back to the article, he said:
... he was doing exactly these things for five of his own constituents- including phoning local bank managers. He refused to identify the people he was attempting to help.
What I am saying is that unfortunately the minister is now deteriorating from saving the entire housing industry in Canada to helping five members of his constituency. But he will not identify those five.
I say to the minister that the history has been sad and unfortunate and leads us to the situation we have today. 1 have before me a Canadian Press article published in the Montreal Gazette today. Under the headline "House-starts outlook bad, CMHC says" the article reads in part as follows:
The federal Crown corporation predicts little change in mortgage rates during the first half of this year and perhaps slightly higher rates in the second half. As a result, housing starts in Canada are expected to drop to some 162,000 units from 177,973 in 1981.
CMHC's predictions of housing starts by province this year, with actual 1981 starts in brackets: Newfoundland 3,500 (3,210), Prince Edward Island 300 (203), Nova Scotia 3,500 (3,715), New Brunswick 2,500 (2,188), Quebec 31,000 (29,645), Ontario 45,000 (50,161), Manitoba 3,000 (2,824), Saskatchewan 6,000 (5,972), Alberta 33,000 (38,470) and B.C. 34,000 (41,585).
That is the history of the expectation we in this House and the people across Canada have had of this minister responsible for housing.
I face today the dismal duty of commenting on the government's housing policy and this particular piece of legislation, which appears to be the response of the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) and the government after a dismal future was anticipated by the minister, following reports received by him and his department. Never before have the home owners of this country faced such incredible obstacles in obtaining and keeping one of the essentials of life, namely, the shelter of a family home.
As I have pointed out, the people of Canada have faced inexcusably high mortgage interest rates. They have had to deal with the minister responsible, who has not had the ability to deliver on the promises he made to the people of Canada.
In terms of housing possibilities in this country and the extent to which the federal government could influence housing policy, it has been demonstrated that the government has no commitment to deal with the real home ownership problems faced by families in our country. The minister has been well aware of the gravity of the problem. His own department has given him position papers. A report given to him has been made public, and it states:
It can no longer be argued that the number of households facing hardship in renewing mortgages is minimal. During the next year more than 100,000 households will exceed a GDS of 30 per cent after renewing their mortgages.

February 23, 1982
Housing
The majority of households up for mortgage renewal have sufficient equity in their houses to allow them to take steps to reduce the substantial increases in their payments on 21 per cent mortgages. Even so, these households, on average, face increases in the order of $300 to $350 per month. These higher payments will force significant realignments in household budgets.
These householders will manage but will be angry about having their standard of living set back by something totally beyond their control.
For the remaining, from 100,000 to 110,000 households, the increased payments beyond 30 per cent of income will place unmanageable burdens on household budgets. They are already paying a high proportion of income for housing and have little equity. For these households hardship results. Their major asset, their homes, will be lost because of the luck of the draw as determined by the timing of their mortgage renewals.
That quotation is taken directly from the government's position paper, prepared by officials in the minister's own department, with respect to the severity of the housing problem in Canada today. This was a pre-budget forecast of the difficulty to be faced by Canadians, and the minister initially set out to say that he was prepared to meet the challenge, but it did not take long after a few cabinet meetings with his colleagues before his horizons were lowered to the point where all he could offer Canadians was to try to use his office to exert what he called moral persuasion on the banks of Canada, in the hope that they would go a little softly in terms of foreclosure proceedings against real and living people in Canada.


Paul James Cosgrove: Plus $350 million.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, the minister's imagination in terms of his contribution always amazes me.
1 want to speak about rentals because a prospect was held out for renters in this country. The forecast in the government's own position paper was equally bleak.
Rental investment will thus dry up in most markets and vacancy rates in most markets will approach zero by 1983.
A black market will develop with the phenomenon of "key money" becoming prevalent.
You know, Mr. Speaker, what key money is. It is payment. It is a black market arrangement by which people are able to get access to accommodation in spite of the lack of suitable rental accommodation there is in Canada. I am not talking about the Soviet Union or Moscow. I am talking about Canada where it is getting ever so difficult to get suitable rental accommodation for those who cannot afford their own private home accommodation. Again I quote from the minister's own departmental papers:
Tight markets will produce waiting lists for rental units and force doubling up with family and friends. We will witness a substantial regression in housing conditions following 35 years of gradual improvement.
Those were the forecasts the government, the Minister of Finance and certainly the minister responsible for housing knew well prior to the budget. Indeed, the minister responsible for housing put his seat on the line by saying if there was not help in the budget for the home owners of Canada, he would resign. That is an honourable position for the minister to take, a minister who is sincere and determined to help home owners in Canada, and I applaud the minister for taking that position-


An hon. Member:: But!


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: -but after the expectation about assistance in that budget was raised by the minister, the minister was clearly undercut by his cabinet colleagues.
As we are well aware, the budget upset the plans of home owners and renters across the nation. What is remarkable about the budgetary proposals is how they could be drawn up with so little regard for their practical application and probable repercussion. We have seen this demonstrated with respect to the myriad of issues which come up in the question period day after day. My colleagues have asked questions as to what the Minister of Finance meant by certain budgetary proposals. Why were certain other provisions not made? In this particular context, why have the home owners of Canada been let down so severely? The answer of the government was to provide 550 million this year either to guarantee to repay deferred interest up to $3,000 if a home owner has substantial equity or to pay all or part of the interest deferred to a maximum of $3,000 in cases where the home owner has little equity. This funding covers mortgages renewed between September 1, 1981, and November 12, 1982, a period which does not take into consideration the record high rates on renewals during this past summer. As a result, even though there are 920,000 home owners renewing their mortgages in the applicable period, a relatively small number of those will qualify, and all those home owners who had renewals during the summer are left high and dry.
What did the budget do for renters, Mr. Speaker? As the minister prophesied, unless something is done in terms of providing rental accommodation, the housing industry will be decimated by the budget. By tying the deduction of interest expense to investment income, the industry loses a major incentive to expand. The provision doing away with the deduction of soft costs for MURBs has the same effect. It makes for stagnation in the industry at a time of unprecedented demand and shortage of supply. The 15,000 units that the Minister of Finance promised will not begin to fill the gap that these tax measures opened. With a little incentive, private industry could have done the job itself. Perhaps, after having had to battle with his colleagues in cabinet the minister will now understand that the government has little regard for the private sector of the economy.
The net effect of the budget will probably be a reduction in housing starts. The MURB program has been cancelled. We should remember that it is a program that was responsible for the construction of some 25,000 rental units last year, which is
10,000	more than the 15,000 units the government expects will be built under the program provided for in Bill C-89. Meanwhile, the government will reduce its commitment to subsidizing social housing in 1982 from 30,000 to 25,000-a drop of 5,000.
I wanted to go into more detail on this, Mr. Speaker, but I am sorry that I do not have the time. The minister has been under attack from many sources. I should like him to know
February 23, 1982

