1983-04-26

GOVERNMENT ORDERS


Mr. Cyril Keeper (Winnipeg-St. James) moved:: That this House condemn the tragic implications of monetarist economic policies adopted by this Government that resulted in 24 per cent unemployment among young Canadians and that deny reasonable job prospects for the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
He said: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to open this debate with regard to youth unemployment in the country. That is an ironic statement in light of the tragedy that is facing our youth today. It is absolutely necessary to bring to the attention of the House the plight of our young people and it is crucial that we bring to the attention of the Government the concern that we on this side of the House have for them and their need for jobs. It is important that we bring to the attention of the Government the feelings, the concerns, the hopes and aspirations of young people across the country. That is why we put forward the motion with regard to youth unemployment and that is why we chose to make this the priority of the day for the House.
[DOT]	(mo)
Young people in Canada today, according to Statistics Canada, are unemployed at the rate of 34.4 per cent in the month of March, which means that there are some 650,000 young Canadians out of work. This compares, Mr. Speaker, with an unemployment rate for adults in the country as a whole of 13.9 per cent-that is unadjusted, Mr. Speaker-and some 1,658,000 Canadians out of work, again according to Statistics Canada. These statistics do not take into account the discouraged or underemployed worker. If one compares the
650,000	unemployed young people with the 1,658,000 of the general population who are unemployed, one finds that somewhere between one-third and one-half of unemployed Canadians today are young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Therefore to a very large extent the unemployment problem in this country is a problem of unemployed young people.
Clearly today there are previously unheard of numbers of middle-aged people, heads of households, who are used to steady, well paid employment and are without work. This is, indeed, an unprecedented tragedy which is happening in our country, certainly since the great Depression of the 1930s.
However, a very significant and very important part of the unemployment problem today is the unemployed young people which comprise one-third to one-half of the general population.
One of the reasons it is important to bring this tragedy to the attention of this House today, Mr. Speaker, is the over-all economic policies of the Government of the day and the failure of those economic policies to provide work for Canadians. The young people of Canada suffer much more from unemployment than many of their older brethren due to the policies of this Government as illustrated in its budget, which gives very little hope to people who are unemployed. The Government, by its own actions, by its own economic analyses and its own economic papers, has accepted the extremely high levels of unemployment. It has accepted that for this year there will be some 12.4 per cent unemployed overall. It has accepted that in the medium to long term there will be at least 10 per cent unemployment.
Looking from the perspective of a whole decade, the Government will be seeking to bring down unemployment to something like 7 per cent or 8 per cent, which shows that the Government has really accepted a very harsh view of the world, a view which leaves a very significant proportion of our people unemployed and an even higher level of unemployment among young people. This Government with its policies and actions, therefore, leaves very little hope for the future to young people in the present circumstances.
Young people suffer particularly from unemployment, Mr. Speaker, because, first of all, they lack experience in the job market. When they go to an employer to ask for a job they are told they must have experience, so this lack becomes a barrier to their getting work. This problem is particularly difficult these days because even people who have considerable experience and demonstrated capabilities in a particular occupation are unemployed. Young people also lack training. There is a waiting list for all the training programs in this country. Many people who apply for training under these programs find themselves on those waiting lists. Even many of those people today who are trained and have skills are unemployed, so it is doubly difficult for the young person today to get work because of lack of experience and training in a world where many who have that experience and training are themselves unemployed.
It is particularly important, Mr. Speaker, to pay attention to the plight of young people today because they are forming their first impressions, their views of the working world. Work, Mr. Speaker, should be a satisfying and self-fulfilling activity,

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something which gives a person an opportunity to serve the community and grow and learn. But by today's standards young people's impression of the work world and work is just the opposite. They are unable to find work or, when they do, it is insecure and short term. Their experience in the work world is one of frustration.
This is not a good attitude to be fostering in this land. It is important, if a nation is to be strong and its people are to be happy, that work be a satisfying, self-fulfilling activity and that people see work from that perspective. They cannot do it unless they experience it that way, and young people today entering the labour market are experiencing frustration, disillusionment and hopelessness. Young people entering the work world today find they cannot get work, even given their best efforts, and they are unable to deal with this new, harsh reality. They end up with a feeling of powerlessness.
It is important that we take note of that feeling, Mr. Speaker, because in Canada young people form their political ideas, a notion of themselves as an active citizenry, much later than they do in other western democracies such as the United States or Great Britain. The fact that young people coming on to the job market end up frustrated and powerless has great significance for our democracy. In the final analysis democracy depends upon the faith and belief that you can make a difference in your world, that you can have a real impact upon what is happening to you and your community. If the feeling is just the opposite, then their whole approach to democratic decision making is going to be one of apathy rather than one of participation. And it is crucial in a democracy to have an active citizenry.
The tragedy of youth unemployment is not only that they have a lack of income, Mr. Speaker. That is significant and it should be paid attention to by this House, but it also relates to the social sense, the quality of community and political life in this country. Not all young people are on the job market looking for work 12 months of the year. There is a significant number of young people in the training and educational institutes, colleges and universities. In fact, there are probably more people in university today than ever before, because they read the newspapers and see what is happening on the street and they know there are extremely high levels of unemployment. Therefore many have postponed their entering the job market and university enrolment levels have ballooned. We are going to have to keep an eye on this. These people are going to be graduating and when they do, they will need employment. The Government brought down its National Training Act a full year ago and started to train young people for new occupations. A year from now, when those young people start graduating from their community colleges, they are going to need work and if they do not get it they are going to start asking: Why have we trained? They are going to feel double disillusionment and disappointment and alienation.
Seeing no prospect in the budget of employment for these people when their training is up paints a picture of a dismal future, a future about which the Government has chosen not to do anything significant. However, the point I wanted to make about students is that they depend upon employment as well. While they are going to school, there are a number of months in which they are looking for work, and they look for work for a number of reasons. One of the reasons relates to the fact that students pay a significant proportion of their own education costs and, all across the country, tuition fees are rising, at least in part, because of the restraint in transfer payments from the federal Government to provincial Governments. However, tuition fees are rising and the percentage of the cost of education which a student pays is increasing. Therefore, the summer employment of students, the capacity of students to earn and save money for their own education, is very crucial and increasingly important.
However, not only do students seek summer employment to help pay for their own education, they also seek it for the experience of work, for the pleasure of productivity, in order to get out there in the world and find out what the work world is like so they can begin more clearly to define their aspirations for the future, what kind of services they want to provide to the community, what kind of employment they would like to engage in. Therefore, employment for students is crucial in terms of their being able to afford their education and also to learn from their experience.
I would like to say a few words about the student employment programs and youth employment programs of the Government. I have in my hand a copy of "The Budget in Brief'. There is a section dealing with direct employment programs and one dealing with youth programs. Not only have the Government's general economic policies failed to provide employment for youths, but its specific youth employment programs fall far short of the mark as well. They do not reach the target, let alone score a bull's-eye.
I mention these programs rather than just economic policies in general because, even if we had a booming economy, we all know from experience over the last couple of decades that it would still be necessary to have special programs for youth in order to provide them with adequate employment programs.
On page 7 of "The Budget in Brief' of April 19, 1983, under "Youth Programs", there is reference to an additional $70 million which has been allocated for the Summer Canada Program, etc. This would leave one with the impression that on budget night, April 19, 1983, the Government took $70 million out of its pot and put it into the Summer Canada youth programs, $70 million of new money. It refers to "additional dollars". One would have thought that it found the money in the same pot that it found the $200 million to save the reputation of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde).
I have consulted with a number of people including the Canadian Federation of Students. To the best that we can piece the information together, this additional $70 million has been announced at least twice now. Some time in December or
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January, the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) announced some $100 million for Summer Canada youth programs and then some time later, in February or March, raised it to $170 million. The Government now takes that same additional $70 million and announces it again in the budget. Therefore, while the Government was able to find $200 million to save the reputation of the Minister of Finance, or at least to paper it over, it has simply reannounced the additional $70 million.
The additional disappointment about the $70 million is the fact that if one compares the amount which the Government is spending this year on youth programs, $170 million, to the amount that it spent in 1979-and I forget the exact figure but it was around $112 million-one finds that the amount of dollars which the Government is putting into Summer Canada for youth in real terms, taking inflation into account at about 10 per cent, is the same this year as it was in 1979. The real dollar commitment, adjusted for inflation, is at the same level as it was in 1979, even though we are all aware that the economic circumstances are very different from what they were a couple of years ago. As well, the need of young people for employment is much greater this summer than it was a couple of years ago. I point this out specifically because it is important for the Government to have adequate youth programs.
Let me briefly mention the two other announcements made in this document. One concerns Katimavik which provides $40 million for 4,000 participants. I must say that although that is commendable, Katimavik is not really an employment program. It is a program that provides an opportunity to young people to serve their communities. It is not a program which provides a full wage for a full day's work; it is an opportunity for youth to serve their community at below minimum wage. While it is a good program and a worthy idea, I suggest that to list it as direct support for employment is misleading. Once again, while it is a good opportunity it is not an employment program.
The other announcement of direct support for employment which I want to comment on briefly is the one under the Department of National Defence, which provides $75 million over two fiscal years to hire 5,000 young people. Obviously there will be many young people lining up at the Department of National Defence to take advantage of this opportunity because they need work wherever they can find it. Of course, young people will join the Armed Forces, like anyone else, since they want to serve their country and take advantage of this option. The difficulty is that if there are no other real options for young people, they will feel obliged to take this option when they should have choices.
This brings me to another aspect of my concern about youth. The value of youth is the hope that they bring to the country. Therefore it is important for us to provide significant employment for young people, so they can gain experience as well as
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pay for their education and ultimately grow and add to the strength of our country.
Youth are not only concerned about themselves. They are concerned about the survival of this planet upon which we live. The youth of today have taken a great deal of initiative to fight the efforts to test the Cruise missile in this country. They tie this issue to employment as well by pointing out that many more jobs can be provided through social spending than military spending.
I see that my time is almost up, but let me say that it is very important for the Government to support the efforts of youth to disarm this world because it is that kind of idealism that will build a better country for the future. Rather than adopting the hawkish attitude of the Government toward the world, we need the hope of youth and should support them in order to make that hope flower.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Questions or comments? Debate.


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to participate in this because it certainly represents an issue that has been of primary concern to Members of the Government and to me personally as Minister of Employment and Immigration. It is an issue that I believe deserves a fair, open and good exchange of views. However, I would hope that we might avoid the traditionally expected Opposition tendency to wag fingers, lay blame and try to find a culprit or scapegoat by accusing the Government of acting improperly. I think the issue we are examining deserves much better than that.
It is an issue which requires a sensible and common sense approach. It is a problem which has been with us, is with us now and will continue to be with us and it represents one of the most significant, social and economic circumstances that we, as Canadians, face. But we do not face it just by ourselves. I do not know whether Members of the House have had an opportunity just recently to read the front page story in the New York Times. The story described the serious plight of European young people who are faced with this issue. Unemployment has been the subject of a wide number of papers and examinations by Governments around the world.
This phenomenon was born out of the baby boom of the Second World War. Over the past 10 or 12 years we have been watching the enormous acceleration of young people into the labour market. The numbers of young people coming into the job market in this decade has almost doubled that of decades before. We are dealing with very large volumes of young people who want a job and are expecting a job. In any of the traditional occupations, ways of providing employment are no longer there.
At the same time as we have been receiving large numbers of young people in the job market, we have also been experiencing a change in the job market. The questionable pattern of moving toward jobs that require high degrees of

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skill, far more training and background and the attempt to come to grips with that particular issue is at the centre, and should be at the centre, of our debate. What we have to recognize is the issue of youth employment. It is not simply a product of the existing recession that we are in; it is an ongoing problem which will represent one of the major issues with which we will have to contend for the rest of this decade.
I would recommend to Hon. Members that they look at the documents I tabled in this House last week during the budget debate entitled "Perspective and Labour Market Policy Framework for the 1980s". I believe it gives an accurate and a good account of the kind of demography and work force which we are looking at and how we as a Parliament will be asked to deal with those issues on a continuing basis.
It is wrong to suggest, as the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James (Mr. Keeper) is trying to suggest, that nothing is being done, that everything is going to hell in a hand basket and that no one cares. 1 want to take this opportunity to describe to Members of the House some of the issues into which we have been entering and as well describe some of the direct areas of progress that we are making in coming to grips with this issue.
First, I would like to say that if Hon. Members want to measure the efforts in which we are engaged by sheer dollar or volume terms, I would point out that in my own Department we spend about $2.5 million a day on the employment and training of young people. In fact, in the 1982-83 fiscal year we spent something like $900 million in a combination of training and employment programs directly targeted at the interests of young people. We provided unemployment and training services to over two million young people this past year alone. In the kind of wide-ranging activities we are able to provide, the largest clientele we serve is under the age of 24. We have been investing in a number of initiatives which I think will provide for a very hopeful future for young people.
The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James resides, as I do, in the Province of Manitoba. I draw to his attention the announcement that I made last Friday in our own Province. The announcement described that, as a result of the investment under the skills growth fund, we were able to invest in close to 1,000 additional training places in Manitoba alone in high technology areas. This has provided a wide range of new training opportunities in computers, robotics, advanced electronics and heavy machinery that we have developed in Manitoba through that investment by the federal Government's skills growth fund in the distribution of training facilities in northern Manitoba and on Indian reserves. We have taken mobile training vans into the rural areas and we are providing a brand-new training centre in the City of Winnipeg.
If the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James is trying to suggest that we are standing still and are not actively engaged in doing things, I would say that he should probably invest 15 cents to buy a newspaper so that he can learn what is going on in his own area. He will be able to discover that the activity in which we are engaging is providing a very sound and important foundation for economic growth.
I can repeat those examples right across the country. We invested in Holland College in Prince Edward Island to train an additional 90 young people in marine technology. We have just put $4 million into the British Columbia Institute of Technology for a new CAD/CAM program, again providing major training for young people in those areas.
We invested something like $14 million in 17 different community colleges and institutions in the Province of Ontario. This will provide something like several thousand additional training opportunities. I could repeat those examples to demonstrate that we are aware of the necessity of addressing the employment needs of young people, primarily by investing in their future, thereby ensuring that they will have the skills and training to allow them to compete for the new kinds of jobs the decade will bring.
In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, I think it is important to point out the evolution that we have gone through in the development of the youth employment strategy that was announced in last week's budget. Last summer we were very conscious of the increasing problem of youth employment and a need to do something about it. We introduced a number of test programs. For example, we started ten experimental youth job corps programs in ten metropolitan centres across Canada. The job corps idea is to help young people who have been on the sidelines in the job market, those who are disadvantaged or who have been chronically unemployed, get counselling, guidance, work experience and training all at the same place. It will allow them to come out of the disadvantaged category and move into the job market.
We have also introduced a network of specialized youth employment centres across Canada. They will provide special placing and support for young people. We have also introduced a number of trial experiments on a wage-subsidy program through the PED Program. This will allow us to test how we can work with the private sector to provide an incentive for young people to get that first job. We used our opportunities last summer to test some of those new programs and to determine what worked well and what did not.
Following that, Mr. Speaker, in January, 1983 I met with all provincial Ministers of Labour and Manpower and introduced a paper on youth employment. I asked them for their cooperation and co-ordination in our youth strategy. Youth employment represents unquestionably one of the most serious issues facing all Governments. But this problem cannot be solved by one Government acting alone. It has to be a combination of efforts.
I am pleased to report that the provincial Ministers have responded. Since that time we have had a series of senior officials working at how we can co-ordinate the various youth employment training programs across Canada. What became very clear in those discussions last January was the necessity of dealing with a problem that has been endemic in our employment market for the last two decades. Young people face special difficulty in the job market getting that first time job experience. That is the breakthrough they have to make, and it is the major barrier which they have to overcome. Unlike
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many European countries that have a very well defined transition period between formal schooling and work, Canada does not. It is almost a two-year national apprenticeship program. In Canada we have never adopted that, partly because of our fragmented educational system. But we have never adopted the notion that there has to be a transition period between formal schooling and work so that a young person can get work skills and on-the-job training. That is an idea I put forward that we should grow toward, but how can we make it happen?
I think one of the most important productive results of the budget last Tuesday was that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) provided us with an opportunity to enter into a major new youth employment program, an interim program which will allow us to provide direct subsidies to private business, to small business in particular, to universities, to school boards and to non-profit organizations to hire young persons for on-the-job training, so that they are provided with job experience in the workplace combined with training. The $95 million to launch that program in the first year of operation will provide close to 35,000 young people with that opportunity. I did not hear the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James mention that particular initiative, probably because he knows that it is too good or too effective.
It was based upon the proposals we received from a number of youth organizations asking for the opportunity to break down the barrier. We now have that opportunity. We now have the resources to enter into that new interim youth program. It is my intention as Employment Minister to consult first with private business to gain its views on how it should operate and also to work with young people and youth organizations in its implementation. To carry that forward, we will be holding a national conference in August in Newfoundland on youth employment. We have invited a number of the major youth organizations to join with us in a discussion on how we can mount that major youth strategy.
I think this represents to all of us a major launch forward into a new kind of youth employment posture, one that will be combined with the continuation of the youth job corps system which we have established such as Katimavik, and the additional programs in the Department of National Defence, to supplement that. In the budget the Minister of Finance included $280 million in addition to the other moneys in Departments already going into youth employment. It is additional money to provide young people with that first-time opportunity.
It would be wrong to suggest that nothing is being done. In fact, what we see is a fairly well articulated strategy beginning last summer, moving through the proper steps of consultation and resulting in the budget announcement of a new youth employment strategy on the part of the Government. What we really need now is a full partnership with and participation of other sectors of the economy. We need the assistance of the school boards and provincial Governments. Certainly we need
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the full partnership of labour and business in helping us to mount this new youth employment initiative. It will be our intention to seek that consultation with the idea that it must be a national effort and commitment. It is not something one Government alone should be able to mount. All Canadians must concentrate and devote their attention toward coming to grips with the problems associated with young people. That is really the direction and thrust we are taking in Government to deal with the employment issue.
Also we recognize that we must deal with the other side of the ledger, the people who are still in school. As I pointed out, in that area we will be spending over $1 billion this year in providing new high technology training for close to 275,000 or
300,000	Canadians of whom over 50 per cent are young people. Also this year alone we will be investing $100 million in new training facilities, modernizing equipment and bringing in the new kinds of technology so that young people can be trained in the work of the future.
Also we have started a number of support systems which the Hon. Member mentioned, of summer employment for those who are still in school. The federal Government will be providing direct employment jobs this year for over 70,000 young people. We are hoping that that figure will be matched equally by the efforts of provincial and municipal Governments. If they will make a similar kind of effort, we could be providing double the number of jobs directly by Government.
In addition, we recognize that it is the private sector which must provide the major source of employment for young people. It often disturbs me that the New Democratic Party ignores that fact. It does not pay attention to the potential and capability of the private sector in providing young people with employment. That Party seems somehow to gloss over the necessity of ensuring that private employers play their role. In fact, we launched last week a major information campaign to get private employers to provide jobs for summer students. We will be opening some 400 youth employment centres across Canada which will provide places for employers to post available jobs on the market and opportunities for young people to obtain those jobs. We are not only making an appeal to traditional private sector employers but to people who want work done around their homes or offices. It will require a special effort this summer. The information and advertising campaign is designed to ensure that if they have any kind of job, they should contact one of the 400 youth employment centres, post it on the board and we will get a young person to do the job this summer.
It is my hope that through this debate Hon. Members of the Opposition will offer their services to make this program work and will co-operate in ensuring that activities within their own constituency offices will be directed toward that initiative. Rather than using their time and energies in the pursuit of criticism, hopefully they will turn them to somewhat more constructive pursuits during these very critical summer months. I know the Hon. Member for Saskatoon West (Mr. COMMONS DEBATES
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Hnatyshyn) will be a major and active supporter of the program. I can see that he has already acknowledged it and given us his support. We will mark his name on the list.
These are the kinds of efforts we are attempting to provide, but I want to return to one fundamental issue. We must recognize that during this period there are no quick-fix solutions. In fact, it was interesting that the opening speaker for the New Democratic Party did not make any offers as to what he would do. He did not have any sort of magic solutions to the problem; he simply criticized what was being done. I think the issue requires much more than that. It will require the best of our creative abilities and energy as Parliamentarians to address this issue, to use our resources effectively and to provide for a better partnership among all major players in the economy.
What the economists call the structural problem of youth employment will be a continuing problem. We must work away at it. We must develop better techniques for bringing people into the labour market. We must make better use of our teaching and training institutions. We must go into the schools and try to give better guidance and information to young people so that they will choose careers which will lead to jobs.
When I talk to young people in the high schools in my constituency, it disturbs me greatly that many of them are preparing themselves in grades eight, nine and ten for jobs which will not be there four or five years from now. The basic information about the changing nature of the job world is not being transmitted or passed into their hands. In passing I want to say that we are trying to address that issue through the implementation of our new Canadian Occupational Projection System. We are trying to provide a much better navigational system for the job market by being able to predict and forecast where future job markets will be. We can obtain that information and give it to guidance counsellors in the schools, to teachers, parents and young people, so that they can begin preparing themselves for careers which will be real ones.
When we go into the schools and talk to young women in the system, they say that they are going to be clerks, stenographers or work in offices. We have to tell them that in four or five years maybe 40 per cent or 50 per cent of that work will be eliminated. They say that no one told them. This simply points out the necessity of working on all fronts with educators to ensure that the basic training and education they offer is relevant and contemporary to labour market needs and to ensure that young people have access to that information.
I am simply suggesting that the issue of youth employment cannot be solved by the wave of a magic wand. It will require a very major combined effort on the part of all sectors of our economy. I hope this debate will help generate that kind of interest, involvement and particularly that kind of co-operation, so that we can address what I consider to be the number one national priority.
[DOT] (USO)


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, the Member for Winnipeg-Fort Garry (Mr. Axworthy) is clearly aware that the NDP has long been calling for a serious industrial strategy in the country to
create long-term employment for everyone who wants to work. In terms of immediate action, we have called for significant action on public works and a decent tax break for low and moderate income people to stimulate consumer demand.
I direct a question to the Minister. He talked about economists and structural unemployment among youth. This echoes the Minister of Finance's general statements about structural unemployment for the general population and leads into an acceptance of an extraordinarily high level of unemployment for the general population and for youth. Given the Minister's long list of activities that the Government is involved in and the fact that today there is an unemployment rate among youth of 23.4 per cent, and given his stated concern for students this summer, will he tell this House what level of youth unemployment he expects this summer during the months of June and July? Does he expect that his programs will have a significant impact on the unemployment rate among youth? What are his expectations in terms of their impact on the social reality of this country?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying that this is the first time we have had a clear-cut endorsement of our budget from the New Democratic Party. The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James says that the New Democratic Party wanted a public works program, and breaks for small business. They wanted these kinds of incentives. That is exactly what the Minister of Finance offered last Tuesday. Announcements are now being made in that regard. We certainly welcome the Member's full-scale endorsement of the initiatives taken last Tuesday and we will be glad to recognize that endorsement.


Mr. de Jong:: Boy, are you slippery!


Lloyd Axworthy: Slippery? I think it is wonderful that the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James has now accepted the kind of strategy that we have put forward.
As for his question about statistics, I note how the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James has shifted his ground. He wants to talk about statistics now. As I said during the course of my remarks about the document I tabled last week, we recognize the reality that it is a very serious issue. But the problem will not be solved haranguing or by pointing out the failures of one group or the other. It will be solved by managing it and by coping with it.
We have tried to put forward a strategy that clearly enunciates the method that we believe will succeed in dealing with this problem by working with the private sector in developing a wage subsidy program for on-the-job training so that we can overcome the barrier that young people face, and by using the job corps program as a way of giving chronically unemployed young people the kind of support that they need. We are looking for the same endorsement of those kinds of programs that the Hon. Member just gave to the general budget. We are looking for a willingness to go back and persuade provincial Governments, municipal Governments, the private sector and labour to co-operate so that we can create a national coalition.
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We are hoping that through those kinds of efforts yes, we can succeed in providing jobs for young people.
Mr. Speaker, because Members of the Opposition love to get hung up on statistical somersaults, I want to point out a statistical phenomenon that exists: the more jobs you create, the more people you are bringing back to the job market; therefore, the indicators do not change but more jobs are being provided. That is what the Government is interested in.


Mr. Ogle:: Mr. Speaker, I would ask the Minister a question along the general philosophical line of what is seen in the future for work in general but particularly work for young people. I know the Minister is aware that the problem that exists in Canada is a very real one that is not going to go away instantly, and as he said, there is no magic wand that will take it away. However, one must look at the Canadian situation in relation to the whole world, particularly in relation to countries in Latin America where the majority of the population is young. The world population is growing at the greatest rate in the youth sector and any future planetary economy will be based on all the people in the world working somewhere.
I would ask the Minister if he has in his Department any sort of futuristic planners who are looking at what will happen to Canada in its relationship with the whole world as this massive number of young people come on to the labour markets of this planet. Does he have a futuristic group that will plan for other ways to look upon work in Canada? This may sound a little bit funny, but will it always be necessary for one to have a job to get an income as many of the traditional jobs that provided income in the past disappear? What group or groups will do the creative thinking for the future which, to my mind, will differ from even the recent past?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, the question of the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ogle) will somewhat tax my well known capacity for being succinct, but I will attempt to answer his question very quickly: Yes, we do have a policy planning unit. I would refer him to the document that we tabled last week on employment perspectives in the 1980s, which does set out some of the forecasting projections that we see. He will notice in that document that we are projecting, by 1985 or 1986, at least in Canada, that the number of young people coming into the job market, people born during the post-war baby boom, will decline. In fact, the number of young people coming into the market will be almost cut in half by that time. Therefore, we will go back to a pattern of unemployment that will be closer to the norm than it has been for the past seven or eight years.
We believe the answer to the question of youth unemployment is to ensure that youth have adequate and effective skills to meet the new world of high technology and information that we are moving toward. That is why we are investing so many of our resources in a new training system across Canada, a program that is central to our strategy.
Mr. Speaker, in relation to the Hon. Member's larger question about what we are doing in the world, I do not know
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if we have quite been able to grasp the full global significance of that. I would point to one example that the Hon. Member would be interested in. We are starting to bring an increasing number of minors and young people from some of the refugee camps and displaced persons camps in Central America to Canada to start training them in new skills. An officer from my Department is in El Salvador at the present time negotiating a specific program for the training of young El Salvadorans in Canada so they can take those skills back to their own country.


