1983-05-26

GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Tuesday, May 17, 1983, consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-151, an Act to provide supplementary borrowing authority, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: My understanding is that the floor is free at the moment. I will therefore recognize the Hon. Member for Peace River.


Mr. Albert Cooper (Peace River):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am pleased to have the opportunity to enter into debate on this borrowing Bill. It is obviously an important subject for the House to consider. It is one which I think has become increasingly important to Canadians from coast to coast because, more and more, what the Government does with its money, how it obtains its money and the way it spends it, is having an increasingly dramatic effect on our lives, whether we be farmers, businessmen, housewives or Canadians in virtually all walks of life. It has now come to the point where it has become very significant to us. That fact was driven home to me last night as I was returning from Toronto. I was speaking with a cab driver about the impact taxes are having on his life, on his job and all the other effects.
This is, in fact, the seventh borrowing Bill with which we have dealt in this long session, one which seems to be going on forever and ever. We are wondering whether this session will ever end. I understand the total borrowing now amounts to some $77 billion, somewhere in the neighbourhood of $77,300 million, which is an awesome amount of money. At one point we would have considered $1 billion as being a figure we could hardly imagine, yet today it is becoming quite commonplace. I understand, in fact, that at this point the Government already has some accumulated borrowing authority in the neighbourhood of $16 billion. I understand that comes from a certain amount of carryover. We find out that what the Government really needs this time is in the neighbourhood of $10 billion. What the Government is asking for, however, is around $14 billion. As a result there is a surplus amount of $2 billion for this year or perhaps for the next year. The question that
remains is why there is this surplus and why these requests have been averaged. Is it in fact nothing more than a type of hiding or delay?
When one looks at the projected Government borrowing requirements for the next while, to the year 1987, one sees that the Government will be looking for some $93 billion. That is an astounding amount of money. Perhaps that is why we are seeing an increased borrowing at this particular time rather than for the amount that is actually needed. Is it because the Government does not want to startle Canadians with those high figures and is trying to average it out over time and create a nonchalant feeling about the significance of a billion dollars? Perhaps it is the fact that it will end up creating a need for less the next time. In other words, simply forestall and delay the borrowing requirements over a period of time.
Obviously we and all Canadians want to warn the Government that we are concerned about deficits. I would like to refer to a recent article in the Ottawa Letter, Voi. XVI, No. 20, page 156 which describes this concern rather dramatically:
In a Gallup Poll released May 12, an overwhelming 85 per cent of Canadians think that the federal government should introduce economy measures to lower the huge federal deficit. No matter which party they support politically, those surveyed were of the same mind. Eighty-nine per cent of Conservative supporters chose economy measures as the best deficit-fighter; 85 per cent of New Democrat supporters wanted economy measures; and 82 per cent of Liberal supporters in the survey wanted more economy measures. Only 3 per cent of those questioned in the late March survey wanted higher taxes to fight the deficit-
That is something that I believe all of us can understand and identify.
-and 5 per cent suggested that borrowing abroad would be the best solution.
Essentially, the fact is that Canadians are becoming very concerned about deficits because they see it having a dramatic impact upon them. I think that fact is demonstrated very well in this recent Gallup poll. Only 3 per cent of Canadians want to see an increase in taxes in order to solve the deficit problem. That is a natural reaction. Once people see the relationship between the deficit and their own tax burden, they obviously will want to have that deficit cut back. I suggest that is the situation today and why we in the Opposition, when we discuss a borrowing Bill, want to warn the Government of the serious situation which exists when it allows the deficit to grow.
We find that deficits will have an inflationary pressure on the economy. It will tend to stimulate inflation which I believe is a generally accepted view.
We also find that the Government is now projecting deficits of over $25 billion for the next four years. We can begin to see

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and forecast the kind of pressure that will place on our economy. I understand the Government currently has in the neighbourhood of $115 billion in unmatured Government debt. That is debt that has not yet come due but will in the near future. We are now arriving at a situation where the debt load itself is adding to the deficit significantly. Presently, $1 out of $3 in revenues that come to the Government are going to service the debt itself. Every third dollar coming into the Canadian Government is going out to pay the deficit with which it is currently faced. Half of this year's deficit comes from financing deficits accumulated over the past few years. This becomes even more significant when you think about the fact that over the next four years we are projecting high budget deficits of over $25 billion per year. Government spending is now 26 per cent of the Gross National Product which is having a very significant impact on the Canadian economy and all Canadians. Eighty-four per cent of the savings of those who put their money into a savings account for a period of time is going to be needed to meet the financial requirements of the Government.
Therefore, the Government will be in a situation where it will be forced to grab a very large chunk of available funds that would normally be allowed to go into the regular economy to stimulate it, and create the jobs and the opportunities which all Canadians want. I am thinking particularly, as youth critic for my Party, of the young people who so desperately need employment opportunities at this point. The unemployment rates for our young people are running between 23 per cent and 25 per cent. The projections of the Canadian Conference Board indicate these rates will continue in that fashion well into the 1990s. This is a very serious situation and it demonstrates the future of our country and our economy.
Speaking of the future, this is one of the big concerns that we have with this borrowing Bill. Essentially, the Government is borrowing against the future of our country. Our young Canadians must realize that their future is in a sense being mortgaged to finance the present situation, which has a significant impact in the country. It destroys investor confidence which in turn does not create jobs. Those people who are unemployed are forced to collect Unemployment Insurance, putting a further drain and pressure on Government spending. It forces a whole cyclical approach.
When confidence in the country's future is destroyed and you start to borrow against it, pressure is put on interest rates. Interest rates become a very important factor when you are trying to turn an economy around. This is significant to a small, struggling business that employs, three, five, six, or eight people. Interest rates are one of the biggest expenses people in small business are forced to face in the every day existence and survival of their business. With those high interest rates and the pressures associated with it, jobs are threatened. Once again, the whole cycle starts rolling again.
Then there is the pressure that is put on the dollar. That has a particular impact on Canadians because we tend to import many things on which we rely for our day to day living; for
example, food in the winter and clothing. This in turn puts pressure on the Canadian economy.
Instead of trimming the fat of Government spending, this Government continues to carry on in much the same tradition that we have seen over a period of time. There is the whole idea of the pork barrel. We saw that recently in the Gillespie coalgate affair. We have seen the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) hire his friends; for example, the architect for the American embassy. We have seen mismanagement in some of the Crown Corporations. The most significant one of late that has been the topic of discussion in all our newspapers is Canadair. There are some concerns with Canadair. Canadair should be a topic of discussion before Parliament. We have to discuss those types of issues and address the very serious problem as to whether or not the taxpayers' dollars are being well spent and well invested.
Another area of Government expense that I find most aggravating is what we call advocacy advertising. We saw that most glaringly in two recent examples. The first one occurred during the constitutional debate. We saw the beautiful geese flying across the water. The Canadian taxpayer was paying for that. It was an advertisement advocating a particular position which was not yet the position of the Canadian people or of Parliament; it was simply the position of the Government, the Liberal Party. We saw it very recently, in the last few weeks, in terms of the advertising of the Crow rate issue. We know what is happening today in this regard. The Government is spending a significant amount of money to put forward its position on the Crow rate at the expense of taxpayers. We have to look very carefully at some of the areas in which we could begin to trim Government spending.
Of course we would like to encourage entrepreneurs to get out and enrich the country, which would essentially increase revenues to Government, by creating opportunities and employment. Instead we find the Government stifling them by continuing policies such as the National Energy Program, which is of particular interest to myself. In my riding unemployment quadrupled as a result of the National Energy Program. What happened was that a number of small Canadian firms that were struggling in the oil industry for ten years to 15 years and had increased their employees from two or three to perhaps 15 or 20, supplied welding material, cars, trucks, oil, gas, or whatever were the particular needs of the oil rigs in the area. But when the National Energy Program came in, all this suddenly ground to a halt. The net result was that unemployment in my area went up four times because of one program that instead of increasing revenues, which seemed to have been the Government's purpose, actually resulted in lost tax revenues and unemployment in my area rising.
We have concerns for small-businessmen. There are many things we could do in order to create opportunity for them. I receive constant mail about the paperwork they are required to do. It is becoming so complex and technical to operate small
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businesses that business people are now spending a lot of their funding on high-priced accountants and advisers, which money could be going to create a stable situation in their business opportunities and thereby create more jobs.
I see my time has just about run out. In an attempt to wrap up, I want to emphasize that the whole business of Government borrowing and spending is a very serious matter. It is becoming very serious to all Canadians. They view it as being a personal issue. Again 1 refer to that Gallup poll. People now see it as being a significant issue. They are now relating it to themselves personally. They are now seeing that unless the deficit is dealt with, very soon the Government will have to raise taxes and as a result all Canadians will have to pay.
I want to conclude by saying that it is an important issue. The Government will have to look at its spending and encourage the private sector because it is the only way we will be able to raise revenues in the country and, as a result, reduce the pressures on the deficit.


Mr. Cosgrove:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Hon. Member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper) a question. He referred to supporting and encouraging the entrepreneur and assisting the private sector to maximize profits. Bearing in mind the advice given to Canadians by the Catholic Bishops in the document entitled "Ethical Reflections on the Economic Crisis", in which they called for economic policies that realized the needs of the poor as a priority over the wants of the rich and indicated that the rights of workers are more important than the maximization of profits, is the Hon. Member satisfied that his plans to help with the profits of the private sector will guarantee that the economic benefits will indeed be shared by poor people? Does he not see some value in the borrowing authority before us today which will help the Government with its policies to assist the unemployed, for example natives?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, I was also very interested in the Bishops' statement and read it with great care. I found the area the Minister referred to very interesting. It caused some thought. The more I read on in that report, the more I become aware that one of the things the Bishops put forward was the fact that many people have to be able to create opportunities that will help themselves in their own situations. I refer to one example the Bishops put forward, the whole area of encouraging co-operatives, encouraging co-operative investment in communities. We see that in housing and employment.
In my area a grocery store was put together by the farming community. A group of farmers got together. This has created significant employment. They provide a good product at a reasonable price. It is working very well.
The Minister used the words "profits of those companies". 1 do not think that is necessarily what is significant. What you are doing is looking after the well-being of the corporation. That will translate into security of employees, which is very significant. The Bishops related to that very well. If the
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Minister reads further in that statement, he will find it in there.


Paul James Cosgrove: Mr. Speaker, is the Hon. Member therefore in agreement with the increased allocation the Government has given toward co-operative housing, which now carries a total financial cost of $500 million annually in support of co-op housing? I will put my question another way. I take it the Hon. Member agrees with that part of the Government's initiative that supports co-op housing and that it is a cost that will have to be shared by all Canadians in the future.


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, what the Minister is effectively trying to do is turn my argument around. 1 talked about Government fat, the need to trim it and the need to look very closely at Government waste. There are programs which have some legitimacy, significance and importance. None of us disputes that fact. That does not destroy my essential argument, which is that there is fat in the Government's budgets that should be trimmed. I referred to a couple of examples. Something we would like to look at is Canadair. We would like that brought forward for parliamentary debate. Also, let us look at the Gillespie coalgate affair. Let us look at the architect chosen to do the embassy job in the United States. It is that kind of thing that is Government fat. There is no point trying to compare a legitimate Government program with one that is waste and saying that if you accept this, yoou accept the other. That is not the case and the Minister should recognize that.


Paul James Cosgrove: With respect, Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member cannot have it both ways. If he says he relies on the statement of the Bishops as to what the Government can do, he cannot disavow what the Bishops say. The Bishops say:
In our view, it is important to increase the self-sufficiency of Canada's industries-
The Government is doing that with Canadair. The support of technology in that industry is one of the more significant ways in which the Government supports private industry to be a leader in the industries of the future. How can the Hon. Member complain about that when the Government is doing exactly what the Bishops asked it to do?


Albert Glen Cooper: Mr. Speaker, 1 just heard the comment made that Canadair is not a leader, it is a laughing stock in terms of what it is doing in advances. If the Minister wants to talk about the Biships' statement, he should look at the speech that I made in that regard. I thought their statement was very significant. I have given a great deal of thought to it. I made a speech, which is on the record of this House, in which I stated 1 felt it was significant.
I am not disputing some of the solutions put forward by the Bishops. At the same time, I am not saying that is justification for the Government to go ahead and not look at the waste that is in its budgets. The Minister will have to accept the fact that there is a certain amount of waste.
There are legitimate programs. One program that is very important now is Unemployment Insurance. Everyone in this

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House can relate to an individual Canadian who is now collecting Unemployment Insurance and who comes under that program. It is a legitimate program. It costs money. I am not saying that that makes it wrong, but the point I am trying to get across to the Minister and to the Members on that side is, let us look for the waste. There is waste. The Minister would not have to look very far, I am sure, even in his own Department, to begin to find some of that waste. That is what we want to address because that is how we will ultimately reduce the deficit.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Questions, comments? Debate.


Ms. Lynn McDonald (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-151 on the borrowing authority shows that the Government has no shame. It lacks wisdom, it lacks decency, it lacks respect for ordinary people, it lacks compassion for the unemployed, the elderly and especially elderly Canadian women who have spent their lives raising our country's children and face retirement without a decent pension. The Government now shows a lack of ability even to blush.
The approach taken in the borrowing authority Bill is the big lie: It is better to borrow an outrageous amount of money than to reveal economic incompetence bit by bit by borrowing billion by billion. The Government has even admitted that it does not need all of the money immediately. It needs the money for so-called contingencies so it will not have to raise the delicate issue of our economic problems closer to election time and so it will have cash on hand for the projects which Liberal Cabinet Ministers will be announcing. At these announcements, there will be fanfare, there will be the opportunity for political speeches and the opportunity to operate the traditional Liberal pre-electoral pork barrel.
The borrowing authority is the logical accompaniment to the budget. The budget announced a series of projects. These projects are of modest proportion but they will afford splendid opportunities for Cabinet Ministers to make public appearances and to give the appearance that they are doing something for the economy. The appearance is there, yes, but the reality is not.
What is wrong, Mr. Speaker, with borrowing? Of course, it depends on what the money will be used for. We could accept the borrowing if it were part of a long-term economic recovery plan, if the Government would begin to recognize our serious economic and structural problems, if it would begin to solve these problems and if the borrowing would provide money that would go into real, substantial, well thought out job creation programs. We could accept the borrowing if it would mean that people would get back to work and start paying taxes again instead of taking Unemployment Insurance, thereby creating demands for other goods and services and putting more people to work. We could accept the borrowing if it were directed to the recovery of the economy, for that would reduce
the long-term drain on the economy as dividends, interest payments and management fees go out of the country.
If it would save the generation of our children and our grandchildren from having to continue to pay for our economic short-sightedness, we could accept the borrowing. Even if the money would go to increase pensions, for example, or social services, it would be serving the higher purposes of decency and equity. It would not be building a long-term economy, of course, but the economic consequences would at least be partially good because people at the margin would spend their additional income mainly on domestic goods and services. They would be creating employment for unemployed Canadians and unemployment is the major problem that we face at the present time. Unemployment is the problem that we should certainly be addressing.
We could accept the borrowing if it were directed toward research and development, and I do mean serious research and development, not the band-aid measures that were announced in the budget and not in isolation from other institutional changes which are needed. With our branch plant economy, we will never have enough research and development because branch plants are not intended to do research and development and put products on the market which would compete with the home country. But we need to spend more money on research and development if we are to have an efficient and productive economy and if we are to reap economic benefits when we begin to do this.
[ Translation]
Unfortunately, the purpose of the Government's spending program is not to provide for research and development projects, social services, economic recovery and job creation, not according to the budget that was brought down recently by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde).
What is the purpose of this budget? It is to give handouts to private corporations. Small- and medium-sized businesses stand to benefit very little, despite the fact that, as employers, they are very important to our economy. Once again, the Government is demonstrating its lack of consideration, even contempt, for small- and medium-sized businesses. This is a pre-election budget where expenditures have been chosen for their publicity value. The budget gives Liberal Ministers an opportunity to announce projects, to cut ribbons and open institutions, research centres, improved harbour facilities, and so forth. These projects must be paid for through taxes and loans that will have to be reimbursed later on. This makes the budget even less attractive, because the bills will be paid by low- and middle-income Canadians. The same budget announced tax increases for low- and middle-income Canadians, in the form of capped deductions and postponed sales taxes. The budget grants tax rebates to private corporations and so, the Government is demanding more and more from the average Canadian and less and less from corporations. In the 50's, corporations paid half of the tax bill and individual Canadians the other half. Now, individuals pay 80 per cent and corporations only 20 per cent.
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The financial burden on individuals has been substantially increased by this Government, and this is entirely unfair and unacceptable. We of the New Democratic Party feel that the responsibility for supporting Government programs should be shared equitably by private corporations and private citizens.