that 1 sympathize with him because I believe he is trying to do a good job. However, he has a responsibility to Canadians to demonstrate that when he said he would resign if he were not able to deliver, he will take the honourable course and do so. If he is an honourable man, and I believe he is, then in the interests of Canadians and in order to get this government on the right course, he will tender his resignation in light of the abysmal failure of the budget to deal with the housing problems in the country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Constantine George (Gus) Mitges: Mr. Speaker, 1 am pleased to contribute to the debate on Bill C-89. This was intended to be a very important piece of legislation. It is one that home owners have been waiting for with some anticipation but it offers much too little much too late to those who have already lost their homes or have resigned themselves to losing their homes.
The very desperate situation that home owners and renters find themselves in today is the result of the government's refusal to change its high interest rate policy and its refusal to tackle the housing industry problem head on in a responsible and equitable way.
There is no question that the Minister of Public Works (Mr. Cosgrove) who is responsible for housing, missed an excellent opportunity to bring in legislation that would deal with the housing and high mortgage rates in a meaningful way. Instead, he and his colleagues in cabinet, including the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) needlessly chose to raise the expectation of home owners about the kind of relief the government would offer. Those expectations soon turned to bitter disappointment. Even under very heavy pressure by members of the House and Canadians everywhere, the minister only responded by making several public statements to the effect that a major relief package was on the way if people would only hold on until the November 12 budget. By then, he said, Canadians would be offered relief. His colleagues thought that in this way the heat would be taken off the subject.
Just days before the budget was brought down, the minister denied that he had made any previous promises to the effect that the government had a comprehensive scheme in mind to help Canadians. There is no doubt in my mind, Mr. Speaker, that the aftermath of this was that the minister was heavily criticized in cabinet for supposedly giving budget secrets away.
The bill before us proves that the government's plans for relief for home owners, renters and the housing industry, should not be taken too seriously. It is very obvious that the government hopes to get away with paying token service to this ever-present problem by offering minor, short-term relief, all the while content to cross its fingers in the hope that inflation and interest rates will soon drop and that it can claim success.
When we look at the current problems facing the housing sector and the way the government has addressed them, it is clear that it is waiting for the storm to pass while refusing to deal with the problem itself.
Housing
There is no question that affordability and availability of houses in Canada are the two main areas where very serious problems have developed in the last few years.
In terms of availability of homes, it is quite clear that new housing starts are dropping far behind current demand and that this is resulting in increasing shortages. It has been estimated by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and by the Housing and Urban Development Association of Canada that on average, Canada needs well over 200,000 new homes each year just to keep up with consumer demand. Yet, over the past four or five years, housing starts have consistently fallen far behind.
In 1977 we needed 256,000 units but 245,000 were constructed. The figures are worse each year. In 1978 we required
259,000	units but only 227,000 units were built. This trend continues today, Mr. Speaker. In 1981 we needed 265,000 units but only 170,000 units were produced. It is predicted that in 1982, housing starts will number about 135,000 while the actual need will be about 261,000 units. As you can readily see, Mr. Speaker, the situation is deteriorating very rapidly.
Availability in the rental or apartment sector is not much better. From the government's own Figures and predictions as revealed in the CMHC document leaked last fall, it is clear how serious the problem is. The government predicts that by 1983, we will have a zero vacancy rate right across the country. However, if current trends continue we could well reach that by next summer. The national vacancy rate fell from 2.8 per cent in 1980 to 1.2 per cent in October, 1981. In some metropolitan areas the vacancy rate already stands at zero per cent. It is evident from all this that the situation continues to deteriorate at a very rapid pace.
The government has estimated that about 90,000 rental units per year are needed to meet our rental requirements, yet it seems unable to assist in a meaningful way any rental construction, outside government assisted rental housing projects. At least this appears to be the case, given the government's continued support of a high interest rate policy and a budget filled with disincentives for private investment to move into rental construction.
An example of this disincentive is the cancellation of the multiple residential building program. By killing this plan it is estimated that 20,000 fewer units will be started this year.
In place of this very sensible program, the government introduced interest free loans of $7,500 for each of the 15,000 units to be built in various areas of the country. This program does not even begin to meet the strong demand for rental housing in Canada, and the leaked CMHC document admitted that the rental market is drying up very quickly. The MURB program served rental construction needs much better than the government's replacement, given the fact that its goal of
15,000	units does not come close to meeting current or future demands.
When we turn to affordability of housing, it is quite clear that the dream of owning a home is becoming a genuine

February 23, 1982
Housing
nightmare. In the last three months of 1981 the average cost of a home sold in Canada was $77,900. If we assume a 10 per cent down payment and, $1,000 in property taxes and accept the general principle that payments of principal, interest and taxes should not exceed 30 per cent of the gross income of a home owner, an annual family income of $44,500 is needed to purchase an average priced home. How many Canadians who face mortgage renewals make this amount of money? With prices so high, who can really afford to purchase a home today? Real estate agents tell us how depressed their business is because very few people can cope with the high asking prices for homes, to say nothing of the unreasonable and very high interest rates involved in assuming a mortgage.
Unfortunately, there is another great segment of our home owner population who have already purchased homes and are now at the mercy of high interest rates because they are required to renew their mortgages. Over the next two years approximately 1,200,000 families will find themselves in such an impossible situation. CMHC admitted that some 40,000 Canadians may well lose their homes because of continued high interest rates, yet the government refuses to extend any meaningful aid to home owners, no matter how many Canadians lose their homes or their life savings.
Removal of building subsidies in the rental industry is putting increased pressure upon monthly rental levels. The Housing and Urban Development Association of Canada estimated that removal of federal subsidies in terms of investor returns can only be replaced by rent increases of some 60 per cent or more. Because this situation is impractical and unrealistic, it is quite clear that potential investors are staying away from this area. Therefore, the government is killing this very important industry which it says it is trying to help with the bill. The result will be massive unemployment, not to mention a stagnant industry incapable of meeting necessary consumer demands.
I should like to take a brief look at what the government offers Canadians in this bill to show that their sense of outrage and criticism is completely justified. Canadian home owners, collectively, will not be better off because of the bill. To save face, the government will be extending some band-aid assistance to two groups of home owners facing mortgage renewals. The first group, estimated by CMHC to be about 12,500 in number, will receive a once-in-a-lifetime grant of some $3,000. This grant is designed for those people who have too little equity in their homes to support any interest deferral scheme. The second group, estimated to be about 37,500 in number, face monthly mortgage payments of over 30 per cent of their gross income. They will receive government guarantees of up to $3,000 which are designed to convince lenders to allow home owners to fend off some of the high interest rates. However, this scheme applies only to those home owners who renewed their mortgages between September 1, 1981 and November 12, 1982, and to those who pay over 30 per cent of their gross income on mortgage payments. The grant and loan plans will only help 50,000 people out of an estimated 920,000 home owners who renew their mortgages during the prescribed time. Of the 900,000 Canadians who will renew their mortgages, 100,000 face the very real possibility of losing their
homes, yet the government will only help directly 12,500 home owners with $3,000 grants. Canadians left in the cold face the bleak prospect of renewed mortgage rates of approximately 20 per cent or so. It is not something to which one looks forward.
Another disturbing aspect of the bill is that aid offered to home owners in a mortgage deferral program merely puts them deeper and deeper into debt. The leaked government document admitted that interest deferral schemes appeared unlikely to cure the problem faced by Canadians renewing their mortgages. In spite of the leaked CMHC document, the cabinet chose cosmetic relief. It is hoping that lending institutions will agree to provide interest free deferrals with the encouragement of guarantees.
As mentioned earlier in terms of assistance in the area of rental, the government announced a very feeble program to encourage construction of 15,000 rental units costing some $125 million in low vacancy areas. The program offers free loans of up to $7,500 per unit. What is really needed to protect Canadians from crippling mortgage interest rates and to prevent them from losing their homes is a mortgage interest and property tax credit similar to the one introduced by the hon. member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) when he was minister of finance. If this program were in place today, home owners would enjoy tax credits of $1,125 for 1981 and $1,500 for 1982. The program would have made over $2 billion of relief available to home owners. At that time we offered $2.3 billion in relief, while the government only offered $50 million for this year.
Once again home owners who are on the short end of the stick when dealing with the government are those who insulated their homes with urea formaldehyde foam insulation on the advice and financial backing of the federal government. Anyone who is currently trying to sell or renew the mortgage on their homes with this insulation knows all about UFFI. Their homes are worthless and hazardous to the health and wellbeing of the occupants, yet it took the government over a year, after it banned the use of UFFI from the market, to bring in a relief program to help clean up a very messy situation which it created. The government is taking its sweet time to begin processing applications, obviously wanting Canadians to shoulder the financial burden themselves at a cost which can easily run into thousands of dollars per household. If the government had acted quicker, it would not be faced with so many angry Canadians, not to mention the problem of removing the foam. There is no question that the government has a responsibility to help remove UFFI because it pushed Canadians to use it. It is clear that the most common sense approach would be for the government to own up to its responsibility, to recognize a mistake was indeed made, to stop dragging its feet, and to pay full compensation to home owners involved in this government-sponsored mess.
I believe, as do most Canadians, that shelter is one of our basic rights. Everyone is or should be entitled to a home. However, while it may be a recognized right, we are slowly
February 23, 1982

losing our ability to obtain shelter. Yet the government has little or nothing to offer thousands of Canadians who are facing the immediate threat of losing their homes.
Bill C-89 hardly even addresses the deep financial problem facing home owners or the housing industry itself. The bill is totally inadequate. If the government had listened to Canadians and found out what they really need, we would have had a better financed more wide-ranging and comprehensive piece of legislation before us today. We can only hope the government will accept some of the amendments and change the bill before it passes the House. I will not hold my breath that such changes will take place. I have come to learn during the ten years that I have been a member of the House that the most uncommon thing to find on the other side is common sense. It is truly unfortunate and tragic that this place is just one more place where theory and theoretical ideas always take precedence over practical ideas which actually work better both in terms of application and in lower costs to the taxpayers in the long run. It is no wonder that our farmers and our producers are the most efficient people to be found anywhere in the world. They are practical people with little time for nonsensical theories and ideas that usually do not have a firm foundation to stand the test of practicality.
Whoever coined the expression that there is no experience like practical experience never spoke a truer word. It is too bad that many people who should know better chose to ignore these words of true wisdom.


Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first opportunity I have had to stand up in the House since last Wednesday, which was a fateful day in the history of the province of Alberta. Last Wednesday was the day when the first separatist was elected to our provincal legislature, the first separatist who ever ran for office. That brought memories of some ten or 12 years ago when there were no separatists elected to public office anywhere in Canada.
As I stand here today, February 23, 1982, I stand with some sense of impending doom, and with a great deal of impending sadness. I look at Bill C-89, an act to amend the National Housing Act and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act and I ask myself why am I standing here this evening debating a bill of this kind. As I reach out and look for the answer, 1 find that it is because this country is in crisis. But in a time of crisis, I would hope to see a piece of legislation that might help us overcome that crisis. When I look at Bill C-89, I do not see in this legislation any sense of real hope for average Canadians. I see once again a piece of legislation which is taking the time of the House because the government has decided to engage once more in a piece of public relations chicanery, another piece of public relations trickery.
When there is a problem in Canada and it is identifiable, the government is quick off the mark to say that it will solve the problem. That story lasts three, four or five days or for as much mileage as hon. members of the Liberal Party can get
Housing
out of it. Sooner or later in the Parliament of Canada we see the piece of legislation which is supposed to be the solution to the problem. As we read it carefully, we find inevitably that it fails to address the real problem. It simply provides language which is designed to confuse and convince Canadians that the problem is being worked on and being addressed.
If the Clark government had been allowed by the New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party west, to pass the legislation which was before the House in December, 1979, that legislation on mortgage deductibility for home owners in the budget presented by the hon. minister from Newfoundland, which has been judged by those who are experts in their society as the fairest budget in the decade of the 1980s and by the poorest segment of Canadian society-


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is just a matter of clarification of fact. The people of Canada judged that it was not one of the finest pieces of legislation in Canada and turfed out that government.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: The Liberal Party west, the NDP, got sucked in by the so-called experts on the other side. They told them what it said and they did not bother to read it. I tell hon. members to find out what it said and learn what it could have done for Canadians. But they went out like loyal soldiers and sold Canadians a wrong bill of goods.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: That budget, Mr. Speaker, dealt with the housing issue in the following fashion. It provided tax relief for every home owner in this country who paid municipal taxes. The Liberal members and the NDP members shot it down, and Canadians do not have that relief today. It was a budget that provided relief for every Canadian who owned a home. They were to get tax relief on the interest payments on their mortgage. Members of the NDP stood and moved a motion in this House, supported by the Liberals, and said to Canadians that they could not have mortgage relief or tax relief for municipal taxes because they did not need it. The NDP said that they would put the Liberals back in office. But two years later anyone who held a $70,000 mortgage in 1979 at 12 per cent and paid $720 a month is now paying $1,130 a month. We must not forget that municipal taxes have gone up also. The NDP said that was the kind of program they wanted, and they will put the Liberals in so they can deliver that program to Canadians, and that is what they did.
As if that were not bad enough-because people pay their mortgages and municipal taxes from after tax income, that is the amount of money in pay cheques, the money that is used to make those payments-they elected a government full of deceit and trickery that has doubled the indirect taxes in this country. Do the NDP, the Liberal Party west, and the members opposite, and all the backbenchers, understand that indirect taxes under the present Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen) have moved from $10 billion to $20 billion? Do those people understand what that means to a working man and a man on pension?

February 23, 1982
Housing


Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, would the hon. member entertain a question?


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I will just proceed. It is so seldom that the hon. member is in the House that I am not used to his voice and I cannot quite understand what he is saying.
I was talking about indirect taxes and the burden placed on Canadian home owners from those indirect taxes. I pointed out that those taxes have risen under the present Minister of Finance, from $10 billion to $20 billion, and the NDP put him in. What does that mean? It means that indirect taxes, those are the taxes a person pays out of his take-home pay, have risen since the change in government in 1980 more than $100 per month per household on average. Whether you are rich or poor-


An hon. Member:: It is those guys.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: It is not those guys, it is the New Democratic Party which decided that the hon. member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski) was no good in transport and we should have the present Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin). The Liberal Party west made that trade. That is worse than a Toronto Blue Jay trade.
That extra $100 a month, Mr. Speaker, in indirect taxes coming out of your take-home pay, when added to the extra $408 a month because of high interest rates, comes to $508 a month which Canadians are paying extra. What are they getting for it? They are still in the same house, still driving the same car, using the same heater in their home. They get nothing extra for that, except for the privilege of paying taxes to the Liberal and New Democratic parties. They have the privilege of paying all that extra money to advance causes which are designed not to help Canadians, Mr. Speaker, but to bamboozle them. A $100 million for advertising. How much better would this country be if that money were given to Canadians to reduce their monthly mortgage payments!
One of the purposes of the December, 1979 budget was to reduce federal borrowing. Of what significance is that to Canadians? Well, when this government was elected, 19 cents out of every tax dollar went to pay interest on the public debt. This morning we discovered that two short years later 23 cents out of every tax dollar collected goes to pay interest on the public debt. An increase of almost 20 per cent, Mr. Speaker. That is what public debt is all about. It is spending money today so that your children and your grandchildren can pay for it. I looked at those figures this morning, and I found that interest on the public debt is getting very close to the sum total of all indirect taxes taken from Canadians in a year. It amounts to $200 per month per household to pay interest on the public debt. Instead of paying that against a mortgage, Canadians are forced to pay that to the bankers in Switzerland, in New York and Canada simply to pay interest on the public debt.
Now, Mr. Speaker, in case some of the Liberal backbenchers or some of the NDP think that is a good thing, there is something else to remember. There is a limited amount of money in the world and it is sold to people at a kind of auction based on interest rates. Every Canadian who has to go out and borrow money to buy a home or expand a small business has to go into that auction market and compete for the money. They can go and say, "If you will loan me that money, I will give you 16 per cent". But in the auction market somebody else says, "I will give you 16!/2". Someone else says, "I will give you 17", or it could be 1 IVi, 18, 18!A or 19 per cent. Then the bidding stops and you get the money for 19 per cent. And if you get that today, you are lucky. Well, do you know who was bidding against you? The federal government. They were out there trying to borrow the same money you are trying to borrow for your home. And they, through that auction market, are driving up the cost of money.
Now, here we have a piece of legislation which will affect very few Canadians but which bears a title that suggests it is a panacea, the help that Canadians need. It says, focus your eye on it, the government is doing something. They have already spent an unknown amount of money advertising this program before Parliament even dealt with it. They drew the attention of Canadians to the fact that this piece of legislation was here, and said it would help. But each day that advertising campaign was going on, each day we stand here and debate the bill, that same government is out there borrowing money and driving up interest rates, thereby causing Canadians to pay a higher amount of money to borrow than would be true had we had a government in the last decade with any sense of fiscal responsibility.
Mr. Speaker, if we were not today paying 23 cents out of every tax dollar to pay interest on borrowed money, we could increase by 50 per cent the amount of money we spend on hospital care, social services and old age pensions, all of which touch the hearts of most of the members who sit in this chamber. It is help to those who need it most. But instead we send money off to the bankers in other parts of the world, 23 cents out of every dollar, $16.5 billion in total.
Last fall this government asked Canadians to buy Canada savings bonds at 19'/2 per cent. The minute they did that, Mr. Speaker, people had to pay 20, 20.5, 21 or 22 per cent to borrow money on a mortgage. The government was out there trying to get it at 19'/2 per cent, but if it is for your home, you have to go higher. And here we sit in this chamber tonight addressing ourselves to legislation which has been advertised with your tax dollars to distract your attention away from the fact that the primary reason that Canadians are losing sleep worrying about losing their homes, or in fact losing their homes, is this government's policies. Canadians are worried about what is going to happen in the next three or four months when their mortgages come up for renewal. Their health is suffering, the tension is there, but the advertising says: Do not worry, we will bail you out. The legislation gives the lie to that ad, but in the meantime Canadians are not supposed to
February 23, 1982