Mr. McGrath:: Mr. Speaker, I have a succinct question for the Minister that I hope will elicit a succinct response. There are now 600,000 young people unemployed. We are anticipating another 300,000 unemployed when the new graduates come on to the job market. So we are looking at one million young people unemployed in Canada. As a result of budget initiatives, can the Minister tell us how many jobs for young people he anticipates will be created this year both from indirect budget initiatives and from direct spending by his Department?


Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Speaker, in answer to that question, I refer the Hon. Member back to the statements made by the Minister of Finance indicating that over the next two years we expect some 600,000 new jobs to be created in this country. A large percentage of those new jobs will go to young people. As pointed out, in my own Department about 50 per cent of our clients are those under the age of 24.
The basic thrust of the budget is to start accelerating the pattern of recovery that we are now entering into. To facilitate that acceleration, we will provide the opening of a number of job opportunities. The announcements made yesterday by the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais) and the Minister of Economic Development (Mr. Johnston) in the Capital Works Program will provide many jobs. A large percentage of those jobs will go to young people. A large percentage of jobs in the housing field will go to young people. A large percentage of jobs in the area of new technology will go to young people.
In our own programs, my Department is trying to provide for a kind of bridging of the programs, such as the 35,000 new jobs that would be created directly through our wage subsidy, our new interim program that will be targeted at the young people who are most chronically unemployed, as well as the
125,000	young people who go into our training programs each year; but at this point I cannot add those programs up. I would say to the Hon. Member that I expect he and I will have the opportunity to exchange further information tomorrow when we get the estimates, and I will be glad to try to provide full totals for him at that time.


Mr. Albert Cooper (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to enter the debate today as it is an important one. The whole issue of youth concerns all of us.

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I was interested in the Minister's remarks. He started out by saying that we should not point to the sins of the Government. Why is that? Certainly the Government has to take responsibility for some of its actions that have contributed to youth unemployment in the country. The Minister spent a great deal of time talking about Government spending, Government programs and how they would solve all sorts of problems; then he talked about the need for the private sector to create the jobs. I believe that is only lip service, Mr. Speaker. There are some Government programs but the question remains about what they will do for the private sector.
The National Energy Program took away literally thousands of jobs in the country but that matter was not addressed in the budget. Those jobs will not be back on the market this year. There were no changes to the tax regime that would stimulate and encourage the private sector and small business.
What I think is most significant about the budget is the fact that there is a great deal of talk about helping the private sector. We were hoping for some recovery this year but next year new taxes will come in that may stifle any revitalization of the economy that could take place in 1983.
The Minister talked about creating 600,000 new jobs. As my colleague from St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) stated, we find that 500,000 young people will be out looking for their first full-time job this year. They may get some of those jobs. The problem is serious when the Minister admits that unemployment is going to continue well into 1986 when we will still have an unemployment rate hovering around 10 per cent. That means youth unemployment will still be very high.
The problems that face all young people in Canada are staggering. At the moment we have 658,000 unemployed young Canadians, or 23.4 per cent. One out of every four young people in Canada is presently without a job. When we start to break the figures down we find that of the 2 million who are employed, roughly 700,000 are only employed parttime. Half the people who are employed part-time are looking for full-time jobs although they are not registered as unemployed. That brings in another 300,000 young people. They have a difficult time of it because they have no job security. Virtually always they receive low wages. I could give examples of businesses which keep people on part-time employment because they can pay them lower wages. Thus, they receive a sketchy training and have little opportunity in the future. The underemployed have a difficult time of it today.
The figures do not even consider what we call the "uncounted", the discouraged people who have quit looking for work and those who are making a tawdry living at best on the streets-the hidden unemployed. These young people are developing the worst possible attitude toward their future. They feel there is no future for them, and they have no pride because there is nothing they can do.
So, Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion. The people we are talking about, the young people, are the last to be hired and the first to be fired. They certainly need our attention and consideration and they need to see a demonstration of our concern.
I am glad that the motion we are addressing includes consideration of the situation of this year's graduates and what
they are going to face. Looking through some figures taken from various engineers' associations I find that since 1981 unemployment among engineers has risen by 500 per cent. This spring 7,000 graduates will be looking for new employment opportunities, and unemployment in the engineering field is already up by 500 per cent. Many of the graduates from last year have not found jobs, yet this new group is coming onstream. They will have little opportunity for employment.
When the Hon. Member drafted his motion he perhaps cast his net a little too narrowly. It is not monetarism alone that is responsible for the situation. There is a need for the Government to try and curb Government caused inflation. Its deficits, its intervention and its fiscal irresponsibility are among the root causes of youth and general unemployment in the country. In 1973 the gross debt was about $46 billion; we understand that today it is around $160 billion. That is certainly a significant increase, Mr. Speaker.
The Government does not seem inclined to do anything about its wasteful habits. It has looked around for someone to take the blame and has hit on the Bank of Canada. The Government chose not to do the necessary hard work itself. It did not stop the advocacy advertising that we have just seen on the Crow rate. That is the kind of thing that needs a great deal of money, just to bring the viewpoint of the Government to the public. It is a viewpoint that has not been discussed in Parliament and certainly is not reflected in legislation. It is what I call propaganda and is a considerable waste of Government funds. The Government has not watched the spending of Crown corporations and some examples of this have caused concern. A recent television program on Canadair's Challenger executive jet showed that it involved a cost of over $1.5 billion. Some jobs were created but Parliament still has to see a review of Canadair operations and has not had a chance to discuss the implications of the Government funds going into it.
Consolidated Computer has cost $125 million over the past ten years. That money has gone, Mr. Speaker; it is wasted. It could have been used to create jobs or as an incentive in the private sector, but instead it may well have contributed to inflation.
I am concerned that the motion does not really understand the impact of the broad range of Government policies. I mentioned the plight of engineering graduates. One of the major employers of engineers is the oil and gas industry. It used to employ a lot of engineering skills but neither that industry nor related industries have had a great need for engineers lately. That all came about as a result of the national energy policy. Two years ago I was in Calgary talking to employers of engineers and asking what opportunities were available to young engineers coming out of our universities. Formerly, those young people were able to go into head offices and negotiate a job as though they had five, 10 or 15 years' experience, the demand for their services was so strong. It is not there today. Since the National Energy Program was brought in those graduates have been looking for work.
April 26, 1983

The Minister from Quebec shakes his head, but I live in that area and I happen to know that people employed in that sector are no longer employed and no longer have that opportunity. That is true of those in related industries. There are a lot of industries which are related and are spin-offs from the energy sector. You do not see the growth that occurred in the towns and cities which once were booming and creating employment opportunities, not just for Albertans but for people right across the country. In my own riding there were people from Quebec, Ontario and virtually every Province in Canada who were employed. Today they do not have those jobs or that opportunity because of things like the National Energy Program.
We still import some 250,000 barrels of oil a day. The National Energy Program prices our petroleum products right out of the international market. We know those concerns are there because of the problems we are facing with natural gas exports. That programs which is demonstrative of what we could be encouraging in the private sector, is a real example of what is not being done. It is a contributor to our youth unemployment, not just for the engineers, as I mentioned, but for construction personnel. Anyone who knows anything about the energy sector knows that these projects which we have been talking about require literally thousands and thousands of people to work on them, from the unskilled to the most highly skilled. But that is not happening. There is no construction personnel. There are no "roughnecks" any more. In my area there used to be as many as 65 or 70 rigs going all the time, all of which employed young men and women. Today they are down to five, 10, 15. The jobs are gone.
What causes me some real concern is a new attitude which I sense is coming. I was very interested in the question which was just put to the Minister, and that is, where are we going in the future? What is the significance? What is happening? What causes me concern is this solution of work sharing, this idea of work sharing. Because we are not going to be able to provide employment for our young people in Canada on an ongoing basis, we are going to have them share jobs. I find that very offensive.
I come from a part of the country which is rich in resources, whether it be oil or gas, or the sands which can be turned into glass. There is the kind of opportunity in this country which is hard for us to imagine. People from other countries look at us and say: "My goodness, you have everything". We have everything and we still have a very small population. The question is, then, if we have all those opportunities and resources, why are our young people unemployed? I believe it has to be very clearly because of the fact that the Government has not provided any stimulus or incentive to see those resources brought onstream in order to create and provide opportunities for young people right across Canada.
Another concern, and I suppose this is the one most often referred to, is that of interest rates. I believe that interest rates over the last couple of years have had an impact on bankruptcies. In 1982 we had some 90 per cent more bankruptcies than in 1979. In 1982 there were some 10,700, close to 11,000
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bankruptcies. In 1983 we find that we already have about 2,800 bankruptcies in the first three months of this year.
That is a very serious problem because those businesses, those private sector small businesses which are going bankrupt, are not doing business, are not hiring and are not creating jobs for young Canadians. There is now a modest reprieve from the high interest rates of last year and the year before, but the question still remains, what is coming next? The Government has just told us in this last budget that we are going to be looking at deficits of over $20 billion for the next decade. That is obviously going to put pressure on the market and on interest rates, and it has to. The Hon. Member opposite should know that. When interest rates climb, business opportunities in this country and employment opportunities for our young Canadians must be affected.
The great concern, however, is that of youth unemployment. I believe that the Government is responsible for this problem in a number of ways. The problems our young people are facing are massive. We have over 600,000 unemployed, we have over
300,000	underemployed, we have approximately 600,000 seeking summer jobs, and we have over 500,000 who will be seeking their first full-time job this year. If we total up those figures we will find that it has significant impact and is a problem of very serious magnitude.
It is no wonder that these young people have high levels of frustration and very little sense of hope or sense of where they can go in the future. But what is the Government doing about it? Something that really stunned me when I heard the Minister refer to it was the study called "Perspective on employment: A Labour Market Policy Framework for the 1980s". This report indicates that Government is redefining acceptable unemployment levels. My understanding is that it is now going to accept 8 per cent instead of 3 per cent. That is an acceptable level of unemployment in a country like Canada? That is an acceptable level of unemployment in a country of opportunity and potential? Right now we have unemployment running at 12 per cent to 12.5 per cent and we can virtually double that figure for our youth who are running at 24 per cent. Does that mean that if we have an acceptable level of unemployment in this country of 8 per cent across the board, then it is acceptable to have 16 per cent unemployment among our young people in this country? I find that, Mr. Speaker, very unacceptable. I feel that is something which is very serious and we should be looking at it, because historically our youth has had a hard time finding employment. Youth unemployment has always been high. Does this new definition mean that unemployment among the young is to be acceptable at 16 per cent or 18 per cent?
The Government has indicated it is making work for the young people of Canada. We just heard the Minister recite a number of programs which are coming forward. I applaud him for those programs, but in reality is the Government really doing very much? Take, for example, the youth internship and wage subsidies for the young, a program worth $95 million. If you break that down for the 500,000 young people who are seeking their first full-time job this year, it works out to about
24850

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$190 per person. If we give them some sort of a wage subsidy of $2 or $3, what kind of an impact is that going to have? That amount of subsidy per person would hardly last more than a couple of weeks. So we must get this problem into perspective and realize just how serious it is and how much of a pittance that $95 million really becomes when you are talking about literally millions of young Canadians.
The Government has indicated it cannot spend very much more money; it cannot continue to spend more money than it has. The problem is that it spent the money when the economy did not need it. Now when we are in a situation where we desperately need some funding and some help, the money is not there because it was wasted in the past. We get lip service now that the private sector is going to be helped and encouraged, that the Government is going to do this and do that. I do not believe very much is going to happen.
I would like to conclude by saying that I believe this whole situation of youth and general unemployment is partly a result of this Government's cavalier attitude towards the private sector and of its massive and costly intrusion into the very private lives of Canadians. I believe the National Energy Program is probably one of the most prime examples of that. It is a program which could have been creating jobs in a sector which was alive and well and which had lots of potential, but which has now ground to a halt. We are left with a Minister who has to stand and list off Government programs, and we know that even if youth took every job which the Minister has just indicated will be created, it would barely employ those people who are taking their first full-time job this season. It is a serious problem, Mr. Speaker, and it will take an awful lot more incentive from this Government to create the very real jobs which are needed by the young people of Canada.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Questions, comments, debate.
[ Translation]


Mr. Jean Lapierre (Parliamentary Secretary to Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, I listened very carefully to the comments of the previous speaker, the Member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper). After listening to him in English and then using my earphone to find out whether it sounded better in French, I realized that the Hon. Member used his entire twenty minutes to make a post mortem of the past recession. I sincerely believed there was a new generation of Members in the Progressive Conservative Party. When the Hon. Member rose, I felt that here was one of the younger elements of the Progressive Conservative Party who would use his imagination and avoid the usual cliches in criticizing inflation, which is going to be 6.3 per cent, and the deficit, as he has done. But then he said: Do more and spend less. That does not sound very sensible. He said: The
Government is not doing enough, but he also said: No Government interference! Finally, he treated us to some weeping and gnashing of teeth about the energy problem in Canada, and he was very sorry to see that no large projects were being undertaken. I agree, but the Hon. Member should not blame everything on the National Energy Program. He should realize that oil prices have varied substantially since these projects were developed, and that to be financially viable, many of these projects depended on oil price levels of around $42, and are therefore entirely unrealistic today.
I think all Canadians are going to be disappointed in the speech by the youth critic of the Progressive Conservative Party, because for twenty minutes, he failed to offer any solutions at all. I think he is treading the same path as the leadership candidates. They have absolutely no recommendations to make, and the best they can do is to launch vicious attacks as they do on the leadership candidates in their own party, and I think that I heard the Hon. Member say that we might steal them. If they have any to steal, we would try and implement them, but they have nothing to steal, they have no ideas and I think this is very unfortunate, because the youth problem is one that requires serious study by both Opposition and Government Members.
Earlier, the New Democratic Party made some entirely meaningless comments. The same applies to the Progressive Conservatives. Fortunately, at least our Government Members are being imaginative and looking at programs that can deal with the concerns of young people. Of course, we would all like to have programs that would provide employment for 600,000 young Canadians, but that is impossible in the present situation.
I thought it was very interesting that just a few days after the budget, the New Democratic Party should ask for a debate on youth employment, because it is a subject that is worthy of the undivided attention of all the Members of this House. Unfortunately, I now realize that Hon. Members are more interested in making political points than in offering young Canadians any hope or solutions or jobs.
In fact, the Lalonde Budget has offered a great deal of hope to many people of my generation, if I may say so. In all parts of the country, the budget was received with great satisfaction by businessmen, who saw these programs and fiscal measures as the road to accelerated recovery, and in fact, according to the comments I heard during the last two weekends in my riding they were ready to start new projects and felt that economic recovery was imminent.
I know that, unfortunately in many cases employers will first have to call back employees on the lay-off list before recruiting people from outside, and that is why I welcome these temporary programs. People argue that these are not permanent solutions and are a bandaid approach to the present situation. Actually, I think the Government should not get involved in permanent job creation programs and that its role should be to provide relief in situations like the present one
April 26, 1983

where it will be several months before private enterprise will be able to start hiring young people.
On the other hand, Hon. Members know perfectly well that this summer-in a few weeks-hundreds of thousands of students throughout their ridings are going to start working on projects they themselves proposed. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) has set aside $170 million for the Summer Canada program, and when I hear the Members opposite say that we are doing nothing, I would like to point out that they are all delighted to announce these summer jobs in their ridings. I certainly am. Thirty-two projects will start in the riding of Shefford to provide students with interesting work during the summer. That is one of the many programs we are offering. Thanks to the Summer Canada program, and the funding it is able to provide, many young people will be able to pay for their education next year and at the same time acquire some useful experience on the labour market. I think this is an admirable initiative on the part of the Government. There are also summer programs in the Federal public service under which thousands of students will be able to acquire practical experience, and although these programs may not be attractive to everyone, anyone may apply, and applicants who are chosen will be able to work under these programs during the summer.
The Government also has other programs which I intend to discuss in greater detail later on, and these include the NEED program, community development, manpower training, worksharing, National Defence projects and the Katimavik program of the Department of the Secretary of State. At this point I would like to point out that this summer again, the main employer of young people in Canada will, of course, be the private sector.
In this connection, a national advertising campaign, urging the private sector, including industry, businessmen and even private citizens to hire a student this summer, has been launched by Employment and Immigration, under a very striking slogan: Profitez de l'energie scolaire. Embauchez un etudiant cet ete. Earlier, 1 heard the Member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper) say that we should not spend money on advertising. I beg to differ. This publicity campaign will help make potential employers aware of the services offered by student employment centres, and as a result, think about having certain jobs done by students. As Hon. Members will see in their own ridings, student employment centres are playing a very significant role throughout Canada.
I would therefore like to take advantage of this opportunity to ask Canadian employers to hire as many young people as they can this summer, either on their own or by asking the Canada Employment Centre or the Student Employment Centre to get the young workers they need.
Incidentally, we are trying to direct young people to entrepreneurs who are able to offer career-oriented job experience. In the past, we have seen that in many cases, such jobs have finally led to permanent employment. In fact, I would say that student employment centres are another important source of
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employment and experience for thousands of our young people, because these centres are, in fact, run by students.
In addition, one sometimes forgets the significant role played by the employment and counselling services of Employment and Immigration Canada. Are Hon. Members aware that, before the June 19 budget last year, the employment strategy for 1983-84 was expected to provide assistance to 2.2 million young Canadians thanks to a $145 million appropriation to Canada Employment and Youth Employment Centers. Are they aware that, in the area of job training, under the Act passed by Parliament last year, $589 million out of a total of over $1 billion allotted this year are to be spent directly for young Canadians and should provide assistance to 140,000 of them? Job-creation programs such as the CCDP, NEED, Katimavik and Summer Canada were allotted $338 million and will provide employment for 107,000 young people. Including the additional $70 million allotted to Summer Canada, which represent 24,000 jobs, the $18 million allotted to the youth-oriented element of the ACCESS Program, which will provide 9,500 jobs, as well as the $2 million granted to the Department of National Defence, which will provide employment for over 4,000 young people, and the additional $10 million provided to Katimavik, which will help another 1,000 young people, the recent federal budget provides an additional $160 million to create 38,000 more jobs for young Canadians. In view of the present economic conditions, Mr. Speaker, this allocation of funds indicates that the Government recognizes the unemployment problem among young people and is willing to spend a lot of money to alleviate it, since it intends to add $160 million to its existing programs and make a special effort to provide assistance during these difficult times.
I might add that the youth employment strategy proposed by the Canadian Government depends on the cooperation and the participation of the young people themselves, as well as of business, labour, and the Provincial and Federal Governments. Speaking of Provincial Governments, I would like to take this opportunity to deal with the NEED Program as it applies to municipalities in Quebec since the PQ Government has refused to cooperate with the Federal Government. We all know that the PQ Government reversed its decision at a time when we had already received from Quebec over 400 municipal projects which could have provided many jobs for young people. Moreover, last week, in my own region, the Minister of Municipal Affairs announced a subsidy program, and what is more, he made something of an overbidding by saying that the Provincial Government would in any cases spend $50 million, while providing a bit more for winter works, and so on. What he did not say publicly, but revealed privately was that all municipalities with employees subject to recall will have to rehire all of them before being eligible for the subsidy program. In other words, the city of Granby, for instance, which

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would have received thousands of dollars under the NEED Program if it had been approved for municipalities has 32 employees subject to recall, which means that it would have to rehire these 32 people to be eligible for the provincial subsidy program.
No municipality should consider this as a subsidy because all major cities in Quebec, such as Sherbrooke, Montreal and Quebec, have unionized employees that are subject to recall. This program is therefore nothing but a smokescreen. In my opinion, the Provincial Government is simply seeking wide publicity. However, young people in Granby will not be able to take part in municipal projects because none can be undertaken in the present circumstances.
To come back to youth employment and the Federal programs in this area, I said earlier that the contribution made by the private sector is its most important element. I was therefore glad to see that the NEED Program now provides an opening for the private sector. I would like to give an example of a project which was accepted in my constituency, namely the case of the Ezeflow company which has now decided to upgrade its plant and to relocate. When the NEED program was announced, the owner told me that thanks to the $120,000 grant, he would hire 15 temporary workers for a few weeks, and then he would have to hire 30 permanent workers after moving to the new plant. And if among the 15 employees hired through the NEED Program I find good workers, I will keep them. Consequently, the NEED Program in the private sector may turn out to be a program which will promote the creation of permanent jobs. That is one example among many others which I can now witness in my riding, and I am convinced that everywhere else in the province and throughout the country they have a similar experience. A Member opposite was trying to say earlier that there is too much Government intervention, but all the potential employers whom I met and to whom I mentioned the NEED Program are very anxious to participate in these economic recovery projects, and I am confident indeed that they will create not only temporary jobs for many young Canadians, but permanent jobs as well.
Last week the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) announced that twelve programs will be combined into four. I must admit that I welcome that initiative. Our colleagues opposite may not want to advertise so that people do not get to know our programs, but I for one feel that we do need a bit of publicity and that our programs ought to be as simple as possible to enable Canadians to derive real benefits from them without having to make 32 phone calls, arrange 43 appointments and write letters with umpteen copies. We all know that simplification is the order of the day in a crisis such as we have. Since the Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais) is in the House, I take this opportunity to commend him for the way he has launched the special projects. He has decided to shorten delays, to do away with bureaucratic red tape, and to get on with the job immediately. In my opinion, the Minister of Employment and Immigration is taking similar action through the NEED Program, the CLE
Program, the ACCESS Program and the Summer Job Corps Program. The twelve federal programs will become four generously funded programs which will be easy to administer and which the interested groups will readily understand. That is why when I hear our colleagues opposite claim that indeed they are concerned about the youth unemployment issue, I am tempted to point out to them, particularly to the Progressive Conservatives, that the last time they raised the question of youth problems in the House was during the Tory convention when the young pro-Clark delegates were given expense accounts to come to Ottawa and fill up the galleries. As I recall, Mr. Speaker, that was the only time the Progressive Conservative Members devoted an oral questions period to the problems of young Canadians, the only time in their history, and it was nothing but a real show.
I am sure that even today they pay lip service to the issue without suggesting a solution because, ever since that convention, they have not given a thought to young people and right now they are less concerned about idle youths than they are about 13 or 14 year old youngsters who are still attending school and whom they want to parade on the convention floor. I hope that once and for all they will come to grips with the problems of young people, not only when they have their leadership brawls. That is the only time we see them.
I conclude my remarks by expressing the hope that within the next few weeks or months Members from both sides of the House will get together in parliamentary committees to examine the overall situation of young people in Canada with respect to unemployment and social issues. I hope as well that the Progressive Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party will select Members who have a little bit of imagination, who will not look upon youngsters as so many more votes at the convention, and who will come up with ideas and solutions. The Government is now working alone, but I would suggest that the problem is so serious that everybody must come to grips with it. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for being so patient and so attentive.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: The Minister of Supply and Services (Mr. Blais).


Mr. Blais:: Mr. Speaker, I should like in the first place to congratulate the Hon. Member for Shefford (Mr. Lapierre) who spoke so eloquently as usual. I also congratulate him for having dealt with the important issue of youth.
My question, Mr. Speaker, concerns a part of his speech in which he dealt with the NEED Program. I was recently in the Lac-Saint-Jean area and I was scandalized when I realized that federal-provincial co-operation was not only non-existent but even negative. He spoke about the PRIME program. I would like him to be more specific because if I remember well the NEED program was intended for the construction of wharves and various recreational facilities, but because of the
April 26, 1983

Quebec regulations, it became impossible to hire people who otherwise would have been unemployed. The provincial regulations required higher wages than those we had expected to pay. As you know, I am a Member from Ontario, Mr. Speaker, and indeed in my province there is a high level of cooperation between the federal and provincial Governments especially with respect to labour-intensive programs. I ask the Hon. Member, especially in the wake of Mr. Parizeau's statements of last week when he recognized the lack of cooperation between the federal and provincial Governments, if he does not expect the removal of those regulations which prevent the NEED program from being successful?