I would like to point out some anomalies in the Government's spending priorities, Mr. Speaker. There could be a very, very long list of these anomalies, but 1 will confine myself to a few examples. First of all, take as an example the Public Service Commission. It does not have enough money to promote women. Women will just have to be patient because now is not the time for affirmative action. Women will just have to stay in the lower-paid jobs and in the dead-end jobs. Yet the number of people earning over $60,000 a year, almost all of them men, increased threefold this past year.
The Government does not have the money to increase Old Age Security. It has even cut it back with the partial deindexing in the six and five program. It does not have enough money to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement even for single people to bring it up to the Statistics Canada poverty line. Yet the Government cut income taxes for high-income Canadians.
The Government does not have enough money for serious job creation apart from the PR event-type job creation that we have already seen in the budget. Yet the Government is continuing to increase military expenditures. I would not want to suggest that our problems with military expenditures are remotely as bad as those problems of the United States and the Soviet Union, countries where their enormous expenditures on military hardware are a serious strain on their economies. Our mistakes in this area are more modest, but coupled with the seriousness of our structural problems they are grave enough.
The point is that money spent on the military hurts the economy and fuels inflation. Money spent on research for military hardware is money not spent on research and development in the industrial sector. High military expenditure is associated with low productivity in industry. In Canada we need to invest more money in research and development for industry and any diversion from this goal ought to be looked at very, very carefully.
To conclude, Mr. Speaker, the Bill before us is unsound and unjustified and it ought to be defeated. Its intent is to postpone the day of reckoning and to enable the Government to evade its responsibilities. Its hope is that the public will be fooled, that the public's memory will not be long enough to last until the time of the next election and that when the election comes by, the public will remember only the cute projects and the fanfare and will not consider the Government's absolute failure to deal with long-term problems. Certainly my Party will do its best to prevent that from happening by exposing the incompetence of the Government's plan and the ineptness of the Conservatives' response as an alternative. Mr. Speaker, we have serious problems to address in this country. Irresponsible Bills like the one before us now are not going to help.
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Mr. Fisher:: Mr. Speaker, could I start by saying that I listened to the views expressed by the Hon. Member on this Bill and the budget and have been very impressed by her contributions. It seems to me that she always expresses her priorities very clearly and has a passionate way of expressing what she sees as priorities for ordinary people. I should like to congratulate her. I do not agree with all her priorities as I believe that our course of action is better than the one she proposes but, contrary to many of the contributions in the House, her contribution is always worth checking to ensure that reasonable alternatives are not being overlooked.
I should like to differ with the Hon. Member on one point- perhaps a somewhat technical one-and 1 should like her opinion on it.
At the beginning of her comments she said that the contingency borrowing requirements in this Bill were unacceptable to her. I should like to point out that the Government has always put those provisions into its borrowing authority Bills. This is not a new idea. We hope that it helps us to come to Parliament less often. It is strictly an administrative move on the part of the Government to try to avoid parliamentary logjams on borrowing Bills.
When we do this we end up, we hope, with better financial management. This gives the Government a great deal of flexibility in its borrowing program so that it can get the lowest interest rate. In this way we can use different financial instruments at different times to borrow at the best rate, whereas last March when the Tories were filibustering this Bill we were forced to borrow on expensive instruments.
I should like to point that out to the Hon. Member and indicate to her that while she raises the concern of contingency, on this side we feel that we are accountable to Parliament for this. We also feel we are accountable to the people and must set up the best borrowing program we can so we can manage their money as cheaply as possible.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly in favour of managing the economy so that money can be borrowed as cheaply as possible. That is a laudable objective. My concern and the concern of this Party is with the amount of borrowing, which keeps going up enormously. I spent most of my time talking about the sins of omission rather than commission. I think it is what the budget is not doing and its failure to address long-term problems that is wrong. It is not just that we are borrowing this rather large amount of money now but that we will continue to borrow because our economy continues to decline and foreign ownership continues to grow. We are losing control of the economy and not beginning to address those problems.
If this were a one-shot effort, that would be a different matter. If we were really beginning to go after the structural problems, it would be a different thing.
Regarding the question about timing in Parliament, I must point out that there is another response to obstruction on the part of Opposition Parties and that is to work in a more

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reasonable way with them. If there is obstruction there is usually a reason for it. There are many opportunities for difficulties to be talked out and resolved. Clearly, we are committed to the adversarial system and things get hot and heavy and difficult when there is ill will. Some of this could be prevented by better consultation. Opposition is not always opposed to the objectives of the Government; it is sometimes opposed to the means by which the Government is trying to achieve those objectives.
I think the Government would do well to assume a little bit more reason on the part of this side of the House, or at least this corner of this side of the House, than it often does.


Paul James Cosgrove: Mr. Speaker, 1 should also like to congratulate the Hon. Member for joining in this debate, unlike other Members of her caucus who are afraid to come to the House to debate, for example, the Crowsnest Pass legislation which would provide $15 billion of investment money to create jobs.
I am interested in the last answer given by the Hon. Member wherein she stated that the Government is going to continue to borrow. I should like her opinion on the special recovery tax element of the budget which is designed to recoup the special recovery spending that will take place in the next two years. For example, does she share the opinion of the Conservative Party that we should not have introduced the tax to pay for that deficit next year? We have allowed a 12 to 15-month period in between. Does she feel we should have extended that or, as they did in Ontario, in addition to providing stimulation, should we have introduced taxes on a selective basis immediately to recoup those deficit funds?


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, it is difficult to deal with one item in isolation from the others. The objections of my Party, which 1 very fundamentally share, are that we have an extremely unfair tax system. 1 refer to the burden between individuals and corporations where individuals are paying more and more tax. It is now 80 per cent whereas in the fifties it was 50 per cent of income taxes. The shift occurred mainly under the Liberals but it started with a Conservative Government, so we cannot blame one Party alone. I think that is an extremely important point. Then, of course, there is the individual level.
Sales taxes are regressive taxes and very unfair taxes. The less sales tax possible, the better. Obviously there are differing circumstances. Where does the burden fall? We feel that there is a great deal of unfairness in the way the Government is having the tax burden shared at the moment.


Paul James Cosgrove: Mr. Speaker, I take it the Hon. Member is saying we should not have introduced the special recovery tax so as to reduce the deficit within a year and a half. If she says that, I must ask her how she can reconcile that statement with her earlier statement that she was opposed to the Government continuing the deficit.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, there are other ways of raising taxes. My point was that taxes should be borne equitably by the Canadian population. The shift from corporations to individuals is extremely unfair. The lowering of taxes for
high-income people and the raising of taxes for low-income people is extremely unfair. Earlier, this Party proposed a surtax on high-income people because they can more easily bear the tax.
We have a reasoned proposal. We have not just said that money grows on trees. Clearly it has to be raised, but we want to see it raised fairly. That is not the case right now.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I should like to take issue with the last statement. I hope the Hon. Member accepts the fact that if we drain taxes away from corporations then at various times we are also draining away their ability to create jobs.
Prior to the budget we heard very clearly from people like the Canadian Manufacturers' Association and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business that indirect taxes like payroll taxes, which help low-income people through the payment of things like medicare fees and Unemployment Insurance, might be a good thing to use but that the timing was poor. They pointed out that additional loads imposed on corporations with these kinds of taxes would prevent corporations from undertaking job expansion activities. I think there is a balance on this and 1 am sure that we are reaching for it. At this point in time, however, corporations have told us very clearly that we must choose between taxes and jobs.
Given the performance of the economy, we surely must accept that kind of testimony from corporate leaders. It is not doing any worker any favour if we increase a company's obligations to pay his OHIP but at the same time take his job
away.


Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, corporations and organizations of corporations are always going to say that now is not the right time to raise taxes for corporations. They always say that. Let us look at the banking industry, for example. We see jobs being lost in banks, but not because of taxes; they are paying less and less taxes. They are being lost because of automation. I just do not think there is any clear relationship between taxes and the ability to provide jobs. The shift of taxes has been from corporations to individuals. If the Parliamentary Secretary's logic is correct, Mr. Speaker, we should have seen an increase in employment as taxes shifted from corporations to individuals.


Paul James Cosgrove: We have.


Lynn McDonald: We have the highest unemployment we have ever had.


Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Mr. Speaker, I come from a farming and ranching constituency. Of those farmers and ranchers 1 doubt there would be 10 per cent who have never borrowed money in the past. Almost all farmers and ranchers borrow money. But for those farmers and ranchers who are in some economic difficulty, their neighbours still have respect for them when they know they borrowed money for the purchase of another tractor, the acquisition of land, or for
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some project to increase their capacity to earn a living. But farmers and ranchers in my constituency view with unspoken ridicule those persons near the state of bankruptcy and who borrow to purchase pianos, new television sets or new and larger convertibles.
Sir, we have a Government today which is borrowing and borrowing without economic direction. It is buying pianos, television sets, Alastair Gillespie's oil companies and Mirabel airports. The list of waste and extravagance goes on and on, to the point where Canadians pay $1 out of every $3 in taxes just to pay the interest on the national debt. Sir, what an insult to Canadians. One-third of all their tax dollars goes to pay the interest on the national debt.
Seven times, Mr. Speaker, in this one session the Government has come to Parliament to ask for more money.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Listen to this! This is the same guy who will tell you about parliamentary responsibility.


Arnold John Malone: Seven times the Government has come here to beg for more and more money.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: These are the people who made us come back.


Arnold John Malone: We have had Bill C-30, Bill C-59, Bill C-l 11, Bill C-l25, and Bill C-l43. Now we have Bill C-l51. Then there is a Liberal across the way telling an NDP Member that somehow all of that is because they have some great responsibility to the Canadian people and therefore they should be able to borrow money without accountability. He is trying to tell the NDP Member over here, Mr. Speaker, that that is why the Government can borrow $2 billion more than it needs or has budgeted for. Well, Sir, going back to my farming and ranching constituency, they do not go to banks and say: "Look, Mr. Banker, I want $2 billion extra". The banker will ask what he needs it for. The farmer says; "Well, 1 do not know; it might be for some emergency or contingency". I come from Conservative country, Mr. Speaker, and farmers do not automatically know there is going to be an emergency. The Government comes from Liberal country, and Members opposite can budget that way because they know that as long as they are in power there will be an emergency; therefore they will need $2 billion. When they borrow, they have to borrow all kinds of extra money because the Hon. Member who is heckling knows that as long as they are over there, there is going to be a problem. The Liberals are buying oil companies and airports and supporting their friends, and that simply cannot be economically justified.
1 remind this House that the country of Mexico, with seven times the population of Canada, is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy with a debt load of $80 billion. Yet this Government, in one session of Parliament, has borrowed $81.5 billion, with one seventh the population of Mexico. How can this great and wealthy land of Canada sustain itself? We have a land of agriculture, of forests, of hardrock minerals and one-tenth of the world's fresh water. We have all of that natural wealth and resources, along with a talented people, and this Government is
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borrowing to the extent that we are mortgaging the children of tomorrow.
This is the greatest country in the world, Mr. Speaker, with the greatest potential. That is not just some political statement; 1 believe that to be a fortunate geographic fact. 1 believe this country is potentially far wealthier than the United States of America. Yet in comparison Japan, this land of rock with 110 million people and natural resources consisting of tin and fish, has a booming economy, the second biggest in the world. Here we are with 20 million people, wanting in no resource, rich in virtually everything, an accumulated national debt of between $160 billion and $165 billion, and a Government which has come to Parliament seven times in one session to ask for more money. And the Liberal heckler opposite thinks that is a legitimate activity. It is simply a disgrace and every Canadian from coast to coast should rise up and demand that this group of rascals be thrown out for sheer incompetence. They simply cannot manage this great country of Canada. Among the leading industrial nations of the world we are in fortieth position behind countries like Belgium. That is simply a disgrace, Mr. Speaker, for a country with Canada's economic capacity.
This Government's latest budget forecasts that over the next five years we are going to have debt on debt on debt. That is also at variance with the views of the farmers and ranchers in my constituency. They may go out to buy a new tractor, but they always look forward to the day when that tractor is paid for and they are debt free. All business persons work with that objective in mind, yet here we have a Government which has got into a rut-as an aside I might say that a rut is just a grave with the ends kicked out of it-believing that we can achieve prosperity tomorrow by borrowing year after year and living on borrowed money. Well, it simply cannot be done. At some point Canada, like Mexico, will come to the point where the International Monetary Fund will say that the ratings are such that we simply cannot continue to borrow and we will be on the verge of bankruptcy like Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina.
It is therefore important to underscore the first principle, that is, that our country cannot be sustained on continued borrowing. The Government must think in terms of efficiency, of cutting inefficient programs and decreasing the amount of Government involvement. Added to that point, I want to make the following observation: when the Government continually borrows on the private market to the extent that it has, borrowing $81 billion in one parliamentary session, then it is obvious that $81 billion less is available to those in the private sector to borrow.
What do we see in a society which is built on enterprise? Virtually all economists agree that it is the private sector which creates wealth. At best, what the public sector does is to redistribute wealth. The Government is locked up in the mentality that it must redistribute more and more of the wealth. The truth is that the private sector, because it must