recognize the fact that it is the government and its lack of a sense of responsibility which has created, over the last ten or 12 years, this situation of high interest rates that Canadians are trying to live with.
They do not only affect housing. When we build a house, we affect our society pretty dramatically. 1 will just read something into the record from an Informetrica study in April, 1980. It showed that for every additional 1,000 housing starts during a given year, 1,635 man-years of employment are created over the course of two years. For each 1,000 houses, 1,635 jobs are created, 460 ef which go right into the construction industry. However, the remainder of those jobs are primarily generated in those sectors of the economy which supply material inputs and services to the construction industry. Five hundred and ten man-years of employment for 1,000 housing starts are generated in manufacturing. Hon. members of this chamber who come from Ontario and Quebec, particularly the southern parts, can look at their local newspapers, listen to the local radio stations, and watch the television news, and they can see all the examples of plant closures and people who are being put out of work as a result of lay-offs. I wonder if they remember those nine months of the Clark government in which a sense of direction was clearly signalled to this country, a sense of a government and a party which valued ownership. People believed and started to act on that sense of direction, and over that nine-month period an average of
35,000	jobs per month were created. In the public sector, tax spending jobs went down. However, in the private sector, tax generating jobs and the provision of goods and services went up throughout that entire nine-month period.
Then the Liberal Party, which consulted the NDP, decided that too much prosperity was not good for Canadians.


Mr. Gustafson:: Right on.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: They thought it was best to have many people unemployed so that the government could appeal to them politically. They would not be happy to have everyone working, satisfied and feeling productive. They said they would put the other guys back in. &ed3955;-l
1 stand here in this House tonight, some two years later, and I find the exact opposite has happened. In the last year, Canadians have lost jobs at the rate of 35,000 a month. Two years ago, we were creating them at the rate of 35,000 a month. The NDP decided to put these guys on the other side back into power so we could lose 35,000 jobs a month.


Leonard J. Gustafson: Thanks to the NDP!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: In all of the history of this nation since it started to keep statistics on employment, this was the first time when there were less jobs in the Canadian economy at the end of the year than there were at the beginning. I ask Your Honour, is that a consequence of the nine months of the Clark government, its policy and its legislation? Most Canadians may not realize it, but because of the filibuster of the NDP and the Liberal Party, we did not pass any legislation. They
Housing
blocked the House. They filibustered. They would not let anything go through. However, the amount of jobs still went up because people sensed that there was an honest government which cared and which would attempt to keep its commitments.
What is wrong in Canada today? it is not necessarily the legislation. It is predominantly that sense of certitude here in this land that the group in charge in Ottawa is interested in public relations, in chicanery and, in deceit, but not in proposing honest policies which can be believed. In that climate, the people, the money and the equipment tend to drift, tend to be driven toward a political climate which investors view as more trustworthy. They want a sense of certitude. The tragedy in Canada is that they have a sense of certitude that they cannot trust and they cannot believe in the government.
If every Canadian could read those newspaper ads and the budget speech of the Minister of Finance and then look at the piece of the legislation before us tonight, Bill C-89, they would know that this piece of legislation is a piece of chicanery, a piece of trickery. It falls so far short of the promises of that budget speech and the tone of that advertising campaign that it becomes one more piece of concrete evidence that we have a cabinet in Canada whose members cannot be trusted. One cannot listen to what they say with belief. One simply cannot. Canadians now have such a sense of certitude in that respect that they do not follow up the details. They just think the first thought that comes to their minds. Each time the backbenchers on the opposite side and the New Democratic Party support that kind of chicanery, they undermine the long-term health of our entire parliamentary system.


Mr. Fulton:: Point of order. Mr. Speaker, I would just like to point out to the Tories that they are voting two to one with the Liberals. As a matter of fact, they voted four times-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: That does not constitute a point of order.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, the hon. members in the NDP keep rising, and they do not like it to be known that there was a vote of confidence in this government last Friday, and that eight of their 33 members were missing. Twenty-five per cent would not even show up in this chamber in an effort to defeat this rotten government. Their new marvellous leader in the province of Ontario, drawing a public salary from this chamber, was sitting on a beach in Florida.


Some hon. Members:: Shame, shame!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Now they stand and quote a voting record. Did they tell Your Honour what we voted for and what we vote against?


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: He didn't even come home from Strasbourg.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: With all due respect to the hon. member, I call to his attention the fact that the item before the House is a bill respecting housing.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

February 23, 1982
Housing


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Mr. Speaker, I should probably direct my attention to public housing of a particular kind.


Mr. Friesen:: This is public housing.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Like a jail is a kind of public housing.


James Ross Fulton: Good place for Tories!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Sometimes I think our priorities of what is a danger to our society are a little mixed up.


Benno Friesen: Cuba has public housing.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: We let the wrong people out on the streets sometimes because they do not know what it is that they are doing. Any group of hon. members sitting down at the far end of this Chamber who would have chosen the budget which we are now debating over the budget of 1979 either did not do their homework or had no sense of integrity-


Some hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: -about what is right in this society. They did not read it, or they did not understand it, or they had no integrity. However, Canadians remember that 18-cent increase for a gallon of gas was too much. Two years later it is 86 cents. In my election campaign, I said to the people in my riding, "Remember wage and price controls-90 days is too much and we got more than ten times that much." I said that if they tell you 18 cents is too much, ten times 18 is $1.80.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: With all due respect to the hon. member, the Chair is listening with interest but having difficulty relating it to the subject before us.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: When you have to increase the price of gasoline by $1.80 a gallon, you have no money left to pay the mortgage on your house. It is a very simple situation.
If you really want to make it relevant, the then finance minister from Newfoundland stood in the House and told Canadians that they had a choice as to whether or not to drive their cars. He said that we were going to raise the price of gasoline 18 cents a gallon, but if they did not drive their cars they would not have to put that 18 cents in the public till. However, because they had to heat their houses, he said there would not be any tax on home heating oil. He said we would put the tax where there is a choice as to whether to spend it, but there is no choice as to whether to heat your home, so we will not put a tax there.
The New Democratic Party, the Liberal Party west, joined with their partners across the way and said "That is not a good deal. We will kick you out, put the other guys in and increase taxes on home heating oil". They agreed to an indirect tax of $100 per month, and mortgage rates rising 8 per cent. They said now we will have equity. Do you know the purest form of equity, the easiest thing in the world to divide into equal shares? It is nothing.
If all of us cease to work and farmers cease to produce, we will come to a perfect state of equity. However, we value a
society where those who want a little more, such as a little better home, car and better food, are willing to work a little harder to get it, they produce.
If the million unemployed Canadians could find useful work to do, we would be a nation engaged in the production of wealth. The harder we work, the more we produce, the better our health care systems, pensions for our senior citizens and those with physical handicaps.
That is the kind of vision that this party had and has. The Liberals and the New Democratic Party decided that our desire to provide tax relief to those who have to pay municipal taxes and make mortgage payments was not fair. They said all Canadians should not get some tax relief for owning a piece of property, a home.
Tonight, two years later, we stand in the House with a piece of legislation that will provide increased indebtedness to a segment of our society that is already in debt over its head, not able to make mortgage payments on their homes. This government says it will provide some insurance which will allow these people to borrow more money to go further into debt to delay the day of reckoning for two or three years. This legislation encourages a poorer segment of society to go deeper into debt and to postpone the day of reckoning for two years.
I ask members opposite whether they wish that back in December 1979 they had put in place the proposed scheme which would have provided tax relief for municipal taxes and interest payments on the mortgages of all Canadians who own a home. I ask the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party whether they feel that if that legislation had passed there would be today more construction, more jobs, more production in the factories of Ontario and Quebec of stoves, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and carpets, and whether the demands for unemployment insurance and other social payments of that kind would be down because a higher portion of our population would be working. I ask hon. members to consider that.
I stand here tonight to accuse the New Democratic Party of causing this situation. That is who caused the opportunity system to put in a government that is unbelievable, cannot be trusted and is exceedingly destructive. I do so tonight as a Member of Parliament from the city of Calgary with the certain knowledge that some 25 miles from my home the voters last week elected a separatist. The reason they elected a separatist is that they do not trust, and they are looking for a way out. They are angry. They come from a part of this country where government policy, and government policy alone, has killed close to 50 per cent of the jobs in the exploration and service part of the oil industry. Government policy and government policy alone has decided to send the money to Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Libya instead of investing it in drilling rigs and in Canadians to drill for oil and gas, to refine and deliver. It is a government that has chosen to export jobs from my region of the country, and the people do not like it.
February 23, 1982

It is the government, supported by its backbenchers and the New Democratic Party which at one point said the first Constitution was marvellous, the people of Ontario and Quebec would be first-class citizens, each province with a veto, compounded by a veto in the House of Commons, because of their population majority. Those who live in the other eight provinces of Canada were to be satisfied with one third of the veto. We were one third as important. The NDP, most of its members from the west, said that was marvellous. They stood up in this chamber and voted for it. Several times they made speeches in praise of it. Gradually the people of western Canada began to find out about it. The anger lives on.