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, the Minister's question is quite in order, especially since close to 400 Quebec municipalities already have submitted projects under the NEED program. They were kept waiting for three months, and finally the Province in a gesture smacking of false modesty decided to opt out and have its own program. And that program, unfortunately, comes under the responsibility of the Quebec Construction Board. This means that even if we can provide $200 a week for people working on the projects, given the fact that a carpenter earns $21 per hour according to the QBC, we cannot under the NEED program hire a carpenter for $200 a week, which means in actual fact that many projects of significance to the community-there was reference earlier to infrastructures and recreational facilities-cannot go through unfortunately. This is unfortunate, because municipalities often are tremendous builders. They have needs, but lack the financial resources, and clearly they would like to make maximum use of those projects. I will give examples. In my home town, in Grandby township, parks and children's playgrounds should be developed. Unfortunately the Quebec Government has said: "As municipalities, you belong to us; you have no right to deal with the Federal Government".
And there is worse still. Last week the Minister for Municipal Affairs said: "If it so happened that indirectly, through your Recreation Committee, you were to get federal grants, we would deduct from any potential provincial grants the amounts received from the Federal Government. So I do not see much room for agreement, and I feel this is unfortunate. But on the other hand the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) has given us the assurance that the $170 million in the budget earmarked for the Province of Quebec would be expended through the private sector, whom I urge to submit projects, as well as community organizations. Unfortunately for the municipalities, they will not benefit from the NEED program, and what with the terms of the provincial program PRIME, if they have a labour union and employees on the waiting list, they will get no help from the Quebec PRIME program. This is unfortunate because there are people who are unemployed, even though there may be unions and employees waiting to be recalled by their municipalities.
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Mr. Thacker;: Mr. Speaker, the last speaker waxed eloquently about the downside of the present Government in Quebec. I agree that there is a Government there committed to dividing and separating from the rest of the country, yet would he agree that when the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) come to power, the Separatists were not in power but came to power in Quebec some eight years later? Would he agree that some of the policies of the national Government made the problems in Quebec worse so that it was easier for the Party Quebecois to be elected after eight years of Liberal Government here?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. As Hon. Members know, questions should relate to the comments of the previous speaker as much as possible. It may have escaped the Speaker's attention that the Hon. Member referred to the matter raised by the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker). Nevertheless, I thought that I should remind the House that there must be a relationship to the remarks made.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, there is indeed a relationship between this question and my remarks, for we were dealing with federal-provincial relations. The Hon. Member has overlooked the fact that there is a difference between federal and provincial politics. The same Quebecers who elected the PQ government in 1976, provided our party with some 60 seats in 1979, and then with 74 seats out of 75 in 1980. Had they been in any way disenchanted with the policies put forward by the Right Hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), I doubt very much that they would have given us such an overwhelming endorsement. On the other hand, the Hon. Member would be well advised to wonder about his own party, a party which finally managed to gain only one seat after nine months in the government. I suggest that the support the Prime Minister is getting from Quebecers is due mostly to his performance as Prime Minister of Canada. On the contrary, provincial politics have a great many connotations and depend to a large extent on circumstances. It is due in part to the lack of understanding demonstrated by some of his colleagues who have projected such a poor image of English Canada-including the leadership candidate who is always speaking against bilingualism; as a matter of fact, I could understand the Quebec people's desire to seek independance and elect a separatist government, if his colleague I have referred to were the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party.
But for the time being, judging from recent pools ... When Quebecers had the opportunity to vote during a referendum on Quebec's separation from the rest of Canada, they voted no.
Therefore, there is not any relationship, of cause and effect for the Prime Minister's support in Quebec has continually increased since 1968.

April 26, 1983
Supply
[English)


Mr. Nickerson:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to compliment the Hon. Member for Shefford (Mr. Lapierre) for a very interesting presentation. I have one question to ask him. I would disagree to a certain extent with his observation that the high level of youth unemployment is something that is very new. In my opinion, it is a matter that has simply become very much worse in the last year or so and the problem really goes back several years to the late 1970s.
The response of the Government at that time was to engage in these make-work programs-the alphabet soup programs. The problem was not alleviated and got worse year by year, culminating in what we have seen in the last year and at present. Again the response of the Government has been more of the alphabet soup, make-work programs. It does not seem to be working.
Has the Government Party given any thought to how it can get away from this make-work scheme where the taxpayers' money has to be paid out? It seems that we are on a rollercoaster with no end to it. Has any thought been given to the long-term solution of what appears to be a structural problem of youth unemployment in Canada?


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, I was quite pleased to hear the comments made by the Hon. Member for Western Arctic (Mr. Nickerson) because in closing my remarks, I called for the establishment of a special parliamentary committee which would precisely be given the mandate to deal with the problems of young Canadians and which could at the same time review the host of existing programs in this field. I think there is a total of 82 programs which directly or indirectly affect young Canadians and I believe it would be a very valuable exercise to sit down and review all of them, to estimate their value and to verify whether their existence is still justified in today's society. Obviously, this host of programs did not solve the problem, and that is why I would very much welcome the co-operation of the Hon. Member and of the Government. Indeed, I know all Hon. Members share my concern in these problems, but we must examine the whole matter of young Canadians' opportunities for the future. I know the Hon. Minister of Employment and Immigration is studying this question within his mandate, but it seems to me that the social aspect of this matter should be the responsibility of all Members of Parliament, and I would hope that we can count on the co-operation of all Members. Of course, even the implementation of some 52 new programs would not necessarily solve the fundamental problem, but I think at this point we can count on the co-operation of the Hon. Member for Western Arctic, and I hope other Members will join us in calling for such a committee. In this way, the problems of the young would be drawn to our attention and we would be forced to think about them in a global way, to re-examine all budgetary items allocated within various programs which are-


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on this New Democratic Party Opposition Day to join with Members of the NDP in condemning the Government on behalf of the youth of this country. You will note that the NDP has framed its motion to restrict criticism to condemning the tragic implications of the monetarist policies adopted by the Liberal Government. You will note from my comments, Mr. Speaker, that I will go well beyond restricting criticism to the monetarist policies. In fact, I will condemn the economic, social and fiscal policies of this Government.
I agree the Government has clearly botched the governing of this country. Let us look at the basics. Canada has a small population and we have tremendous resources over which, by the grace of God, we have stewardship. One must then look at the way in which the Government over the last 15 years has botched its stewardship of governing. It has not put in place policies which ensure that our small populace have work and satisfying careers.
I agree with the NDP that the Government has clearly botched its job. The Government has lost touch with reality. It has lost touch with the economic reality of Canada in global terms. It has so concentrated its efforts on internal conflicts, whether with the Government of Quebec, the Government of Alberta, or within the social classes of our country, and on its view of centralizing power, that the Government has forgotten that the primary role we have in this House is to deal with international affairs. If it were not for the Progressive Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party allocating Opposition Days to discuss international affairs, the subject would never be discussed. Yet if you look at our Constitution, our prime responsibility is to deal with international affairs, international trade and defence matters. We never talk about them.
If we were to concentrate on what Canada should be doing in the world, this small population of 24 million people should be working flat out. No doubt people all over the world need our resources. They need to have the benefit of our many many generations of political stability, economic development and general maturity. Canada should be providing capital to the world. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, the capital which 24 million Japanese would generate from the resources we have? Can you imagine the capital that 24 million Germans would generate? Canada would then be a source of wealth to the world. But instead, what are we doing? We are begging on our knees for money from Germany, Japan the the United States. By having to borrow that money we are competing against Third World countries, which in turn drives up interest rates. We are hurting that Third World countries far more than we need to. It is the same with energy. We are competing with Third World countries for energy. Canada should be a source of energy.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) gets a lot of praise in some branches of the media for his high international reputation. I can tell you, Mr. Speaker, that the people to whom I
April 26, 1983

talk internationally do not think our Prime Minister has done a good job; nor do they think that Canada is pulling its weight in the world in terms of defence, in terms of international energy or in terms of international capital flows. Canada has vast resources. We should not be out competing in the world; we should be providing skills to the world, not taking them away.
My point of departure with the NDP motion is that it puts total blame on the Government's abuse of monetary policy. I believe the Government has abused not only monetary policy but social policy, fiscal policy and economic policy. When a Government year after year after year piles on deficits, which is just another way of saying that the Government offers programs to people without a corresponding tax to pay for them, it defers payment to another generation. It is a mortgage on the future. When a Government does that year after year after year, it leads directly to inflation, which we have had; it leads directly to high interest rates, which we have had; and high interest rates lead directly to loss of jobs and bankruptcies, which we have had. Then we have an enormous period of adjustment that is so difficult. The Government has thus violated social policy.
Let me talk about those people who have retired. During all of those years they worked faithfully at their careers and put a little money aside for their pension. But when they were faced with 20 per cent inflation, the value of their pension dropped to half within four or five years. Therefore all our seniors are upset. Those same deficits led to people taking money out of the country rather than investing it here. That procedure has affected our youth because there is a direct correlation between investment of the capital of the nation and jobs. Resources do not mean anything if they are not used.
Let me cite one example. For hundreds of thousands of years, coal lay under the great western plains unused. The native people at the time had a different culture. They walked over it. They had social taboos against using the coal that stuck out of the banks in my own City of Lethbridge, Alberta. It was only when that resource was developed and used that it became wealth, which was redistributed to all parts of our society and generally raised our well-being.
Forests are worth nothing if the trees are left standing. The forests are of value only when the lumber is used. If I take a tree and cut it up, I can sell the lumber somewhere within or outside the country to build furniture, to build houses or factories. If I, as an individual, find oil, I realize that I can build a refinery and turn the oil into propane, butane, gasoline, kerosene and asphalt. But only by people having ideas and acting upon them does oil or other resource take on value.
Peter Pond found the Alberta tar sands 200 or 300 years ago. Yet the Alberta tar sands were nothing until a company, a collection of individuals, decided to put up a syncrude plant, process the oil by running it through hot water, skimming the
oil off the top and then selling it. Only then did that resource take on value and increase our standard of living.
The Government, having driven away all that capital, has taken away jobs. This affects our youth and is why we have youth unemployment of 24 per cent.
All of these ad hoc programs that just keep people occupied for a few weeks at most do not direct themselves to the underlying problem, which is real jobs, not ad hoc jobs. Interestingly enough, the poor parts of the country become poorer and poorer under these ad hoc programs. Let us have a unified effort and develop this country, because the resources are here.
May I call it one o'clock, Mr. Speaker?
[ Translation]


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order! It being one o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 1 p.m., the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Madam Speaker, on November 7, 1981, the Quebec Minister of Finance introduced the 40 per cent escalator tax on gas in Quebec. In his speech at the time, the Minister said that the increase was necessary and temporary, and would be in effect until March 31, 1983. The tax is still in effect, however, although we are now past that date. Last weekend, the same Minister announced that the escalator tax is here to stay, and there is every reason to maintain this particular tax.
Madam Speaker, I feel the tax is having the worst possible impact on Quebecers. If we consider that Quebec is getting more than $1 billion in revenue from this tax and that agrofood-related activities represent 20 per cent of economic activity in Quebec, it means that there is a difference of $200 million between Quebec and Western Canada where gas taxes are low or altogether non-existent. This puts Quebec at a veritable disadvantage in the agro-food industry, and members of the Coalition for the Survival of the Agro-food Business should raise this point with the Government of Quebec. The same applies to tourism. Our American neighbours and Canadians from other provinces have every reason to avoid



INCOME TAX


Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Madam Speaker, on March 29, 1983, I asked the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) if he would at the very least increase the allowable deduction for part-time farmers under Section 31 of the Income Tax Act from $5,000 to $20,000 to reflect the general rate of inflation since 1952. Arbitrary interpretation of Section 31, by Revenue Canada auditors with little or no agricultural expertise, has financially crippled many farmers and ranchers to the point that they are now faced with bankruptcy. The Minister indicated that he would give the matter serious consideration and that he would consider the question as a suggestion for the budget.
The budget has come and gone and, judging from the lack of action on Section 31, the Minister did not give the matter his attention. In fact the Minister of Finance gave so little consideration to the agricultural sector that, according to an April 25 report in The Globe and Mail, several Liberal backbenchers have complained to the Minister.
The Minister of Finance should immediately introduce measures to increase the deductions allowable under Section 31 to reflect the fourfold increase in costs since this tax measure was first introduced some 31 years ago. In addition, the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres) should introduce a moratorium on farm audits until this measure has been implemented and, furthermore, limit back taxes already assessed to the current year.
The Minister of Finance introduced a $200 million budget change to save his job. Surely he can introduce simple measures which would correct the obvious inequities and ambiguities in Section 31, amendments which would provide incentive and assistance to farmers rather than the present harassment and destruction.



HEALTH CARE


Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, at a recent official opening of a nursing home for senior citizens in the Hamilton region, I was most favourably impressed with an innovation whereby a 32-bed nursing home
was constructed within a 110-unit senior citizens residence. This was a very progressive step in which the continued need for nursing beds for senior citizens was met.
The details of the financing of this project were under the supervision of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, but it required a co-operative effort between the federal Government and Ontario provincial authorities to overcome the regulatory restrictions to make the project feasible.
The principal advantage of integrating a nursing home with a senior citizens residence is the reunification of elderly couples, one of whom requires nursing care, and the other, residential facilities. It also brings together medical and paramedical personnel available for the care of senior citizens in both wings of the building project.
My concern is the bureaucratic nightmare that presents itself to non-profit organizations in many areas of the country where similar projects are needed and could replace separate nursing homes and senior residences which currently preclude companionship and closeness of aging couples. Hopefully the results achieved at the Heritage Green senior citizens residence and nursing home in Stoney Creek, Ontario, which combines these two types of facilities, can be duplicated in other parts of the country through federal-provincial cooperation.



FISHERIES


Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, the Canadian scallop fishing industry is in deep trouble. At the present time the count for scallops exported from Canada to the United States is 40 meats to the pound. On this basis the scallop fishery alone was worth $88 million last year to Canada. About 75 per cent of the 15,000 metric tonnes of scallops caught off the Atlantic Coast last year was exported to our friends south of the border. This market will be devastated if the United States follows through with its proposals to limit scallop imports to 30 meats to the pound on May 15.
The Americans have stated that the proposal to restrict scallop imports to the larger size is being implemented as a conservation measure. Yet when Canadians some three or four years ago requested the American scallop fishing industry to cut down on the number of pounds landed per trip from Georges Bank, they not only continued to overfish the Bank but the American fleet has more than doubled in size.
If the proposal to limit imports of scallops from Canada to 30 meats per pound is implemented by the United States, it will mean that Canada will no longer have a viable scallop fishery. I submit that the American proposal is a non-tariff barrier to trade. This is a fundamental basic resource industry, and I urge the Government to take this matter up with the Americans at the highest possible level.
April 26, 1983



NUCLEAR ARMAMENTS


Miss Pauline Jewett (New Westminster-Coquitlam):: Madam Speaker, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) keeps suggesting that people in the thousands, including Members of this Party, who want a freeze on nuclear weapons testing, development and deployment, followed by massive reductions, want it to be on one side only. Of course this is not true. They want it on both sides and they want it to include SS-20s whether in eastern Europe or on the Chinese border.
The Prime Minister would know this if he attended any of the marches and rallies which have taken place or if indeed he listened to the people; or he could read anything I or others have said on the subject as reported in the proceedings of the Standing Committee, on radio, and on television. He would also discover that the United States Cruise missile is seen as particularly destabilizing, above all with the proposed stealth technology, because of its unverifiability. If we cannot verify the numbers and location of a weapon, we cannot have arms reduction. To test it, therefore, is a grave escalation of the nuclear arms race and an invitation to the Soviets to try to catch up with the newest United States technology.
The education of the Prime Minister would be immeasurably advanced if he would allow debate in the House, giving up a Government day for this purpose, and if he attended and participated in this debate and allowed a free vote to follow.



HOUSING


Mr. Jean-Guy Dubois (Lotbiniere):: Madam Speaker, when the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) brought down his budget on April 19, he mentioned the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, also known as RRAP. In fact, an additional $40 million has been allocated to this program, that is, $10 million for 1983-84 and $30 million for the year after. Before the budget, $155 million had been earmarked for 198384.
The purpose of my statement is to ask the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, in view of the additional funding it has been granted, to examine forthwith applications by various municipalities who wish to be designated under the rural RRAP program although they are considered urban because they have a population of over 2,500. Many municipalities and towns in my riding have applied under this program. There are a number of points that must be discussed and negotiated, with the Provincial Government as well. However, with this additional funding, perhaps the Minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation could recommend to his officials that municipalities with a population of more
than 2,500 be admitted to the program, considering the funds granted in the Budget, and I am sure that many Canadians and Quebecers would be very pleased to see this happen in the context of the urban RRAP program.



INDUSTRY


Mr. Ron Stewart (Simcoe South):: Madam Speaker, last week it was revealed that the Pentagon is planning to exclude Canada from access to U.S. defence industry development programs partially because Canada has been taking a free ride at U.S. expense, and, more significantly, because they feel our participation would result in the leakage of American secrets to the Soviet Union. The Government's refusal to prosecute Hugh Hambleton and the recent revelations concerning Long Knife, an ex-RCMP officer's betrayal of a Soviet source, serve to reinforce this opinion.
Canada's defence industry is not capable of survival without sharing U.S. research, development, design components and machine tools. Therefore it is time the present Government faced the reality that its leanings toward socialist friends while not protecting our own national security will result in severe limitations on Canada's historical participation in American military production, and no doubt could cause problems with the $3 billion Canadian offset package negotiated as part of Canada's $5 billion purchase of the McDonnell Douglas F-18, particularly if limits are placed on U.S. industrial offset agreements as per the monitoring Bill H.R. 2057 which is before Congress again this year. The close relations with our largest trading partner, neighbour and protector, must not be jeopardized by irresponsible Government policies, particularly from here onward.



THE ECONOMY


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Madam Speaker, in January of 1983, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops called upon the Government to introduce an option which called for economic policies which recognized that the needs of the poor have priority over the want of the rich. As the Bishops pointed out, working people, the unemployed, young people, and those on fixed incomes, are increasingly called upon to make sacrifices for the sake of the economy at the same time as tax changes favour the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Since its re-election in 1980 the Liberal Government, in three successive budgets, has heightened these inequalities at

April 26, 1983
Oral Questions
the same time as it has called on all Canadians to accept sacrifice as the price of recovery.
We have discovered that Canadian Pacific and Canadian National have increased executive salaries up to 35.5 per cent, and averaging 20.7 per cent, at the same time as the federal Government has introduced six and five legislation for the workers at CP and CN.
In the spirit of sharing the burden of the recovery, this Party calls upon the Government to abandon its survival of the fittest theory which is used to rationalize the programs of the Government, and calls upon the Government to be concerned about the poor, the unemployed, the pensioners, those who are making the real sacrifices in Canada.



FINANCE


Mr. Len Gustafson (Assiniboia):: Madam Speaker, last Tuesday's budget was a very disappointing budget for farmers. Less than 1 'A per cent of the total budget goes toward agriculture, the major backbone of the country, at a time when farmers are faced with high rising costs of production and falling world prices for agricultural products sold.
I and my colleagues have called again and again in this House for the cutting back of the very high federal tax on farm fuels, a tax that is over 60 cents per gallon at this time when world prices are falling. This was obviously rejected in the budget.
In addition, there seems to be no positive direction for agriculture put forward by the Minister of Finance. It is obvious that the Minister of Agriculture has no clout in the Cabinet and has had absolutely no impact on the Minister of Finance and the Liberal Government in regard to the welfare of farmers and agriculture.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Miss Pat Carney (Vancouver Centre):: Madam Speaker, my first question is directed to the Minister responsible for Economic Development who announced the Government's Special Recovery Program yesterday. He announced that Ottawa will commission up to 20 Canadair CL 215 water bombers on a shared cost program with the Provinces as part of the Special Recovery Program. Will the Minister confirm that this plane has been around since 1968, that it uses a World War II model
engine, and that the other Provinces and other potential customers have rejected it in the past because its cost per flying hour is ten times as high as other planes? Is this the Minister's long awaited high tech policy?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: Madam Speaker, the aircraft is, of course, of a 1967 design. It has been utilized very widely, not only in Canada but internationally, including China, France, and North Africa. It has been utilized with the engines that are now in the aircraft because of the specific use that is made of the aircraft.
The piston engines that are used in the CL 215 are desirable because of the necessity for the aircraft to accelerate at a very rapid rate in the environment within which the aircraft operates. If the hon. lady will recall, it flies in and scoops water out of lakes in order to dump it on forest fires. You cannot do that with a jet aircraft, Madam Speaker.


Pat Carney: Madam Speaker, I should point out that I had been flying in water bombers long before I ever came to Parliament. Ten times the cost per flying hour of a competitive aircraft is about par for the course for the Government.


CUSTOMS AND EXCISE
Pat Carney: Madam Speaker, I address my second question to the Prime Minister who said that his Government could not leave more money in the hands of consumers because they cannot be trusted to buy Canadian goods and would spend it on imports and trips abroad. We can only assume that the Prime Minister ignores the value added to the economy by Canadian-owned foreign car dealers and import companies.
If the Government has such a low opinion of the spending habits of Canadians, why did it increase the duty-free exemption by 100 per cent, a measure which encourages spending abroad and leads to the export of jobs?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, I do not know why the hon. lady deliberately misquoted me. I never used the words, "the consumer cannot be trusted". I enunciated the very simple economic proposition that I am sure that the Hon. Member would agree with, that when you stimulate consumer spending directly, some of that consumer spending leaks out of the country to purchase goods made in other countries. That is all I said.


Pat Carney: I should point out that the Prime Minister still did not answer the question.
April 26, 1983


FINANCE
Pat Carney: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Finance I direct my third question to the Prime Minister. Tomorrow the Conference Board of Canada will publish a forecast claiming that the Finance Minister is overstating his budget deficit by several billion dollars for 1983 and 1984, mainly because the projections for transfer payments seem too high. Transfer payments to persons will increase 14 per cent next year, although the two major programs, old age pensions and Family Allowances, are capped at 5 per cent.
Has the Government inflated the budget deficit, thereby putting pressure on interest rates, in order to provide the Liberals with an election slush fund for next year? If the Government can increase transfer payments in an election year, why can it not do so now when two million unemployed Canadians need the money?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member is asking me to answer a question based on a publication of the Conference Board which is to come out tomorrow. I have not seen it, obviously; I have not had that privileged access. I would be happy to comment on it when it comes out, but I do see that the U.S. Conference Board announces today from New York, in a Canadian Press report, that an economic recovery is accelerating in Canada and it brings out several indices which show that that is the case.
Madam Speaker, in so far as creating jobs is concerned, I remind the Hon. Member that the Special Recovery Fund in the budget was divided into two parts. One was to have capital projects which would start immediately within six months, so-called shelved items or shelf items, which Departments could move forward and which would improve the Canadian infrastructure all across the land. We had some announcements yesterday of water bombers and, I believe, search and rescue facilities and Coast Guard ships. That creates jobs now. These jobs will start within six months, but the money will be spent now and it will be in the hands of workers and consumers to spend.
The other half of the Special Recovery Fund, the other $2.4 billion, is in terms of improving the private sector. This will create jobs, but not immediately. They have cash flow problems and an over capacity right now. The budget is bringing in some $2.4 billion worth of measures, substantially in the form of tax measures, which will permit the private sector to create jobs and to boost the economy.
That is the approach of the budget, to create jobs now through Government spending, and to create jobs in the middle term through private sector spending.
Oral Questions ENERGY


SHUT-IN OIL PRODUCTION
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. As he knows, during April over 200,000 barrels per day of Canadian crude oil production is shut in. This shut-in problem has been in existence for months and months and is costing the Canadian economy hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of jobs. Does he not agree that is absurd that Canadians should be losing this money and be denied the resulting jobs while we continue to import the equivalent amount of oil and to tax consumers to subsidize these imports? Would the Minister not agree that the problem must be solved, and will he tell the House when he will bring about the solution?


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, I am well aware of the problem and I have discussed it many times with my counterpart in Alberta. We have discussed solutions. Of course, we cannot ship Alberta oil everywhere in Canada at this time.
One solution is to permit the export of light crude abroad. The NEB has said that if it were to receive applications it would consider them favourably. In fact I read in the paper, and I knew about it, that there are shipments of oil products going to Japan at this time. It is something new that we permit the export of oil products to that part of the world. For years we did not permit the export of light crude. At this time, however, the NEB is not receiving many applications from producers because the price is very soft in the United States. There is no demand at this time. Anyone who believes in the market economy knows that when there is no demand there is a shut-in problem.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT FACILITATE OIL EXPORTS
Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, the Minister knows full well that much more of the shut-in western crude could go to eastern Canada. Is he also aware that the reason the shut-in crude is not being sold offshore in the United States is because of the rigidity of Canadian prices, the rigidity of the export tax on crude oil, and National Energy Board red tape? He must realize that curing the shut-in problem will, in just two months, produce more benefits in terms of income and jobs to the Canadian economy than the entire Special Recovery Capital Projects Fund. If he wants to do something for the unemployed and for the terrible state of Canadian industry, looking after this problem would do more than all the flim-flam introduced in the budget.


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member is speaking very loudly. I have had many discussions with Mr. Zaozirny, the Minister in Alberta. He knows, for example, that the question of price is very important for them, just as it is for us. I do not think that the Hon. Member would ask us to sell

April 26, 1983
Oral Questions
Canadian oil to foreign markets at a lower price than the price Canadians have to pay for it.
We are looking at all these problems. Basically, if there is shut-in oil it is because there has been a great reduction in the demands in Canada for oil. Some of the oil coming into the East is subject to contracts that we have to respect. I do not think that the Hon. Member would ask me not to respect the contracts we have with some foreign nations.


DISARMAMENT
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister. A few weeks ago the Prime Minister suggested that alternative proposals were necessary in order to break the deadlock in nuclear disarmament negotiations taking place in Geneva. George F. Kennan, a former ambassador of the United States to the Soviet Union, made one such proposal. He suggested that each of the nuclear powers accept an immediate reduction of some 50 per cent of nuclear warheads.
I should like to ask the Prime Minister if he agrees with the suggestion made by Mr. Kennan and, if so, when he meets with President Reagan in the near future would he present this constructive suggestion to him for his consideration and acceptance.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I have not seen the Kennan proposal but I would imagine it has been brought to the attention of the President of the United States. Certainly if it is a good proposal I imagine it will become part of the panoply of negotiating possibilities in which the two great powers are involved.
As far as the earlier part of the question is concerned, the Hon. Member said that I suggested we should look at alternatives. I would point out to him that very recently, following the visit of Vice-President Bush to Canada, to European capitals and NATO countries, there has been a change in the U.S. policy in the intermediate-range nuclear force. The United States has departed from the zero option and has proposed a compromise which would lead to a reduction of the number of SS-20s which the Soviet Union is deploying against western Europe. It seems to me that is a step in the right direction. It is certainly a different negotiating posture than the zero option. I believe it corresponds to the will expressed by many NATO members. I would hope that the U.S.S.R. would indicate a positive response to that.
I would also hope that the pressure of many of the peace groups in Canada and elsewhere would turn at least in part to the Soviet Union so that they would show more flexibility.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, to keep this discussion at a serious level, I should like to say something to the Prime
Minister on that point because I read what he said in the House yesterday.
For a long time my Party has made it clear that it has been opposed to the deployment of the SS-20 by the Soviet Union. I was speaking in Toronto yesterday and made that very clear. My external affairs critic has made it very clear on television and in a Committee of this House. I point that out to clarify the record so that the Prime Minister understands.
This is a two-way street, and we understand it. The two great powers, the Soviet Union and the United States, have obligations in this immensely important area.
The Prime Minister has indicated that there has been some shift on the part of the United States, and that is true. There has been another and related area of concern as the Prime Minister knows, about what nuclear weapons are to be included. The former head of arms negotiations for President Carter has made a suggestion which meshes with the shift made by President Reagan that, in future talks, the nuclear capacity of France-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member should come to his question.