May 26, 1983
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compete for these borrowed dollars, is getting into a tighter and more difficult position with regard to being able to borrow for the creation of wealth. Today the Government is trying to redistribute more wealth than there is the capacity to produce.
From another perspective, when we take the view that the private sector creates wealth and the public sector, at best, redistributes wealth, we find that any time there is a situation where a Government is trying to borrow 50 per cent plus one penny of our Gross National Product, then it is trying to redistribute more wealth than there is the capacity to create. Governments taken collectively, meaning the three levels of Governments, are today spending half of the nation's wealth. They are simply redistributing money. This country must back away from that kind of percentage, where Governments spend half, to allow greater entrepreneurship so there is greater creation of wealth.
Hon. Members who have been asking questions of others who have spoken today have come to the view that if the pie is only so big and some need or poverty is evident, then it is obviously incumbent upon Government to take a bigger section of the pie to erase the poverty. 1 am suggesting that the percentage of the wedge of the pie for Government should remain the same, but the Government should have the imagination to stimulate the country in a way which would create a bigger pie. There should be greater wealth and then from the greater wealth the private sector will be able to produce its section and the Government's section will also be larger. By the mentality of the way in which the Government approaches the question, it is driving us to a point of perpetual bankruptcy. Today we are only surviving on tomorrow's children and the development of tomorrow's resources. That is folly in terms of economic planning and certainly defies any logic in terms of where the country is going.
I submit to Your Honour that as my friend, the Hon. Member for Peace River (Mr. Cooper), stated earlier in his very excellent speech to the House today, the fact is that the people of Canada, who are reflected in the Gallup polls, know that a country simply cannot be managed in the manner in which this country is being managed by the Government. That kind of borrowing upon borrowing, involving billions upon billions of dollars, an amount of money which the public does not even understand, simply cannot go on.
When the Government borrows billions of dollars, people have difficulty putting that volume of money into prespective. Perhaps I can be of some assistance by giving them an image of the actual size of $1 billion. 1 ask the people of Canada to think of their location in Canada now and then to think of some town or community or other point 80 miles away. If $1 million in one dollar bills were laid end to end, they would reach from where they are to that point 80 miles away. However, if $1 billion in one dollar bills were laid end to end, they would reach from Vancouver to Halifax and back, two and one half times. The Government, having in one session of Parliament borrowed $81.5 billion, is trying to wallpaper Canada with one dollar bills. That is the kind of borrowing it does. It just borrows and borrows.
Now, when we pay our taxes, one-third of our taxes buys us nothing. It buys us no more health, no more airports, no more military equipment or agricultural research. It simply goes toward paying for the interest on the accumulated debt. One-third of our taxes does nothing except pay for interest charges because the Government has been spendthrift in its thinking and has been a novice in economic management. The Government should be roundly condemned for pure incompetency from a business perspective.
To those unemployed persons in Canada today, the amount of money which the Government is borrowing represents $3,252 for each of them. I submit that those people who are unemployed today, who know the rate of the Government's borrowing, who know that they continually cannot obtain jobs, also know that the main reason our country is in such a state is the psyche, the mentality, of the Government, which cannot put an incentive into growth sectors.
I come from a Province where the people are deeply angry with the present Government. We once had an oil industry which was the leading engine of the economy of Canada back in 1978. After the 1980 election, the Government came through with a new energy program. Today, out of approximately 400 oil rigs in my Province, 32 are operating. The rest are shut down. However, when an oil rig is shut down, a whole service industry also shuts down. There are places in my Province of Alberta where a Liberal Member of Parliament could not walk from the front door of a bar to the washroom; he would be skinned alive because the people would blame him absolutely for unemployment.
Part of the reason the Government thought it was legitimate to pick on the Province of Alberta was that no Liberals were elected. Therefore it thought it could hurt Alberta or Saskatchewan or any other part of the Prairies with Crow rate changes. But when the Government hurt the oil industry in the West, it did not just hurt Alberta, it also hurt Canada. Alberta is only a part, because in the projected 25-year lifetime of one tar sands plant, $108 billion of direct spending goes into the Provinces of Ontario and Quebec, $800 million in transportation, $700 million in technical development, in iron and steel fabrication.
What was the choice of the Liberal Government? It chose to kill the industry, to force Canadians to buy from other oil companies every time they bought some gas. It has not produced one more litre of oil anywhere in the country, but has chosen to import hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from offshore, from other countries, creating jobs in other countries but not in Canada.
At the time the former Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources said that Albertans would become rich beyond their wildest imagination. I say to him through Your Honour, so what if an Albertan did become rich? Suppose an Albertan does get rich. He will buy a new refrigerator, a new car and new furniture, all of which come from central Canada. I see the Hon. Member from Prince Edward Island here. This Albertan would also tend to buy more potato chips. When
May 26, 1983

Canada becomes richer in one part of the country, we can all be more wealthy.
Surely when we have a wealthy Province there is a responsibility for the Government to see to the redistribution of funds.
1 accept that. However, it is unacceptable to stop activity in one sector of the country for the advantage of purchasing offshore so that people in other countries will get jobs and drive that opportunity and potential away from Canada. That is simply a policy that we cannot endorse. Our debt is now almost three times the per capita debt of the United States.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order. I have been signalling the Hon. Member that his time has expired. Of course, he can seek the unanimous consent of the House to complete his remarks. He may also realize that there is a ten-minute question and answer period.


Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, I will not seek the time to speak longer because no one would grant me the two years that is necessary to talk about the Government and its incompetence.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Questions, comments and answers.


Mr. Roy:: Mr. Speaker, I have always listened to the speeches of the Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone), and I have always considered him to be an optimist rather than a pessimist. I liked his story about the banker, but 1 think what he failed to mention, and perhaps he could be a little more specific in this respect, is that if I go to a bank manager to borrow money and I tell him, to borrow a phrase from the Member for Crowfoot: I am going to use this money to paper my walls with dollar bills, and I have absolutely no specific planning program . . . On the other hand, the Liberal Party tells its bank manager: I need money and here is my spending program and this is how I am going to use it. 1 want to create jobs, re-train manpower, develop advance technology industries, invest 700 million in a technology development program for manpower re-training, 1 want to stimulate homeownership, and here some of the items in my program and the reasons why I want a loan. I would like to ask the Hon. Member whether he agrees that when a person borrows money, a distinction must be made between a loan to pay the grocery bills and a loan that will be used to stimulate and invest and maximize those investments. That is the whole difference between the Liberal philosophy and the approach of the Progressive Conservatives, which is pessimistic-using the money to paper the walls. I would therefore like to ask the Hon. Member whether he realizes that in Canada, the savings rate is twice as high as in the United States. Does he agree with this percentage? I think I would like to know more about these two aspects as they concern the Liberal and the Progressive Conservative borrower in front of their bank manager.
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Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, I believe part of the Hon. Member's question with respect to borrowing asked if it was not all right to borrow for those aspects for which there is an investment in the development of the country. 1 believe that my analogy was an attempt to establish that that is the only reason we should be borrowing. In its Bill before us today, the Government is asking for $2 billion for which there is no budget and no accountability. No one should lend that volume of money for which there is no established program for its expenditure. The Government is asking for $14.5 billion, $2 billion of which cannot be accounted for. That is simply unacceptable to any group. My colleague says it is $4.7 billion. If that is the case, then it is twice as bad.
With respect to Canada having twice as much savings as the United States, the Hon. Member should not have brought up that subject. It only underscores the lack of confidence that Canadians have. It only makes it evident that Canadians know they have some money but dare not invest it because of their experience with the kind of economy that the Government runs. They have experienced skyrocketing interest rates which depreciate the value of their money, and rather than risking their money in venture capital they are putting it into savings. Rather than investing, Canadians have preferred to buy lottery tickets.
I am telling he House quite frankly that Canadians will start to invest their money when they have confidence that the country is run on sound managerial principles. The Canadian public is not at fault; they just do not have the confidence. When that confidence is restored, savings in Canada will greatly diminish.


Paul James Cosgrove: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) began his remarks by criticizing the Government for presenting seven bills before the House requesting borrowing authority. He complained that the Government has returned to Parliament on obviously too many occasions to ask for this kind of authority. Yet the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), who sits next to him has introduced a motion in the House asking that the Government do the exact opposite to the Hon. Member's suggestion. The Hon. Member for Mississauga South asks that we split the present Bill before the House, multiply it by two, and bring it back. This would increase the number of times the Government will come before the House for borrowing authority.
I read a quote attributed to one of the eight candidates for the leadership of the Conservative Party to the effect that the Conservative Party is the only one that has it together. The Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) said that the Conservative Party is the only one that has it together. The Right Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) said that the Conservative Party has it all together.
Could the Hon. Member for Crowfoot tell me what position the Conservative Party is taking? Should we split the Bill and increase the number of times the Government comes before the House? Will he support the motion of the Opposition

May 26. 1983
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finance critic, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South? What is the Conservative Party's position?


Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, because we have it together I agree with the Right Hon. Member. 1 underscored the number of times the Government has come to the House for borrowing authority to show how incompetent it is. Yet I will never endorse the principle of borrowing money which is not accounted for or for which there is no plan or budget. The Government should borrow what it needs and not $2 billion extra, telling Canadians that it does not know what it is for. The Government will show its incompetence by returning once more. It should return once more.
We stand together on both points because we are both correct. I believe Canadians will endorse that. It will underscore the fact that the Liberals borrow too much money all of the time.


Mr. Orlikow:: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Hon. Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone). He attributed the precipitous decline of the oil industry in Alberta to the Government's National Energy Program. If one looks at the United States, which has one of the most pro-business Presidents in approximately 50 years, one sees the same situation. American journals such as Time magazine and others show that the majority of oil rigs in operation two or three years ago have been mothballed. According to American reports, the reason for that is that the oil drilling taking place a few years ago was in anticipation of the world oil price increasing by 10 per cent or 15 per cent a year. The new oil, whether found through conventional ways of drilling for oil or developing shale deposits in Colorado or in developing the tar sands, would be too expensive and could not compete with the likely price of conventional oil for the next couple of years.
If that is the case in the United States and in other countries-and I am not defending every aspect of the Liberal Government's policy with regard to oil-why does the Hon. Member continue to blame the shutdown of so much of the oil industry in Alberta on the Government? It seems to me that what is happening in Alberta and in other parts of Canada is the same as what is happening in other parts of the world, given the fact that the world price of oil is not rising but will probably come down in the next year or two.


Arnold John Malone: Mr. Speaker, in part world conditions obviously had an impact on Canada as well as on other countries in the world. But the significant difference between Canada and the United States is that the United States has increased its volume of oil production. As a result that country is much closer to self-sufficiency than Canada.


Mr. Blais:: That is baloney and you know it.


Arnold John Malone: That is absolute fact. Here in Canada we are still importing large volumes of oil from offshore. Those imports should be decreased in favour of producing jobs here in Canada and making Canada more energy self-sufficient.
What the Government program has done is not to lead to oil sufficiency in Canada. It is simply taking the oil industry from private ownership to Government ownership, charging the individual Canadian every time he goes to the gas pump. That charge does not create more oil, it simply saps out of the Canadian wallet more dollars for the Government for the single purpose of saying "It is ours". Therefore, the oil industry is not Canadian privately-owned but Canadian Government-owned. That is not an objective that meets the target of greater production of oil, the greater creation of wealth in the country or the greater creation of jobs. In fact, it has diminished all three.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Order, please. Before the Chair recognizes the next Hon. Member for debate, and it will be the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski), may 1 remind all Hon. Members that the eight-hour period for debate will end at 12.27 p.m. I take the view that the Hon. Member who has the floor at that time is entitled to his full 20 minutes and the ten-minute question and answer period. Thereafter debate will be restricted to ten minutes for each Hon. Member.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I have just listened with a great deal of interest to the last speaker. I have a question for him.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: At this point that would require the unanimous consent of the House because the ten-minute question and answer period has expired. Does the Hon. Minister seek unanimous consent?


Jean-Jacques Blais: I am sure 1 will not get it, Mr. Speaker.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: I shall put the question for the Hon. Minister. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The Minister does not have unanimous consent. Therefore I recognize the Hon. Member for Vegreville.


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, I think the exchange that just took place between the Hon. Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) and the Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Cosgrove) clearly demonstrates it is the Liberal Government that does not have its act together. Of course, the clear manifestation of that is the result of the Brandon-Souris by-election last Tuesday. The people in that constituency know that the Liberal Government does not have its act together. Only 17 per cent decided to vote Liberal. That should be a warning to this Liberal Government that it is now the third Party in western Canada. People in western Canada recognize that and increasing numbers of Canadians are recognizing the fact that this Government is out of touch, incompetent, corrupt, full of deadwood and that it should do the honourable thing and call an election and clear the air.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
May 26, 1983


Donald Frank Mazankowski: The New Democratic Party cannot take much solace in the results of that by-election in Brandon-Souris either. Members of the New Democratic Party promenade around the country and speak in the House implying that they speak for western agriculture.


Mr. Huntington:: They are not even in the House.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: It should be noted, according to the reports I have, that the New Democratic Party did not win one rural poll in the constituency of Brandon-Souris. I guess we know what the people of Brandon and the surrounding area think of the New Democratic Party's policy.
I was interested as well in the challenge of the Minister of State for Finance when he was responding to the Hon. Member for Broadview-Greenwood (Ms. McDonald). He suggested to her that if we were to pass Bill C-155 this would immediately trigger $15 billion worth of investment to create jobs. That is really stretching it a bit, Mr. Speaker, if we base that contention on the record of the Government in the past and on the promises made during the last election, particularly those of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan), as well as the promises contained in the Speech from the Throne which started this first session of Parliament.
We westerners are still looking for the $4 billion western development fund that is supposedly still being kicked around. However, it has literally vanished. It is now being suggested that this fund might find its way into the rail transportation Bill. But that was an exchange for the very generous energy agreement negotiated by the people of Ablerta in terms of rechannelling some of that money back to western Canada for needed industrial development. Nevertheless it was vanished.
I should also say to the Minister that perhaps he could point out to his colleague, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin), not only the inadequacies and the divisions within that Bill but that it is incomplete. That Bill is a bureaucratic nightmare, incomplete and divisive. It enjoys literally no support in western Canada. If the Government brought in a Bill that could have a modicum of support in western Canada, then the Bill might proceed in an orderly fashion. However, that has not occurred.
We are dealing here with a Bill in which the Government is requesting another $14.7 billion to help cover its $31.3 billion deficit. As has been pointed out by previous speakers, particularly by the Hon. Member for Vancouver Centre (Miss Carney), the Government requires some $26.7 billion. It has currently $16 billion in borrowing authority. The Government's requirements are really $10.7 billion, but it is asking for $14.7 billion, $4 billion more than it needs.
The obvious question is, why this additional money? What does the Government need it for? The first thing that comes to mind is that this Government is putting together another porkbarrel fund. In other words, an election slush fund. It will distribute this fund in a manner in which its individual Members of Parliament can go about the country making grandiose announcements, all in the name of recovery, but essentially in the name of trying to bolster sagging Liberal fortunes.
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We have just dealt with the budget that is supposed to have in it a special recovery component. Yet it fails to address, I would say, the three most important elements of the Canadian economy, elements which could generate some new growth and some new wealth in the country, namely the agriculture sector, the energy sector and the small business sector.
1 want to deal with those things in a moment, but first 1 think it is fair to say that the budget presented last month also failed to address some of the long-term issues, such as the structural defects that we must face currently. A recent study by the C.D. Howe Institute pointed out that 40 per cent of our unemployment is due to the recession and that 60 per cent of the unemployment, or approximately one million of those unemployed, is a result of the structural problems that exist within the Canadian economy. Those structural deficits have to be dealt with, but they were not dealt with in the budget and they do not appear to be addressed by the Government in terms of its over-all approach to economic policy.
The issue of productivity must also be addressed because it ties in with our ability to compete in the international marketplace. We all know of the importance of exports and the vital role they play in the wealth of the total Canadian economy. Over 30 per cent of our economic activity is attributed to exports. In order to capture that market and further penetrate it, we must be competitive. In 1982 our productivity dropped once again. Statistics Canada reported that the industrial output for each hour of work dropped during that year by .6 per cent, unit labour costs rose by 11.4 per cent as production dropped and labour compensation climbed 4.5 per cent. When we add all these together, we realize that they further deteriorate our competitive position and reduce our productivity even more. Our productivity record is the worst among leading industrialized nations of the world.
I believe as well that the budget failed to address the issue of worker training and retraining. It failed to ensure that we could mesh more accurately job requirements with skilled trades and develop skilled trades to meet job demand. These are the kinds of long-term issues which we need to address but which were not addressed in the budget.
As the Hon. Member for Crowfoot indicated earlier, we have to approach economic issues in a twofold manner. We must maximize efficiency in terms of Government expenditure, trim the fat and get rid of the deadwood. At the same time we must inspire and rejuvenate the private sector and wealthgenerating enterprises in the country. I singled out the three areas in which this could occur, namely the energy industry, the agricultural industry and the small business sector. Notwithstanding the fact that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) paid a great deal of attention to and said all the correct things about, the need to inspire the private sector and to use it as the main engine of economic growth, upon closer examination we find that these were merely buzz words that were not backed up with any realistic policy.