An hon. Member:: Dishonest Tory drivel.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: It is a region of the country where I was born and raised. It has some of the most generous people in the world. They are the kind of people who will give you the shirt off their back. They come from a pioneer tradition which says that you cannot take anything. If you ask for a gift, you will get it but if you try force, you will be resisted.
Day after day these people have to face a government which does not seem to comprehend the importance of this principle. It is a region of Canada where a handshake is worth more than a legal document. These westerners can look each other in the eye and say, "We agree". That is binding upon them. They cannot understand a government which says one thing and does another. They cannot understand why a piece of legislation is touted as helping to solve the housing problem when, in fact, it does nothing.
The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) knows that it does not solve the housing problem. I have respect for the President of the Treasury Board and I do not think he would stand on any platform to say that this legislation does. I hope I am right.


John William Bosley: Mr. Speaker, before I commence my speech tonight on the housing bill I will say that I found it tragic to see western members of the other opposition party in the House laughing when a member from Calgary tried to deal with the separatist problem which was espoused in a byelection last week. I say this advisedly but I have become used to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) sneering at the views of those who try to express their feelings for the federal government. However, 1 was not expecting to see those sneers from the New Democratic Party. I was suprised to hear a reference to that tonight. In any event, tonight is not the occasion on which to debate that, but it will be a matter we will be debating in the future, because there are real problems to be solved in the west.
The member for Calgary West (Mr. Hawkes) was correct in raising it tonight in connection with this legislation. This bill represents yet another attack on the dreams of all Canadians, wherever they come from. It represents the conclusion to a string of reductions of federal government commitments to private sector housing which goes back nearly 25 years, and most recently from the last election.
Housing
The member for Saskatoon West (Mr. Hnatyshyn) earlier gave a list of the litany of claims by the current minister responsible for housing with regard to this matter. Therefore, I will not go into them now. I happen to know the minister well from our days together on council in metropolitan Toronto. Therefore, 1 knew exactly what he meant and I am sure he chose his words well when he said, in introducing this bill, "The bill before the House for second reading is a response to the serious difficulty which faces Canadians." I know that the minister chooses his words well. He did not say "a significant response" or "an important response" or "an effective response". He is honest enough to know that it is only "a response". We hear consistently throughout this debate that the mortgage assistance proposal is for $50 million and the multiple unit assistance proposal in the bill is for $350 million over two years. That is $400 million over two years for the total program, if you like.
To most Canadians that may sound like a great deal of money. It is if it is viewed in absolute terms. Perhaps we should try to put the government's housing priorities into context. The government is to provide $50 million in an attempt to deal with the problems of 920,000 Canadians who will face mortgage renewals during the lifetime of this program; of whom 50,000 fewer will even get help, we are told. What does this $50 million represent? It represents what we gave to the Algerian government to build a monument. In other words, this government's housing priority is just as important as a 434 foot monument in Algeria.
The government intends to provide $350 million over two years, or $175 million per year, to help those in need of rental housing in Canada. This also sounds like a lot of money. Rental housing is no more critical than in my home town where our vacancy rate is approximately 0.03 per cent. But $175 million per year represents exactly twice what the government wastes on its advertising budget. I will put it in a context which will make great sense to the House. Although we do not have all the details, we have discovered that the government has made a commitment to assist the Soviet Union in the construction of a gas pipeline. It is to be financed, we are told, through the Export Development Corporation guarantee, and although the figures are not confirmed, that guarantee is for approximately $600 million. Of that $600 million, approximately $275 million will be spent in Canada and the interest on that money, since we are guaranteeing the reduction of the rate from 16 per cent to 10 per cent, we are told, will effectively be a gift costing the Canadian taxpayer approximately $125 million. When those figures are added up, we will give away $125 million and lose in terms of the support, since the money will not be spent in Canada, somewhere between $200 million and $350 million.
In other words, building the Russian gas pipeline is somewhere between two or three times more important to the government than housing for tenants in Canada. If we review it in that context, of a government which came into office promising to lower energy prices and then raping western
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February 23, 1982
Housing
Canada for $52 billion, perhaps if we look at it in the context of a government which is stealing $52 billion from the private sector in the oil and resource development area, and understand that what they are prepared to put back into housing is less than they will give the Russians, maybe it will clarify for Canadians the government's view on housing.
During my lifetime, which is not that long, and for years before, the single greatest support has been shelter, not just for old age when people come to need it but for their sense of wellbeing and feeling of independence. In my city, the number of tenants has increased from 20 per cent to 60 per cent since the war. There is a very valid reason why we built a lot of rental housing. We built-incidentally, the government did not build, the private investors built it-the housing in response to the household formation change which we sometimes call, in demographic terms, the baby boom. At the same time that we were doing this, we built a great deal of ownership housing in Toronto because we could see the time coming when those born during the baby boom grew up to their present age. When the CMHC documents predicted the majority demand would be for ownership housing, we knew it was necessary to have a stock to serve that demand in Toronto as well as across Canada.
Today we face interest rates which make it impossible for that baby boom generation of Canadians who are on the verge of being able to achieve what they thought was their dream and that of their parents; to own their own home. We now face policies which have made it impossible for them to do that.
As a party we argued in the last election campaign that home ownership is so important to the nation and to Canadians that it is well past the time we understood that it is simply unjust to say that Canadians should have to pay municipal tax out of after-tax income. They ought to be able to deduct their municipal tax from their federal tax. It is well past the time for us to understand that it is unjust to say that once a person has bought his house he may, through the tax system, reborrow money to make other investments and be able to deduct the interest then but not, at the same time, be able to deduct the interest to buy the house in the first place. That was the tax equity which was represented by our party's mortgage tax credit plan.
The government finally, having said throughout the election campaign that it did not understand or did not accept that there was a tax equity argument, recognized in the November budget of the Minister of Finance (Mr. MacEachen)-if I can be cynical-the argument that there is a question of equity in tax treatment. Did the government consider bringing in the only sensible policy to correct that inequity and make it possible for people who cannot afford homes and who are faced with monstrous increases in their mortgage interest rates to deduct? No, and this is not really perhaps as widely understood as I would like it to be. The government's sense of equity was not to make it possible for people to deduct the interest
when they first get a home; the government made it impossible for anybody else to deduct interest. In other words, rather than creating an incentive to help people build homes and help people buy them, in the budget the government took away the right of other people to deduct interest for other investments.
It is fundamental to an understanding of the philosophy behind this pittance of a housing bill to understand that it is not separate from the context of the economic philosophy of the government opposite. There are several reasons why, for example, we have a vacancy shortage of the kind we do in rental housing. The most significant point is that the rental housing market, which is where people start in the system when they come out of school or form their first household while they build up some equity to buy a home, was killed by the government opposite. It was killed when the government opposite some years ago took away the incentive for small investors to invest directly in rental property. It used to be in Canada that if a person had a little extra money and wanted to buy or build a duplex or a little apartment building or if a person had a loss or the depreciation of a building created a loss, he could carry that in his personal income, and it was a stimulation for those who wanted to help support their old age by having a little building with three to four units or a couple of units. Let us look at how apartments were created originally in Canada. In Montreal, for instance, nearly 50 per cent of the apartments were created using that system. This government started there. It killed that right to deduct, and it has done so persistently throughout its economic policy. This government regards this as some kind of tax loophole. It killed the right to get tax relief if a person is willing to invest in his country.


Mr. MacKay:: They do not want you to own anything.