John Edward Broadbent: I shall come right to the question, Madam Speaker.


SIZE OF INDEPENDENT EUROPEAN NUCLEAR FORCES
John Edward Broadbent: Considering that it has been suggested that the nuclear strength and capacity in terms of weaponry of both the United Kingdom and France be included in the balancing of the nuclear totals in Europe, will the Prime Minister agree with this? If he agrees that their strength should be taken into account and added to the western equation, if you like, will he pass that suggestion on to the President of the United States, with his support?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member asks several questions. He began by making one point about both great powers. I am happy that the NDP, perhaps having listened to my enjoinders to them, decided to protest last night in Toronto against the SS-20s. It is about time they did that.
Insofar as the French force de frappe and the British nuclear force are concerned, I would point out to the Hon. Member that the suggestion made by someone unnamed by the Hon. Member-


John Edward Broadbent: Mr. Warnke.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If it was Warnke, that suggestion is probably addressed to the President of the United States. The Leader of the New Democratic Party will know that the answer to that suggestion has already been given by the President of France and by the Prime Minister of Great Britain.
The Hon. Member asked me to talk to the President of the United States. I would answer that it is not the President of the United States who controls the French force de frappe. It
April 26, 1983

is President Mitterrand, of the same Party as the New Democrats, and I would hope that the NDP would be able to get President Mitterrand to answer its question.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, I see the Prime Minister has returned to his usual lofty level of debate. I say to him that we have been on record on the SS-20 for a long, long time, well before he opened his mouth on the issue, I might add. Just for once would the Prime Minister show a smidgen of respect for the truth, just a wee bit? I willingly say to the Prime Minister that we disagree with the President of France on his policy in terms of-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Edward Broadbent: -the inclusion of nuclear weapons, and we would like-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


GOVERNMENT PROPOSALS
John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, will the Prime Minister for once show some initiative on his part, instead of just responding to what France is doing or what President Reagan is or is not doing? Will he stand front and centre and tell the people of Canada what his proposals are for bringing about nuclear disarmament?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I have done that repeatedly. I did that at the two special sessions of the United Nations on disarmament. I did that in a speech at Notre Dame University. I did that just a couple of weeks ago in a toast on the occasion of the visit of Vice-President Bush. I have stated the position many times of this Government. I wish the Hon. Member would look at that and, rather than talk about his long record of participation, take it up with his own friends.
Once again, he asks me to take initiatives rather than to put pressure on others, and in the same breath and same Question Period, he asks me to put pressure on President Reagan. That is fair. I did that when I made a public speech a couple of weeks ago to Mr. Bush. I did that in private meetings with Vice-President Bush. I have not heard of the Hon. Member meeting with his socialist friends of France and making any great hullabaloo about the French force de frappe. Why does he not start there?


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport. It
Oral Questions
comes right back to earth, and we do not have to cruise around at all. The Minister could not give me any information on Friday, Madam Speaker, when I asked about the Chairman of Air Canada and RCMP investigations into activities of Air Canada and/or the Chairman. I would like to ask the Minister of Transport very directly today, Madam Speaker, about the Canadian National and the reports out of Washington that Canadian National high officials received a 20 per cent increase in pay this past year, and that the salary of the President, Mr. Le Clair, is $213,000, up from $151,000 a year ago?


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, the truth of the matter is that the salaries for high officers at CN have been frozen since January, 1981. What has happened is that, following the departure of Mr. Bandeen and others, there have been promotions, normal ones, at the top. Mr. Le Clair, who was a Vice-President, has become President. That is the explanation for his increase.


JUSTIFICATION FOR SIZE OF REMUNERATION
John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Madam Speaker, perhaps I will leave the President alone. He will appear before the Transport Committee, I believe, this week, perhaps with the Chairman also. The fact of the matter is, however, there is a report filed with the Securities Exchange Commission in the United States giving public information to the Americans on Canadian officials, which Canadians cannot get in Canada, showing that the remuneration for top officials in CN is now at an average of $92,000, up some 20 per cent since last year.
What is the justification for a 20 per cent increase for the top officials of CN, a Crown Corporation under the direction of the Minister, when the employees in the yard and along the tracks, be it fast track or greasy track, have settled contracts of six and five per cent under the law of the land? Does the Minister not think this represents moral deceit and decay of a Government which has to be corrected forthwith?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Luc Pepin: Madam Speaker, I can only repeat what I have said, which is that the salaries at CN have been frozen since January, 1981. The salaries which are referred to which have been increased have to do with 1982 over 1981, which is not the period of the six and five application. The explanation I have given, I thought was a very good one, that when you have the President, his salary is consequently adjusted because of the promotion he receives. If you have a good number of people leaving at one time in the organization, you have, of course, a more general effect. The salaries of officers at CN have to be compared with

April 26, 1983
Oral Questions
the salaries of other leading administrators in the private sector of business, because CN is supposed to behave as a quasi commercial institution, which it is.


CANADIAN PACIFIC RAILWAY
Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Prime Minister who engaged the services of Mr. Ian Sinclair, the Chairman of the Board of Canadian Pacific, to oversee this great six and five program. Has the Prime Minister discussed the increase of some 35 per cent given to the President of CPR, and has he asked Mr. Sinclair whether or not it is his philosophy, as part of this advisory board, to "Do as I say, not as I do"?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, this is the first I have heard of this whole matter. I was listening attentively to the answers given by the Minister of Transport. It seems to me that, in so far as CN is concerned, he gave perfectly valid answers, that the increases were before the six and five program, on one hand, and there was a promotion of a Vice-President to the job of President, on the other. He presumably received the salary which the President was receiving. I do not know about the-


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: What about the other "choo-choo"?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: I do not know about the other "choo-choo", to quote the Hon. Member. Perhaps he will put the question either to the Minister of Transport or to Mr. Sinclair himself.


FARM CREDIT CORPORATION
Mr. G. M. Gurbin (Bruce-Grey):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture. The Minister will know by now, I believe, of the very great disappointment felt by Canadian farmers following their almost total neglect in the latest Liberal budget. Is the Minister aware, first of all, of a very specific problem which was not dealt with in the budget which has to do with those farmers who are locked into loans from the Farm Credit Corporation at 16 3/4 per cent, and have not, in any way, been given an opportunity to refinance? And does the Minister in fact have a plan to deal with that situation? Did he make representations to the Minister of Finance on behalf on this group of Canadian farmers?


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, that does not have to be done within the budget, and the Hon. Member knows that. We have had discussions with
the Board of Directors of the Farm Credit Corporation regarding this situation. We believe we can come up with a plan which will help those who are paying those fixed rates of 16.5 per cent-I believe that was the highest that we went. At that time it appeared to be a very good deal because it was about 5 per cent to 7 per cent cheaper than they could get anywhere else. We know that this rate is high. We believe we can come up with a solution within a month which will alleviate that problem with which those borrowers are confronted.


INCOME TAX
Lorne Everett Greenaway: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. It is with respect to Section 31 of the Income Tax Act. It was a great disappointment to the agricultural community in Canada, as well as to some of the Minister's own backbenchers, that this problem was not addressed. Many farmers across the country who have been faced with tough economic conditions over the last several years are now being audited by insensitive auditors of the Department of National Revenue who have little or no agricultural experience. Farmers are being shifted from one class to another and being assessed as much as four years in back taxes, plus interest. Because of the ambiguity of this Section of the Act, until it is amended, will the Minister agree to call a moratorium on tax audits done under provisions of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, first it must be recalled that Section 31 of the Income Tax Act is one of a series of sections aimed at establishing the losses which may be deducted from the income so as to figure out an individual's taxable income. Section 31, which is outlined in an Interpretation Bulletin issued by the Income Tax Division of Revenue Canada, relates particularly to agricultural producers and, to be eligible with respect to losses such as those provided for under the Income Tax Act, one must first be recognized as an agricultural producer. No one is so recognized unless he or she runs an agricultural operation which generates enough income to be eligible. I would suggest to the Hon. Member that he examine each case submitted to him so as to make a distinction between a person who owns land and claims to be an agricultural producer, when in fact he or she is not, and who simply wants to deduct other income from other sources, which enables him or her to earn a living, and to deduct the losses incurred because of that property.
April 26, 1983


REQUEST FOR LIMITATION ON ASSESSMENT OF BACK TAXES
Lorne Everett Greenaway: Madam Speaker, clearly the Minister does not really understand the problem or the gravity of the situation. There are many, many farmers who are literally facing bankruptcy because of this auditing process going on right now across the country. As I pointed out in my previous question, many of them are being assessed up to four years back taxes. In 1972, when this problem came up, the then Minister of Revenue allowed people to be assessed back taxes only for the current year. Would the Minister agree to that, to assess back taxes only for the current year if people are going to be reassessed under Section 31?
f Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, I challenge the Hon. Member to show me cases of farmers who really run an agricultural operation, who get their income from farms which generate revenues, and who are having problems because of Section 31.1 challenge him to show me such cases, for I would be quite prepared to examine them closely. However, I want to point out to him that I make a distinction between an individual who earns an income from an operation other than a farm, but who owns a farm or a piece of land which he works as a hobby or as a second or third occupation during this leisure time and who wants to deduct his expenses incurred in that activity from his income earned from another source. To my mind, that is a very significant distinction to make and I would not call that individual a farmer.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. The Consolidated Bathurst Company closed its plant in Hamilton today. Many of the workers who have worked there for over 20 years made an offer to Consolidated in Montreal to purchase the plant and equipment. The offer was turned down because the Company did not want the competition.
Given that this is not an isolated incident across the country, that many companies are doing similar things, is it not time that we had legislation to require major corporations to justify their actions which disrupt the lives of many families and many communities?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I do not happen to be informed on this particular
Oral Questions
case, but I do know that there is a very general policy, one that is widely respected, of asking the private sector, when it is proposing to close down plants, to consult both levels of Government and that steps be taken in order to try to find solutions to the problems of the people who will be unemployed as a result. The Hon. Member is proposing a legal change which, at first blush, would seem to me to be within the clear jurisdiction of the Provinces. Obviously Consolidated Bathurst is a company operating within a Province, under provincial laws, and it is provincial labour laws which apply there. It is provincial laws which apply to the general operation of that company. Therefore it might be more useful if the suggestion were made to the provincial Premiers in various Provinces to consider that type of reform.


REQUEST FOR LEGISLATION AUTHORIZING INQUIRIES INTO PLANT CLOSURES
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the advice. Given that I cannot do that, and given that the Consolidated Bathurst head office is in Montreal and they intend to put an additional shift on there which will replace the work done by the workers in Hamilton, and given that this happens in one Province after another across the country, is it not reasonable to think that we might require some federal legislation which would cover all the Provinces and would enable the federal Government to inquire into the reasons behind the closures taking place, to determine whether or not there are in fact justifiable economic reasons or whether it is simply another rationalization to improve profits at the expense of the workers and their families?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, once again I cannot deal with the substance of the suggestion since I have not looked into the presumably valid financial reasons why Consolidated Bathurst is doing this. But I reiterate to the Hon. Member the point that it is not because a problem exists in many Provinces that it suddenly becomes a matter under federal jurisdiction. Education, for instance, is a matter dealt with by all Provinces but it does not, because of that, become a matter under which-


Ian Deans: They do not close a school in Ontario from a Quebec base.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -under which we can pass laws. So I ask the Hon. Member to reflect on the Constitution of this country and see if I am not right in suggesting that that problem is one for the Provinces. The Hon. Member says he cannot talk to the Provinces. He probably can talk to the Premier of Manitoba; would he pass such a law, Madam Speaker?


Ian Deans: What the hell good is that? It is happening in Quebec and Ontario.

April 26, 1983
Oral Questions AGRICULTURE


MINISTER'S POSITION ON BUDGET
Hon. John Wise (Elgin):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Agriculture who will recall that, two or three days prior to the budget, I asked the Minister whether or not he had made representations on behalf of the industry to his colleague, the Minister of Finance. We have had the budget now for seven days, the Minister has had an opportunity to assess its impact or lack of impact on the agricultural industry. Therefore, does the Minister stand by some comments and concerns expressed publicly by his Liberal backbench colleagues, or does he stand by the budget of his cabinet colleague, the Minister of Finance, and turn his back on the industry which he has represented in Cabinet for nearly 11 years?


Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, I have just seen a publication called the "Conservative Agriculture Policy for Canada", published in some eastern newspapers. One of the things that document asks for, and the Minister of Finance put it in his budget, was $100 million extra for farmers who needed extra compensation because of the dire economic straits in which they found themselves. The Hon. Member did not say the Minister of Finance did what his Party requested. There are many other things in the budget for business people. Farmers have the same right to participate in those programs as do the business people.
I have studied the budget. There is not everything in there that I would have liked to have seen, but there is a lot in there for farmers. I have not seen the press article the Hon. Member is referring to when he says my colleagues have made some comment. I am not aware of that, Madam Speaker.


John Wise: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the Minister has read the ten point agricultural program put out by the Conservative Party. I recognize the fact that the Government has accepted point number one, and it would do well to accept the remaining nine.


INFLUENCE EXERCISED BY MINISTER ON BUDGET PREPARATION
John Wise: Madam Speaker, the Minister did not answer my question directly. I ask if he was pleased with the fact that the agri-bond concept was omitted? Was he pleased with the omission of any reduction in the farm fuel tax and assistance for greenhouse operators, who are particularly heavily concentrated in his own riding and in mine? Was he also pleased that indeed the Minister of National Revenue had no more influence on the Minister of Finance than he himself did with respect to bringing about any changes in Section 31 of the Income Tax Act, and the problems with it that have been caused by the Government?


Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member knows that maybe the amendment
to Section 31 was not there, but the very fact that they can write off their losses back three years and ahead ten years gives them practically the same privilege they were asking for in the amendment of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act.


An Hon. Member:: No, it does not.


Eugene Whelan: Yes, it does. It gives them that, maybe not exactly, but practically gives them all they want.
If everyone got everything they wanted in the budget, the Minister of Finance, who talked for nearly two hours in the House the other night, would have talked for four hours. I did not get everything I wanted. You stay in the big leagues if you bat fifty-fifty.


PUBLIC WORKS
Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Public Works. Somebody mentioned earlier that some Crown corporations will not comply with the 6 and 5 program. Can the Minister tell us whether it is true that la Societe immobiliere du Canada (Mirabel) Ltee was recently exempted from the provisions of the Public Sector Compensation Restraint Act?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, I shall check, but I would be very surprised if that were true. In fact, as the Hon. Member already knows, in the case of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, because a mistake had been made and the ruling had not been submitted to the Treasury Board Committee as it should have been, the ruling was reversed and the necessary adjustments were made to conform to the 6 and 5 program.


Roch La Salle: Madam Speaker, I have here a copy of an order from the Clerk of the Privy Council which states the following:
His Excellency the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the President of the Treasury Board, pursuant to section 16 of the Public Sector Compensation Restraint Act, is pleased hereby to terminate the application of the said Act in respect of the employees of the corporation ... in clerical, technical, professional and middle management positions.
Under these circumstances, will the Minister make this ruling public as soon as possible and will he tell us how many employees are involved and why this corporation should be exempted from the Government restraint program?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, if I heard the Hon. Member correctly, he mentioned the President of the Treasury Board. I shall therefore consult my colleague and try to answer this question tomorrow.
April 26, 1983


CANADA MORTGAGE AND HOUSING CORPORATION
Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: Madam Speaker,
I want to ask the Minister in charge of Central Mortgage and Housing a question which is further to the one I asked him on March 16. It concerns the efficiency, total cost, and satisfactory performance or otherwise of the mortgage portfolio management system of CMHC. He knows of my interest in it since this program had its genesis when I was Minister. I realize that he was not Minister during the critical period. However, will he tell the House and the country if he is satisfied with the way this program has evolved?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, this very morning I signed the answer to the Hon. Member's question which is on the Order paper. It will give some of the details that I may not have from memory.
The Hon. Member is correct to point out that the program did start some years ago, in the late 1970s. Around July of 1981, if I remember correctly, it was discovered that there were problems which really should be very carefully reexamined. This was done.
I might say that some months ago, around the end of 1982, the Board of Directors called in a consultant to examine the question, and in fact put a hold on the program until such time as they are satisfied. I might also add that the figures quoted by the Hon. Member, or attributed to him in the Toronto Sun, are highly inaccurate. In fact we are speaking of a maximum of $24 million instead of $60 million or $80 million.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: I recall yesterday when the Minister quoted the late U.S. Secretary of Defence, Engine Charlie Wilson, saying that he wanted a bigger bang for a buck. I would imagine that he would agree that a $24 million loss is hardly peanuts and could have provided for a lot of low cost housing.


CONSULTANT FEES
Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Madam Speaker, does the $24 million that the Minister is tossing about include all of the consultant fees, to companies like Systems House? Is he prepared to stand or fall on that $24 million figure?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, I would have to check the contents of that $24 million before I answer. I take the Hon. Member's question very seriously since he is the former Minister responsible for CMHC. I might suggest that the idea that this was all wasted is inaccurate, if that is the understanding of Hon. Members. The fact is that a certain amount of the equipment or hardware was utilized by the Corporation in other ways.
Oral Questions MINES AND MINING


CLOSING OF SHERRITT GORDON MINE AT LYNN LAKE, MAN.
Rodney Edward Murphy: Madam Speaker, my question for the Prime Minister is supplementary to that asked of him by the Minister for Hamilton Mountain. The Prime Minister ended his answer by asking what the Province of Manitoba or the Premier of Manitoba would do.
In the case of Sherritt Gordon Mines in Manitoba, Sherritt Gordon has announced that it is closing the mine, laying off the workers, and will not do exploration in the region for base metals even with the assistance of money from the the Province of Manitoba because, quoting from the President of Sherritt Gordon, "They get a better deal with the private sector since the Government does not pay taxes where Governments do and therefore private enterprise could obtain-"


Madam Speaker:: Order. I will not allow Hon. Members to start quoting in the course of the Question Period. That is going a bit too far.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Since the quote indicates that the company will not accept money from the Province of Manitoba because of the federal Government's tax write-off procedures, will the Prime Minister check into the tax write-off procedures and make sure that there is a change so that, when companies refuse to do exploration because of these tax write-offs, the Government will have a stick as well as a carrot?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the question is one which I obviously cannot understand or answer without knowing the facts in more detail. But I do understand that the Hon. Member is alleging that tax write-offs are discouraging exploration rather than encouraging it. It would seem to me to be certainly contrary to the spirit of the budget, and would seem to be a good matter to raise in debate since we are in the middle of the budget debate right now.


Rodney Edward Murphy: I intend to speak on this subject tomorrow when I do speak on the budget.


REQUEST THAT TAX WRITE-OFF PROVISIONS BE CHANGED
Rodney Edward Murphy: This matter affects the workers in Lynn Lake. If the tax measures of the federal Government are preventing the company from doing exploration because it would rather do so with private enterprise and not accept the money provided by the Government of Manitoba, will the Government change the tax write-off procedures, since it is a matter of Government policy?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I think it would be important to correct the Hon. Member's assertion in the House. The fact of the matter is that, in the case of the proposed closing of the Sherritt Gordon Mine, negotiations were undertaken under the NEED Program to provide financial assistance under the joint program. Federal authority officials were quite prepared to

April 26, 1983
Oral Questions
help Sherritt Gordon under the NEED Program to keep the workers in place. It was the provincial Government that said no.


SUPPLY AND SERVICES
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Supply and Services. Can he assure me that the Government's decision to purchase 20 Canadair CL-215 water bombers will result in new jobs at Springer Aerospace near Sault Ste. Marie which has had the subcontract in the past for painting these planes, and is located in a very high unemployment area?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: Madam Speaker, I am very much aware of the Hon. Member's interest in that particular company and the work that it does. I understand that that company has done very good work indeed for Canadair in the past. Of course I remind the hon. gentleman that in circumstances such as those that he has described, the work will undoubtedly be allotted by Canadair on a competitive basis. However I would strongly urge him to make his representations known to Canadair.


FISHERIES
James Aloysius McGrath: Madam Speaker, on April 15 the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was asked if the Government had made a decision on the restructuring of the processing sector of the Atlantic fishing industry. Since that time we have had a budget with no reference in it to the belaboured and financially undercut fishing industry in Atlantic Canada. I would like to ask the Minister of State for Economic Development, who I understand has the responsibility in Cabinet for the restructuring of the Atlantic fishing industry, if a decision has been made. His colleague, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, told us on April 15 that negotiations had reached the delicate stage, and he suggested that we take it up with his colleague, the Minister of State for Economic Development. I now ask him that question.


Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows full well, the negotiating team was given a mandate by the cabinet committee charged with the restructuring, and that negotia-tiong mandate is currently being carried out.


PRIVILEGE
Madam Speaker:: Before ruling on the question of privilege raised by the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens) on April 21,1 wish to inform the House of the sequence of events concerning the tabling of the budget documents on April 19 and 21.
Toward the end of his budget speech the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) tabled six printed budget documents which were authenticated as having been tabled by the Clerk Assistant on duty. Very shortly afterwards the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fisher) handed to the Clerk Assistant some additional duplicated material which he said should have been tabled by the Minister with the printed documents. The Clerk Assistant accepted these additional documents but decided that he could not endorse them as having been tabled because they had not been delivered to the Table in accordance with the regular tabling practice. He sent the supplementary material to the Journals Branch together with the documents tabled by the Minister, and made a report to the Clerk of the House as to the action he had taken.
On the following day the Parliamentary Secretary inquired of the Clerk Assistant why he had not endorsed the supplementary material as having been tabled. The Clerk Assistant explained that because of the departure from normal practice he did not feel he was authorized to do so. He suggested to the Parliamentary Secretary that this material could be tabled by the Minister or by the Parliamentary Secretary on behalf of the Minister at the following sitting. In the event, the Parliamentary Secretary sought and obtained the unanimous consent of the House to table the additional material at 11 a.m. on April 21.
This leads me to the question of privilege raised by the Hon. Member for York-Peel. In the course of his presentation he alleged that, as a result of changes in the budget documents and the separate tabling of some revised tables, the Minister of Finance misled the House, breached his oath of secrecy and was in contempt of Parliament. The consumption here is that the Minister was in some way dishonest in his manner of furnishing the budget documents.
My predecessors and I have on various occasions ruled that charges of this kind cannot be made by way of a question of privilege but only on a substantive motion making clear and specific accusations. In any case, there is no evidence of what the Hon. Member alleges. It is clear from the report I have had from the Table that the Minister intended to table the supplementary material with the printed documents. The oversight was almost immediately realized and a minute or two later the Parliamentary Secretary handed the supplementary material to the Table. The Clerk Assistant, conscious of the importance of observing the regular practice of the House, did not treat the supplementary material as an integral part of the printed documents. Nothing more serious occurred than
April 26, 1983
perhaps a misunderstanding concerning the practice relating to the tabling of documents.
On the matter of tabling documents, Standing Order 46(2) states quite clearly that:
A Minister of the Crown, or a Parliamentary Secretary acting on behalf of a Minister, may, in his or her place, in the House, state that he or she proposes to lay upon the Table of the House, any report or other paper dealing with a matter coming within the administrative responsibilities of the government, and, thereupon, the same shall be deemed for all purposes to have been laid before the House.
Ministers, and not the Chair, are responsible for anything they might table concerning the administrative responsibilities of the Government. The Chair is competent to determine whether or not the tabling procedure observed is correct. It is not responsible for the content of the documents themselves. In the present case, the printed budget documents were properly tabled on budget night and the supplementary material was properly tabled at a subsequent sitting. Neither the privileges nor the procedure of this House has been breached.
I must therefore find that the Hon. Member for York-Peel does not have a question of privilege.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Robert Joseph Ogle: Madam Speaker, I have in my hand a petition which has been signed by people from the City of Saskatoon and citizens of the northern parts of Saskatchewan. It states that the offices of the National Film Board presently located in the City of Saskatoon, in the Province of Saskatchewan, are facing closure; that the services rendered by the offices of the National Film Board in Saskatoon have been of immeasurable value to the community; that there is no comparable service with resources to provide a similar public service to the community; that the closing of these offices would deny, to countless individuals in northern areas, rural communities and prairie cities, ready access to a form of Canadian culture and creativity which their tax dollars help to make possible; and that the closing of these offices represents an irreplaceable loss in the quality of service to the community.
Therefore, the undersigned petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to urge the Minister of Communications (Mr. Fox) to reverse the decision to close the National Film Board offices in Saskatoon. The petition has been presented by teachers, by professors from the university, by senior citizens and by a broad sector of people. I hope the Minister will listen attentively to it.
________________________________24867
Order Paper Questions UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE ACT, 1971


AMENDMENT TO PROVIDE BENEFITS TO ADOPTING PARENT
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-683, an Act to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971 (benefits to adopting parent).
He said: Madam Speaker, this amendment to the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971 would entitle an adopting parent, whether male or female, to benefits equivalent to pregnancy benefits currently accorded to natural mothers under the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971.