May 26, 1983
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We know that small business is the best source of creating new jobs. It has been stated time and time again in the House that in the North American continent some two-thirds of all new jobs created were created by firms with less than 50 employees. This is clearly an area in which we could rejuvenate the dynamic, creative and innovative spirit of Canadians and Canadian enterprises. I contend that the budget does little to promote small business growth. When we look at some of the things which could have been done but have not been done, we get a clear picture.
I would like to refer to a paper which was put out by the firm of Drache and Goldstein which commented upon investment tax credits and the proposal with respect to the issuance of equity shares. It was pointed out that while all this looks good on paper, small business had never been a major user of investment tax credits because of the various limitations imposed on the nature of the assets which must be acquired. Also it pointed out that the total benefits to small business looked like an addenda to plans to stimulate big business, sort of a mere afterthought which did not really address the real problems of small business. Not a word was said about the removal of the 12.5 per cent corporate distribution tax, about the repeal of the reduction in the capital cost allowance, about the potential of restoring the Small Business Development Bond, about ways and means of liberating some of the RRSP funds which could be channelled back into future investment for small business, or about the prospect of employment tax credits to stimulate employment in the small business sector.
I could suggest a tax holiday on the first $100,000 worth of profit because small-businessmen, like farmers, are the last ones to take salaries. They plow their profits back into the business sector to create jobs and to provide a stable and economic environment in all areas of the country. There were a whole host of suggestions and recommendations advanced by various groups that deal closely with small business, but they have been ignored.
Another area is energy, to which the Hon. Member for Crowfoot referred as well. I support what he said because he was speaking the absolute truth when he indicated that we had a dynamic oil industry in western Canada, particularly in the Province of Alberta. He said that it was dominated by small Canadian companies, particularly in the drilling, service and supply sectors. Those enterprises were in business for ten years to 15 years but many of them were forced into liquidation or into bankruptcy. This is a sad tragedy.
There was some suggestion that the budget would help the energy sector. Referring to the April 21 edition of the Edmonton Journal, Mr. Hans Maciej, an economist at the Canadian Petroleum Association, is quoted as saying:
The federal budget will neither help nor hurt the petroleum industry very much-
In terms of an activity impact, there is none immediately-
When we place this behind the backdrop of the disastrous National Energy Program of 1980, we realize that the Government has yet to undo the damage it inflicted upon the industry.
I repeat that the National Energy Program of 1980 cost the industry some 20,000 jobs. It forced the cancellation of many major megaprojects. My colleague outlined its impact not only
on western Canada but on Canada as a whole. I remind the House that every job created in the oil industry produces two other jobs in other parts of Canada. We know the difficulties of the petrochemical industry. The fact of the matter is that Canada was once a world leader in that industry, but because of heavy upfront taxes the Canadian petrochemical industry is non-competitive on world markets.
There is still potential in the energy sector, such as the potential of a heavy oil upgrader in the Lloydminster-Wain-wright area. It would involve an investment of some $3.5 million to generate some 93,000 man years of work. We have a situation where Petro-Canada is exploring for oil in China to help China become self-sufficient, but we are no closer to oil self-sufficiency in real terms than we were when the National Energy Program came into place. We have failed to turn our energy advantage into an economic advantage, and we have that opportunity.
I repeat, in the course of this whole exercise we have destroyed a very vibrant service and supply industry. The Hon. Member for Crowfoot is correct; of some 400 rigs in western Canada, there are less than 50 which are currently working. The Hon. Member used the figure 32; I know it is less than 50. Even with the initiatives taken by the Alberta provincial Government, we will be lucky if we get 100 rigs working out of the 400. What a disaster! What a change! Here was a golden opportunity for our young people that is lost. Many western Canadians are involved in the energy sector. Rather than building upon that potential, we have a deliberate Government policy which has destroyed that opportunity and potential.
I turn now to agriculture. This is another area with tremendous potential which was literally ignored in the budget speech. We are all aware of the difficulties that the farm community has experienced, particularly since 1980. In excess of 400 bankruptcies have occurred in the farm community. That is only part of the story. It does not take into account those who liquidated voluntarily or gave up. The situation in western Canada is such that bankruptcies are up by 200 per cent. The banks are not helping the situation, nor is the Minister of Finance who has undertaken to examine and to deal with the banks which are ripping off many of our farmers by imposing severe penalties upon pre-payment of mortgages.
I have a situation in my constituency where a certain bank decided to suspend an operating loan. The customer was forced to move to another bank where it arranged credit facilities. The amount owing was in the order of $378,000. Because the mortgage was pre-paid, the bank imposed a penalty of $42,561. A competing banker told my constituent that was three times the normal three-month interest penalty required for pre-payment of mortgages.
Two months ago the Minister undertook to deal with this and to issue an ultimatum to the banks either to clean up their act or face the consequences. I challenge this Minister now to
May 26, 1983

get on his toes and deal with the banks so that we can avoid this kind of rip-off.
We are trying in this House and in the Agriculture Committee to bring in a piece of legislation that will give farmers of Canada who are up against it some relief. At the same time, the Minister of Finance merely pays lip service to the real issues. I have written to the Minister but 1 have not received an acknowledgement. I challenge him to deal with this issue. It not only destroys the integrity of the banking system, but destroys the ability of farmers to go into a bank with any degree of confidence without getting ripped off.
Our Party has advanced a ten-point agricultural program that would assist in some small measure. It is by no means total. We have made the following recommendations and suggestions. There needs to be some relief in terms of the ability of farmers to bail themselves out of high interest rate mortgages. We recommend the use of the agri-bond system.
Sales tax on farm fuels and natural gas used in the production of food should be removed. Initial grain prices should remain at the same level as last year. Cash advances on farm-stored grain should be doubled. Changes should be made to the Western Grain Stabilization Act and the Agricultural Stabilization Act. We are recommending a voluntary national incomes stabilization program for the red meat sector. We recommend changes to Section 31 of the Income Tax Act so that those farmers who have to supplement their income off the farm will be treated in a fair and equitable manner.
These are some of the suggestions we have advanced. They will by no means resolve all the problems in the agricultural industry, but they should be considered by this Government. I present them for the consideration of the Government, if not in the course of the next few weeks, at least when, hopefully, drafting the new Speech from the Throne which will start a new session of Parliament soon.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, as usual we have heard a refreshing speech from the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazan-kowski). He pointed out three areas of concern to him: shall business, energy and agriculture. The Hon. Member said that the budget was a disaster for small business, that it did not do enough and did not go far enough.
I received in the mail today the May-June issue of "Impact" from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. It states "Federal budget will strengthen economic recovery:	Chamber".
"Canadian Chamber reacts favourably to recent federal budget". These are just the headlines. "Business was the big winner". "Box Score: The Canadian Chamber and the April 19 federal budget". Under that heading it lists 30 ideas from the Chamber: 16 wins, 8 partial wins and six losses. I was concerned when I looked at the losses, but I found that they were pretty minor issues.
Among the 30 ideas are the issues raised by the Hon. Member for Vegreville.
At the beginning of his speech, the Hon. Member said the budget does not do enough for productivity. Point three states in part that "The Chamber recommended . . . significant
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strides in productivity." The April 19 budget "provided tangible responses". The Chamber recommended "steps to be taken to increase business and consumer confidence". The April 19 budget was "tuned to this objective." It was rated "Win". We find these very powerful statements in this pamphlet. At the end it states, and I quote:
The Chamber has contended that the success Canada will have in attaining economic growth will, to a large extent, rest on the health of our small-business sector since small business employs a large number of Canadians and is responsible for a significant share of new-job creation. With this in mind, it applauded the Minister for recognizing the important role of the small business sector by introducing a number of special tax and other measures that may help to alleviate certain elements of the difficult financial situation faced by small business.
That is an endorsement from the Chamber of Commerce representing thousands of small businesses. There are similar endorsements from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. They rank this budget as a "win". The Hon. Member says we do not do anything for small business. I wonder whether he has been reading his mail.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has seized on an oportunity to exaggerate. I did not say the budget was a disaster for small business. He is fabricating words. I said it did not do enough to assist the small business sector.
As far as the Chamber of Commerce is concerned, I think they would be judging their comments on the basis of the previous two budgets. Compared to the last two, this one is a winner because the other two were absolute disasters.
Notwithstanding what the Hon. Member may say about the support which the Chamber of Commerce is giving to the budget, I would rather look at the level of support that is emanating from the people of Canada with respect to the policies of this Government. We had a good test in Brandon the other day. Only 17 per cent of the people in Brandon approved of the Government's record, approved of its budget, approved of the way the Government is handling the economic and political affairs of the country. I submit to you, Mr. Speaker, that that is the better test. Even in the Gallup poll, which takes into account the heavy proportion of support that the Liberal Party still continues to enjoy in the Province of Quebec, the Government can only eke out about a 27 per cent or 29 per cent level of support across the country. I believe that that is the real test.
The fact of the matter is that others have said the same things as the report by Drache, Goldstein and Company, which said:
The "benefits" for small business, in sum, look like addenda to plans to stimulate big business, a mere afterthought which does not address the real problems of small businesses.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, supplementary to what the Hon. Member has just said, I believe that Arthur Drache is the same lawyer who sat in the Tory lobby during the debate over the Income Tax Act and fed questions to the Tory Members of Parliament. I would not expect a man who would do that to

May 26, 1983
Borrowing Authority
stand up the next day and automatically applaud anything the Liberal Government does. I do not think he would be willing to do that, nor on the other hand do I expect partisan comments from the Chamber of Commerce. That is why, unlike the other Member, I chose a non-partisan body for its assessment of the budget rather then some gentleman who made a lot of money from the Tory Party during the income tax debate.
1 would like to point out, Mr. Speaker, that Norman Godfrey of HUDAC said on April 20, as reported in The Globe and Mail, "The pro-business budget will generate confidence and create jobs".
On the night of the budget, John Bulloch said that the budget was a combination of good politics and economics and that business will generally give high marks.
Those people are not partisan like the gentleman who sat in the Tory lobby and fed questions to Tories who could not themselves understand what they were supposed to ask.
1 would like to point out to the Hon. Member that in the budget there is indeed a very short section dealing with small business, but everything else in the budget stimulates the interests and the benefits of small business. The RHOSP will stimulate the business of furniture companies and stores. Again the RHOSP will stimulate activity among small construction companies and housing contractors. The tax incentives, the investment incentives, the construction equipment incentives will all stimulate small business. I can go on all day. Those incentives are not listed under the section dealing with small business, Mr. Speaker, but they sure help small business.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, in responding briefly to the Parliamentary Secretary's rhetoric, I should point out that Mr. Drache has a very distinguished record as a public servant who worked for the Department of Finance and who, 1 suspect, has drafted a few budgets himself. As far as the Parliamentary Secretary's other rhetoric is concerned, it has become fairly well known across the country that this is a budget of shortterm gain for long-term pain.
Unemployment levels will not be affected very much. There will be at least 10 per cent unemployment plus into the next two to three years and 12.4 per cent for the rest of this year. That figure will hopefully moderate to a level of 10 per cent. I do not think that a level of 10 per cent unemployment is acceptable in any industrialized nation, and certainly not in Canada with the potential and opportunity that we have.


Mr. Blackburn:: Mr. Speaker, I have just one question for the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski). He, along with his colleagues, constantly refers to the exodus of oil companies and drilling companies in particular, with their rigs flowing in vast quantities south from Alberta into the United States. This was quite true back in 1980 and 1981. 1 was wondering whether or not the Hon. Member attributes this exodus to the downturn in OPEC oil prices throughout the world, to the fact that there is a world glut in oil, and to the fact that we have found alternate sources of oil and petroleum products. How does he account for the fact that, without very
much fanfare and publicity, particularly in the West, most of these oil drilling companies are now bringing their rigs back into Canada and are saying that the reason they are coming back to Canada is that there is no work for them in the United States, that they cannot compete in the United States, that there is no demand in the United States, that their balloon has burst in the United States? The oil industry in the United States is a totally private sector industry, all privately owned. There is no national energy policy, Mr. Speaker, south of the border. Why are all these rigs now coming back into Canada? Because they cannot make a living down in the United States.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Mr. Speaker, 1 have a great deal of respect for the Member who posed the question, although 1 would not expect him to be totally abreast of the realities in Alberta. The fact of the matter is that in 1980 and 1981 when we saw the exodus of drilling rigs south of the border, there was not an OPEC crisis. The fact of the matter is that things in western Canada were really humming for the oil industry and the service sector. The whole industry was really humming. We saw not only an exodus of drilling equipment and men and capital, but we saw an exodus of expertise.
1 speak with some experience, Mr. Speaker, because I have two boys who are involved in drilling activities and they too found their way down south temporarily. Yes, they are on their way back home now because there is renewed activity in Saskatchewan. There is a new Government in Saskatchewan that is open for business. It happens to be a Progressive Conservative Government. There is a recently announced drilling incentive program in Alberta and there was a drilling incentive program announced which was in effect a year ago. But these are provincial programs that are needed to compensate for the disastrous effect of the federal energy program.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. McMillan:: Mr. Speaker, in view of the proximity to the hour, might I call it one o'clock?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: May 1 remind Hon. Members that the eight-hour period has now passed and that speeches and contributions from now on will be in the order of ten minutes. It would certainly be difficult for the Hon. Member to commence his speech now. That would leave him with perhaps six minutes or so remaining when we reach Orders of the Day again. Accordingly, with the consent of the House, shall we call it one o'clock?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: 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.
May 26, 1983

[Stage Direction]
[ Translation]

Marcel-Claude Roy: Madam Speaker, under the Canadian Home Ownership Stimulation Plan, a grant of $3,000 was paid by the Federal Government to all Canadians wishing to buy a home. This program was very popular and has helped to stimulate construction in Canada. Unfortunately, the program had to be discontinued on May 4 of this year for various reasons, including a moderating trend in interest rates, which have dropped considerably. Since this announcement, the caucus of Liberal Members from the Laval-Laren-tians area, which is honoured to have you, Madam Speaker, among its members, had a meeting on May 12 with the Quebec Provincial Home Builders Association. At this meeting, the Association submitted an official resolution that was transmitted to the national Liberal caucus and received the unanimous support of caucus members, who urged the Government to acknowledge the commitments of home buyers who had signed their purchase offers. We are now anxiously waiting for a decision by the Minister responsible for the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation with respect to this vital sector of our economy.


NATIONAL FILM BOARD
Hon. Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, I wish to protest, in the strongest terms, the recent decision by the National Film Board of Canada to close down eight of its regional offices across the country, including one in my constituency of Kingston and the Islands.
The savings projected by this move are minimal compared with the contribution of these outlets to the concerned communities. For instance, the resources of the National Film Board library in Kingston are in constant demand by local school boards as a valuable supplement to Canadian studies. Ethnic communities make great use of films which show Canadian life and history, particularly that of their own forebears in Canada. Senior citizen groups in the area regularly schedule film screenings for the enjoyment and entertainment of their members. All of these usages will be drastically curtailed should the local office be closed.
The National Film Board office in Kingston ranks fifth in terms of efficiency out of 30 NFB offices in Canada, so its closing is particularly difficult to comprehend.
I therefore urge the Minister of Communications (Mr. Fox) to take early action with a view to reversing the short-sighted
decision of the National Film Board with regard to the closure of so many of its local film libraries.


HOUSING
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Madam Speaker, my purpose today is to call to the attention of the House and, I hope, to the Government, the plight of those families who entered into the AHOP Program several years back, who have really tried to make a go of things and have done everything to live up to their responsibilities under their agreements. These families now find themselves in the aggravating position of, in effect, being punished by the Government for being responsible people. The people who did not or could not repay their loans, and/or who simply walked away from their AHOP homes after not making payments for a while, are in some cases actually better off than those who stayed and now see the value of their investments being eroded by subsequent CMHC handling of vacated AHOP homes in their neighbourhood.
If the Government could see its way to providing $3,000 to those who wish to buy a new home, I do not see any reason why it could not, at this time, reward the perseverance and responsibility of those AHOP home owners who have persisted, by forgiving outstanding loans or paying back the loans which have already been paid up. This is the least that could be done for these people in a very difficult situation.