John William Bosley: It shows up again here where, having promised relief to home owners in order to get votes in the last election, the government now comes along and says that the only people who will get any help from the government are those who have no equity left because the economic policies of the government have destroyed home values. I can refer to case after case in my riding in which house values have dropped 35 per cent or more in the last year, which means there will be no equity left. In such a case, if a person is now bankrupt in house value, he will get a grant from the government. If he has not yet made it to that point under this program, the proposal before us is that he be allowed to borrow what little he has left as an interest deferral so that the government can take it from him next year when the program expires.
The government tried this in relation to AHOP and ARP. The government has slowly but surely eroded the ability to own by taking away the incentives for people to invest in mortgages and by taking away the incentive for people to build affordable rental housing, and the litany goes on and on.
The scariest part of the budget is not this statement of budget policy on housing assistance. The scariest part is when this policy gets to its final logical conclusion. I refer to the policy of the last 25 years of changes to the National Housing
February 23, 1982

Act, changes to CMCH provisions and changes respecting who can invest in this country. The final change is on the tax expenditure side of the budget document. If Canadians will look, they will find a statement that, according to the mandarins in the Department of Finance, we can look forward to the day when Canadians will have rent imputed to them on houses they own. The President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Johnston) looks askance. He knows full well where this is in the document. If he has not read it yet, I find that difficult to believe. If he reads it, he will find the proposal to impute rent on an owned home one lives in and has paid for. That imputed rent would be added to taxable income.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: It is called confiscation.


John William Bosley: In other words, if the government cannot drive people out with interest rates, it will do so with tax burdens. To anyone who follows the history of the fiscal policy of the government in relation to housing the conclusion of this policy should come as no surprise. Its conclusion is in the statement on the tax expenditure side of the budget document because that is the direction in which we have been going all this time. There seems somehow to be no awareness on the part of hon. members opposite that housing expenditures have been the most important expenditures Canadians make. Housing expenditures form some 30 per cent of the consumer price index. They have formed anywhere from 6 per cent to 8 per cent-in good years-of our gross national product. They have also been the underpinning of much of our society's economy through all their spin-off effects. Every time a house is built, bricklayers are put to work, electricians are put to work and plumbers are put to work. People who build roads are put to work building roads to that house. People who build furniture are put to work to provide furniture for that house. People who make carpets are put to work to provide carpets for that house. People who make windows are put to work to make windows for that house. We do not need a policy which will result, as this policy confirms, in a drop in housing starts of 30 per cent in one year. Projections in the government's own documents are just crazy. Last year we were getting projections from CMHC, and now we are falling short of those projections. I suspect next year the results will be even below this year's projections from the CMHC, not just because there is a fundamental lack of investor confidence in the policies of this government-


Paul James Cosgrove: Check the facts.


John William Bosley: The minister responsible for housing says I should check the facts. I suggest that the minister responsible for housing check his back because he will find that the pride the people of Scarborough felt for him when he was mayor will not reward him with a return to this House.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Johnny one-time.


Paul James Cosgrove: Check the facts.


John William Bosley: The minister responsible for housing keeps yelling, "Check the facts". The facts are that the minister promised Canadians mortgage relief, not 50,000 of 920,000,
Housing
which is a pittance. If that is what he means by a fact, he should check his facts. I think the minister knows that full well.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: He is just uncomfortable.


John William Bosley: Let me refer again to the minister's comments, since he has interjected, because it will perhaps make the point as well as it can be made. The minister speaks of facts. This is the government's philosophy on rental accommodation: "The fact is that without government support the construction of rental accommodation in this country is simply not a viable business". That is true, Mr. Speaker, because of the policies of the government opposite over the last 15 or 20 years. It seems to permeate every policy that comes from the other side. There seems to be a sense that the only way to get the economy going again is through some form of government support. Yet that will drive the country into fiscal bankruptcy, if it has not already.
There seems to be a sense that the way to get a rental housing policy is to take away all incentive to invest and then to tell people to come cap in hand, and they will get a $7,500 interest free loan. That is what we have as a rental housing policy.
The argument goes like this, Mr. Speaker. Last year's policy, MURB, under which 25,000 units were built, is no good; that what we need is to get rid of that and instead have a policy that will build 15,000 units over two years through interest free loans. People are supposed to believe that that is a better and more productive policy than encouraging them to build through MURBs and all the other incentives that are now gone, such as the capital cost allowance, depreciation or write-offs into personal income. According to the Liberal government, none of that worked but in fact, Mr. Speaker, those policies built the houses that Canadians live in today.
People were operating at a profit, however. Some people paid lower rents than they do today. The market vacancy rate was 5 per cent or 6 per cent and, as a result, rents were held down. So the government got rid of all those things and created a system based on the belief that without government support the construction of rental accommodation is simply not a viable business in this country.
Why does the government believe that is a necessary policy, Mr. Speaker? The answer is quite simple. It is the same answer as that which was given by the government in the National Energy Program. In effect, the government says that we cannot afford to let private individuals in this country develop oil and gas. The government will do it. It will levy taxes and confiscate as well. This government does not believe that it can afford to let private individuals accomplish things in this country. That is evident in this bill and it is evident in the National Energy Program. I see the minister who is responsible for the Kent commission is in the House. This shows up in the policy that says that we cannot trust newspapers in this

February 23, 1982
Housing
country either, and that we had better have people interfere with them. This is the consistent view that runs through Liberal policy today.
All the budget does, through this bill and all the other programs, is to take the trend line of the last 12 years of Liberal management of the country and because the existing political leadership of the Liberal Party is not going to be here after the next election, one way or the other-either they will honour their promises to quit or we will beat them-they have decided not to wait 12 years but to accomplish everything in four. The only accomplishment of the budget is to accelerate the idea that there is some sort of free lunch and that Canadians will understand that and vote accordingly. It promotes the idea that the way to get a house in this country is to become broke. In that case, the government will offer assistance. That is the way people can get shelter they can afford-not because they go out and earn the money to make a downpayment. We believe that taxpayers ought to be able to deduct the borrowing cost of that asset from their taxes, because a house is the single asset that is a protection against inflation. No matter what happens in the rest of the world, every Canadian who owns a home and has paid off the mortgage knows that he or she is about as well protected from the ravages of inflation as is possible.
Apparently the government does not believe we can afford that; it does not believe that we can afford to have independent thinking Canadians, and so it proposes to take away the sense of security that comes from having made an investment in a home. The government wants to make everybody dependent.
1 do not say that lightly, Mr. Speaker. When 1 was outside politics it took me a long time to see the trend line emerge and to come to the realization that the socialism represented in the housing policies of the government is endemic to everything it does.
We must establish that this policy is not independent of the rest of the government's policies. On that score 1 should like to deal with some information which was available to the government in a document issued by CMHC planners in July, 1981, entitled "The Demographic Future: Impacts on the Demand for Housing in Canada, 1981-2001." It was produced by Philip W. Brown of Market Forecasts and Analysis Division, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation and was prepared for a symposium held at the University of British Columbia. The document laid out very clearly what was going to happen to housing trends in the country. It forecast that the major problem of 1980s and 1990s will almost certainly be the rental market.
That should not come as a surprise to those of us who follow this issue in the urban centres of this country, Mr. Speaker. Did we see stimulus through MURBs or stimulus for people who would build any form of rental housing? We did not. What we got was an argument from the government that it believed that 15,000 units of accommodation provided by the private sector over two years is all the government help that is
needed. We see an indication that the social housing side, which 1 admit is important, is more important to the government than simply getting people to invest in housing in this country.
The author makes the following point about the expectations of the baby boom generation. Members of that generation are now at the age when they are just about to buy a house, but he points out that this will not be possible for them. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, the suggestion in the budget that a whole generation of Canadians should not be able to afford a home was already known to the minister and to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. He suggests that there is more here than a simple failure to understand the rest of the world; that there is in fact a cynical attempt to prevent people from owning homes. On page 25 there appears the statement, "The whole question of expectation levels, for example, is critical". In the last paragraph he writes:
Realization that erosion of expectations is imminent or threatened may result in a search for further alternatives to curtail household expenditures besides the usual steps to increase income.
He goes on to indicate that the only solution for those who may want to own a home in this country may be to resort to some form of co-operative housing.
I appreciate that my time is about up, Mr. Speaker, but I want to say that if the only answer to the problem in this country is co-operative housing, if we have seen the end of the private home in this country, then I for one fear greatly about what will happen to my country.


Some hon. Members:: Hear, hear!