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

Mr. David Smith (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, if question No. 4,527 could be made an order for return, this return would be tabled immediately.


Madam Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House that question No. 4,527 be deemed to have been made an order for return?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


EQUIFAX INC.
Mr. Parker: 1.	Have any government departments or agencies done business with the firm Equifax Inc. in the past two years and, if so, what was the nature of the work?
2.	Is Equifax Inc. presently performing any work for any government agencies or departments and, if so, for each agency or department, what is the nature of the work?
Return tabled.


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


Mr. McKinnon:: Madam Speaker, a question of mine is on the Order Paper. It is a starred question, which is supposed to incite a little haste on the Government side. It has now been on the Order Paper since May 19 of last year, and it concerns Mr. Geoff Wright. A clear case of petty discrimination has been made against this young gentleman, and the Department of National Defence is refusing to allow him to enrol in the reserves. No real acceptable reason has been given, and I ask that an oral answer be given in the House with the utmost dispatch. I also understand that the answer has been sitting on the Minister's desk for several weeks or months.

Order Paper Questions


David P. Smith: In the event that the Hon. Member's information is correct, I will do what I can to expedite the tabling of that answer.


Mr. Stevens:: Madam Speaker, I, too, have a question on the Order Paper which I would like to-


David P. Smith: Which one is that?


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: -gently remind the Parliamentary Secretary is still unanswered. This is undoubtedly an oversight, in that I asked it on January 29, 1981. It simply asked: "What was the total cost of the Prime Minister's December 1980-January 1981 world tour? What percentage of the total cost of the trip will be paid by the Canadian taxpayer?" It is question No. 2,042.


Mr. Lewis:: Give us the percentages.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, it is correct that the Hon. Member has raised this matter before. I believe that at least one Department has not completed the necessary information to answer that question, but I will see what I can do to give it a great deal of priority and I will look into the matter on behalf of the Hon. Member.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Madam Speaker, while the Parliamentary Secretary is putting that on the fast track-I understand there is a new "clear all" bureaucracy process over there-could he also look at questions Nos. 3,216 through 3,220 inclusive, all of which deal with the Prime Minister's jaunts to various areas of the world, including Mexico, Australia, Korea, Fiji, Washington, D.C., New York and Algeria. These all go back to 1981. Could we please have an answer as soon as possible showing what it has really cost the Canadian taxpayer?


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, I will be happy to look into that on behalf of the Hon. Member. I should point out to the Hon. Member that those trips, which he regrettably and mistakenly referred to as jaunts, have all been official business and they are every bit as legitimate as the frequent trips which the Hon. Member takes to return to his constituency. It goes with the job, Madam Speaker.


Sinclair McKnight Stevens: All we want to know is the cost.


Mr. McKenzie:: Madam Speaker, would the Parliamentary Secretary please look into two questions of mine, one of which has been on the Order Paper since November 18, 1981. It has to do with Liberal Cabinet Ministers' travels. The question reads:
Did the (a) Minister of Supply and Services (b) Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (c) Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development take a Jetstar flight to Winnipeg for the official opening of General Aluminum Forgings Incorporated on October 30, 1981 and, if so, in each case, other than the Minister and the aircraft crew, who was on the flight?
That question has been on the Order Paper well over a year and a half. I am sure there has got to be some mistake to account for why there has been no reply. I would appreciate it
April 26, 1983
if the Parliamentary Secretary would check into what is causing the delay.
Now for about the eighth time I have inquired about question No. 4,175. This question was placed on the Order Paper on March 24, 1982. This question inquires about the Government's hiring teams that are going to universities in apparently just two Provinces, according to the information I have. I have asked in my question for details as to whether these hiring teams will be going to any other Provinces and will they be going to universities in Manitoba. I have asked what nationalities in particular these teams are hiring. The information I have is that only one nationality is being hired for these Government jobs, which seems highly discriminatory.
I have spoken in committee to some of the Ministers, who have told me that they have filed the information with the proper sources. The Parliamentary Secretary has told me a number of times that he will get an answer for me as to what is causing the delay, Madam Speaker. I ask him once again to make some inquiries and inform me why the delay in answering question No. 4,175 which was placed on the Order Paper on March 24, 1982.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member is correct; he has raised this matter in the House before. I regret at this point that I am not able to table the answer but I will be delighted to look into the matter on behalf of the Hon. Member.


Madam Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions be allowed to stand?



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Keeper:
That this House condemn the tragic implications of monetarist economic policies adopted by this Government that resulted in 24 per cent unemployment among young Canadians and that deny reasonable job prospects for the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, when I was speaking to this non-confidence motion in the Government on which we will vote later today, it reminded me that we are once again giving Government backbenchers an opportunity to rise and do something for their constituents and for the nation; that is, to put the Liberal Cabinet out of power so the people of Canada can have a fresh choice as to which group of men and women and which Party they want to lead them over the next few years.


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
April 26, 1983

I was speaking about how the Liberal Party has truly botched the governing of this country over the last 15 years and how the Liberals have not only failed the country but our citizens and the world. Instead of being a nation of 24 million people sitting on the vast resources of half of this whole continent, instead of being a nation that is a source of capital to the world, a source of energy to the world, a source of food to the world, instead of being givers, we are takers. I think we will be judged harshly on that. Canada is made up of 24 million people sitting on vast resources, and only by being next to the United States could we get away with this. If Canada were sitting next to China, India or Russia, those countries would have taken us over long, long ago. We are not good stewards of the resources over which we have legal and international jurisdiction. The Government has to take that flat on the chin.
It was not always that way. If we think back fifteen years ago, we realize just how far down we have gone. Fifteen years ago we had a national debt of about $13 billion. That was after we had gone through an enormous depression and had also come through a world war in which 40,000 of our fellow men and women gave their lives to preserve our freedom and economic system. They fought so that our young people could have the opportunity to excel, to work and to do better for themselves and future generations.
We had a deficit on a yearly basis that was zero. We had balanced budgets at that time. We did not have the $30 billion debt that we are facing now; we had balanced budgets. Yet with that small national debt and with balanced budgets we had a hospital insurance program, so that people were protected if they went to hospital. We had a medicare program covering doctors' treatment. We had a post-secondary education system that turned out graduates by the tens of thousands. We had an economic system that was generating ten jobs for every one of us who came out of the university and college systems in 1968. As well, we had an Old Age Security system for our seniors which was fair. We had a Family Allowance system for mothers with young children. And we had a rate of inflation that was small enough that a man or woman could work 25 years or 30 years and put aside a little bit each year. They had a pension plan they knew would protect them in their later years. With low rates of inflation, that could be done. But where are we now, Mr. Speaker? Up to 1968 we had positive attitudes. We were building a nation, and we were building a nation on the basis of our resources.
Before lunch I was saying that resources are nothing if they are not developed. Resources only become available to people if we let our creative individuals and corporations develop them. Creative individuals are able to turn the tar sands oil into an asset. The tar sands oil has been sitting there for millions of years. It was worth nothing to no one until the Syncrude operation came along. Forests are worth nothing if the trees simply stand there. Once the trees are taken down, turned into lumber and converted into houses, this means jobs and infrastructure and our young people can have work. We were respected internationally because we carried our weight.
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We were a source of food, energy and capital to the nation. This is not the way it is today. We carried our weight in the international defence sphere.
Here we are 15 years later. We are into the troubles that I am setting forth not because there is anything wrong with the Canadian people, not because there is anything wrong with our Canadian Constitution. We have the problems we have today because of deliberate Government policies that were formulated by a Cabinet, put before this House and passed by this House, most often by closure. These policies were passed by the active collaboration of Members of the New Democratic Party when the Liberals were in power in a minority situation, and they are passed now by a Government majority. Members stand day after day on these closure motions and put through any sort of a Bill, whether it is a borrowing Bill for $14 billion or Bills that do not really reflect the genuine need of the nation.
Today the national debt, if we add the debt of the Crown corporations and the contingent liabilities of the Crown, is over $200 billion. The interest on that debt, which does not pay the debt back at all, takes one in three tax dollars that are paid in this country. We tax all of our citizens and that money flows into the Government. We take one of every three tax dollars and give it to someone, often our own citizens who have enough wealth to lend money to the Government. The rich are getting richer. We are reaching the situation where we have small but incredibly rich class of people, while the rest of us who do not have the wealth to lend to Government are becoming poorer and poorer. The programs are not there. Because the Government spends $1 in $3 on servicing debt, it does not have money for programs or for capital to develop resources so that the youth of the nation have jobs.
On a yearly basis we now have a deficit of $31 billion. That is $1.5 billion per month, compared with 1968 when we had balanced budgets. When people were offered programs in 1968, there was a corresponding tax. The deficit means that the Government offered programs with insufficient tax revenue. It stacked up the debt, and as we know young people are becoming painfully aware of the fact that the national debt will be paid by them. A deficit is really a mortgage on the future. Mr. Speaker, it is something you and I would never do in our personal lives. We would never encumber our children in this way. Surely the goal is to make things easier for our children. At the end of our lives we want to be able to say: "I carried my weight and left something better for my children and my grandchildren".
Certainly that is the Conservative philosophy. It is not a Liberal policy or philosophy, nor an NDP philosophy. Theirs is really a policy of greed-we will get all the benefit of these programs today and the next generation can pay for them and make its accommodation with the future. This almost shows that they do not have a thought for the future.

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What has the Government done for the post-secondary educational system? The universities are turning out graduates, but there are ten graduates for every job. Through its fiscal policy is has destroyed the economic infrastructure necessary to develop resources and create jobs for young people. Our senior citizens are upset. There is a general attitude of fear. There is fear on the part of our young people that there will not be jobs for them. There is fear on the part of people with jobs that they will lose them. There is fear on the part of senior citizens that their pensions, because of high inflation, will not be adequate in a mere four or five years.


Mr. Gauthier:: Nonsense.


Blaine Allen Thacker: I hear the Hon. Member. That is precisely why we have this problem. For years we have seen that situation developing and have heard Hon. Members opposite saying "nonsense". If we carry on in the same fashion, the debt will get larger and rather than $1 in $3 being used to service the debt, it will be $2 out of every $3. What do we do when all revenue goes to pay interest on the debt? In that event we would be into a Third World situation-a small, incredibly wealthy class and a large poor class. Where would the Hon. Member opposite draw the line? I keep saying that it has to be in the area of 15 per cent to 20 per cent maximum. Perhaps he is saying 30 per cent is okay, or is he saying 50 per cent or 75 per cent? In any event, it is a mortgage on future generations. I do not think our young people will put up with it. Their only solution is to become politically active and help us defeat the Government.
How did we get into this jam? As I said earlier, it was by deliberate Government policies. The deficit is not the fault of the Canadian people, the Constitution or the French/English situation we have discussed in the House. It is not the problem of the poor versus the rich or the employed versus the unemployed. It is the problem of a Government which has been in power too long and has learned to exercise power to the full limit, plus an extra 25 per cent. It is still able to fool people. It is relying on the essentially good nature of Canadians who trust the people they elected. That is their first mistake. They should not trust the Government. They should call all of us back to find out what we are doing, particularly Government Members who should be called to account for most of the things they have done.
The National Energy Program was a deliberate policy. So was the policy on defence spending. There has been a deliberate policy of criticizing the United States, the nation with which we have to get along whether or not we like it. The Government cannot ride the free blanket of this defence spending and then kick them in the shins at the same time. It just will not work. We must sit down and reason with them in order to get them to recognize this, not kick the U.S. snipe at their sides and expect them not to retaliate. When an elephant retaliates, the mouse gets squashed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Questions. Comments. Debate.


Mr. Douglas Fisher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, jobs and recovery were the two
themes in the April 19 budget. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) stated very clearly on budget night that he had two goals he wanted to accomplish in his budget. First, he wanted to encourage the early signs of recovery in our economy. Second, he wanted to make that recovery permanent and give Canadians the hope of a prosperous decade in the 1980s.
Job creation was at the centre of the budget. It was the reason for the incentives and the programs the Minister announced last Tuesday-jobs for young people, jobs to rehire workers who have been laid off, jobs to help people in the short run until the economy picks up permanently and rehires them permanently.
How are we to accomplish this? We will accomplish this through three steps. First, there is the massive injection of public works spending into the economy through Special Recovery Capital Projects. As we know, $2.4 billion will go into the economy immediately in the form of public works to stimulate the recovery. Second, private enterprise is being given encouragement to invest, to rehire and to expand- another $2.4 billion in special incentives to encourage business to get back on its feet and to get going again. Third, we are not waiting just for those two streams to come along. We are injecting $1.5 billion into the economy for direct job creation over the next year; $710 million of that money is new in 1983.
All three steps fit together. All three steps are important to job recovery and economic recovery. The Special Recovery Program will start right away. As its impact is felt throughout Canada, we will see a general economic recovery, particularly as businesses, consumers and trade get back on their feet. Equally, while that is going on we will find groups of people who need help the most receiving direct aid and job support.
What industries or areas will benefit from all this? The Special Recovery Capital Projects are being announced by various Ministers. For example, we have already heard about water bombers to fight forest fires and about a strengthened Coast Guard. We will hear more announcements from other Ministers over the next few days. Whatever the project, whatever the announcement, these public works must come onstream quickly. They must be there fast because we want the impact of this spending to be felt right away. At the same time they must be projects which have a lasting value, a permanence and a usefulness for all Canadians. They must be in industries where we have high unemployment and where our dollars will stimulate recovery quickly.
As I have mentioned, we have already heard about ships and about aircraft and we know that more announcements will be coming in the transport area. We know that public works will involve construction. Because of the announcements made by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde), we know that there will be a high priority placed on research and training in order to put our industries into a competitive position in the future. We know that one of the great foundations of our economy, resource development, is going to be emphasized. Tourism, an area in which young people and unskilled workers can find so
April 26, 1983

much employment, will be one of the areas that will be targeted. Of course, high technology, the industry that holds out so much promise for us, will be part of the Special Recovery Capital Projects.
Mr. Speaker, it is important to know that these projects respond to the requests and the initiatives of the private sector that we heard during the pre-budget consultation. Over and over again, representatives from labour, from banks, from industry, from the retail sector, from all parts of Canada, told us that if we wanted to stimulate the creation of jobs, we should do it through public works that have a lasting value. We should, in effect, add to Canada's wealth and inventory. So it is important to know that the ideas for our first leg in this program, the Special Recovery Capital Projects, come not just from Government but from all Canadians, from people in all sectors and all regions, Canadians pulling together through public works to rebuild our economy. But we have not stopped there. As I mentioned, the private sector is receiving important incentives as well. Some of these incentives are in the form of grants, such as increased aid for exports, and some are in the form of tax breaks and new tax incentives. These will stimulate growth in the private sector.
From coast to coast, we have heard business groups on a national, regional and local level saying that we have taken the right course with this kind of priority. We have chosen ways to reach the biggest company right down to the smallest enterprise through tax incentives that will stimulate business into expansion, through refunds in special targeted areas, through help to businesses to get off the debt bandwagon and to start issuing equity, easing the pressure on their cash flow. These incentives are vital, and business has recognized the wisdom of the budget's approach.
In areas like small business, housing, construction, the furniture industry, the mining industry, the machinery industry, the heavy construction equipment industry, we are providing an extra incentive. We are not only providing tax breaks across the board, we are also providing more incentives in addition to all the other new ones that we have introduced. We are doing it because these areas need an extra boost to rehire their workers.
Areas such as small business or the furniture industry have been particularly hard hit by the recession. These sectors of our economy will hire workers back quickly. In our judgment, the best way that we could have created jobs in our economy was to stimulate sectors like the small business area that handle so many jobs and can react so very, very quickly to any changes and any improvement and recovery in the economy. So job creation especially is a target in these incentives.
The third area I would like to mention to you, Mr. Speaker, is support for direct employment. This is something that I am particularly proud of. We have undertaken a very, very agressive program to create jobs in the short term for people who need that help the most. We have, for example, put in another SI00 million into our program to let communities take advantage of the special Section 38 regulation. People whose Unemployment Insurance is coming to an end, people who
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have had that kind of support, can look forward to additional help through the NEED Program. This help includes jobs and projects in communities, private organizations, co-operatives and businesses, jobs and projects that give them needed work and again that have a permanent and lasting value after the projects are over. In the NEED Program, we have added an extra $260 million as an important impetus for this vital project.
Young people have been the topic of today's discussion, Mr. Speaker. In the Minister's budget, direct aid for young people to find jobs totalled an extra $280 million. Obviously we are doing this to tide people over in an emergency, to provide them with a safety net when they need it the most. We are giving this help to targeted groups, to people who are most deserving of the help, and we are doing this to bridge the gap and to get people over these tough times.
This direct action, this targeting policy, is a continuation of past policies that have built up these vital safety nets. These programs have, over and over again, reached out into depressed communities across the country and given them a vital boost at a time when they have needed it the most. These programs have reached into homes where people are unemployed and given them some hope and comfort because the rest of the country is there to help them in their hour of greatest need.
In my community of Mississauga, I have been proud of the kind of projects that this direct aid has produced. My community has come forward with the kind of projects that every Member of Parliament has seen. We in Mississauga are not special. The projects we are promoting are typical of the projects that are being promoted in communities and constituencies from coast to coast.
Looking at the list of projects that I recommended for approval to create student work over the summer, there were several projects on child care, a couple of projects to help handicapped people, one project for the community non-profit housing authority, and another couple of projects for cooperative housing. There were several projects involving community service, and one project involving nursing care. Those projects are of permanent and valuable benefit to my city. I am proud that we have reached out to improve the quality of life in Mississauga through these kinds of student employment projects.
Equally, Mr. Speaker, the parks in my city, the libraries in my city, and the small businesses in my city have taken advantage of the NEED Program. Millions of dollars have gone to Metropolitan Toronto, and much of that has gone into Mississauga to support worth-while programs and to give people who need the help a job until the economy can recover. What could be better? What could be more typical, Mr. Speaker, than the $11 million that is being spent by the Catholic Church in Toronto, the Ontario Government and the federal Government, all three working together to make our city and our region a better place for people who are unemployed?

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Through this same direct concern to create jobs and to bridge the tough times, we have also seen a massive investment in retraining. That, Mr. Speaker, is a massive investment in our future. We are teaching people new skills to match new jobs. In 1983 alone, the federal Government will spend over $1.2 billion in retraining, not the least of which is the $60 million going into student loans and aid for young people who want to stay in school a little longer and need help to meet the cost.
Today's motion treats youth unemployment as if it were isolated. I hope my comments will put that into a little bit of perspective. The federal Government sees youth unemployment as a particular tragedy. In the April budget an enormous amount of money was dedicated to solving the problem. We targeted over $200 million to help young people as a special group and to provide direct jobs for them right away. More important, we targeted billions of dollars to renewing our economy and giving young people a chance to look forward to a secure future. Equally important, we targeted hundreds of millions of dollars for skill training and retraining so that people will have the tools to deal with tomorrow's challenges.
That is the message of the April budget, Mr. Speaker. We said that jobs are at the heart of our concern and that we want an economy that will recover in a permanent way. We are boosting those forces in our economy that will make us permanently prosperous.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Questions, comments or debate. The Hon. Member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Corbett).


Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, as usual I listened with a great deal of interest to the contribution of the previous speaker to the debate. I was particularly interested, although not too impressed, with his closing words when he referred to the "heart" of the budget that was recently put forward by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde). Anyone who has read the budget and is knowledgeable in the affairs of the world of finance would realize that the budget does not have a heart. It has no heart at all.
When listening to the Hon. Member it was some time before I came to the conclusion that he was talking about the budget. His opening remarks certainly did not sound as if he were referring to the same document that I and hundreds of thousands of other Canadians were made aware of with the introduction of the budget. The Hon. Member referred to the $1.5 billion that would be injected into the economy over the next few months but he conveniently neglected to advise the House where that $1.5 billion was coming from. Mr. Speaker, eventually it has to come from the pockets of the taxpayers of the nation. Taxpayers will end up paying over $3,000 each for the deficit that the Government has imposed upon them. That is something that is going to be very difficult for them when added to the already overwhelming burden that they shoulder.
The Hon. Member mentioned several items, several projects, several areas that the Government was going to address to see that the economy was stimulated. He neglected several very important areas from the standpoint of our youth and he did
not get around to addressing the problems of youth until his closing remarks. I felt that his speech addressed the plight of the youth of the nation about as much as the budget did, and that is very, very little. He spoke about rebuilding the economy, about giving people hope in time of need. The people who have been talking to me and my colleagues do not feel that the budget imparted a message that gives them any hope.
There are a number of things the Government could have addressed with reference to assistance to our youth population. Just about a year ago I stood in my place in this House and spoke about youth employment. If I recall, the date was around May 6. At that time I said that the unemployment figures of the day, which were in the vicinity of 1.25 million, had been referred to by the Government as being near the peak. The Government anticipated that at the most another
100.000	might be added. In this Party we expressed concern that the figures were inaccurate. Time has taught Canadians a cruel lesson. Over the period of a year we have seen not
100.000	people added to our unemployment rolls but close to
500.000.	The real tragedy for the nation is that the people who seem to be hardest hit by the desperate unemployment are our youth. These are the people it seems to be affecting most.
In New Brunswick over-all employment is in the vicinity of 16.1 per cent, or 49,000 people out of a labour force of
305.000.	In March, 1983, youth unemployment in New Brunswick was 28 per cent while just a year ago it was 23.2 per cent. It increased by 4.8 per cent over the past year. In my constituency of Fundy-Royal there is general unemployment. Albert County has 18.2 per cent, Kings County and Saint John's County have 12.9 per cent, while Queen's County and Sunbury County have 14.1 per cent.
Over-all unemployment in Canada is 12.6 per cent, and youth unemployment is 21.3 per cent. Unemployment in New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada is higher because of the uncaring attitude taken by the Government over the last number of months. Its policy is not directed toward healing that intolerable situation in my part of the country.
When another 12 months expire the budget will have done nothing to alleviate that unacceptable situation. What it means is that people coming out of school this year will not be able to find a job. That is going to be a very frustrating experience for them. It is going to be a very unplesant experience to face at a time when knowing their future and having confidence in their future is very important to them.
Last week I had occasion to visit a school in my constituency where grades 9, 10 and 11 were combined in a class. After class the teacher told me that she could only take comfort in the fact that her students are not going to be put into the work force this year as they do not graduate yet. In our area there is just no work available for these young people. She said, Mr. Speaker, "I hope that by the time these young people do graduate the situation will have improved to the point where they can have some hope for their future". Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, despite the fact that I would have liked to have given that woman some assurance that things were going to get
April 26, 1983

better, I was not able to do so. We know from the projections of the Government itself that, indeed, that is not going to take place. Things are not going to get better in Canada over the next while. Unemployment is going to continue to grow and the youth of this nation will be among the hardest hit.
Most jobs in the workplace, Mr. Speaker, are interrelated. It goes without saying that if the industries of this nation do not have work there will be a spreading effect. If the shipyards, for example, do not have work, do not have ships to build, then the youth of the nation, who might like to take up an apprenticeship in the shipbuilding industry, will not have an opportunity to learn that trade. That is exactly what is taking place. The shipyards are experiencing lay-offs the like of which they have not experienced in years, and that is adversely affecting many of our young people who could otherwise and might otherwise look forward to obtaining long-term employment, even lifetime employment, by virtue of becoming apprentices in the shipbuilding industry.
That is a shame, Mr. Speaker, because our country has many young people who are capable of pursuing many meaningful careers in industries such as the shipbuilding industry. The Government has been repeatedly asked to accelerate its shipbuilding program, to no avail. We find now, within the last couple of days or so, that a program is expected to come into place in some meaningful fashion in the fall. But we have heard these promises before. We have heard them for months and months in days gone by and what has materialized? Nothing. There is little hope.
At least, at the beginning of this Government's reckless venture into the economic morass which it has created, there was some hope, but our citizens, our youth, are fast losing that hope. The only hope is for the Government to address itself to the problems our young people have now and the problems which they will face down the road, and give them an opportunity to establish themselves in our society in a meaningful way so that they may contribute to the future of this country, an opportunity of which they would have been assured if the economic affairs of our country had been managed in a way which was proper and responsible.
There is a group of young Canadians who are following in the footsteps of people who have contributed substantially to the solid foundation which Canada has had up to this point. I speak with pride of the young people who belong to the 4H Clubs across this nation, some of whom are visiting us in Ottawa and some of whom are visiting the House this afternoon. It is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Finance in his budget speech did not address himself to the needs of the farming community in this country in a meaningful way. No hope has been given to the farming community that things will improve or that this Government recognizes the difficulties which the farming community is experiencing or recognizes the terrible problems and burdens of the high interest rate policy of this Government which has been in effect for the last number of months. The budget gave no hope
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to those farmers and their families who are facing a disastrous future, if they have not already succumbed to the disaster brought upon them.
It is unfortunate, Mr. Speaker, that these young people will be returning home with only the memory of the sights and sounds of Ottawa as it is enveloped in its own pink crystal unreality which seems to blend into harmony on Parliament Hill, and which is so untypical of the situation which exists out there in the real world. That is the impression they will go home with, Mr. Speaker. They will experience a sense of despair because when they arrive back in their various areas they will see that things are very much different than they appear here in the nation's capital.
I would like to deal now with the incentives to which the budget did address itself in some ways as far as youth unemployment is concerned. Some programs have been introduced, including the Summer Student Employment Program which, according to the budget, is supposed to provide an extra $70 million for this year and will create 17,000 jobs over the 1982 job level. On examining the documentation, Mr. Speaker, we see that really all we are talking about is an additional $50 million increase over the 1981 funding program.
It is difficult to analyse how this Government can rationalize in its own thinking the fact that it is going to raise taxes in this country next year by something in the vicinity of $250 billion, which the consumers are going to have to pay directly into the coffers of the Government, in order to finance a program to help employ youths, when it is going to put a pittance of only $50 million additional funds into that Summer Student Employment Program. We cannot buy that, Mr. Speaker. We cannot accept it. What is that going to mean to the young people in Fundy-Royal, my constituency? What it is going to mean to them is that a program is going to be developed and that that constituency, which has counties with an unemployment rate which is considerably higher than the national average, will receive the smalles allotment in the Province of New Brunswick to assist youth to find summer employment. That is unrealistic, Mr. Speaker, and unacceptable. The people of this nation will not allow this Government to get away with it. They will not forget.
There are other programs, Mr. Speaker, such as youth internship and job-corps programs. The Department of National Defence is offering to enrol 5,000 more in its reserves. We see the program of Katimavik increased somewhat by $40 million over the next two years, which is going to provide 2,000 more jobs. But what kind of jobs are they? They are jobs which are paid at the rate of $ 1 a day. The reserves are not full-time jobs. They may possibly provide some training for some of those young people who will be fortunate enough to get into the program, but after that they will find themselves in a work place where there are no jobs for them. Now, what earthly use is that either to the nation or to the young people of the nation who want to go out into the country with some confidence? Mr. Speaker, it is of absolutely no use in the context in which it has been put forward through this

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budget. Even governmental officials are reported as saying, when asked about what this is going to do to help the youth of this nation or even the nation in general, "Don't hold your breath." Officials say that the program will not make more than a dent in the over-all unemployment problems this country is experiencing. What this nation needed, Mr. Speaker, what the people needed, was hope. Hope is something that we do not have.