[ Translation]


TEXTILES AND CLOTHING
Mr. Jean-Guy Dubois (Lotbiniere):: Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, April 13, I made a statement under the provisions of Standing Order 21 about the clothing import situation, and at the time, I urged Cabinet to look into the matter and decide accordingly.
Yesterday, 1 read in the papers, after a press conference held by the Canadian Institute of Clothing Manufacturers and the unions to discuss the situation in the clothing and textiles industry, that these two groups have asked the Canadian Government to make a decision with respect to imports.
Madam Speaker, after listening to news reports and reading newspaper articles on the subject, 1 must say that 1 do not entirely agree with all the statements made by labour and management, although I do share some of their views on the import situation, and I would like to make it clear to both labour and management that Federal Members with a special concern for the textile and clothing industry are discussing the issue with the Ministers concerned and have asked Cabinet to

May 26. 1983
make a decision on imports. When people talk about convincing Federal Members about the importance of this issue, the fact is that Members with a specific concern for these problems have already made considerable progress with the Ministers in working on the situation, and 1 would like to say to workers in the textile and clothing industry that Members in the various ridings concerned are working very hard on this case, and we hope that the Government will shortly be able to make a decision that will be favourable to workers, employers and the unions.
* *
*


TWO-PRICE WHEAT ACT-NON-OBSERVANCE BY GOVERNMENT
Mr. Charles Mayer (Portage-Marquette):: Madam Speaker, I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Government has essentially been breaking the law since November, 1978. This has come about as a result of the Government acting as though the Two-Price Wheat Act had been repealed in 1978. The Two-Price Wheat Act was put into effect to protect producers and consumers from the fluctuations in the world market. As of November, 1978, the Government acted as though the Two-Price Wheat Act had been repealed, but in fact it was not. At that time, as a result of the Government not adhering to the law, the price of flour to domestic millers went up, thereby causing an increase in the price of bread to consumers.
If this had happened to any other smaller group or individual in the country the Government would have been taken to court. All consumers have been disadvantaged and there has been no move by consumers, through a class action or otherwise, to take the Government to court or call it to account.
1 suggest that the Government should show some respect for the rule of law and start obeying its own laws by giving priority to Bill S-6, which is now in Committee, to repeal the Two-Price Wheat Act, or go back to obeying the letter of the law as in the Two-Price Wheat Act.
anxious to see Quebecair and Air Canada reach an agreement as soon as possible. Such an agreement would be a boon to those people who use the services of Quebecair and it would ensure that Quebecair personnel are directly involved in the negotiations and can rest assured that the issue of their employment will be resolved to their satisfaction.
Madam Speaker, 1 believe that this matter is very important and that the House ought to know exactly what is going on with respect to Quebecair. I would also urge that Regionair be directly involved in the negotiations because this case relates to the area between Sept-Iles and Blanc-Sablon as well as between Sept-Iles and the Magdalen Islands.
I hope that the Minister of Transport of Canada will take this representation into consideration so that, in the region of Quebec City or Montreal, this matter be cleared up very quickly, vital as it is to northern cities along the north shore and in Eastern Canada.
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*


WESTERN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION ACT
Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, in 1973, at the Western Economic Opportunities Conference in Calgary, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) said in part: " ... What the West wants is a fair deal-wider choice and opportunity within the West, and a fair chance to build a West which will be an integral part of a stronger and more prosperous Canada."
Right on, Mr. Prime Minister! But why do you not let us do just what you said-why are you and your Government handcuffing agriculture in the West with Bill C-155? Why are your actions not in conformity with your words'? Your National Energy Program all but destroyed our gas and oil industries-your Bill C-155, if passed as is, will force every farmer to take his grain to the elevators. He will lose his freedom of choice.
* *
*


AIR TRANSPORT
Mr. Andre Maltais (Manicouagan):: Undoubtedly, Madam Speaker, you are aware of the wide expanses of the Manicouagan riding and the difficulties in the aeronautical field. I would like to ask the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) to bring us up to date on the Quebecair issue, because all residents of the north shore region as well as those of Eastern Canada are
During this Prime Minister's time in power we have seen our livestock production move east, our packing plants close, our oil and gas drilling dry up. Gilson's recommendations gave us hope. The Minister's "50 per cent of Gilson" dimmed that hope a little, and then Bill C-155, ordered by the Prime Minister and the Liberal Quebec Caucus, blotted out all hope.
If the Prime Minister meant what he said in Calgary, withdraw Bill C-155, return to Gilson, or better still, to the alternative suggested by the Hon. Member for Vegreville (Mr. Mazankowski). Let us have freedom of choice. Do not talk sweetly and then fence us in.
May 26, 1983


CHANGE IN RULES GOVERNING MOTIONS AND POINTS OF ORDER
Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, on November 13, 1970, during Question Period, a dispute arose over the lack of Cabinet Ministers present to answer questions. After some considerable wrangle the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) rose on a point of order and moved that the House proceed to the Orders of the Day. It was acceptable in 1970 to make motions and points of order during Question Period. That practice wad discontinued in 1971. I contend that as a result of that discontinuance that particular practice cannot be considered as a precedent.


Madam Speaker:: Well, I was wondering where the Hon. Member was going with that particular statement under Standing Order 21. I have some doubt about whether this is a proper time to discuss procedural matters.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. David Smith (Don Valley East):: Madam Speaker, about 15 minutes ago I received a phone call from Avital Shcharansky in New York, the wife of Soviet prisoner of conscience, Anatoly Shcharansky. No member of his family has seen him for 17 months, and during that time he underwent a hunger strike which was widely reported throughout the world press. That hunger strike was finally terminated, but it is generally recognized that he is in very poor health. In a letter which his mother received just a few days ago he described in great detail symptoms which would appear to indicate that he may have suffered a heart attack. Yet he is not receiving medical treatment.
I feel quite strongly about this, Madam Speaker, A meeting with his family, scheduled for June, has been postponed until July. 1 think it is important while Mr. Gorbachev is in this country that Canadians indicate that these flagrant denials of human rights of people like Mr. Shcharansky and others will not go unnoticed. I call upon him to intervene when he returns to Moscow to allow Mr. Shcharansky to be released and join his wife, whom he has not seen since the day after they were married, in Isreal.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


NATIONAL UNITY
Mr. Bill Yurko (Edmonton East):: Madam Speaker, since Confederation the national question has been how is the French fact to be accommodated in Canada. Three general
Oral Questions
possible solutions have evolved through time, resulting from social organization, technological inter-relations, and economic interdependence. These solutions are separation, assimilation, and coexistence.
Various Canadian organizations, political parties, and even some Members of this House, have directly or inadvertently favoured and fuelled the separation option.
Some Canadian organizations, some members in high political office and organizations, and even some Members of this House, are perceived to favour and even promote the assimilation option.
The statesmen, the realists, and the nation-builders have promoted and strived to implement the coexistence option. It is the only acceptable option for most Canadians, and I count myself as one of these, particularly so during the recent constitutional drama. Canada has for several decades moved boldly towards this workable option of coexistence between two founding races, two solitudes, two linguistic and cultural identities. Manitoba is to be applauded and respected for its recent historical action. The nation waits on Ontario for a similar response.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of National Revenue who yesterday tabled one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation to be introduced in Parliament in the past decade, the Canada Development Investment Corporation Bill. The CDIC will be the largest holding company in Canada and a massive intrusion into the marketplace. It will have special privileges that its private sector competitors will not have.
Can the Minister confirm to the House that in fact CDIC, when it decides to buy or sell a company, will not require parliamentary approval and that all it will require is the approval of Cabinet? Can he tell the House why it is he feels the Parliament of Canada should not be required to give its consent before CDIC purchases more companies?


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, I fail to see how the Hon. Member could have concluded from the Bill tabled in the House yesterday that it was the most dangerous piece of legislation he had seen for a long time. Actually, it is a very positive measure, and it is a response to one of the Government's concerns, a concern that

May 26, 1983
Oral Questions
the President of the Treasury Board in the previous Government had as well, although he lacked the imagination to find a solution to this kind of problem. So, the Government's concern is to provide for tighter management of certain corporations that are wholly-owned by the Government, to return to the private sector certain shares held by the Government through the Canada Development Corporation and, finally, to act in an important consulting capacity by advising the Government on management of certain Government assets.
Prior to making any acquisitions whatsoever, the new Corporation will have to refer to Cabinet, which may or may not authorize the Corporation to carry out the transaction. 1 should also like to point out, and the Hon. Member must have noticed, that the Bill tabled in the House will oblige the Corporation to submit its investment programs and that these documents will be examined carefully and thoroughly by a standing committee of this House.


CORPORATION'S POWERS-IMMUNITY FROM LAWS
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, now that the Minister has unburdened himself with that speech, will he answer the question? Will the Minister confirm that in fact CDIC can purchase any company it wants to, and that if it used internally generated funds all it would require is the consent of Cabinet, and no consent from Parliament would be required? Will the Minister confirm that because CDIC will be an agent of Her Majesty it will be immune from provisions of the Combines Investigation Act and federal legislation dealing with false and misleading advertising?


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, 1 think that instead of commenting on the kind of answer he was given, the Hon. Member would do well to listen carefully and relate the answer to the questions he asked in the first place. Perhaps I may be allowed to say, in answer to the same question about the authority of the new Corporation for making acquisitions, that-and the Hon. Member can read this in the Bill-before using any funds to make any acquisition whatsoever, such plans must be submitted to Cabinet. Furthermore, the Corporation will have to submit operating and capital plans, which will have to be examined by the committees of this House. Parliamentarians will therefore have an opportunity to make a careful and thorough study of such plans provided of course, that the Members sitting on the committee are prepared to be thorough, unlike the Hon. Member who is asking these questions.


REQUEST THAT AUDITOR GENERAL BE REQUIRED TO AUDIT CORPORATION
Henry Perrin Beatty: Madam Speaker, what a piece of flimflam. Does the Minister not realize that the Bill he tabled says that the capital plan becomes effective immediately upon approval by Cabinet?
There is no time limit for tabling in Parliament. There is no requirement that Parliament approve it. Does he not realize that this is an agent of Her Majesty? Will the Minister now answer either of the two questions I have asked him, honestly and in a straightforward way?
Will he also tell the House why there is no provision whatsoever that the Auditor General have access to the books of CDIC? Will he give the House and people of Canada the assurance that with this largest and most dangerous holding company in Canada the Auditor General will have full access to the books and he will be able to conduct comprehensive audits of the activities of CDIC?


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, yesterday, the Minister responsible for the Canada Development Investment Corporation said at a press conference that he was still looking into the matter of having the Corporation's books audited by the Auditor General of Canada. However, 1 may point out that private auditing firms are already auditing corporations whose new shareholder is the Canada Development Investment Corporation, and furthermore, the question of audits by the Auditor General of Canada is still being studied by the Minister responsible, and we shall probably have an opportunity, at the clause-by-clause consideration of this Bill in committee, to take a closer look at this question with the Minister responsible. I should also like to point out to the Hon. Member that for the first time, standing committees of the House will have an opportunity to make a thorough study of the financial statements of the corporations that will be controlled by the new Corporation.


CROWN CORPORATIONS
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, my questions are directed to the President of the Treasury Board who will know how the Government flaunts the law with respect to Crown corporations. He will know that on April 13 he promised the House that he would file a report on Cana-dair. On May 19 his parliamentary secretary repeated the promise. The President of the Treasury Board will know that Section 75 of the Financial Administration Act requires that a Crown corporation file its financial report three months after its year end. He will know that that same Section requires the statement to be filed in Parliament 15 days after it is with the Cabinet.


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Where are the reports?
May 26, 1983


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. Does the Hon. Member have a question? He has been enumerating quite a number of things.


Mr, Blenkarn:: Well, certainly. Let me give it.


Madam Speaker:: Let us proceed to a question.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, we will get to the question. The question is: where are the reports? Why have the reports not been filed? Why does the Government of Canada continue to let Canadair flaunt the law?


Hon. Herb Gray (President of the Treasury Board):: Madam Speaker, I do not accept the premises of my hon. friend's question. I could be wrong, but I do not think that the year end of Canadair has taken place as yet. I will check into it. Like my hon. friend, I want to see the requirements of the Financial Administration Act properly met.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: It is amazing that the President of the Treasury Board does not know the year end dates of his own corporations.


APPROVAL OF ADDITIONAL FUNDING
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, the President of the Treasury Board also knows that under Section 70 of the Financial Administration Act the capital budgets of a Crown corporation must be approved by the Government and filed with the House. How does he now come to this House demanding $240 million for Canadair-


Mr. Nielsen:: On his knees.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: -without filing a capital budget, at the same time saying that this money is for equity in the capital of the Crown corporation?


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: Madam Speaker, the supplementary estimates in question will be studied by the appropriate Committees of the House. The Committees will certainly be in a position to be assured and satisfied that they have the relevant financial information. 1 will be consulting with the Minister responsible, to be in a position to assist him in providing the necessary information.


CANADA DEVELOPMENT INVESTMENT CORPORATION
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue and it also concerns the Canadian Development Investment Corporation Bill. I should tell the Minister that we in the New Democratic Party feel that Crown corporations must be open, accountable, and free of patronage, if they are to survive.
Oral Questions
If the Minister were to study the Bill would he agree with me that the people associated with the CDIC comprise the same old group, the Strongs, the Bells, the Austins, and the Cohens, the old NEP gang, the return of the Jedi, if you like, who are known for being elitist and independent of Parliament? Can the Minister tell the House how he can say that the CDIC is responsible and accountable to Parliament when, in fact, the CDIC will be almost completely directed by Order in Council?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, I find the question of the Hon. Member rather amazing, because I was myself pleasantly surprised today to read a headline in a newspaper saying that the new Corporation would provide more information to parliamentarians, and more important to the public, about the activities of these corporations, and second, that parliamentarians would also be able to question the managers of these corporations and hold them accountable to Parliament. Indeed, the bill contains provisions requiring the parent corporation to file regular financial statements for its subsidiaries, as a result of which parliamentarians will be able to ask questions, be better informed about management matters, and give a much more detailed account of the administration and operations of these corporations to their colleagues and the public.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: The Minister should have the experience of trying to challenge an Order in Council, as I did. It took me three years to get into court to challenge the pipeline Order in Council.


Mr. Lalonde:: No case.


PURPOSE OF GOVERN MENT
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Madam Speaker, I would like to ask a supplementary question in a more general vein. If the Minister reads the Bill, he will find that there are, in fact, inconsistent goals in it. At first, it is to privatize. Second, it is to have a window in the industry, for some corporate or commercial information. Finally, it speaks of a corporate plan, which is more like modern social democratic economic planning. I want to ask the Minister which is it.


Mr. Hnatyshyn:: Smile, Svend.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I know that the Conservatives do not like that. They want to sell it off.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Who would buy it?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Is it, in fact, the purpose of the Government- because it is not really spelled out; it is inconsistent-to begin modern economic planning to solve the work crisis we have in Canada by using the Crown corporations in part, or is it just to provide a tool, a vehicle for the old Austin gang to play some

May 26, 1983
Oral Questions
power games, and to leave undefined what the Government wants to do?


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, first, I should like to remind the Hon. Member of the four major objectives of the Corporation. He must know that the Government and the taxpayers are concerned about the way some corporations operate. There is no need for me to mention specific cases. I am certain that all Hon. Members already have some in mind. It was therefore necessary to take drastic action to ensure a closer control over these corporations and provide a businesslike solution to the business problems they were facing. The first objective of the new Corporation is therefore to oversee these corporations more closely.
The second objective is as follows. We all know that the Government has holdings in several corporations which could easily be privatized when market conditions make it possible to get a good return on the sale of these holdings for Canadian taxpayers. That is the second objective to be met by the Corporation.
The third objective-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please! The answer of the Hon. Minister is a bit long.


CORPORATION'S OBJECTIVES
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, my final supplementary question is directed to the Prime Minister. Could the Prime Minister assure the House that the new umbrella corporation will be more than just the latest evolution of the bureaucratic state capitalism that we have received from the Liberals over the years?


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Erik Nielsen: You've got to be joking.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Author?