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House deemed to have been moved.
ROYAL CANADIAN MOUNTED POLICE-(A) INQUIRY RESPECTING INVESTIGATION OF CONVICTED MURDERER CLIFFORD OLSON; (B) STATEMENT MADE BY PROSECUTOR
["The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.\nAt 10.27 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.", 'Wednesday, February 24, 1982']
Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, last Friday I rose in the House to ask some questions of the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) regarding the last four days of July, the activities of Clifford Olson and the manner in which the RCMP handled that particular problem. I do not like to ask those kinds of questions. I have a great deal of admiration for the RCMP. I admire its work and I have total confidence in it, yet it appears something has gone wrong in the handling of the affairs of Clifford Olson. The fact that the government is keeping a lid on this is keeping line officers of the RCMP from doing their very best and maintaining their reputation.
February 23, 1982

1 should like to cite one simple example. A resident of an Edmonton suburb came to me a year ago and told me about an event in that community. Some young people were having a private party. In the midst of it, a gang of 60 or more young people came from the city of Edmonton to disrupt that very quiet and peaceful party. The parents then called on the RCMP in the community to come and take care of the disturbance. Two constables came out, handled the situation with dispatch and great efficiency, quelled the uprising if it can be called that, and the parents were supremely happy. The next or the following day the staff sergeant of the detachment wanted to discipline the two constables because they had not quite followed the book in the way they handled the affair.
This is what bothers me. It seems the staff sergeant was much more concerned about public image, public reputation and fear that public questions might be asked and, therefore, wanted to discipline the officers rather than commend them. It seems that in the Edmonton case the staff sergeant, middle management, wanted success to look life failure, and in the Olson case it looks to me like middle and upper management of the RCMP wanted failure to look like success. In both cases I believe the officers have done their work and have done it well, but somewhere in the Olson case, upper and middle management have made a series of errors and have frustrated the work of line officers. We need to know what has gone wrong in the decision-making level of the RCMP in this particular case.
Let me cite the sequence. On July 27 Burnaby RCMP were briefed by one of the officers on Olson as a prime suspect. He outlined the 92 convictions and the kinds of convictions which comprised the career of Clifford Olson. On the same day Surrey RCMP issued a warrant for Olson on a charge of indecent assault, and the police were commanded to arrest him forthwith. On July 28, the next day, eight cars of officers were involved in apprehending Olson and taking him into custody. Eight cars of officers were involved; I presume that would be 16 officers. On July 29 Olson walked out of jail in Surrey; he walked out of custody and surveillance of him was dropped. In the process the serious crimes division of the RCMP indicated that it wanted the warrant "taken care of', whatever that means.
On July 30, the following day, Olson spent the best part of the morning in a coffee shop with some RCMP officers discussing the offences of other criminals; there was a warrant outstanding on him but he was not arrested. On July 31 the special "O" unit of the RCMP asked for surveillance again. In the meantime, Olson had killed his eleventh and, presumably, his final victim. Again on July 31, the same day as the special "O" unit asked for surveillance to be dropped, the prosecutor asked that the "warrant be vacated". On the one hand the special unit wants surveillance, on the other hand there is an application to vacate the warrant.
There are some serious questions, and 1 want to enumerate them in the two or three minutes I have left. First, why was the
Adjournment Debate
warrant issued four days previously and then vacated? In four days it was vacated. Second, why did the prosecutor on July 31 say, "I didn't get feedback from the police."? Four days previously Olson had been named a prime suspect and 16 officers were involved in his apprehension. Third, why could officers spend all morning with him and not arrest him when they knew there was a warrant out for him? Fourth, who authorized Olson's release?
Why will the assistant commissioner Don Wilson and the Solicitor General not answer these questions? Why do they choose to stonewall? I can say with assurance that these questions will not go away. They will be answered one way or the other. The Solicitor General says he wants to maintain the integrity of the RCMP. The only way he can do that is to be open and honest, and free them from the pall of universal guilt they are sharing because several people have apparently made some wrong decisions. The Solicitor General has not come clean on that.
I am again asking for a full and independent inquiry into the affairs of this case.
[ Translation]


Mrs. Celine Hervieux-Payette (Parliamentary Secretary to Solicitor General):: Mr. Speaker, I want first of all to indicate that I agree with my colleague when he says that he admires the RCMP. I believe that most Canadians appreciate the job they do. I would suggest to the hon. member who intends to repeat the same questions again that, rather than making political mileage out of tragic events which occurred in British Columbia, he should tell the population that the administration of justice is exclusively a provincial matter, and I would also advise him to provide accurate information.

On February 19 last, the hon. member asked questions of the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) pertaining to details of the police investigation of Clifford Olson. The Solicitor General then answered that the attorney general of British Columbia had answered these questions previously. As well, they were the subject of a press conference held by the RCMP in Vancouver. It is always better to have the facts of an investigation explained by those close to the scene and this has been done in this case. Answers have been provided and can continue to be provided by those who were involved in the investigation, namely, the local RCMP and the attorney general of British Columbia.
With respect to the hon. member's second question, the Solicitor General has asked the attorney general of British Columbia if he was satisfied with the police conduct of the investigation, and I am sure that if the prosecutor had not been properly briefed by the police, the attorney general of British Columbia would have mentioned this to the minister. He did not do so.

February 23, 1982
Adjournment Debate
EXPORT DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION-(A) CONSTRUCTION OF MONUMENT IN ALGERIA; (B) USE OF CORPORATION RESOURCES


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, the question I raised on February 11, 1982, regarding the appropriateness of Canadians financing the construction of a large edifice for Algeria, to the extent of $50 million, is fairly complex. My colleague across the aisle will tonight probably be attempting, as well as he can, to justify this particular course of action. 1 will leave that to him. Obviously there are certain benefits for Canadian business, shipping and other elements, that will to some extent justify, at least in the minds of the government, this rather unusual exercise on behalf of the Export Development Corporation. On the other hand, 1 feel there are higher and better priorities for the Export Development Corporation. The answer given by the minister on February 11, reads as follows:
Madam Speaker, this is not at all unusual. It is an ordinary export financing operation of the EDC.
That, Mr. Speaker, is manifestly stretching the point.
1 do not know how many other projects we are financing around the world which involve building a monument to a revolution in a country where the money could probably be very much better utilized for some other purpose. 1 do not know if there are any other countries building similar monuments. If there are, perhaps the minister's answer may be factually correct, but I would sure like to hear about them tonight.
In addition, as a matter of principle, I and many other Canadians would like to know the reason for the secrecy surrounding the interest and repayment terms. I suppose it will be contended, as it often is, that commercial necessity or confidentiality is the criterion. In my view, Sir, this is utter nonsense. Canadian taxpayers are entitled to know what their government agencies are doing, on what basis and for what purpose. But this government, Sir, has never believed that, and it is unrealistic for me, I suppose, to expect any answer on that score tonight.
My feelings are not unique, and I am getting quite a bit of mail on this matter. One letter which came in today from a Toronto businessman pretty well sums up the feelings, I think, of many Canadians when they read about these subsidized projects involving gas projects in the Soviet Union, which are of doubtful strategic value and cost Canadian taxpayers millions of dollars in subsidies, or Algerian monuments. This letter is addressed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacGuigan). It bears a fairly recent postmark, although we cannot expect too much from the mail these days. As you know, Mr. Speaker, it costs 30 cents to mail a letter, which works out to about one cent a day in delivery time. The letter reads:
The attached newspaper item was published on the same page as the obituaries and rightly so, as it represents what is surely the death of reason! May I, as a poor slob of a taxpayer-
And this is the way the man feels:
-please have explained to me, how $46,700,000 can be justified to the benefit of my fellow Canadians, with the exception of Messrs Lavalin International of Montreal, Quebec.
I should say at this point, Mr. Speaker, that company is only doing its job as an aggressive Canadian corporation. I have no quarrel with it; the priorities are what bother me. The letter goes on to say:
1 am told that we (the public) must use restraint and conserve our monetary resources, and not buy unnecessary things like homes, automobiles, appliances, or anything that might improve the employment problems, directly involved. And yet you have authorized the outrageous amount to build a bloody monument-
I know that you don't give a damn what people like me think, but perhaps you could make an exception in this case and explain to me the following:
Now, this is a Canadian taxpayer and businessman speaking. He says:
If you feel that you have to waste these funds anyway, why not on a hospital, school, factory, or something useful.
My sentiments, exactly, Sir. He goes on:
What are the terms of the loan and what interest?
Do you really think we will get an answer to that? I do not think so, Sir. It goes on:
How many Canadians are going to benefit from the actual construction and from the effects, after the ... thing is finished.
In fairness, there are jobs being created there now. As I said, it is not all on the down side. However, that is a good point. Next June, when this accelerated project is over and the people of Algeria have their monument, what lasting good is it going to do for the people of either Canada or Algeria? The letter goes on:
How much (dollars) business did Canada do with Algeria in 1981, that the Algerians actually paid for, and 1 don't mean a Third World grant.
So you see, Mr. Speaker, there is a real problem, as far as our taxpayers are concerned, in using our Export Development Corporation to finance a project like this. Despite Canadian content, despite the good things that may be said in terms of making a breakthrough in Algeria with Canadian technology-if this occurs it is not all on the down side-the problem is compounded greatly, Sir, by the persistent lack of information and co-operation which agencies like the Export Development Corporation put in the way of taxpayers like this man who wants to know what the heck is going on. Many Canadians do not mind helping the Third World, either through an Export Development Corporation loan, or through CIDA, as far as that goes. That is an entirely different matter, but even in this regard we cannot find out what is going on.
As members opposite may know, we are presently negotiating to spend about $200 million in Trinidad and Tobago to construct two airports and a prison. I do not know whether this is a good thing, but it is a sure thing. We could certainly use money like that, and like the money provided through the EDC alone to Algeria, here in Canada.
February 23, 1982