Mr. Pierre  Gimai@: Mr. Speaker, we are considering an Opposition motion which seems to indicate that the New Democratic Party has developed some awareness of the employment situation of young people in Canada.
I intend to use the time allowed to give my personal impression of the last ten years and what they have meant to the development of the role played by young people and the Canadian Government. I can only applaud the fact that today, a Member of the New Democratic Party has moved a motion expressing his Party's concern for the young people of this country.
Fortunately, Mr. Speaker, the Canadian Government realized well before 1983 that young people were having trouble finding employment in this beautiful country of ours, and took positive action and introduced policies aimed at helping young people to cope with this situation.
For ten years now, a Liberal Government, that is, the present Government and its predecessors, have introduced programs such as Opportunities for Youth, the Canada Community Development Program and Canada Works. I may recall that during its short period in power in 1979, the first action taken by the Progressive Conservative Party and one of the few decisions it did make, was to do away with Canada Works. This program, which for many years has been severely criticized by the Official Opposition, happens to be the most legitimate vehicle the Canadian Government or any government for that matter has ever given young people as a means of expressing themselves. The Canada Community Development Program and Opportunities for Youth-all these job creation programs constitute an act of trust by the Government in a group in our society that was faced with employment problems. Young people are being asked to design and submit their own projects, and the Canadian Government will give them the money they need to demonstrate that their concepts are workable and to set up their own development structures.
Mr. Speaker, our young people are extraordinary, because they are living in difficult times. However, I feel that in a country where life is becoming difficult for everyone, coping with that situation is feasible. Our young people grew up in nice homes with parents who are secure in their jobs and who are generally quite well off. Often they can afford quite a few luxuries such as travel, several cars or television sets, and so
on. In fact, our young people have been surrounded since birth by what would be called affluence in any part of the world. I think that previous generations acquired, quite legitimately, a very high degree of material security, which in turn put our young people in a situation where the material security their parents had acquired in order to provide their children with the essentials of life finally led them to opt for other values, to make a choice. That is, they were told that jobs are important but jobs are not everything, and they discovered other values to defend such as the environment and peace throughout the world and a number of other concepts such as the co-operative system, group work, solidarity, and they made those decisions calmly and clearly. Today, I think we owe them some recognition, because for two years people have been talking about the recession all over North America and the Western world. It seems to be the only subject of conversation. When did people start talking about a recession, Mr. Speaker? When other people, and not only young people, started having trouble getting jobs. When young people had to cope with this, they did so in a positive way, and they are still doing so. They coped with this problem by developing ideas and trying to get people to accept them. To a certain extent, they have led the way as a result of certain views they have expressed on matters that we did not think were terribly important, such as acid rain, and now Canada is very busily defending those views. Young people made this happen. Today, the Canadian Government is being accused of a lack of concern for these young people. This surpises me, because since 1970, the Government of Canada has shown tremendous concern for young people and their future. Have union leaders shown the same concern for young people in our country during the last fifteen years? Has anyone ever seen a union leader get up and try to talk about the future of young people with his own union members, with the management of businesses with whom he negotiates and with various levels of Government?
Mr. Speaker, in the present Budget, the Canadian Government has earmarked billions of dollars for manpower training, which will be used more specifically for young people. Has anyone wondered why the Canadian Government has to train young people who are just out of school? After all, the same Canadian Government is already paying for 50 per cent of postsecondary education, which includes CEGEPs and universities, and 50 per cent of the cost of education in technical schools, plus equalization payments. So why, after paying all that, should the Canadian Government be obliged to pay for training people who have just finished their formal education? It is easy for the Opposition parties to stand up and blame a Government for adopting certain policies, but I want to point out that these policies based on co-operative federalism were originated by the Liberal Party of Canada over the years, and I think the Opposition parties are ill-advised to point a finger
April 26, 1983

at a Liberal and Federal Government, while the people responsible for providing training programs, and for educating young people for 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19 years and supposedly preparing them for the labour market, are members of their own parties and happen to head our provincial governments. Those are the people to whom the Canadian Government has given a blank cheque to prepare our youth for the future, and they now criticize us because all that they have succeeded in doing is to put on the labour market untrained young people due to the lack of foresight or vision of provincial authorities.
I have no objection if someone wants to say to the Canadian Government: You must do more. We are indeed trying to do more. I do not agree, however, when someone tries to hide the truth from the Canadian people and to suggest that the Federal Government is to blame if young people today have greater problems than other members of our society. I have often been attacked in the past by members of other political parties because the Canadian Government allocated funds to young people in order to launch projects and set up cooperatives, corporations or non-profit organizations for humanitarian purposes, and so on. Such programs have often been branded as band-aid programs because funds were allocated to young people who had decided to help themselves. When the Federal Government said that it wanted to ensure not only freedom of speech, but also freedom of action to those who wanted to try something new, it was accused of taking stopgap measures. I can now laugh about it because the same people, namely the leaders of the Parti Quebecois, who used to accuse us of every fault and of taking band-aid measures because of programs such as Canada Works and Opportunities for Youth, are now saying that they want to organize a summit of young Quebecers to learn what young people are thinking. I find this pure nonsense. One thing is certain, Mr. Speaker, I shall attend the summit of young Quebecers and young Liberals will also be there working. Why? Because the Liberal Party of Canada has always allowed young people to express themselves directly without requiring them to wave the banner of separatism or to wear maple leaves or fleur-de-lis, because it believes in human relationship and the basic concept that two heads are better than one and that, with all our resources, millions of Canadians together, regardless of their age, can work wonders.
Today, the New Democratic Party condemns the Canadian Government, that New Democratic Party which has shamelessly jumped on the bandwagon of Mr. McDermott and his cronies, a bunch of people who do not want to see much further than the end of their noses. That same Party now wants to take to task a Government which for many years has been spending millions of dollars to help young people enjoy their place under the sun like anyone else.
We know when we go back home, when we go back to our ridings . . . Over the weekend I gave a small lunch talk to nearly 400 people on Sunday morning at Alma. I took that opportunity to announce that the Canadian Government will allocate $492,000 this summer under Youth Canada projects
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and that 261 students will have jobs. I did not make that announcement in the spirit of someone who was bringing gifts, but rather in the spirit of someone who thought that those young people who are now university or college students have an outstanding productive capacity and they represent the future. They are fully aware of their own problems and they are quite capable of proving it if they are given the chance. That is exactly what the Government did-it gave them confidence in themselves.
Mr. Speaker, we all know that we live in a society in constant evolution and progressing ever more rapidly towards electronic and mechanical improvement. We are entering the era of automation and, as I said, we have provided ourselves with a security structure over the years, with the result that one or two generations of our society have pulled much of that security blanket to their side to cover their own future.
Everything goes well until the day when the birth rate drops by almost 50 per cent in the country and, although we think that the labour market will easily absorb young people in the 1980s, it may turn out to be somewhat more difficult as a result of automation in the industrial sector and practically everywhere else. But the main thing is indeed to seek the experience which we can learn from young people. This may sound paradoxical, but it is pure truth. We know that young people have learned much in the past ten years. They have learned that there are very important values in life, more so than work itself. They also learned to respect themselves and to respect others who were relatively better off, but they are doing all this with a patience that will bring about a complete restructuring of our industry, based on optimism, on local initiative and on private enterprise. That is exactly what the Canadian Government announced in the Budget last week and that is what it wants to do.
Private enterprise, coupled with our native optimism ... If our pessimists would stop talking about deficits and having Canadians believe that when the Government has a deficit, everyone is in debt, if our pessimists would only stop talking about a recession and if Canadians would start taking the economy in their own hands, by taking their savings out of the bank and spending and investing, they could take advantage of some very real investment opportunities in the last Budget. The Canadian Government is well aware that part of the problem facing our young people is that unfortunately, Canadians have often found it easier to invest in a trip to Florida than to buy $3,000 worth of shares in a company. That is a major part of the problem facing our young people today, and I wish that from now on, Canadians would realize that the reason why today, two or three generations of Canadians have been able to find jobs easily is that Canadians before them worked their fingers to the bone and as soon as they had five cents, they spent it in Canada and concentrated all their energies on developing their own country and developing our

April 26, 1983
Business of the House
industries, which as a result were always very advanced, always kept expanding and have always been able to provide jobs for Canadians.
In recent years, we have developed a taste, perhaps too much so, for spending our money outside the country, and we are also perhaps too much inclined to put our money in the bank and invest in loan capital rather than risk capital, because it is easier. The returns are more straightforward, there is no need to worry about where the money is going. All a person has to do is to get out the savings book and have it updated. I think that today, as a group, we should realize that Canada will have to be developed first of all by Canadians, and although 30 per cent of what we produce is exported, 70 per cent is sold right here in Canada, and if the generations who have the money fail to understand that they must buy a strict minimum to provide young people with enough jobs so that they can make a living in our society and continue to develop their skills, if the generations that have the financial resources fail to understand that they will have to do more than just invest in loan capital and that they should also finance part of the risk in order to provide for future generations, we may be in serious trouble. That is what the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) tried to explain to the Canadian people last week. These are the tools the Minister has tried to give Canadians. These are the tools that will help Canadians invest in businesses by giving them a tax credit they will be able to spread over ten years. These are the tools that will help Canadians who have the resources to create jobs through direct investment. Sunday, I was telling young people in my riding: Stop wondering when to buy something you want. Go ahead and buy it. Do it for your children who are living at home and who are waiting for you to create jobs by purchasing goods. Go ahead, because the country you will give your children is the one you will build yourself.
Mr. Speaker, in concluding, I would like to say that no other government in the world is doing for its young people what the Canadian Government is doing for young Canadians.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: The Hon. President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard), on a point of order.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Pinard:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to formally designate this Friday as an Opposition day.

I indicated earlier to my colleagues, the House Leaders, that 1 might designate Friday this week as an Opposition day. That is what I am doing now. If they want to provide for a vote on
their motions they will have the opportunity to discuss that in caucus tomorrow.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Domm)-Bilingualism-Katimavik Program-Refusal to hire anglophone; the Hon. Member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. Scott)-Banks and Banking-Renegotiation of loans- Amount of penalty, (b) Plight of home owners with high interest mortgages; the Hon. Member for Edmonton South (Mr. Roche)-Finance-Registered charities tax proposal, (b) Calculation of benefits to Government and charities.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Keeper:
That this House condemn the tragic implications of monetarist economic policies adopted by this Government that resulted in 24 per cent unemployment among young Canadians and that deny reasonable job prospects for the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, today we are debating a motion that has been put forward by the NDP. It reads:
That this House condemn the tragic implications of monetarist economic policies adopted by this Government that resulted in 24 per cent unemployment among young Canadians and that deny reasonable job prospects for the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
This motion was introduced by the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James (Mr. Keeper) but he conveniently or inadvertently neglected to include the NDP Government of Manitoba in the motion. The result of that Government's monetarist economic policies was to cause a real hardship to the businesses in Manitoba, which has, in turn, caused unemployment and lay-offs. All this is the result of the aggressive steps of the Manitoba Government's payroll tax that was introduced in that Province. It denies job opportunities for youth. Businesses in Manitoba are unable to hire apprentices for training in their businesses, with that additional burden
April 26, 1983

placed on them. They have had to lay off people in order to pay for this regressive additional workers' tax that has been imposed by the NDP Government in Manitoba. That fact should have been included in the motion. The federal Members in the New Democratic Party should also be protesting that tax in Manitoba and asking that the Manitoba Government remove it.
Another reason for the difficulty in creating employment for youth, or anyone else, is the disastrous National Energy Program which was supported by the NDP Members in the House. As a result of the National Energy Program there was a loss of approximately 60,000 jobs across Canada. These nationalistic schemes do not create employment; they only chase investment money out of the country. This is what is occurring with the nationalistic and socialistic Governments led by the NDP and the Liberals. They are not attracting investment but driving it elsewhere.
Finding out whether a Government is good is very simple because a good Government attracts investment and does not chase it from the country with programs such as the National Energy Program.
Let me elaborate on how this workers' tax has affected businesses in Manitoba and how it will affect the young people in that Province, which is the subject matter of the motion today. This Manitoba payroll tax is just an unnecessary added burden on businesses in Manitoba, which are having a difficult time as it is without any additional taxes being imposed upon them. When this tax was first introduced, higher interest rates were in effect and consumer purchasing was down. Businesses could not pass this 1.5 per cent payroll tax on to the consumer. The only things this tax produced and stimulated was inflation and unemployment. Therefore, this is a rather facetious motion from the NDP, condemning as it does this socialist Government here, when its brothers and sisters in Manitoba are implementing exactly the same regressive type of monetarist policies. Hundreds of businesses have been stopped from hiring as a result of that payroll tax.
For example, in order for businesses in Manitoba to cope with this tax they would lay off people employed by their business to cover the amount of payroll tax they had to pay to the NDP Government in Manitoba. This tax discouraged businesses from investing in Manitoba, so they went to the Provinces that did not have this payroll tax. As well, farmers had to pay this payroll tax, as if they did not have enough problems to contend with.
The NDP Government in Manitoba is removing the five-year hydro freeze that was put in place by the previous Progressive Conservative Government. That five years has not expired and, as a result, hydro rates will increase by 9 per cent. This is another added burden on businesses and consumers in Manitoba. Increased hydro rates will result in businesses and farmers being unable to employ more people as it is an added cost to the operation of their businesses.
This NDP motion should have condemned the NDP Government in Manitoba for increasing the hydro rates and not letting the freeze remain in effect for five years. This increase
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in hydro will be another shock for businesses and farmers because Premier Pawley had promised in his election campaign that the freeze would not be lifted. So much for NDP campaign promises. Today's motion should have included a mention of the effects the increase of hydro rates has had on employment in Manitoba and the fact that it is a reason why we cannot find jobs for youth.
Kimberley Clark has left the Province of Manitoba and is now expanding in Ontario where there is no 1.5 per cent payroll tax. Shell Oil has closed its plant in Manitoba because it is just too expensive to stay in business there under the NDP Government.
The NDP raised questions in the House today about lay-offs at the Sherritt Gordon Mines. The workers' payroll tax was certainly not helping Sherritt Gordon to stay open. That should have been mentioned in the motion of the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James. It is not only the taxes and monetarist policies of the Liberal Government but the regressive monetarist policies of the NDP Government in Manitoba as well that are affecting businesses and causing them to lay off people and not hire youth as apprentices. That should have been included in their motion.
This is one of the best articles I have read on this payroll, or workers' tax as it is referred to in Manitoba. It is an article written by Mr. John McCallum in the Winnipeg Free Press. He said:
There are five other reasons why the payroll tax should go. First, unemployment is by far our greatest single problem at the moment, and the way to deal with that problem is not to put a tax on those who would put people to work.
Second, the payroll tax promotes bad labour relations.
It causes serious problems for businesses when they have to lay people off so that they have enough money to pay the NDP Government this workers' tax.
He continued:
Third, we are very definitely competing for jobs with Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta. None of these jurisdictions has a payroll tax.
He went on:
Fourth, the payroll tax is a very unconventional tax, and an employer looking at Manitoba would probably say to himself, if they are willing to do that, what else might they do?
That is right. What else might an NDP Government do to business? The NDP Government is against business and it is against profit. It does not encourage investment. The NDP Government chases investment out of the Province. Because of opposition to the private sector, the New Democratic Party Government cannot attract business investment into the Province. You are on a treadmill going backwards with a socialist government in power, either provincial or federal, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. McCallum's article continues:
Fifth, some contend that because Quebec has a payroll tax, that somehow makes it okay. This is a very bad argument. Quebec's finances are not regarded as being run even close to well, and claiming that what you do is right because it's done in Quebec is not likely to impress anyone.

April 26, 1983
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There have been some other comments in the Province of Manitoba about the regressive payroll tax put in place by the NDP Government. Mr. Lloyd McGinnis, President of the Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce, said the city and the Province will have trouble attracting new industry if employers are faced with a payroll tax. This can be paralleled to the National Energy Program which drove the oil rigs out of Canada. Oil rigs were lined up for miles wanting to go to the United States where they would be welcome. What about all the industries that were affected in the Province of Ontario? Hundreds of them were affected by the National Energy Program. They were faced with lay-offs and loss of business because of this nationalistic National Energy Program put in place by the Liberal Government and fully supported by the NDP.
Alan McLaughlin, Chairman of the Manitoba branch of the Investment Dealears Association, said the tax could also force some firms to review their staffing needs. Leo Quigley, a salesman for CN Railways, said it could have a bad effect on employers. There is no question about that. Opposition Leader Sterling Lyon had been expecting a sales tax increase. We also have that in place, Mr. Speaker. Since we have had an NDP Government in Manitoba we have new taxes on gas, a workers' tax, new taxes on hydro, and an increase in the sales tax. So much for the so-called people's Party. Mr. Lyon called the payroll tax "a hidden sales tax." He said it will be passed along to consumers by employers. There is no question about that.
The Manitoba workers' tax has affected our hospitals. Municipal taxpayers may have to bail out rural hospitals. They are being swamped with red ink because of the Manitoba NDP payroll tax. Several hospital administrators said that the payroll tax is swelling their deficits. They do not know what they are going to do to get money.
Members of the NDP march around during federal elections stating that they are the only people interested in health care. But now the NDP Government has introduced a tax like this which puts an additional burden on our hospitals in the Province. I will be talking about that in the next federal election. I will be reminding the people of Manitoba of the false statements which the New Democratic Party always makes about health care when going into federal elections. The NDP Government says that all the fat has been sliced from its operations, and local municipalities may be asked to increase property taxes to help reduce the deficits. You can see that nobody has escaped this regressive tax in Manitoba. "The 1.5 per cent payroll tax is killing us", said one of the administrators who does not want to be identified. Taxpayers will not be happy about seeing a hospital tax. They certainly will not be happy about that. They will not be able to take on any additional employees in the hospitals because of the additional burden put on hospitals throughout Manitoba.
Also the NDP Government announced early in April that it would set up a venture capital plan and that it would be putting up a million dollars into this plan. It will be very interesting to see as time goes by how much venture capital the NDP attracts from other parts of Canada. All the NDP Government will attract to a venture capital scheme in an
NDP Province is fly-by-night groups. No doubt there will be some high risk ventures, with the people of Manitoba putting up the money for these fly-by-night groups.
I have some statistics here going back to when the NDP Government was in power between 1969 and 1977. They show that we had a loss of employment and a loss of job opportunities for youth at that time. These are statistics I received from an investment counsellor who was very actively engaged in assisting businesses to move out of the Province of Manitoba between 1969 and 1977. He gives a list of the moneys that were moved out. These are not figures one can obtain very easily. Not many investors like to put an ad in the paper or make any kind of announcement that they are moving out of a Province or a country together with their money. This investment counsellor points out:
Countries or for that matter provinces which have nationalistic, leftist or extremely strong bureaucratic tendencies make striving and successful entrepreneurs feel uncomfortable.
Businesses in Manitoba certainly are being left to feel uncomfortable with this Manitoba workers' tax.
I have statistics here of a number of businesses and individuals who moved their money out of the Province of Manitoba because they simply did not trust socialist Governments. I have statistics here from a number of firms and the billions of dollars that were driven out of the Province. This investment counsellor estimates there was a loss of up to 17,000 jobs for the group of individuals for whom he acted. So much for this venture capital deal being introduced by the NDP Government in Manitoba.
In closing I want to say that it is unfortunate that the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James did not include mention of the NDP Government in Manitoba and what provincial Governments can do when they introduce regressive employees' taxes and place additional burdens on businesses. These things affect youth unemployment as well as senior unemployment, both male and female. That is the weakness of this motion.
I am sure there will be some other NDP speakers this afternoon. I hope they will make some comments and suggestions to the House. I hope they will pass the message on to their NDP colleagues in Manitoba to remove this regressive workers' tax which has placed such a burden on the businesses of Manitoba. As long as that tax stays in effect, there will be no jobs for youth or anyone else.


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Assiniboine (Mr. McKenzie). There are two points on which I would like him to comment. He has been busy criticizing the Manitoba Government rather than the federal Liberal Government. I am really quite shocked that a Conservative Member would leave the Liberal Government unscathed when he talks about a payroll tax, particularly when that tax was brought in by a Manitoba Government because of federal cutbacks in transfer payments. I am quite puzzled why this particular Conservative Member would choose to attack the New Democrats but failed to point out-
April 26, 1983


An Hon. Member:: He is a hidden Liberal.


Cyril Keeper: That is what I am beginning to suspect. I would not want to say that he is a hidden Liberal. I would not want to suggest that he belongs to the same Party as the Liberals. But I wonder why he does not attack the Liberals but only attacks the NDP.
The Hon. Member made many statements, mostly about the Manitoba Government. He said very little or nothing about the federal Liberal Government. He referred to false statements by the New Democratic Party, but it is he himself who made a statement which was clearly and unequivocally false. He said that the National Energy Program introduced by the Liberal Party was fully supported by the NDP. The Hon. Member knows that that is wrong and false. He knows that this Party opposed that program 100 per cent. Therefore I call upon him to withdraw that particular statement and explain to the House why he chose to attack the NDP and failed to go after the Liberal Party.


A. Daniel McKenzie: Mr. Speaker, I will handle the last part of the question first. The Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James said that his Party did not support the National Energy Program. That Party might not have supported it in its entirety because it did not go far enough to nationalize and socialize the Canadian oil industry. That was the NDP objection.
Also the Hon. Member said that I did not attack the Liberal Government. I do not think he was in the House for my full speech. I mentioned the socialistic National Energy Program and its disastrous effect on businesses and industries across the country. I will send him copies of some of my speeches on the NEP and some of my attacks on the Government over the years. I have never taken a back seat in attacking the Government. My record is well known.
If the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James said that his Party did not support the National Energy Program in its entirety, I will apologize. When I think about it now, the only reason why that Party did not support it fully was because it did not go far enough. If we went as far as the New Democratic Party wanted to go to nationalize the Canadian oil industry, we would have lost 200,000 jobs rather than the 60,000 we have lost.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Questions. Comments. Debate.