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Does the Prime Minister intend to ensure that, in the future, Crown corporations will become an instrument for the pursuit of genuine alternative economic development, that is, accountable to social and environmental indicators of productivity as well as traditional profit criteria-


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: -and that it is a kind of economic planning-


Some Hon. Members:: Louder!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Does he intend to insure that it is a kind of economic planning over which Canadians have authentic control?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Or are-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. That enumeration and that long preamble are just a bit too much on a third question on the same subject. I would ask the Hon. Member to proceed immediately to ask his question.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Are we to see the continuation of Crown corporations merely being mirror images of their counterparts in the private sector?


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, I can only advise the Hon. Member to read carefully what the Minister responsible said in the important statement he made yesterday, when he indicated the main objectives of the Corporation and how this new instrument the Government had created would be used to resolve a number of existing problems and also other problems that might arise in the future.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF PARLIAMENTARY DELEGATION FROM MEXICO
Madam Speaker:: I have the honour of drawing the attention of the House to the distinguished presence in our gallery of a parliamentary delegation from Mexico, which is headed by Senator Celso Humberto Delgado Ramirez.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION IN MALTA
Madam Speaker:: I also wish to draw the attention of the House to the distinguished presence in our gallery of the Leader of the Opposition in Malta, Dr. Eddie Fenech Adami.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


FISHERIES
Mr. Lloyd R. Crouse (South Shore):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. At the present time the U.S.-Canada Georges Bank boundary dispute is before the International court at The Hague. In light of the recent presidential proclamation which says that in case of conflicts the boundary of the exclusive economic zone shall be determined by the United States and other states concerned in
May 26, 1983

accordance with equitable principles, was the Prime Minister aware of this statement and, if so, will he discuss this matter at Williamsburg with the United States President to make certain that the U.S. move does not pre-empt the International Court's decision at The Hague on the boundary issue as it applies to Georges Bank?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, first I should inform the Hon. Member and the House that the purpose of Williamsburg is not to have bilateral discussions with the U.S. President but to discuss the agenda which is before the Economic Summit, and particularly the importance of having a lasting economic recovery both in the industrialized countries and Third World countries. Therefore 1 do not propose to raise any specific bilaterals with President Reagan.
If I understood the quotation correctly, and I was not aware of it, there seems to be nothing wrong, in my opinion, with the President suggesting that the solution be found in terms of equitable principles. I believe that is what the reference to the court leads us to expect. We hope that the court will judge on equity and international law. That is our expectation, and nothing has changed.


REQUEST THAT PRIME MINISTER DISCUSS ISSUE WITH U.S. PRESIDENT
Lloyd Roseville Crouse: Madam Speaker, I thank the Right Hon. Prime Minister for his answer. I can appreciate that it may be difficult to discuss this matter at Williamsburg.
However, since Canada contends that the dividing line on Georges Bank should be equidistant between Canada and the United States, while the Americans claim the entire Georges Bank, will the Prime Minister undertake to hold discussions, when convenient, with the United States President, pointing out that their move to declare a 200 nautical mile coastal economic zone further complicates the boundary problem between our two countries and could establish precedents affecting other international boundary disputes?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: No, Madam Speaker, the declaration of the 200-mile economic zone by the United States is no different from our own declaration which was made a few years ago in terms acceptable to the Law of the Sea conference. That is another matter entirely. In my view I think the Hon. Member is a couple of years too late. We have negotiated this situation. Of course there is a difference of interpretation of where the boundary lies, whether it be in the trench or on an equidistant line.
That whole matter had been solved in bilateral negotiations with the United States. It was rejected by the U.S. Senate. Consequently, we have gone to the international court of arbitration. It is now before the court. There has been no move on the part of U.S. or Canada to withdraw it from the jurisdiction of the court, where it is by mutual consent.
Oral Questions


THE ADMINISTRATION
Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. Can the Minister tell the House whether he has recently been made a member of the important Cabinet Committee on Economic Development?


Pierre Bussières: am sorry, Madam Speaker, but I did not hear the first part of the Hon. Member's question.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Could the Minister tell the House whether or not he is presently a Member of the strategic Cabinet committee on economic development?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Madam Speaker, I think these questions should be put to the Government House Leader and not to individual Ministers.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER BE APPOINTED TO COMMITTEE
Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Prime Minister or the President of the Privy Council. In view of the importance of the Canadian Development Investment Corporation to the country, in view of the fact that it seems to report through a member of the other place, and in view of the fact that the Minister of National Revenue has expounded at length on the strategic importance this company will be to the economy, does the Prime Minister or the Government feel that the Minister who does all the reporting should be a member of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Development?
[ Translation]


Hon. Yvon Pinard (President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, a list of Members of the various Cabinet Committees is tabled regularly in the House, and perhaps my learned colleague would like to read it. He will see for himself whether there have been any changes. Obviously, we will be announcing these changes in due time, but since the last election, we have made a habit of regularly tabling a list indicating the membership of our various Cabinet Committees.


HOUSING
Marcel-Claude Roy: Madam Speaker, under Standing Order 21, I brought to the attention of the House the fact that

May 26, 1983
Oral Questions
the Canadian government apparently had dropped, on May 4, its $3,000 Grant Program promoting home ownership, and this had raised a number of questions. 1 see that the Minister responsible for the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation is in the House. 1 would now ask him the following question: Further to the representations made by thousands of Canadian renters who wanted to take advantage of the program and purchase a home under the federal program, and further to the many meetings which Members on this side had with the Minister to convey those representations submitted by thousands of Canadian residents, is the Minister willing to extend the program and accept the applications already filed with the various offices of the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation across Canada?
These are applications filed by people who wanted to buy homes but because of the bad weather conditions that have prevailed these last few months, building operations have been delayed. So 1 would ask the responsible Minister whether he wishes to state the government's intent as to the representations made by thousands of Canadians and discussed in caucus?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: Madam Speaker, 1 thank the Hon. Member for raising this very important question. I am indeed amazed that the Opposition critic, to whom I had indicated my readiness to answer within 48 hours, has failed to do so. 1 am very pleased to report to this House that further to consultations with Cabinet Ministers, and especially the Minister of Finance, the Government is ready to accept all valid applications that were filed with the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation offices up to May 5, the date after which applications were no longer accepted.
1 would also indicate that in the case of remote areas, rural areas where construction could not start, we will be accepting applications until June 15 to accommodate people in those parts of the country where construction operations are more difficult.
establish our trading links with Poland? Specifically, what steps will the Prime Minister take, with or without his Summit partners, to resume trade with Poland?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, on that specific question 1 would have to defer to the Secretary of State for External Affairs for an answer. I am not sure whether any specific steps are being contemplated beyond the ones we have already taken and are following.
On the general matter of debt ridden Third World countries, or weaker countries, it is a concern that certainly will be discussed at Williamsburg and which I personally intend to bring to the attention of my colleagues at the Summit if it is not otherwise raised. It is certain that it is not only the huge debtors which must be of concern to us but the dozens and dozens of much smaller debtors, each of whom could see their economy and systems imperilled if the question of their debt is not addressed.


EXTENSION OF CREDITS
Mr. Stan J. Hovdebo (Prince Albert):: Madam Speaker, I would like to go a little deeper into the subject. Poland has been our third largest grain purchaser, has a better debt record than either Mexico or Brazil, and we have extended credits to those countries. Will the Canadian Government extend credits to Poland for Canadian grain purchases, and allow us to sell some of the two million tonnes which we have on hand of frozen and damaged grain which the Poles will buy?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the House knows we have extended credits to Poland to buy wheat.


Mr. Benjamin:: Not lately.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: If the Hon. Member is asking for further steps in that direction, once again I would have to defer to the Secretary of State for External Affairs for the answer.



DISARMAMENT


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. Since the Western Allies will be meeting in Williamsburg this weekend to deal with foreign debt problems in many countries, is the Prime Minister prepared to deal with the case of Poland which is one of the smaller international debtors when compared to Brazil and Mexico? Our trade with Poland has degenerated because of adherence to the Reagan line. Will the Prime Minister take a Canadian position at Williamsburg so that we can re-


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I would like to follow up with the Prime Minister on the Williamsburg Summit and once again refer to the not so amusing musings of the Prime Minister with respect to the warlike nature of the President of the United States.
Since making those observations, has the Prime Minister had any personal discussions with President Reagan with respect thereto, and in pursuit of his honest broker role of trying to maintain an even handed approach with respect to Canada's approach to the Soviet Union and the United States,
May 26, 1983

does the Prime Minister intend at the Williamsburg Summit to raise the question of the detente agreements which were lapsed by the United States following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, in his question the Leader of the Opposition has managed once again to distort the reality of what I said. He has spoken at least four or five times in this House about my statements concerning the "warlike" attitude of the President of the United States. Either the Leader of the Opposition is extraordinarily gullible and he just reads headlines, because 1 do recognize that those words were used in a headline, or he is determined not to place my position in the sense in which it was stated. I would like to quote what I said in that interview with a representative of The Toronto Star and put it on the record. I was talking about members of the peace movement. Here is what I said:
They-
Members of the peace movement.
-arc demonstrating against what they-
Members of the peace movement.
-see as the policy of an American president who has rightly or wrongly been perceived as warlike-
The sentence is not me saying the President of the United States is warlike. That is saying he is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as warlike by members of the peace movement. Perhaps the Hon. Member would rephrase his question. Perhaps he would even want to recouch his entire frame of mind-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: -in order to try to ask questions which are based on the truth and not on some fabrication of the media.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, perhaps the Prime Minister will the next time he rises, answer my question which he failed to do in putting that explanation on the record which failed to refer to his further observation with respect to the justification of the holding of that perception of the warlike nature of the President of the United States.



CANADIAN POSITION ON DETENTE

Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, in addition to answering the question that I just put to the Prime Minister, which remains unanswered, can he explain to the House whether in view of the lapsed detente agreements, something which took place after the Afghanistan invasion, and in view of the threat to detente caused by the pro-Soviet takeovers in Angola, Ethiopa, Southern Yemen, and Afghanistan, and the deterioration resulting therefrom, he believes there is any point in Canada continuing to support a detente stance in view of those circumstances and in view of
Oral Questions
the United States lapsing of those agreements? Does the Prime Minister intends to raise those matters at Williamsburg?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Yes, Madam Speaker, very much so.



PRIME MINISTER'S CONVERSATIONS WITH UNITED STATES PRESIDENT

Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, there is one more important aspect to the question which the Prime Minister has failed to answer yet.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Cousineau:: Nonsense.


Erik Nielsen: Since making those statements has the Prime Minister had a conversation with President Reagan with respect thereto?


Marc Lalonde: Thereto what?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I have had very many conversations with President Reagan over the years, some personal visits, some phone calls and so on. 1 have had two conversations very recently with President Reagan, one in Washington in the White House about two and a half weeks ago, and another in a phone call about ten days ago. It was the Sunday preceding the last Sunday that the President phoned me from Camp David, just as I was leaving for my beloved Edmonton.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Crosby:: They love you too, Pierre.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: And again we continued exchanges we had begun in Washington on the subject of disarmament.


Erik Nielsen: With respect to those statements?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, I can say that the President may or may not have known those statements. If he did know them, I can assure the Hon. Member that he knew them correctly and not incorrectly as quoted by the Hon. Member and carried in the headline.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: Before or after you talked?



FISHERIES


Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. As he knows, Georgetown Seafoods Ltd. in Prince Edward Island and other fish processing plants throughout the Atlantic region

May 26, 1983
Oral Questions
are desperately awaiting government action on the Kirby report's call for a multimillion dollar restructuring strategy. Given that the Government has now had some several months to negotiate such a strategy with the companies involved, with the banks, with the fishermen and the employees of the various plants, is the Minister in a position to tell the Elouse, and through the House, all interested parties, what action it is prepared to take on this urgent problem?


Hon. Pierre De Bane (Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Madam Speaker, my hon. friend is referring to a problem of great magnitude that concerns over 60 plants in Atlantic Canada, starting with Quebec, Nova Scotia, and also Newfoundland. This comprises assets of over $500 million, thousands of employees and 60 plants and, as the Hon. Member knows, the question of industries in the different Provinces is essentially a provincial matter.
Because of the magnitude of it, the federal Government has decided to do its utmost to prevent any major failure of that industry. We are having intensive negotiations with all partners at the moment. For instance, two days ago we had the pleasure to meet here in Ottawa with Premier Peckford. The meeting was chaired by my colleague, the Minister of State for Economic Development and the Minister who represents the Province of Newfoundland. 1 hope our efforts of the last few months will show up in the very near future in the reopening of as many plants as possible. I cannot guarantee to the Hon. Member that every single plant will reopen. I am working toward a maximum solution-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.



COMMITMENT OF FEDERAL FUNDS

Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the same Minister. Last night the CBC reported that the federal Government has already made a decision to pump $100 million into the restructuring strategy to which I made reference in my first question. Will the Minister confirm that report? Will he at least indicate when an official announcement will be made? In connection with that restructuring will he assure the House that any such strategy for restructuring Atlantic fish plants will ensure that the Georgetown Seafoods plant in Prince Edward Island will be allowed to operate as a separate entity, perhaps in the context of an over-all strategy, rather than being the rear end of some larger plant which will smother it and make it impossible for that plant to operate as a viable and profitable entity?


Pierre De Bané: Madam Speaker, I understand the intention and inspiration of the Hon. Member, but surely he is not asking me to say what level of assistance the federal Government will provide, because that is at the core of the negotiations with the creditors. Surely the Hon. Member expects the Provinces to
play their share. The banks and the financial institutions will also have to put in money. We represent all taxpayers of the country. We are ready to do our share, but it would be most unwise for me to say at the outset what will be the ultimate position of the federal Government. As for this or that plant, that is not the way we are looking at it at this moment. We are trying to revamp the different companies which are technically bankrupt, and after that of course we will have to address each of the different plants.

[ Translation]



FISHERIES


Mr. Cyril Keeper (Winnipeg-St. James):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and concerns the fishermen on the Magdalen Islands. There is a conflict between the Federal Government and the Provincial Government. The Federal Government controls fishing licences and the Provincial Government has control over the fishing companies. Is the Minister prepared to settle its problems with the Provincial Government so that the fishermen can get on with their work?


Pierre De Bané: Madam Speaker, 1 wish to thank the Hon. Member for his question. It will not doubt interest him to know that representatives of Pecheurs Unis, and Madelipeche is one of the branches of this company, came to see the Canadian Government to ask for help. Today, I am happy to say that most of the Pecheurs Unis plants are open again, thanks only to a financial contribution made by the Canadian Government. In two weeks we have already paid more than $1 million. The first bills paid in order to reopen the plants were accounts with the Government of Quebec, but we are prepared to go that far. The only plant that did not open was the only Pecheurs Unis plant whose licences the Government of Quebec would like to have. If it is a matter of money or administration, we are prepared to help, but if licences are involved, I think this kind of action for obtaining access to resources is unacceptable.



URGENCY TO RESOLVE CONFLICTS STRESSED

Cyril Keeper: Madam Speaker, this is a matter of federal-provincial co-operation, and I would like to know whether the Minister realizes that a sit-in is being staged at the Federal offices in the Magdalen Islands and that a solution to these problems is urgently needed so that these fishermen can earn their living.


Pierre De Bané: Madam Speaker, I can inform the Hon. Member that before
May 26, 1983

the Government of Quebec seized the ships, they asked me whether the licences could be transferred. My answer was negative. Subsequently, they seized the ships, and today, unlike what the Hon. Member said, it is no longer a matter of federal-provincial relations but blackmail or worse. 1 understand perfectly well that the people on the Islands are only concerned about their plant. However, if I allow one creditor, even if he happens to be the government of one of the provinces, to proceed with seizure, there are sixty other plants where creditors could also act to protect themselves by seizing plants. If that happens, there will be a wave of bankruptcies throughout the Maritimes, and it is my responsibility to consider the welfare of all concerned.