I have recently written to the minister in charge of economic development about industries in Nova Scotia which have a high export potential, such as Sydney Steel and Hawker Siddeley Canada Ltd. in Trenton, Nova Scotia. We would love to see the Canadian Export Development Corporation financing steel rails or railway rolling stock which would be useful to Third World countries and would protect the jobs of thousands of Nova Scotians.
I see that my allotted time has just about expired.
However, instead of that, we have a priority, through a very potentially useful export development agency which is utilized by a Third World country, to build a monument, financed to some extent by the people of Canada on a subsidized basis. We do not know the terms. We do not know, in fact, if it is a soft loan or if we will ever get it back. I am sure none of us in this chamber, including my hon. friend opposite who will be very ably defending this transaction, really believes that this was the purpose for which the Export Development Corporation was founded or that this is the highest and best use of this kind of credit. Much as this may appeal to the nationalistic and historical tendencies of the Algerian people who want to build a monument, I think there are quite a few other things they could build first.


Céline Hervieux-Payette: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to give some clarification to the hon. member.

In December, the Export Development Corporation agreed to provide $47.6 million or 85 per cent of the value of a contract awarded to Lavalin International for the first phase of an important project in Algeria. This contract includes design, engineering, services, construction management and the provision of Canadian goods and services. All this, Mr. Speaker, means providing 3,000 man-years of employment in Canada.
This project, the main purpose of which is to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Algerian independence, includes the building of facilities and public works. In fact, the monument to the martyrs will be built within the context of a vast development project including the building of public facilities such as museums, shops, etc. The financing provided for this project is part of a credit margin of $1.2 billion agreed upon in 1980 between the Export Development Corporation and the Algerian Development Bank. Therefore, the financing of this project is normal for the provision of Canadian goods and services and is similar to the type of export financing granted by the EDC to other countries.
This is neither a subsidy nor a loan, but straight financing. Moreover, there are ongoing trade negotiations between the Lavalin Corporation and the Algerian authorities regarding another contract for the provision of goods and services within the same project. However, it would not be proper at this time to comment on the terms and conditions of this potential contract as long as the negotiations with the foreign customers
Adjournment Debate
have not been completed. Hon. members surely realize that in this case, the client's motive and sensitivity will not allow us to discuss this matter as long as the trade and financial arrangements have not been finalized. All further arrangements would be subject to the same terms and conditions as the present contract. However, consistent with a long-established policy in the area of export financing, interest rates are never made public, as they are negotiated in each case and their disclosure could jeopardize future transactions. I repeat that this is not a new approach which would apply to Algeria alone, but is the current policy of the EDC.



Raymond John Skelly: Mr. Speaker, this evening I would like to pursue, in more depth, a question I raised today in the House. Unfortunately, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) was not available to comment on it. This was unfortunate because it concerned the third and final report of Justice Dubin on air safety in Canada and the combination of roughly 247 extremely well-founded recommendations for improving the safety of the entire air transportation system in this country.
Within that report there were three key aspects to implementing the recommendations Justice Dubin laid out. Those three key areas involve reorganization of the department, a legislative process that would give force and effect to the recommendations that were proposed and, finally, a financial commitment that would see those recommendations put in place in an effective manner.
The first question related to the matter of reorganizing the department. What is basically needed here is a concept paper or a background paper that would allow the individuals in this country involved in the system to understand where the government is going and to learn of its commitment. There is also a question involving the Canadian aviation safety board, its structure and operation, its relationship to other federal departments and provincial authorities such as coroners and the Workmen's Compensation Board which, because of reneging on the federal air transport administration, has wound up involved in the air safety business. There is also the question regarding the enforcement branch, its structure and operation.
Canada has had some fairly effective laws and committed individuals in the field. Because of problems and a lack of resolve in the whole area of enforcement, our system has collapsed at least to the point where the government of the day and the population are seriously concerned about air safety and the need to strengthen this enforcement arm. Had enforcement been more rigourous at the senior levels, we would probably not have this problem before us in its present scope.
A very important part of reorganization is the placing of search and rescue under the aegis of the Ministry of Transport.

February 23, 1982
Adjournment Debate
This is a very significant and important role. We need information, whether it is a concept paper or some kind of a background information, to know where the government is going in this direction and to learn of its commitment.
The second point the government might consider in the development of such a paper is the idea of explaining the legislative process which will be used to implement the recommendations to the people of Canada. The group task force on the Aeronautics Act has been struggling valiantly for years with this project. I suppose we will not see the fruits of their labours in the term of this Parliament. If we wait too long for a finished piece of legislation which encompasses everything in the Dubin report, we will probably never have it during this Parliament. This will pass on as a temporary embarrassment, and the government will forget about it.
On the other hand, it would be interesting to learn from the government what its intentions are in terms of providing us with the legislative program to implement the Canadian aviation safety board, the delegation of authority to the enforcement branch, the strengthening of airworthiness and personnel licensing.
My last request, and this would be extremely interesting, is to have the government's intentions outlined in the form of the background paper on the financial commitment that will be required to put this entire report and its recommendations, which the minister has already endorsed, in place. This will all require capital investment for airport improvements, navigation system improvements, communications, and financial commitments for radar.
The parliamentary secretary today again announced, and this has been announced I do not know how many times, the $217 million ramp program. I do not know how many times we have heard about this. We know the program will be phased in over ten years. There are some very serious questions about it. We need information, information that should be made public. The program should be accelerated, and it must ensure that the equipment is the top state of the art. We need a concept or white paper to tell us what are the intentions of the government. Financial commitments for training programs are extremely important. Who will bear this burden? Will it be the taxpayers? What will be the effect on small carriers? How will these costs be passed through to private aviation? These are all questions in terms of the financial commitment of the government on which we need some information.
There has to be a solid commitment on the part of the government; a sharing of information; a commitment of
financial and human resources to put the recommendations of the Dubin report in place. I hope the parliamentary secretary will be able to shed some light on these matters.


Robert Theodore Bockstael: Mr. Speaker, since the tabling of the first volume of the Commission of Inquiry on Aviation Safety, the minister has made a continual effort to respond quickly and positively to Judge Dubin's recommendations.
Legislation to establish a Canadian aviation safety board, as recommended in Volume I of the report, is well advanced and should be ready for tabling in Parliament late this spring. As recently announced, a newly published compliance and enforcement manual gives effect to recommendations in Volume II, that a more vigorous enforcement policy be adopted. Amendments to the Aeronautics Act, also recommended in Volume II, are being developed and a bill will be brought before Parliament at the earliest practicable date.
The third and final volume is highly technical and requires some study. However, the minister will give it high priority and the hon. member should have confidence that the minister will respond to it in the same positive manner as he responded to the previous volumes.
Action has already been taken in some areas identified by Judge Dubin in Volume III. For example, emergency locator transmitters, conforming to new standards, will again become mandatory as of April 1, 1982. As for upgrading radar, tendering for a new radar system, expected to cost over $217 million, will begin in a few weeks.
On previous occasions the hon. member has called for the removal of the senior management of the air administration. The minister has asked for co-operation and open-mindedness on the part of his officials in responding to Judge Dubin's fundamental reassessment of the civil aviation system. The positive action taken on Volumes I and II demonstrates that he has so far received it. The minister fully expects that he will continue to enjoy the support of his officials in promoting and maintaining the safest possible civil aviation system.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
At 10.27 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, February 24, 1982