Robert Joseph Ogle: Mr. Speaker, I rise to support the motion of the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James (Mr. Keeper) which reads:
That this House condemn the tragic implications of monetarist economic policies adopted by this Government that resulted in 24 per cent unemployment among young Canadians and that deny reasonable job prospects for the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
I join my colleague in condemning the Government for bringing about the disastrous situation in the country today.
Last Saturday I had the opportunity to visit the University of Saskatchewan which is in the heart of the constituency of
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Saskatoon East. In a sense, it is the very lifeblood of the constituency. The University goes back to 1911. It was built by our forefathers when they saw that education and the preparation of young people for jobs in the future were part and parcel of the prospects in western Canada. When the pioneers first broke the soil of the bare Prairies, it is interesting to note that they realized that if they did not go ahead immediately with establishing institutions to prepare their young people, the future would not be much of a future.
Some 3,000 people gathered together at the University of Saskatchewan on Saturday to take part in a peace march to City Hall. There were senior citizens and children taking part, but basically the majority were university students. Many of them were the organizers and had something to do with the campus. I was with them as they went down Twenty-fifth Street and over the bridge. I could not help but feel that these young people were facing the menace of an atomic war at the same time as huge problems in their own lives. After all the preparation they had made, with the assistance of their parents, teachers and communities, they were reaching a point in their lives when they would be unemployed persons and would join an army of unemployed of their own age group numbering 600,000 people. The 300,000 graduates who will be coming out will turn that army of people into almost a million.
I would like to put some flesh and bones on that number. Our society has become so accustomed to using huge numbers such as millions, billions and trillions that it is difficult to visualize a million people. Something we can feel and see to a certain extent is the Canadian expeditionary forces in the Second World War, the military forces which were established and grew up in Canada from 1939 to 1945. Those who are my age and older can remember just how many people that was, or what it felt like to have that many military people around. Actually I was told this afternoon that between 1939 and 1945 there were 1,086,771 Canadian men and women who joined the Armed Forces-over 730,000 in the army, 249,000 in the air force and 106,000 in the navy. Many of us can remember those days. We remember how many people were in the military. There were troup trains, army camps and a constant movement of people who were marked because they wore military uniforms. An entire economy developed around the building of military bases, aircraft, tanks and the whole business which was part of the war effort. When we talk about the unemployed today we are talking about a hidden army which is equal in size to the army Canada was able to build up during the Second World War.
Basically I have a philosophical problem today. I have a question which I cannot answer totally and with which I am sure people all over the world are struggling. Why was it possible to turn around a broken economy in 1939 and build up such a large war machine which went off to destroy, kill and burn-and other countries were doing the same thing to us- and today it is not possible to raise what I would call an army of peace? We all know that the problems of the world today

April 26, 1983
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are of such a magnitude that we should not have any unemployed at all. The workers required to bring clean water to the people of the world, to build roads, houses, sewer systems, hospitals and schools are innumerable. Why can we not do such things rather than begin to re-arm all over again in an attempt to blow apart the entire planet? This is a question which we all have to face at this time. I do not feel there is that much time left in which to face it.
As I walked with these young people on Saturday, I talked about the question of unemployment, the future of atomic warfare, their own futures, their probable marriages and the families they hoped to have. I felt a subtle but across-the-board silent despair in many of these people about future prospects. They did not know if there would be any prospects for them in the future.
Also on Saturday I had an interesting encounter with a young farmer from Saskatchewan, a person I have known for a number of years. He is married and has his own farm. During the spring and summer seasons he needs an extra hired man. This year he felt that it would only be fair, because of the large number of unemployed young people in his community, to advertise the job in a local newspaper. He advertised for one young farmhand to spend the summer working with him on his farm. He had never done this in previous years but he felt it was necessary this year. He was swamped with responses from strong, healthy, eager, energetic young men wanting the job. In the matter of a few hours he was able to pick his hired man. However, the flow of people continued in an attempt to obtain that one job. One morning there was a knock at the door. A young man had ridden out from the local town, a good number of miles away, on a bicycle. He was sweating and he was tired and he just simply said, "Can I have the job?" And of course the young farmer simply had to say, "The job is gone." And so they sat down and had a cup of coffee and the farmer's wife asked, "Would you like to have a ride back into town because I will be driving the truck back into town?" The young man said, "No, I will go back on my bicycle because I have nothing else to do."
That young man, Mr. Speaker, is the symbol of thousands, now becoming millions, of young people in our country.
This very day, my office was in contact with Simon Johnson, the President of the University of Saskatchewan Student Union. He told my assistant that only about one-third of the commerce and engineering students will get job interviews this year. Even less will get jobs. He, representing the student body which has swelled to a very large number this past year, was feeling the same kind of silent despair that I have been talking about. He was wondering what would happen to them, where it would all lead, what would be their future. Many of those students who get job interviews and finally get a job, the lucky ones, rarely get a job that they feel they are fit to handle right now.
Young people are caught in a dilemma. They could not get employment last year or two years ago, so what did they do?
Well, many of them feel that as they are young and have the opportunity, and as we have a good university and good training facilities in other skills, they can take a year or two of their lives to go back to school to upgrade their education. But this has had an impact upon the university. It has swelled the student population.
Several months ago, I met with the faculty association at the University of Saskatchewan. The members of the faculty association were wondering what would happen to the university. They said, "We are now being in a sense overstocked with students, but at the same time our university budget is being cut back." The impact of the Government's six and five program on transfer payments to the Provinces with regard to education has been to cut back funds to the university. Professors at the university must teach these larger classes with less funds than they had previously. So we really have what could be called a Catch-22 situation.
Young people trying to upgrade themselves are going back to university and, at the same time, universities that are not able to cope with the present load are being burdened by this new load. In light of this, the faculty association is afraid that the quality of teaching will decline, that the quality of the education, the training, and the graduates that they have produced over many years will come under such intense pressure that, against their will, the students will come out into the work force ill-prepared to deal with the very complex situation that awaits them.
This complex situation is one that I believe must be looked at from a far broader perspective than simply the Canadian point of view. Earlier, when the Minister spoke on the subject, I asked him about serious futuristic planning for Canadian young people to enable them to fit into the whole work pattern on this planet, how they will fit into the whole system when the majority of the population of the world is under 25 years old. So the problems that face Canada are only a portion of the problems that face the rest of the world.
If we are serious about planning to solve the problems of our Canadian young people who are now under this kind of pressure, we must do that kind of planning within the reality of the whole world. Unless the planning is done in that sense and unless we look at it as a global question, rather than try to solve the problems bit by bit on an ad hoc basis within our own little country, the problems will not be solved. There is a necessity for a futurist vision, for people who can really look at the whole world around us and put our Canadian situation into that context. Unless that is done, I feel that there will be no solution at all to our own Canadian problems.
Interestingly enough, the Canadian Catholic Bishops' January statement spoke to one of the principles that they felt was necessary to resolve the question of the crisis in the Canadian economy. The thrust of their statement was that the right to a job is a human right, a right that everyone must have in order to develop as a human being. They indicated that the necessity to have a job, to be able to grow with that job, is the very essence of human life at this time.
April 26, 1983

While agreeing with the Bishops' assertion that jobs are necessary for every single person and that seeing to that should be the priority of any Government at any time, I would at the same time question the Bishops' statement in another area, an area that I think can reflect back on the present problem as well. I would criticize the Bishops' statement to the extent that they almost totally neglected agriculture. I think that it is very important in today's world to look at what has happened in modern agriculture as an indicator of what will happen in all other sectors of the work world.
Agriculture is an area that has entered into technology to a far larger extent and sooner, I believe, than many other areas. The University of Saskatchewan was built by pioneers who came to Saskatoon at the turn of the century and immediately began to build this university which includes a great agricultural school. At the time the university was founded, agriculture was a form of production that required a great number of people. These people are depicted in old pictures that can be seen all over the West, pictures of big threshing crews and of the trains that transported working people from the East out to the West to harvest the crops. To harvest even a small farm required maybe one machine and 40 men. Besides that there were bunkhouses and cookhouses and cooks and all the rest of the workers who went with this operation of harvesting let alone ploughing, sowing, and everything else involving a great number of people.
What happened to the farming industry was that it mechanized. It mechanized at a very high level so that for the same amount of land and higher production, one person or two at the most can now do what formerly took 40, 60, or 80 people to do. Those farmers who lost their jobs, one might say, had to get off the land, come to the city and build it. At that time, industry absorbed those people in the new jobs of manufacturing cars or whatever had to be done.
Now the industries in the cities are beginning to go the way of the old farm. What is happening now is that industry does not need that same number of people to produce what is needed. That problem must be faced, and it must be faced in the context of the whole planetary system.
Interestingly enough, some people may have seen last night on television the report that British Leyland, an automotive company in England that produces very high quality cars, has cut back over 25 per cent of its work force in the last two years but now produces three times as many cars. That is the same thing that happened in agriculture in the Prairies in the 1930s when they sold off their horses and bought a little tractor and began to do more cultivating than was possible with horses. It was a big breakthrough. Now it is happening in all industry. The robot system and new technology makes it possible to produce more goods with less people.
Basically we come to the question of what is human work. That question has to be faced by everyone. Traditionally, since the time of the industrial revolution people have associated income or livelihood with work. I would say that in general we
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are still talking in those terms, but I believe we must question that now. Will there be enough jobs? Will it be possible to produce anything more than we need and have everybody work, or does society have to look at a new way of distributing the products of industry and farming? There must be a serious rethinking about how goods produced by human beings are distributed by human beings. It is too big a question to put here, but I believe we must consider it when talking about unemployment in the present age.
To recapitulate, Mr. Speaker, as a people, as a Parliament, as a Government I believe we have to look at questions that we have not considered seriously before. We have to see that everyone has a job, but those jobs could be very different from anything we have known in the past.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Do any Hon. Members rise to ask questions? If not, the Chair will recognize the Hon. Member for Sudbury (Mr. Frith).


Mr. Doug Frith (Sudbury):: Mr. Speaker, before getting into the main part of my remarks I should like to congratulate the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ogle) for adding a new dimension to the discussion this afternoon. He outlined quite properly some of the problems that face our youth today. Some of the issues he raised not only affect our youth but also affect most Canadians in the work force and not on the unemployment rolls. Some of the technological changes that he mentioned as having taken place in the last 30 or 40 years are still occurring every hour of every working day in Canada and in most western industrialized nations. Each of these technological changes that takes place means a loss of jobs for workers in any segment of the economy you wish to look at. The Hon. Member mentioned the massive mechanization of the agricultural sector not only in Canada but in most western countries. He pointed out that over a period of time workers who previously found work in the agricultural sector were able to move, as part of what Toffler calls "the second wave of the industrial revolution" into the metropolis and find jobs in the manufacturing sector.
The Hon. Member is well aware that in the last three or four years a technological revolution has taken place in the agricultural industry. The technological change is frightening to many people, but in industrialized countries they are going to have to be educated to it. It will accelerate over the next five to seven years and it is not going to go away. If anything, experience should dictate that as we get into what I term the post-industrialized age, robotics and microprocessors will become more common. Everyone talks about the computer revolution that is taking place today, but I believe that is only going to have a very small effect on employment patterns in the western world compared to the effect that microprocessors will have.
Over the years the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East has given me a list of reading material to educate me in some of the areas that affect all of us in today's world. I should like to recommend two books. First, Toffler's "Third Wave", but more important a book called "Megatrends" by Anderson. He
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attempts to put some semblance of order into a very chaotic changeover in our society. This does not necessarily mean that I think both authors have all the answers for Government and Members of Parliament attempting to come to grips with the problems created by the technological revolution in all sectors of our economy.
The Hon. Member for Saskatoon East mentioned that he wished there was some sort of forum where the best of our futurist thinkers could put their heads together and decide how the world economy is evolving. I agree because in today's complex society I believe that Government needs lead time to decide on policies that are better than the band-aid solutions which, as I frequently have to admit to my constituents in Sudbury, are not much more than stop-gap measures. They give us time to adjust to the technological changes that both Government and business have difficulty in coming to grips with, regardless of the sector of the economy, be it mining, agriculture or manufacturing.
I think it is safe to say that there is no Member of Parliament who does not have a youth unemployment problem in his riding. During my three years here it is one of the most difficult things I have had to come to grips with. When I have to replace an assistant, for instance, I look at the 60 or 70 resumes that I keep on file. Many of the applicants have masters degrees and are not working at all or are in work which is not related to the discipline they studied in university or community college.
Today the young people of Canada are facing an extremely serious situation trying to find their place in the labour market. It is with some regret that I say the situation is likely to exist for the next two or three years. Their problem is also Canada's problem because on our youth rests the economic future of the country. Their potential skills are essential to the well-being of the country.
An economic recovery is now taking place. I was surprised to see a Thompson newspaper with the courage to publish the kind of headline that appeared in this morning's Globe and Mail. Normally all they have been doing, in my view, is to place a negative interpretation on any Government policies that have been instituted to deal with our problems over the last three years. It now appears that all the indicators show that we are going to come out of this recession much quicker than was anticipated. However, as always, the recovery in youth employment will lag behind the unemployment rate of adults. That has been true throughout our economic history. In times of economic recession young people are the first to be laid off and the last to be rehired in an economic recovery. This is mainly because they have little experience and virtually no seniority.
From a federal Government standpoint, we realize the extent of the problem in the country. At the same time, when placing a budget before the public, we recognize that other constituents have needs that must be addressed because they also have valid concerns about the way in which Government programs should be tailored for them as well.
I can say that we are doing as much as we can in order to lower somewhat the youth unemployment rate in the country.
If we take a look at the unemployment rate for youth between the ages of 15 and 24, we find that it is somewhere between 25 per cent and 30 per cent. I suppose you could argue effectively that there is nothing that the Government can do which would be good enough in order to put a serious dent in that unemployment rate among our youth.
What I would like to do is to outline to the people of Canada, its youth in particular, the programs which are specifically designed for them because I believe one of the problems we have in the House as Members of Parliament is that there is a multitude of Government programs which are specifically geared for certain segments of our population, and often, although the programs are there, the people are not sufficiently aware of them to use them effectively. As an example, this year the Canada Employment and Immigration Commission alone will be spending more than $1 billion on programs and services for youth. That is an increase of some 25.4 per cent over the year before.
Although we have heard mention before that the six and five program has dampened, in some cases, the amounts of moneys placed in university budgets in terms of the commitment of this Government to solve the overwhelming number one problem in this country, that is, inflation, the 25.4 per cent increase over last year's budget should indicate to Canadians that we view this problem of our youth unemployment in a serious way. We are making the greatest increase in money going toward that program as compared to any others we have in the present budget.
There are various programs available to our youth. One that comes to mind is the Canada Community Development Projects or CCDP. We have the NEED Program which is specifically designed for those Canadians or youth who are about to run out of UIC benefits. We have instituted that special program, NEED in order to help those individuals. One of the most successful programs-and I believe that is recognized by most Hon. Members in the House-is the introduction of Summer Canada. This year there is an increase in the amount of money placed into Summer Canada which specifically flows to our Canadian youth. We have had previously, I believe, good examples of programs such as LEAP and the LEDA Program, which provide immediate job assistance for our young people. Something else which has been instituted in the last couple of years by this Government is what we call the specialized youth units. They are among the new initiatives we have recently adopted. They are specifically designed to assist young people between the ages of 15 and 19 in gaining access to the labour market. These units have been established in some ten locations across the country, and five more are in the process of being established. In 1983-84, $10 million will be channelled to these units. Through specialized counselling and referral services, more than 43,000 young people will find employment this summer. These are what we term as chronically unemployed youth. We will aid them in setting realistic
April 26, 1983

employment goals and show them how these goals may be reached. Some of these specialized units are involved in our Canada Employment Centres. Others are attached to Outreach projects. These Outreach projects are sponsored by community organizations and are another response to the needs of young Canadians for help in finding employment. Counselling and tests are given to find if we can place a student in a job for which he is skilled, whether he is a graduate from a secondary school, community college or university. The spending of Outreach for youth projects in 1983-84 is estimated at $2.6 million, and we are hopeful that some 48,000 young people will be assisted.
The Government is very sensitive to the situation facing secondary and post-secondary students and the capacity of our institutions to deal with the growing demands placed on them. Students themselves must be able to finance their own pursuit of knowledge and skills. In a year when there are indications that the private sector will be cautious in its hiring of students, I believe that clearly Governments must take up that slack. We must ensure that students who wish to stay in school can do so, particularly in fields of study for which there is likely to be a strong demand in the years ahead.
Summer Canada has been allocated additional funds this year to enable students to gain relevant work experience while accummulating an adequate income in order to ensure their financial viability to pursue another year of their educational studies. For instance, this summer some $140 million will be allocated to Summer Canada for summer employment programs for students. Some $28 million of this money has been allocated to fund one of Summer Canada's most successful elements, and that is called summer internships. These internships recognize that much of the difficulty faced by young people today can be traced to their problems in moving from school to work and the importance of combining work experience with formal education.
As an aside to that, Mr. Speaker, I might point out that in our country the work element is a means of furthering education. In other countries there has been a tendency to use education as a means of getting work. We are studying the experience of Germany and Austria where vocational education and on-the-job training are integral to the transition from school to work.
I might also point out that in the last several weeks I have had the occasion to visit both Washington and San Francisco where I visited both the Brookings Institute and the Hoover Institute and asked them some of the questions about what in fact the United States Government was planning on doing over the next several years in order to address its equally important problem of youth unemployment. It is interesting to note that the Canadian Government will be spending, over the next two years, roughly three times the amount of money per capita aimed at the youth employment market that the United States Government is spending. I mention this because I asked them if they had any sort of think-tank forums in an attempt to pinpoint where the United States Government feels there will be job opportunities for its young in the latter part of the
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eighties. The director of one of the think-tanks at the Brookings Institute said they had attempted to do that in the last three to four years and found they were not very successful at being able to predict which occupations would require employment five years down the road. I mention that because I know the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East has made that suggestion, and I would concur with him that we do need more kinds of conferences and futuristic thinking about where this world of ours is heading. However, I believe we must be realistic about what can be obtained from that kind of environment.
I believe, personally, that what we must do much more of in the future is to tie the moneys which are directed at youth unemployment to the private sector, because the private sector is much more on the leading edge of the changes in technology and is much more aware of the effect it is having on business than Government can ever be. I would think we should be working hand in hand with industry and companies to help pinpoint with them where they feel their skill shortages are going to occur. Rather than designing programs, I believe what we should be doing is allowing subsidies to encourage the private sector to retrain its own existing work force, to hire young Canadians in the areas where they feel they can get on-the-job experience, and tie it back to the educational system.
I believe that in the last several years, particularly at the post-secondary or community college level, there has been far too much feeling that the academia stays strictly within its own bounds of expertise or reality, or at least its feeling of reality, and does not tie those programs to industry. I find too often that if you take a look at the community college level, or the university level, you find far too many boom-bust cycles. For examples, in one case we were encouraging young people continuously for three years, to go into nursing saying there was going to be a massive shortage of nurses, and suddenly we found we had flooded the market with nurses, and so there is another occupational skill that has gone down in terms of the number of people qualified in that field.
I believe that as a Government we have to co-operate with both labour and business and with the educational facilities, whether those are community colleges or universities. We must work together to develop a long-range program which is going to aid all of us. If we could do that, I believe it would go a long way towards helping us work out our problems with youth unemployment.
I mentioned before that the Canadian Employment Information Centre operates more than 400 Canada Employment Centres for students between April and September of every year. I know most Members of Parliament have probably been invited over the next month or two to open up a particular centre in their own riding. This year we expect some 328,000 job placements from these centres. That is a massive accomplishment which has taken place over the last several years. I think business has responded to the requests from those centres. They have gone a long way toward giving students some employment, particularly in the last years when we have had an economic recession and businesses have not been able

April 26, 1983
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to hire students. The Canadian Government came out with programs which have effectively allowed thousands of students the opportunity to go back to university or community colleges and continue their education.
For those young people who have the education they need but are unable to get that very first good job, we have a new technology employment program. It offers employers a wage subsidy to hire recent graduates trained in scientific or technical areas but who are temporarily unable to find work in their own field. This year we expect to spend some $1.5 million on that program and thus help several thousand students. I would also like to mention new pilot projects being developed to meet the special needs of the young workers. These projects have been conducted at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba. About 580 students are benefiting from jobs which provide them with the money they need to continue their studies and at the same time gain the experience they need to enter into the labour market.
I am going to conclude by saying that unless we help our youth with the difficult transition from school to work, we risk losing their production potential. This issue crosses jurisdictional lines and it requires a concerted and co-operative effort on the part of the Provinces and the federal Government, and I think business, labour and educational institutions, to develop a new and effective strategy to aid our young people and hopefully bring down this tremendously high unemployment rate amongst that group.


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, the Member presented a very thoughtful address to the House and I want to put a question to him in the same vein. The Hon. Member mentioned that he agreed with my colleague, the Hon. Member for Saskatoon East (Mr. Ogle) on the need for looking into the future for possible new definitions of work and that whole area. At first I thought, why is the Government not sponsoring such a forum in order to get this sort of thing done? But later on he said he thought, on the basis of his talks with people at the Brookings Institute who were not very successful at predicting needed jobs, that this whole question should be tied to the private sector. I want to put two thoughts forward and ask for the Hon. Member's reaction.
Why has the Government not yet chosen to support the Labour Market Institute, an institution created by business and labour with a view to finding a practical way of getting a handle on what kind of jobs are needed and what kind we should be training for? This kind of institution could have access to information from the business community which otherwise is not available. That would be a way of predicting what we need to train people for. The Hon. Member also emphasized the private sector and how education in Europe can be a way to get into the work environment and the marketplace. The National Training Act, when it came down, really continued the old system of simple subsidies-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member should make a brief point or ask a question.


Cyril Keeper: Thank you for the reminder, Mr. Speaker. The question is basically this: why has the Government not moved to put in place a training system located in the private sector? An example would be the grant and levy system which we proposed in earlier discussions.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, the Member mentioned two particular projects I am not familiar with. But if you look at the National Training Act, I know the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy), when he introduced that Act, mentioned that it is flexible enough to utilize Government funds on creative projects. My suggestion to the Hon. Member is that he approach the Minister and ask him to take a look at them. It does not mean that every project put before the Minister is going to be funded, but I do know we have done some innovative things using the national training centres across the country. I think there is tremendous potential there. I am involved in a project, as the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) knows, with the University of British Columbia and the riding of Quadra, trying to utilize the Act to retain young Canadians in western Canada in the medical technology field. So it should be innovative that way.
As to the reference to the Brookings Institute. By no stretch of the imagination am I saying that we should not be funding these futurist conferences. One of the major things we as politicians will have to do, regardless of political Party, is to educate the Canadian public as to what is happening with respect to the information explosion and the effect it is going to have on all sectors of the economy and employment opportunities. This does not apply just to youth; it concerns the need to have continuous retraining throughout our lifetime in different fields. The conferences I mentioned can go a long way to achieve that goal. I think it is very important that we teach Canadians not to be afraid of the future, that change- even chaotic change-does not necessarily mean there has to be fear. Change, if it is properly harnessed by Government, business and labour, can be an enriching experience of great benefit to those affected by it.
Coming back to the other area, the experience in the United States, when you look at the amount of dollars being pumped into the system, you will find that in Canada we will spend on a per capita basis three times the amount of money spent in the United States. We are beginning to realize that you have to tie that to the private sector because it is on the leading edge of technological change and it sees it every day because it is out in the marketplace. I think that is where we should be putting more of our funds.


Mr. Gilchrist:: Mr. Speaker, the subject raised by the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-St. James (Mr. Keeper) is of course a very sensitive point and an important subject. It has been responded to in a sensitive manner by the Hon. Member for Sudbury (Mr. Frith), and I would like to pose a question to him.
April 26, 1983

I was distressed to hear him say that he felt the Government was unable to do very much about youth unemployment. He advocated looking at futuristic conferences and planning for the world of tomorrow. All of which, of course, any thinking person would agree with. But has he not been involved in discussions within his own Party and the Government on matters affecting the country today? Unemployment is not a new phenomenon, nor is the information society of which he speaks now. I am distressed that the budget papers say that the existing tax structure in support of research and future jobs is complicated and somewhat arbitrary and falls well short of the Government's to target assistance. The budget papers then go on to advocate more planning, thinking and discussion.
Does the Hon. Member not believe that the discussion part should be well behind us now and that it is time for action? It is clearly known what the opportunities of the information age are for Canadians, and that it will take massive support, but at the same time it provides massive opportunity. I would like to know what specifically he advocates rather than just talking around the subject.


Douglas Cockburn Frith: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member asks two questions. First he said that he is disappointed because I say that the youth unemployment level is going to remain high for the next two or three years. Let us say that someone asks you, right after the budget: what is this going to do for Canada's unemployed? The Figures used show that in order to bring down effectively the unemployment rate in Canada from the present level of roughly 12.4 per cent to 10 per cent an additional stimulus of $12 billion to $13 billion to the economy would be needed. We clearly do not have that kind of manoeuvring room. The unemployment situation is a priority but, quite frankly, we cannot spend ourselves out of unemployment. That cost is far too high. When I say that, I do not want to create any false expectations among Canadian youths. The fact that we are placing this emphasis on increasing by some 25 per cent the amount of moneys put into youth employment programs this summer, does not necessarily mean that the problem will go away.
On behalf of many people on this side of the House I can say that we have been advocating research and development. I think the Government has listened, and Hon. Members opposite can argue that it has not listened well enough in terms of the Cabinet process. We should be putting far more money and emphasis on research and development. If we consider the commitment from the 1980 budget through to the 1983 budget, we find that there has been an increasing importance placed by the Government on the need to put more money into research and development. I could not agree more with Hon. Members of this institution. If I had my "druthers", I would place a tremendous amount of money into research and development because the spin-offs would ultimately do the largest amount of good with respect to unemployment four or five years down the road. If we do not put our money into research and development, we will not develop the leading
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technological edge and our share of the world market in the information system.