HOUSING


Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Public Works, who is responsible for housing. May I first thank him for responding positively to the pressures applied by the applicants and by this side of the House. In regard to the Registered Home Ownership Savings Plan, since there is some confusion and it seems impossible to withdraw funds without any guidelines, will the Minister indicate when certain guidelines or legislation will be brought forward so that pecple can take advantage of the program announced in the budget?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, I apologize to my hon. friend if I cannot give him a full answer. As he well knows, this program is not administered under my responsibility. Although we have been working with the Department of Finance and the Department of National Revenue to ensure that as much information is distributed tc CMHC offices as possible, I am told that some institutions are releasing funds. I think it was really a question of clearing up some details, and this appears to have been done. However, I would defer for details to my colleagues who are more responsible than I am.


Mr. Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Are you saying that you are irresponsible?



APPLICATION OF PROGRAM TO RENTERS

Stanley James Korchinski: Madam Speaker, perhaps the Minister of Finance may be able to enlighten me on this particular situation. Since there seems to be some discrimination against apartment dwellers and people who rent homes, and since this plan is supposed to be a stimulation for the furniture industry, could the Minister look at providing these people with a similar opportunity as home owners enjoy?
Business of the House


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, the provision in the budget concerns the use of registered home ownership savings plans, and only Canadians who are eligible for such plans will be able to make use of this provision.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development I will direct my question to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. It relates to the $345 million "phantom" Native Economic Development Fund. I see the Minister returning to his seat. Would he be in a position today to tell the house whether Cabinet has given approval to the spending of this money and whether this approval is in accordance with the memorandum to Cabinet of April 29, 1983?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Madam Speaker, that is being discussed by Cabinet at the present time. We hope to make an announcement shortly.



AUDITOR GENERAL


Madam Speaker:: I have the honour to lay upon the table the Report of the Auditor General of Canada on the follow-up of the 1980 Comprehensive Audit of the House of Commons.



BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, today being Thursday, I would like to ask the Government House Leader what is the business of the House for tomorrow and for as much of next week as possible.


Yvon Pinard: Madam Speaker, tomorrow, Friday, we will deal with four items. First, 45 minutes will be allowed to start debate and consideration of the objections which are Nos. 5 and 6 on the Order Paper relating to the Electoral Boundaries Commission for the Province of Alberta. I have had consultation and if within 45 minutes, which seems to be a reasonable
25746

May 26, 1983
Point of Order-Mr. Hnatyshyn
period of time, we have terminated consideration, fine. If not, it will be adjourned for further consideration at a later date.
After 45 minutes we will consider all stages of the Bill to amend the Salaries Act, to be introduced later today concerning the Lieutenant Governors. We have an agreement for one speaker per Party.
Third, two resolutions to approve the appointment of Inger Hansen, Q.C. as Information Commissioner and John W. Grace as Privacy Commissioner will be dealt with. We have an agreement to deal with the two resolutions with two speakers per Party.
Fourth, we will deal with Bill C-152, an Act respecting the organization of the Government. That is the business for tomorrow.
[ Translation]
Monday will be an Opposition day. Tuesday, unless we finish today, we shall resume debate on Bill C-151, which authorizes the Government to borrow certain sums of money. We are now at the second reading stage, and this Bill must be passed as soon as possible. Wednesday will be a day set aside for Private Members' Business. As for next Thursday, agreement has been reached between the parties to pass all stages of Bill C-156, an Act to amend the Unemployment Insurance Act, 1971 (No. 3), with the amendments relating to this Act, by 6 p.m. at the latest.
Madam Speaker, that was the order of business for next week.



POINT OF ORDER


Madam Speaker:: I would like to rule on the matter which was raised concerning the inclusion of the time concentrated on points or order in calculating the time of speeches and the total amount of time that is given for discussing a certain matter. After having examined the arguments put forward very carefully, I would like to make the following points touching on the substantial elements put before by me last Thursday.
First, I must say that it is highly unusual for me to consider arguments on a ruling given by the Deputy Speaker or an Acting Speaker. We all know that a Speaker's ruling under our Standing Orders and our practice cannot be appealed. In this case I heard the Hon. Member because he made it clear that he had been invited by the Acting Speaker on May 16 to make those arguments to the Speaker, but I am now making the point that an Acting Speaker's decision has the same finality as if it had been rendered by the Speaker.
Second, the Acting Speaker gave a ruling as to the substance of the problem. That ruling is entirely correct and reflects our rules and our practices in that whenever a specific
length of time is attributed to any proceeding in this House, the time taken up by points of order within that period is not subtracted from the total time allowed. That is the general rule. However, as the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans) stated, the Chair at its discretion can extend the time allowed for a Member's speech if, in his opinion, he has been unfairly interrupted by points of order. Whether such an extension ought to apply equally to the total time for debate is similarly to be determined in any specific case at the discretion of the Chair.
The general practice of counting the time used by points of order against the allotted time for a specific proceeding is not new to this House. It certainly was the practice under the Standing Orders prior to September, 1982, and I see no reason to change that practice under the Provisional Standing Orders.


Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: Madam Speaker, may I get clarification of your ruling with regard to points of order. I believe you indicated that a ruling by the Acting Speaker is the same as that of the Speaker and is not subject to appeal. May I ask when is the Deputy Speaker the Acting Speaker and when are the two Assistant Chairmen Acting Speakers? Because the ruling that was originally made, I submit to you, was made by the Deputy Speaker. Our rules provide very clearly for an appeal from a ruling of the Deputy Speaker. There is a procedure for it. Therefore, I say that there is a difference between the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker. When is a Deputy Speaker and a Chairman not acting in his or her capacity? There is only one Speaker in this House.


Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Member knows that whenever a Speaker or Acting Speaker or Deputy Speaker is in the Chair, what I said about their decisions applies. I think the Hon. Member is confusing the time at which a Speaker is sitting as Chairman of the Committee of the Whole. At that time there is a procedure, I believe, to appeal the decisions of the Chairman.


Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Madam Speaker, I listened intently to your ruling but I have to confess I was not altogether clear as to the exact nature of your ruling. Maybe you can clarify it for me from this point of view. In terms of the debate on Bill C-155, which is the proposed amendments to the Crowsnest Pass rates, is it your ruling that the time, which consisted of about one hour, taken up by points of order with respect to the interpretation of the rules is to be subtracted from the eight hours which is allocated to the 20-minute speeches, or is it your ruling that that time is included in the eight-hour calculation?


Madam Speaker:: Hon. Members are in the habit of asking for clarification of rulings. They should know they can read them in Hansard. If they require clarification, they can speak to the Table officers. The Hon. Member perhaps had a moment of distraction. I said that there is an amount of discretion allowed on the part of the Speaker.
May 26, 1983



LABOUR CONDITIONS


Donald Frank Mazankowski: Madam Speaker, I have a brief point of order. It arises out of a response to a question yesterday to the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) at page 25693 in his capacity as Acting Minister of Labour. I believe that he, inadvertently perhaps, misled the House when in reference to the question of the grain handlers dispute on the West Coast he indicated in his answer that a strike vote had been taken. This morning I was informed by the President of the grain handlers that a strike vote has not been taken and that-


Madam Speaker:: That is not a point of order, it is debate. Furthermore, the Hon. Member may not correct a statement made by another Member. If that Member wants to correct his statement that is up to him.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Jack Burghardt (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to the provisions of Standing Order 46(2), I wish to table in the House two documents, one under the English title "Information Technology: A Call for National Dialogue on the Emerging Information Society", and one bearing the French title "A L'Heure de la Societe Informatisee: Invitation au Dialogue".


RACIAL DISCRIMINATION-ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS TABLING OF REPORTS
Hon. Serge Joyal (Secretary of State):: Madam Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 46(2), I have the honour of tabling, in both official languages, the Sixth Report of Canada on the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination; and the First Report of Canada on Articles 10 to 12 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Petitions


PETITIONS
Mr. Robert Wenman (Fraser Valley West):: Madam Speaker, I have the duty to present a petition today on behalf of Mothers Against Drunk Drivers. Madam Speaker, the petition that I have to support is in fact on behalf of 7,000 Canadians who share in the tragedy of these mothers who have lost their sons and daughters to drunken driving. The name of this organization is becoming known across the country as MADD, and support for this particular petition comes not only from the 7,000 names that are affixed to it but from the Canadian Medical Association, the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, the Attorneys General of many Provinces; and as well the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) has indeed indicated some sympathy and concern toward this type of correction.
This petition purports to have a threefold purpose: the first is that upon a third offence and subsequent conviction there would be a mandatory six-month incarceration and ten-year licence suspension. Second-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member may not read all that out. We have heard the title of the petition and the object of it so I believe that is sufficient for the time being.


Robert Lloyd Wenman: Madam Speaker, the petitioners hope that you will receive, find in good order and refer this matter to the appropriate committee. The petitioners hope that you, Madam Speaker, might, with your own strong sense of fairness and justice, give full force to the capacity of your office and make the appropriate reference which, under precedent, does appear to be within your authority. This petition is the type of petition by which both justice and democracy can be forwarded at the same time, and through the limited capactity of your office I urge you to give support to this petition by recognition of-


Madam Speaker:: I will show the Hon. Member how strong I am by interrupting him now.


Mr. Bob Ogle (Saskatoon East):: Madam Speaker, I present a petition from 160 citizens of my constituency of Saskatoon East where the Regional Psychiatric Centre comes under the jurisdiction of the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan). A recent recommendation to cut back on staff has given me this petition.
To the Honourable the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned citizens of the City of Saskatoon in the Province of Saskatchewan do now avail themselves of their ancient and undoubted right thus to present a grievance common to your petitioners in the certain assurance that your Honourable House will therefore

May 26, 1983
Petitions
provide a remedy, humbly sheweth that staff cutbacks have occurred at the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon. Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners humbly pray and call upon Parliament to provide sufficient staff at the said Regional Psychiatric Centre to assure the safety of the staff and the general public, and as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.


Stanley J. Hovdebo: Madam Speaker, it is my honour and duty to present a petition on behalf of 158 residents of Canada.
To the Honourable the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of the Provinces of Saskatchewan and Ontario who now exercise their right to present a grievance humbly sheweth that the removal of the Crow rate will see its replacement by rates that will impose higher freight costs of five times the present Crow rate; that the increases will be imposed at a time when prices for producers' grain are now at the 1974 level; that detailed calculations show that a rate of 5.1 times the Crow rate will cost the community of Hudson Bay $789,700 in each year in the payment of grain freight that would have otherwise stayed in the community based on the actual deliveries in 1980-81. Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the Crow rate in perpetuity as presently guaranteed by statutes, and as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.


Leslie Gordon Benjamin: Madam Speaker, 1 have the honour and the duty to present a petition from 37 residents of Canada, 34 of whom are members of the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool and who come from Melville, Invermay, Preece-ville and Spy Hill, in which they humbly sheweth that western Canadian farmers paid $131 million to move export grain under the Crow freight rate in the 1981-82 crop year. This grain in turn contributed $6.3 billion to the balance of trade; the undersigned believe this is the farmers' fair contribution to the Canadian economy and that western farmers will pay one times the Crow. Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the present statutory grain rate, and as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Madam Speaker, I wish to present a petition.
The petition of the undersigned residents of Canada who now exercise their ancient and unchallenged rights to present a grievance, with the assurance that your Honourable House will provide a remedy.
Humbly sheweth that:
Whereas western Canadian farmers paid $131 million to move export grain under the Crow freight rate in the 1981-82 crop year.
That this contributed $6.3 billion to the balance of trade of Canada
Whereas the undersigned believe that this is the farmers' fair contribution to the Canadian economy.
And whereas western farmers will pay one time Crow.
Wherefore the undersigned humbly call upon Parliament to maintain the present statutory grain Crow rate.
And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray. [English]


Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: I thank you, Madam Speaker, for this opportunity to present the following petition to you and to the House. It is a petition, Madam Speaker, of some 35 Canadian citizens, mainly from centres such as Cut Knife, North Battleford, Adams, Grand Forks, et cetera, in the Province of Saskatchewan.
The petitioners wish to petition you, Madam Speaker, and the House, and humbly sheweth that western Canadian farmers paid some $131 million to move export grain under the Crow freight rate in the 1981-82 crop year and that this grain in turn made a contribution of some $6.3 billion to the balance of trade for Canada. The undersigned petitioners are mainly farmers and believe that this is a fair contribution to the Canadian economy. They are willing to continue to pay this amount to move export grain. They do feel, however, that the proposed legislation will put a burden on them which will force many of them out of business. They therefore wish to present this petition, Madam Speaker, and I as well as the petitioners thank you for being afforded the opportunity of presenting this petition.


Mr. Jim Fulton (Skeena):: Madam Speaker, I too have the honour to present a petition in relation to the Crow rate, a petition primarily from the residents of Dawson Creek, Pouce Coupe, Grand Prairie and other small communities in that
area.
To the Honourable the House of Commons of Canada in Parliament assembled, the petition of the undersigned residents of the Provinces of British Columbia and Alberta who now exercise their right to present a grievance humbly sheweth that the removal of the Crow rate will see its replacement by rates that will impose higher freight rate costs of five times the present Crow rate and higher by 1990; that such increases are being imposed at a time when prices for producers' grain are now at 1974 levels; and that detailed calculations show that a rate of five to one times the Crow rate will cost the community of Dawson Creek $4,658,800 in payments for grain freight rates that would otherwise have stayed in that community based on actual deliveries in the 1980-81 crop year. Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the Crow rate in perpetuity as presently guaranteed by statutes, and as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.


Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, I wish to present a petition on behalf of residents of Landis, Wilkie, Unity and Luseland in Saskatchewan.
May 26, 1983

The petition humbly sheweth that:
Whereas western Canadian farmers paid $131 million to move export grain under the Crow freight rate in the 1981-82 crop year.
That this contributed $6.3 to the balance of trade of Canada.
Whereas the undersigned believe that this is a fair contribution to the Canadian economy.
And whereas western farmers will pay one times Crow.
Wherefore the undersigned humbly call upon Parliament to maintain the present grain Crow rate.
And as in duty bound your petitioners will ever pray.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Madam Speaker,
1 have the honour of presenting a petition from the residents of Asquith, Saskatchewan, named, of course, after the late Liberal Prime Minister who did not believe in pushing things down people's throats.
The petitioners say that western Canadian farmers paid $131 million to move export grain under the Crow freight rate in the 1981-82 crop year; that the grain in turn contributed $6.3 billion to the balance of trade; that the undersigned believe that this is the farmers' fair contribution to the Canadian economy; and that the western farmers will pay one times the Crow rate, that is, no change. Wherefore these petitioners, all 36 of them, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the present statutory grain rate, that is, the Crow rate, and they are duty bound in petitioning this House.


Mr. Laverne Lewycky (Dauphin-Swan River):: Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to present a petition mostly on behalf of constituents in the Swan River area of my riding who now exercise their right to present a grievance and humbly sheweth that the removal of the Crow rate will see its replacement by rates that will impose higher freight costs of five times the present Crow rate and higher by 1990; that such increases are being imposed at a time when prices for producers' grain are now at the 1974 level; and that detailed calculations show that a rate of 5.1 times the Crow rate will cost the community of Swan River some $1,187,000 in payments for grain freight that would have otherwise stayed in that community based on the deliveries that were actually made in the 1980-81 crop year. Wherefore the undersigned, your petioners, humbly pray and call upon Parliament to maintain the Crow rate in perpetuity as presently guaranteed by statute.
Government Notices of Motions SALARIES ACT


Hon. Jim Fleming (for the Prime Minister) moved: for leave to introduce Bill C-160, an Act to amend the Salaries Act.