Mr. Walter McLean (Waterloo):: Mr. Speaker, in participating in the debate today, I identify with the concern raised in the Opposition motion, the concern which focuses on the tragic implications of the economic policies of the Government which have resulted in 24 per cent unemployment amongst Canadian young people, and which deny reasonable job prospects to the 300,000 young Canadians graduating from post-secondary institutions this Spring.
Today I have had the opportunity to be in touch with universities in my constituency. During the weekend, while attending a reception for the retiring student president at the University of Waterloo, a young man said to me, "Mr. McLean, I want to come to your office because I want to find some work. I am not just concerned about work and payments, but I would appreciate it if you could help me find work where I can gain some work experience, even if I am paid very little or nothing. After completing three years of study, it is most upsetting to find that I have been somehow relegated to a position where I find myself without meaningful entry into the work force". He reflects what we as parliamentarians are hearing across the country, the concern on the part of many young people that somehow they are not a part of society, that they are expected somehow to sit and wait at the convenience of the Government or powers that be and may then enter, if things work out, into the life of Canada.
At the moment, the statistics before us present not only a serious economic but also a serious social question. I want to suggest that the Government, in focusing on employment measures, has not focused on the social implications and the potential unrest of our energetic young people. Second, it has almost totally ignored the sector of our society best equipped to engage these young people, to give them an apprenticeship, to give them some type of internship which would permit them then to enter into the life of Canada.
As we engage in this debate on April 26, we are faced with the fact that 40 per cent of the 1.6 million Canadians who are unemployed are young people. We have been told that in March there were 621,000 unemployed young people. As we know, young people comprise only 25 per cent of the labour force, yet in March. Statistics Canada reported that the overall unemployment rate for Canadians of all ages was 12.6 per cent. The percentage of unemployed young people is almost double the over-all percentage, reportedly 21.3 per cent.
Looking ahead through the fiscal year 1983-84, the Government suggests that it will spend $260 million on youth employment measures. As we know, $100 million was allocated to summer student employment schemes prior to the April 19 budget, and $160 million was allocated as a result of the new budgetary measures. As we look at these studied estimates for the 1983-84 year, we find that expenditures on youth employment measures are to be as follows: the Summer Canada Employment Program, $170 million; youth internships and job

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Corps, $20 million; Defence Youth Program, $60 million; and Katimavik, $10 million. As I consider these announcements, I do not find that they bring a great echo of encouragement.
In speaking today to the Registrar at Wilfrid Laurier University, he told me that approximately 940 students will be entering the work force this summer. However, his comment was that the university graduate is still the most likely to find employment, according to his statistics, because it is more advantageous to fund post-secondary education rather than the unemployment cushion. However, he suggested that of those going out, the great majority from the University are still without significant hope.
The Registrar's Office of the University of Waterloo, which has a world class program of cooperative education, stated that there will be approximately 2,600 students graduating at the convocation this Spring. The final figures, of course, have not been exactly determined. However, this is the estimate with respect to a university student population of close to 20,000. The head of graduate placement, Tom Fitzgerald, told me today that although no final figures are yet known, placement is definitely down from last year. The number of employers recruiting graduates is down by more than 50 per cent over the last calendar year. Approximately one in four engineering graduates has a permanent position to which to go. Only two areas are doing well: computer science and electrical engineering. Science graduates are doing about 25 per cent as well.
With this particular situation in mind, I want to turn my attention for a few moments to the capacity to absorb not only the university-trained graduates, the great majority of whom are not optimistic, but also many of those who are leaving secondary institutions. Where can they be incorporated? How can we somehow begin to take them into the life of the country? The Government proposes several areas, but they are relatively low in employment numbers. For example, the Defence Youth Program will provide work for 5,000 over two years, and Katimavik will provide experience for 4,000 over two years. We are dealing with large numbers in the universities in my own area. In terms of the national picture, we begin to realize the size of the problem we are facing.
We have been hearing from agencies such as the Canadian Council on Social Development and others about the social implications of not addressing the employment situation. For a moment let me share an excerpt from "Youth: The Forgotten Generation A Study of Skill. Training and Apprenticeship Programs in Metro Toronto", dated February of 1982. That report says:
In the past, society looked to its youth to be the future strength of communities. But even then too many youths were left behind. Now the problem has grown worse. The aged, the aging, the training of high-tech workers and other special needs groups gained most of the attention.
Today's youths are being forgotten as we are distracted by continual economic crises and rapidly changing technology. Personal alienation and the risks of social unrest have become substantial and appear to be worsening.
It was in the context of this social concern for the potential of this group that the YMCA, one of our significant national voluntary agencies, undertook a pilot project. It proposed 104
jobs to the CCSP Program of employment. They all had objectives related to the development of volunteers, staff development, social development and program benefits. They stated in their report that the support of jobs of this nature has double benefits in that jobs are created and at the same time some kind of community need is addressed that might otherwise have to be paid for by the Government.
I have a report from the YMCA Canada Community Service project study which was piloted by the YMCA here in Ottawa. This project report has some very interesting statistics which illustrate the information which has been brought forward by the National Voluntary Organizations Coalition. It suggests to the Government in its brief, addressed to both the Secretary of State (Mr. Joyal) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde), that there is an enormous job creation and retraining capacity in the voluntary sector, and that this capacity in particular can be related to the high unemployment of our Canadian youth.
It is very interesting that the budget ignores the voluntary sector with the exception of the reduction of the $100 charitable deduction. The Minister of Finance tries to portray to the country and the House that he is somehow doing the voluntary sector a favour by removing that $100 deduction, but he has failed to give any incentives to the voluntary agencies of this country. As Members of the House know, there are over
40,000	registered charities.
I will return to this statistical analysis project conducted by the YMCA as an illustration of the capacity of this sector. Members of the House may ask who these groups are who have been excluded from the incentives that the Government has put forward. Let me go through the list of Members of the NVO Coalition. There we find the names of the churches of Canada, Big Brothers, the Boy Scouts of Canada. We find such groups as amateur hockey associations, associations for the prevention of crime, the Association for the Mentally Retarded, Neighbourhood Services and the Association for the Deaf. There is the Congress for Learning Opportunities for Women and the Council for Youth. We find the Mental Health Association, the Red Cross, the 4-H Council and the Girl Guides of Canada. There is the John Howard Society, the National Councils of the YM-YWCA, OXFAM, the Native Council of Canada, the Salvation Army and the Unitarian Service Committee. There is La federation des femmes du Quebec. There is an ongoing list of national voluntary agencies.
These agencies, which are represented in the brief that was presented to the Minister, are charities which took in some $5.6 billion in 1980, which is equivalent to 11 per cent of all federal Government revenues, or almost 2 per cent of the Gross National Product. Their wage bill alone was $1.7 billion in 1980 and was estimated to compensate 173,000 workers. This represents 1.6 per cent of the employed workers in Canada, twice as many as are directly employed in the forest industry, one-quarter of all employed in public administration at all levels of Government, or all the employed workers in Newfoundland. We are talking about a sector which has 2.7
April 26, 1983

million Canadians who volunteered 373 million hours in 197980.
This large economic unit is offered no incentive, no encouragement to be part of an employment strategy, particularly when so many of them are youth-related. Canada's 40,000 charities approximately must be seen as a considerable economic force and as part of the response to the current unemployment crisis, particularly as it concerns the youth focus.
I suggest that the Government can address the key issues which have been put forward by the Coalition. The Government has suggested that it has studied these proposals, but then it removed the $100 standard charitable deduction as if that were somehow an incentive to these agencies with all of their capacity to begin to use it for job creation and retraining.
While speaking of the capacity of this sector, let me elaborate on the pilot project of the YMCA. There are 45 associations which proposed 104 jobs for a total of $1,187,377. Thirty-six associations received support for 48 jobs, for a total of just over $500,000. Of the 48 jobs created, 36 of them are projected to be permanent. The success rate of permanent job creation is 75 per cent.
These categories of jobs include physical education and fitness, community development, pre-school children's programs, international development, rehabilitation services, education and program administration. Eighty-five per cent of those hired fall within one of the Government's affirmative action target groups. The estimated potential of new job creation at present is between 75 per cent and 80 per cent. I am trying to suggest to the House that given today's statistics of youth unemployment at double the national average and given the need to deal with the potential alienation of our young people, this Government ought to be censured and condemned for its failure to involve this sector in addressing this serious problem with all the implications for social unrest and alienation if young people are not considered.
I suggest that if the national voluntary agencies were offered an incentive through tax incentives, they could have their funding increased and be able to maintain their independence to do their own work. Instead, the Government chooses to tell these agencies that they will have grants available from time to time through existing programs if those agencies do what the Government says. If we are to maintain the vibrance and vitality of this sector, it is important that these agencies have a sense of making their own plans and are not beholden to anyone else or somehow forced to stay in line through the control of Government funding. Instead, there should be some trust in this sector.
One needs only to look at the list of agencies to understand the sense of involvement, the hours of voluntary activity and the skills of those volunteers. One can see their willingness to train others and in the process of helping our young people give them some sense of involvement in the community and eventually provide them with a skill which they can offer.
We are told that the unemployment rates will not decrease dramatically and that it will take time. It has been suggested that we must put some short-term operations in place while we wait. It is a proven fact that the voluntary sector of this
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country can engage young people quickly and place them in jobs, provide training and involve them in the life of the community.
The Canadian Federation of Students, a national postsecondary student organization representing almost half a million students, has been expressing its concerns to me. The students were responding to a proposal put forward by a Member, a supporter of the Government, regarding the youth employment capacity of our Canadian Forces. The suggestion was that there would be a creation of some 20,000 jobs. We notice now the figure is 5,000 over a two-year period. What the Government says in response to that is that this country's economy and the unemployed youth in this country do not need band-aid solutions to the chronic unemployment and under-employment crisis. They go on to call for the implementation of the strategy outlined in the Employment Opportunities for the 80s Task Force, "Work for Tomorrow". Rather than short-term schemes, they ask the Government to support projects which will have an involvement in the life of the community and will give some life skills of lasting duration. This is the direction the national voluntary agencies could offer that the proposals the Government has put forward do not offer.


Simon Leendert de Jong: Mr. Speaker, in closing this debate for the NDP, I am grateful for the opportunity to say a few words. I understand I am to share my time with a Member of the Government Party and I thank him for giving me a few comments to put some comments and suggestions on the record.
The debate today has indicated the seriousness of the situation that confronts young people in terms of their future, in terms of employment, in terms of asking themselves where they are going. As human beings they must be asking themselves, what should they do with their lives? It is not just a question of youth unemployment; it is a question of unemployment generally. But it is our young people who are on the edge of experiencing a problem which all of society will be experiencing.
When we look at young people and the dilemma they face, we see the terrible social costs already. For example, the suicide rate among young people between the ages of 15 and 24 has quadrupled since 1940. There is a lack of sense of future, of hope, of a sense of direction and a sense of purpose which creates not just economic difficulties but psychological and social difficulties for the young, and I would say for society as a whole.
Perhaps instead of going through all the terrible frustration, anxiety and lack of hope that young people face, can I in the few moments I have try to flip the coin and talk about some of the hope that could exist but does not? Surely in this day and age of tremendous technological innovation and progress occurring at a rate that we did not even dream about a few

April 26, 1983
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decades ago, we should look at the calamity this is creating, particularly for our youth. We have to ask ourselves how this can be rectified. How can the potential of our age be fulfilled? The point has to be made that if we begin to fulfil that potential, it has to be among the young people. To resolve the dilemmas of our present economic and social system we should begin to utilize the energy and the ingenuity of our youth. Canada is a well educated nation. We have to utilize our potential. This is surely the challenge that we as Members of Parliament from all political Parties must face.
I think that in many ways the debate has been a nonpartisan one. There is much to blame the Government for, but the problem goes deeper than just different political philosophies. The problem goes to the root of what is the purpose of life in this new coming age.
This is the beginning of the debate. It is a debate that we should have in this House on many more occasions. I look forward to opportunities to participate in these debates and to add my suggestions and the suggestions of my colleagues in the hope that solutions can be found before it is too late.


Mr. Norman Kelly (Scarborough Centre):: Mr. Speaker, this afternoon two charges have been levied against the Government. The first is that the Government is unaware of the extent and the nature of the problem of youth unemployment. The second, besides this lack of awareness, is that we have done very little or nothing to respond to the problem in an effort to solve it.
I would like to demolish the first argument by saying that I doubt there is any Government or any politician in the western world who is not aware of this problem. I was delighted to hear the remarks of the last speaker which stand in contrast to the remarks of the speaker of this Party who initiated the debate. The Hon. Member for Regina East (Mr. de Jong) said that this is really a non-partisan issue. He is absolutely right. This problem is so fundamental and the solution to it is so important that I believe it should stand above partisan politics, both in the House and in other institutions.
The second charge, that the Government has done nothing about the problem, is a charge I hear frequently from Members of the NDP. I heard it in my riding several months ago. I shared a platform with a Member of the New Democratic Party who told the audience that the Government had done nothing.
In reply I asked him what he would like us to do. He said that he thought we should put together a package of programs to retrain kids, counsel and direct them. I asked him what else he would like us to do and how much money he would spend on those programs. He told me SI billion at least. I told him that is what we have done already. The National Training Act, which was proclaimed in 1982, did exactly that. It will spend close to $1 billion in retraining, counselling and directing youths. All the things the Opposition want us to do have been done. To supplement that program there will be money spent on the Skills Growth Fund, on the COPS Program and the various programs enunciated in the budget.
This afternoon I went through the budget of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) and the provisions it has for youth unemployment. I counted up in excess of half a billion dollars worth of programs being directed toward youth. I imagine a lot of Members of the Opposition might say, "Well, $1.5 billion is a lot of money." But in the context of this problem it is not enough. These things only constitute ad hoc band-aid programs. But I would argue that any Government must respond with the tools that it has at its disposal. It does not matter whether the Government is a Liberal Government, a Social Credit Government, a Progressive Conservative Government, or a NDP Government. You always respond to the problem with the tools at hand. Frankly, I think any person who wants to be fair and reasonable in his judgment of the Government's response to this problem would have to conclude that this Government, using the tools and the limited resources it has at its disposal, has responded extremely well. I think it should get high marks from every fair critic for its response.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. It being six o'clock, it is my duty to inform the House that in accordance with the provisions of Standing Order 62(11), the proceedings on the motion have expired.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 45 deemed to have been moved.

Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, I sought this opportunity to clarify some points raised through a question in the House of Commons on April 25, at which time I asked the Secretary of State (Mr. Joyal) to explain why a constituent in Peterborough by the name of Geoffrey Webb was denied employment with Katimavik, a national program, because he was not bilingual. Mr. Webb took the opportunity to draw to my attention that he answered an advertisement which appeared in a Toronto newspaper. The advertisement indicated that Katimavik was seeking group leaders to work in the Toronto area. One qualification to become a group leader with Katimavik was that the applicant must indicate his willingness to become bilingual. I suggest that nowhere in the ad-and I will submit it for the record-does a statement appear which indicates that in order to apply one must be bilingual.
Mr. Webb received a reply from the Katimavik Human Resource Manager of the Ontario Regional Office, Chapel Street, Ottawa, Ontario, which very specifically indicated in
April 26, 1983

its first reason for the denial of Mr. Webb's application for employment the following:
We require leaders who are functionally bilingual and who pursue a conserver lifestyle in keeping with the Katimavik objectives.
On further investigation of his application 1 thought as far as a conserver lifestyle that with his involvement of three years with the armed services, his trips throughout Canada in the capacities of sales representative, production manager, and traffic manager, and his being stationed for three years as an armed service recruit in Calgary, Alberta, followed by another three years in Germany, the least they could have done was give this gentleman an interview.
However, in the interests of pursuing the issue, I asked Mr. Webb if he would be kind enough to apply for the other position, that of district co-ordinator. We must bear in mind that the job was in Toronto, Ontario. The advertisement indicated that it was located in a district comprising the Greater Toronto and surrounding area. He applied for the district co-ordinator's job and was not even given the courtesy of an interview for the following reason:
Because of the large number of applications received in response to our organization's advertisement for the position of District Co-ordinator we have had to apply a screening process to reduce the number invited for personal interview to manageable proportions.
This resulted in a further inquiry on my part to find out exactly what were the terms of reference for jobs in Katimavik. I have had conversations with the body responsible for Katimavik known as OPCAN. I have had discussions with the staff of the office of the Secretary of State. A Mr. John O'Sullivan very kindly pointed out to me today that if a person was found to be bilingual this would be the ideal situation, meaning that if they could find a bilingual person in downtown Toronto for these programs he would be considered ideal and from there they would work with the remaining qualifications. I suggest that the House of Commons give serious consideration to the ramifications of that decision.
In the Province of Ontario we have over eight million people, of which only 475,000 are Francophones. I would suggest, and I stand to be corrected, that many of those Francophones might not even qualify because they themselves would not all be in Toronto. We are dealing with an ad in The Globe and Mail asking for workers in Toronto and we are immediately reducing potential Katimavik Program employees to somewhat less than 5 per cent of 8,264,000 the total population of the Province of Ontario.
The step that Mr. Geoffrey Webb of Peterborough is now pursuing is this letter which has been sent to the Human Rights Commission in Ottawa, Ontario, to the attention of Mr. Gordon Fairweather:
I am lodging a complaint of discrimination against the Katimavik Programme.
Adjournment Debate
I answered an advertisement in the Toronto Newspaper in March 1983 for a Group leader (Copy enclosed) but my application was refused because I was not functionally Bilingual. Whereas the advertisement stated that I must indicate my willingness to become so.
I also answered the next advertisement (Copy enclosed) for a district coordinator but again was refused this-
The reasons were given in that letter which I read into the record, in reply to in his second application. There were literally no reasons given for the refusal other than that he had one of far too many to consider being given an interview.
I would be interested in the Minister's response to the question whether he intends, through his Parliamentary Secretary, to assure this House that the qualifications as specified in the advertisement will be adhered to, so that totally bilingual people are not the only ones who can become part of the Katimavik leadership or district co-ordinator employee classification.


Jean-C. Lapierre: Mr. Speaker, after listening to the comments made by the Hon. Member, I must say that he has amply demonstrated his ignorance with respect to the Katimavik Program. The Hon. Member is claiming that since Katimavik has projects in Toronto and the number of anglophones in Toronto is very substantial, the person in question would not have to use French. Now, I think most people are aware of the Hon. Member's views on the subject, and some people-I am not naming any names-would even go so far as to call him a frog basher. In any event, Katimavik projects cover a wide spectrum of Canadians, and a project leader must be able to communicate with participants. A representative sample of Canadians, although my hon. colleague opposite may find this most disturbing, would have to include Francophones, and these people must be able to communicate with their group leader. That has been the policy of Katimavik from the outset. Mr. Speaker, I would even say that the raison d'etre of Katimavik is to bring Francophones and Anglophones together. It is too bad the Hon. Member has never taken part in this program, since it might have broadened his mind a bit.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is absolutely disgusting the way the Hon. Member is trying to launch an indirect attack on our policy of bringing together francophones and anglophones in Canada. He has been doing this since he became a Member of the House, and quite frankly, I think his francophobia is preventing him from learning what Canada is all about and from acquiring a proper appreciation of Katimavik, a program that was set up so that his children will not have the same aversion to bilingualism and to Francophones.
Mr. Speaker, I think Katimavik is entirely justified in wanting to have group leaders who are able to communicate with all participants, as is indeed the case throughout Canada.

April 26, 1983
Adjournment Debate


BANKS AND BANKING-RENEGOTIATION OF LOANS-AMOUNT OF PENALTY. (B) PLIGHT OF HOME OWNERS WITH HIGH INTEREST MORTGAGES
Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Mr. Speaker, on April 25 I asked the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) a question which I consider to be of vital importance.
Almost daily, I receive correspondence and telephone calls from constituents who were forced to renew mortgages and loans during the period of excessively high interest rates. I am sure the Minister remembers those rates. At the same time he was issuing Canada Savings Bonds at an interest rate of 19.5 per cent. Of course that lasted for only a year, and they were then renewed at 12 per cent.
The Minister in his answer said that the Bank of Canada does not establish the bank rate. He is of course technically correct in his answer, but we all know that the bank does play a role albeit behind the scenes in determining how the auction of treasury bills proceeds.
I find it incredible that he refuses to even consider the plight of those Canadians stuck with high interest rate loans and mortgages. In many cases the banks and trust companies are asking for penalties of $9,000 and $10,000 to bring loans down to current rates. Reports in the Toronto papers of two weeks ago state that a $10,000 penalty is not uncommon at banks and trust companies in Toronto.
Contradictory to the Minister's answer to my supplementary question, most of the cases I have been made aware of are not short-term loans and may not be renegotiated without a penalty clause, such as he mentions. The lending institutions have protected themselves, probably quite properly, with these clauses.
Who is going to help these people? Must they continue to pay up to twice the amount in loan payments for the next four years because they were forced to renew when this Government was sponsoring a policy of high interest rates? They are left with no alternative; they cannot afford the penalties required in their loan agreement. The federal Government is the only body that can do anything about this situation.
How can the Minister be so callous as to suggest that he has no responsibility toward these people. I repeat, this anwer is not acceptable to me or, I am sure, to any other Member of this House, as it indicates that the Government feels no responsibility at all to citizens adversely affected by its policy decisions.
The budget of April 19 is another example of this. The Minister of Finance reallocated some money to help farmers in financial distress, but just enough to say he had done something. He announced a great new special recovery plan. The announced capital projects under this plan will keep a number of people employed, but I do not see any new jobs. All I see is the acceleration of already planned projects and the propping up of troubled Canadair. Again, the Government is ignoring the long-term need of our constituents for jobs, just as the
Minister chooses to ignore my request for assistance for those paying unduly high interest rates on their homes.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I have to say that today is not a good day for the banks in the House of Commons. I have just come from the Agriculture Committee where we were talking about farmers needing to renegotiate loans. I was involved in giving a blast to the banks about disclosure of one farmer's private business and income. As I rise to answer this question about the banks affairs I must say I am doing so with a certain degree of impatience towards the banks.
In the past the Minister has welcomed Members of Parliament who came to him and told him about specific details of a given mortgage. I think that offer should be renewed to the Hon. Member as he seems to have forgotten it.
Let us be practical, Mr. Speaker. When a mortgage is shortterm, a three-month penalty is too much to pay to renegotiate it. The three-month penalty would be higher than many of the benefits householders would gain by renegotiating. The Hon. Member has an obligation to stand up and admit that point, which he jumped over in his speech.
Officials have informed me that at one major lending institution 85 per cent of home loans negotiated last year were for a period of six months. What good would a three-month penalty do a home owner under those circumstances, yet a three-month penalty would be the very minimum anyone could hope to negotiate with the banks, be he an ordinary home owner or the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde).
The three-month penalty is the standard that developed in the 1970s. For many home owners it would not be worth their while to take a three-month penalty for the sake of a lower interest rate. A little work with a pencil and paper would help the Hon. Member decide whether he is talking about a situation which is to the benefit of his constituents or is opposed to their interests. We need a little less rhetoric from him and more practical thinking.
The Minister is willing to hear when people have legitimate problems, but does not want to be drowned in requests that are made just to get the ordinary Member off the hook.


FINANCE-REGISTERED CHARITIES TAX PROPOSAL. (B) CALCULATION OF BENEFITS TO GOVERNMENT AND CHARITIES
Mr. Douglas Roche (Edmonton South):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to pursue the question I addressed yesterday to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) regarding the way he has distorted the position of the voluntary organizations of this country.
The budget removes the automatic $100 charitable deduction, while rejecting the recommendation for a tax credit on receiptable charitable donations. The Minister blithely says he has accepted one recommendation and has rejected the other. Let me quote from the letter of Andrew Cohen, chairperson of the National Voluntary Organizations Tax Reform Committee, who wrote to the Minister of Finance on April 20, 1983, the day after the budget, as follows:
April 26, 1983

-our suggestion for the removal of this provision (the $100 standard deduction) was inextricably linked to our proposal for a 50 per cent tax credit for all charitable donations.
As envisaged by the coalition of National Voluntary Organizations, the elimination of the standard $100 charitable deduction was proposed primarily as a logical means for Governments to realize the revenue which would be required to finance this 50 per cent tax credit. In short, the budget deceitfully ignores the "give and take" concept which I supported in my Private Member's Motion on June 8, 1980, and which has been put forward repeatedly by the Hon. Member for Waterloo (Mr. McLean).
Incidentally, the Minister of Finance himself supported "give and take" resoundingly in public three years ago. All he wants to do now is to take without any give. The Government's move is a thinly disguised tax grab which, according to Table 3.2 of The Fiscal Plan, will net Ottawa an estimated $380 million over the next four years. Yet, according to Mr. Cohen, finance officials have been opposing "give and take" on the grounds that the elimination of the $100 standard charitable deduction would not yield any significant revenue. They claim that most taxpayers were already giving close to this $100. Indeed, they even suggested that they would have no hesitation in implementing "give and take" if there was the assurance that the removal of the $100 deduction would generate the revenue to pay for it. They cannot have it both ways, Mr. Speaker. Moreoever, given Government's well-known reluctance to forfeit a tax field once it has been occupied, charitable organizations have lost their strongest, self-financing card for pushing for "give and take".
From a narrow point of view, the idea of a charitable tax credit is much more progressive than that of personal tax exemptions which are based on marginal tax rates. Much more fundamentally, "give and take" would give real incentives to contribute to charities, providing the nation's voluntary sector with a badly needed firm financial foundation. Otherwise, they will be dependent on Government handouts, leaving all kinds of room for arbitrary and inefficient Government interference. This is especially worrisome at a time when the position of the voluntary sector remains tenuous, particularly in terms of the definition of a charity having regard to political activities.
In brief, this budget, Mr. Speaker, ignores the social and economic contribution which 47,000 registered charitable organizations make to Canada. They provide 175,000 jobs, more than the construction industry, with an annual wage bill of $1.7 billion and total revenues of $5.6 billion, which is fully 3 per cent of the GNP. And these jobs are labour-intensive by nature, giving work to the disadvantaged, such as women, youth, part-timers and so on. The voluntary sector creates one
Adjournment Debate
full-time position at a cost equal to one-third of that required for the federal Government. Why have these facts been ignored in a budget premised on fighting unemployment? Why does this Government refuse to give charities in this country their rightful place in the sun? Why has the Minister of Finance not brought in the "give and take" proposal?


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to comment. May I begin by quoting from the official briefing note I was given by the Department on this issue. The Department of Finance is currently undergoing careful study of this and alternative structures for charitable contributions. Until the study is completed it will not be possible to ascertain fully the relative merit of a flat credit or any alternative structure.
There seem to be three or four very important technical concerns at stake here, Mr. Speaker. First, we are concerned that a tax credit could easily turn into a disincentive. Tax credits, unless they are at a very high level, will not stimulate the people who traditionally give to certain types of charities. Education, arts and culture particularly, are charities which are sensitive to high income givers. A low tax credit will not be an effective stimulant for people in those income brackets. What we are looking at is a 50 per cent or higher tax credit which is needed in these areas. In order to finance that we would have to pay a minimum of $100 million in foregone tax revenues. This would also involve considerable complexity with regard to the income tax form, and there would be a need for federal-provincial agreements. None of these technical questions have been answered yet. The Department is taking them seriously but they do not have a ready, quick-witted answer to give the Hon. Member when he asks his question.
I would say, however, that the standard deduction was ended for two other reasons. First, it is not intended to be simply an extension of the personal deduction. Second, we were advised by charities that many people were using it that way rather than as an incentive or convenience to charitable giving. We wanted to move this issue along, we did not want to sit on it. We have listened to the charities and, as the Minister said to the Hon. Member yesterday, charities got half of that for which they were asking. I hope the Member will take our assurances that the other half is taken seriously, but we simply do not have ready answers for all the complexities.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at two o'clock.
At 6.24 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, April 27, 1983