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


[Stage Direction]
On the order: Government Notices of Motions:
May 24, 1983-The Minister of State (Multiculturalism):
That a Special Committee consisting of seven Members to be named later to act as a Parliamentary Task Force on Participation of Visible Minorities in Canadian Society, be appointed to examine the subject-matter described by its title, and in particular:
(1)	to seek positive and constructive ideas and models pertaining explicitly to ameliorating relations within Canada between visible minority and other Canadians;
(2)	to identify and investigate positive examples and models of the promotion of harmonious relations between visible minority Canadians and other Canadians, particularly in institutional areas, and find ways and means of improving those relations;
(3)	to seek the views that contribute constructively and positively to the promotion of racial tolerance, understanding and harmony of concerned voluntary, community and minority groups and organizations and individuals, as well as business, professional and trade associations, labour unions, public and private institutions and relevant specialists;
(4)	within a general review to consider Federal Government policies and programs in the area of race relations;
(5)	to recommend the development of positive programs that the Committee finds necessary to promote racial understanding, tolerance and harmony in Canadian society; and
(6)	to encourage the continuation of the dialogue that will be initiated, in a climate that is open and constructive.
That the committee report no later than six months after its membership is named;
That the committee have all of the powers provided to standing committees pursuant to Standing Order 69(8);
That the committee have the power to retain expert, professional, technical and clerical staff;
That the committee be empowered to adjourn from place to place within Canada; and
That the provisions of sections (4) and (9) of Standing Order 69 of the House of Commons should be suspended, unless otherwise agreed to by this committee.
Madam Speaker:: Pursuant to Section (2) of Standing Order 25, this notice of motion is transferred to and ordered for consideration under Government Orders later this day or at the next sitting of the House.

May 26, 1983
Order Paper Questions INFORMATION



APPOINTMENT OF COMMISSIONER

[Stage Direction]
On the order: Government Notices of Motions:
May 24, 1983-The Minister of Justice:
That, in accordance with Section 54 of Schedule I of an Act to enact the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, to amend the Federal Court Act and the Canada Evidence Act, and to amend certain other Acts in consequence thereof. Chapter 111 of the Statutes of Canada for the present session of Parliament, this House approves the appointment of Inger Hansen, Q.C., as Information Commissioner.
Madam Speaker:: Pursuant to Section (2) of Standing Order 25, this notice of motion by the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) is transferred to and ordered for consideration under Government Orders later this day or at the next sitting of the House.



PRIVACY


[Stage Direction]
On the order: Government Notices of Motions:
May 24, 1983-The Minister of Justice:
That, in accordance with Section 53 of Schedule II of an Act to enact the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act, to amend the Federal Court Act and the Canada Evidence Act, and to amend certain other Acts in consequence thereof. Chapter 111 of the Statutes of Canada for the present session of Parliament, this House approves the appointment of John W. Grace, Esquire, as Privacy Commissioner.
Madam Speaker:: Pursuant to Section 2 of Standing Order 25, this notice of motion of the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) is transferred to and ordered for consideration under Government Orders later this day or at the next sitting of the House.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, 1 have a point of order. I was not exactly sure which notices of motions you were transferring. That was my difficulty.


Madam Speaker:: May 1 remind the Hon. Member that one was by the Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Fleming) and two were by the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan).



DREDGING AT WOOD S HARBOUR. NOVA SCOTIA

Mr. Crouse: 1.	What is the amount approved for dredging at Wood's Harbour, Shelburne County, Nova Scotia in 1982?
2.	What is the anticipated date when dredging operations will be carried out?
3.	What is the extent of the area to be dredged?


Pierre De Bané: 1.
While no dredging was approved for Wood's Harbour (Fall's Point) for 1982, dredging will be done in the next fiscal year.
2.	Dredging will begin in 1983/84.
3.	There will be 60,000 cubic metres of class "C" material plus some additional class "A" rock of undetermined quantity which will have to be dredged. The dredging will be carried out to a depth of 4.3 metres below low water ordinary spring tide.



LABOUR FORCE SURVEY-NEW BRUNSWICK

['Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,518 and 4,798.']
Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: The requested statistics are kept by Labour Force Survey reference week. The most current information is:
(a) April, 1981	(i)	53,787 (ii	i) 4,464(b) April, 1982	(i)	64,607 (ii	i) 5,337(c) January, 1983	(i)	69,061 (ii	i) 5,806
Statistics as of April 1, 1983 are not yet available.


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


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,518 and 4,798.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-151, an Act to provide supplementary
May 26, 1983
[Stage Direction]
borrowing authority, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs.
Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, Bill C-151 now before the House seeks to provide the Government with authority to borrow $14.7 billion. That money is needed because, as has been the case from the time the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) took office 15 years ago, the Government's uncontrolled expenditures have greatly exceeded its revenues. Indeed, this is the seventh time in the current session that the Government has had to come to Parliament, cap in hand, for additional borrowing authority.
The implications for the Canadian economy of such massive borrowing by the federal Government are as harmful as they are far reaching. The main problem for the Atlantic Provinces is that in the years ahead exorbitantly high interest payments on the national debt will leave little budgetary room for stimulative measures designed to resuscitate the crippled economy of the region.
In particular, I ask how the Government will find the $500 million that the Kirby Report says is needed for a complete restructuring of the Atlantic fishery. Clearly the state of the fishery on the East Coast is the single most urgent problem faced by the four Atlantic Provinces since World War II. Unless it is resolved, we in the Atlantic Provinces, all four Provinces alike, will continue to be forced to be wards of the federal Government, reduced to living from hand to mouth on the strength of transfer payments to provincial Governments and individuals.
Throughout the Atlantic region, the fishery has a potential work force of something like 100,000 people, about half engaged in the fish processing plants and the other half engaged in the actual catch. Much of the potential, however, is not being realized because the industry is literally on its knees. The fishing season is upon us and a black cloud hangs over those trying to eke out a meagre living from what was once a thriving concern.
The immediate challenge, of course, is to rationalize the small handful of major fish plants that employ the bulk of the
50,000	workers in the fish processing part of the industry. For example, H. B. Nickerson and Sons Ltd., which is of vital importance to Prince Edward Island because of its Georgetown Seafoods plant, at one point had a work force of some 10,000 people. In fact, in Georgetown alone, in that one plant, some 300 full-time jobs were eliminated when the doors were closed in the Fall of 1982. When part-time workers are taken into account, as many as 570 jobs were at stake.
I have been pleading with the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) and the Government as a whole to help revive Georgetown Seafoods. But those pleas have fallen largely on deaf ears.
Now I would be the first to admit, Sir, that the plant's problems cannot be resolved, cannot be dealt with or addressed, and should not be, in isolation from any over-all
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strategy for the Atlantic fishery. By the same token, however, the plant's difficulties should not be totally ignored while a broader solution is being pursued. In fact, the major obstacle to the reopening of Georgetown Seafoods is the lack of high quality fish supplies required for processing and for making the plant profitable. Only a more generous fish quota from the federal Government-and the federal Government is the one with authority in this respect-is keeping Georgetown Seafoods from once more playing an important role in the Island's economy. But in response to overtures from myself and my colleague, the Hon. Member for Malpeque (Mr. Gass), and from the P.E.I. Government for such increased access to fish supplies in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) has stubbornly refused even to consider the proposal, arguing that it would dislocate supplies in other parts of the Atlantic region, especially in the Province of Nova Scotia. The Minister's concern is grossly misplaced, Mr. Speaker. The fact is that any assured fish quota for the Georgetown Seafoods plant, even if it involved a transfer of licences from Nickerson's to another operator, would not necessarily jeopardize fish supplies elsewhere in the region.
The Atlantic fishery, Sir, is on its knees. Fish processing plants are closing all over the region. Consequently, there is an oversupply of fish for procesing purposes. The Government has had the Kirby Report in its hands for many months, well beyond the point when it could justify procrastination and delay. The report was publicly released on February 17. The Deputy Prime Minister told me in the House, in Oral Question Period, on April 29, that the Government concurred with virtually all of Mr. Kirby's recommendations, including presumably those relating to the restructuring of the fish processing plants. If that is the case, why is action being delayed? Surely there has been ample time to consult with all concerned, among them the companies themselves, the banks, the respective provincial Governments and the workers.
If the fishery were instead located in Ontario and Quebec, central Canada in general, action would long since have been taken. The Government has hinted broadly that it may not be able to afford a master plan for the fishery in the current fiscal year, but it was able to come up with $200 million out of thin air within 24 hours to save what little was left of the reputation of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) in order to patch up the celebrated budgetary leak a few weeks ago. Why could that money not have been spent instead on the Atlantic fishery? The budget provides some money, I grant you that, to the fishery under general categories like Special Recovery Capital Projects. But as Mr. Kirby has rightly pointed out, what is needed is not a few dollars here and a few dollars there for a wharf or a vessel here or there or wherever; a total strategy designed to rebuild the fishery from the ground up is what is required. I urge the Government to recognize the fact and get on with the job.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I should like to point out that the task will be costly. On the other hand, the cost of not

May 26, 1983
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acting now in terms of lost output, lost wages and lost taxes on earned income would be even greater. If the federal Government still refuses to act, it should step aside and let someone else do the job. That is a message, Sir, which I think the Atlantic Provinces will doubtless send to Ottawa in the next federal election.


Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I enter this debate this afternoon, albeit for only ten minutes, on Bill C-151, an act respecting borrowing authority. In this Bill the Government is asking for a total of $14.7 billion. It used to be that we would talk around here in terms of "well, what's a million?" Today the buzz words are "what's a billion?" We all know that the cost of running a government and the country has increased substantially, but we on this side of the House constantly wonder whether or not those funds are being wisely spent.
This afternoon I would like to address very briefly one aspect of Government expenditure, that of national defence, and more specifically, the defence of our most northern reaches, the high Arctic. The reason I have chosen to zero in on this specific aspect of Government spending and the woefully inadequate aspect of Government expenditures for our defence in the far North is that I recently returned from a
13,000	kilometre trip in the High Arctic along with other Members of this House and European deputies and Members of Parliament who are members also of the North Atlantic Assembly. I was absolutely shocked to learn of the woefully inadequate defences that our country actually has in the far North when one considers the Soviet Union encompasses the whole eastern and far northern part of the High Arctic. I am not going to give a brief sabre rattling speech, but I just want to give you a few facts and statistics. Believe me, our European friends were more shocked than we were when we discovered some of the following figures and facts.
To begin with, the Government is at present engaged in negotiating the purchase of several hundred F-18A jet fighters.
I do not know why this country is involved in the purchase of jet fighters. We no longer have a raison d'etre, as it were, to be in that phase of defence or offence should a war occur, except in a very limited capacity in Europe within the NATO umbrella. But in North America we are dealing with ICBMs, and the Russians would have to have rocks in their heads to send manned bombers over the Arctic ice cap to bomb North America. 1 notice some of my Liberal friends are getting a little excited over there. They are still thinking in terms of the 1950s. Those jet fighters are going to cost us at least $5.5 billion. They will be totally useless for Arctic patrol. They cannot go any distance at all, whether it is in the High Arctic or in Europe. In the High Arctic there is no place for them to land. There are only three airfields in the entire far North, and I am speaking of well above the 60th parallel. Now, Mr. Speaker, this is $5.5 billion for a useless jet plane which cannot be used to defend our own country. I am not talking about NATO or the European theatre.
What have the Soviets got? They have six divisions, 400 warships and 600 aeroplanes, mainly for reconnaissance and surveillance. Against that, Mr. Speaker, we have a junior
ranking general at the brigadier level. We have the grand total of 75 people attached to National Defence in the High Arctic, of whom 42 are civilians. The rest are professional soldiers. In addition to that, we have several hundred Inuit and Indian scouts on a part-time basis. They perform a very valuable service in search and rescue, but really, as a fighting unit, with all due respect, they cannot be considered professional soldiers. Our Air Force in the far North consists of two planes, both of them Twin Otters, one of them seconded from the RCMP. Again, facing us across the polar ice cap: six Soviet divisions, 400 warships and 600 fighter airplanes.
The other aspect of our woefully undefended High Arctic is, of course, our relations with the United States. No one is anticipating an invasion from United States, granted. However, from an economic point of view and from the point of view of maintaining our sovereignty, it was not until 1969 that we even attempted to prove to the United States that we in fact controlled our High Arctic up to and including the North Pole and the polar ice cap. It is so bad, we learned from our military advisers in Yellowknife, that the Americans send their nuclear powered submarines through our territorial waters, under the polar ice cap, and when they return to the U.S. bases, only then do we give them permission for the journey that they have already made. This means that the Americans do not respect the longitudinal line that geographically divides the Yukon from Alaska as it is extended to the polar ice cap.
The reason the Americans refuse to accept this line and de facto, in effect, refuse to accept our sovereignty over the high North or the High Arctic is that the Prudhoe oil well basin comes down in a southeasterly direction and it does not extend in a northwesterly direction. The Americans know that much of that oil may very well fall under Canadian jurisdiction. So, for the time being, militarily, as a first step, the Americans are refusing to recognize the extension of the Yukon-Alaska border to the North Pole. Economically, that will of course be extremely important to Canada if and when we strike oil in the Beaufort Sea.
The Government is requesting $14.7 billion more, to borrow most of its money on the open market, I presume, and is proposing to spend at least $5.5 billion on the F-18A jet-fighter, which is of virtually no tactical use in North America in view of the fact that the Americans already have a massive interceptory jet-fighter presence in the United States, and in view of the fact that if the Soviets should attack Canada and the continental United States, it will not be from manned bombers of 1955 vintage but, rather, with ICBMs.
I really question the wisdom of borrowing $5.5 billion. Indeed, by the time we receive delivery of these planes, the capabilities and, in fact, safety of which are extremely questionable at the present time, the figure might well reach $7 billion or $8 billion, which would be half the $14.7 billion which Bill C-151 is asking the House to give the Government authority to borrow. In the next three or four years, half of that amount could conceivably go toward a jet-fighter which
May 26, 1983

we do not need, which is, tactically speaking, unnecessary in this part of the world. We all know very well that the Government should be spending money on reconnaissance and surveillance, hardware in the form of reconnaissance and surveillance planes and sea-based craft, such as submarines. That is our role within NORAD and within the purview of our own defence. It is not to spend $5 billion to $8 billion on jet-fighters when, at the present time, we have 75 military personnel in the North, two Twin-Otter planes, one of which is seconded to us from the RCMP, and a few Inuit and Indians attempting to scout for us, mainly in the area of search and rescue.
Therefore, on the one hand, in conventional surveillance and reconnaissance, we are woefully inadequate in the North, and on the other hand, the Government is proposing to waste $5 billion to $8 billion on tactical jet-fighters which we do not need and which cannot be deployed in the High Arctic.
1 notice, Mr. Speaker, that my allotted time has expired, and I appreciate the opportunity to make this intervention.


Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am deeply distressed, as I am sure many Canadians are also, that the Government has once again come forth to borrow more money, this time under the authority of Bill C-151, with very little thought given to the fact that the money must be squeezed out of the already hard-pressed Canadian taxpayers. To date, the Government has come to Parliament an unprecedented seven times in this session to ask Parliament for more and more money. In fiscal year 1982-83 alone, the Government came to Parliament four times to seek more and more money. At present, the Government already has borrowing authority for this fiscal year, 1983-84, for $16 billion.
Bill C-143 provided for $14 billion to be granted for fiscal year 1983-84, and for an extra $2 billion, which was slated for last year, to be carried over into this year. All in all, some $16 billion was already earmarked for the present fiscal year. Now, based on the Government's financial requirements of $26.7 billion, and existing borrowing authority of $16 billion which I just mentioned, the Government requires some $10.7 billion in additional borrowing authority for this year. However, the Bill which we are asked to pass is requesting $14.7 billion in new money, $4 billion more than is indicated by the national requirements of the $26.7 billion. Of this amount, it has been estimated that $2 billion does not have to be used this year, and may be carried forward into the future. What this really boils down to is that the Government not only has a cushion of $2 billion for this year, but it has also arranged for itself a further cushion of $2 billion to be used in any year.
I would also like to point out that there is really no urgency to the passage of this Bill, because the Government already has $16 billion in borrowing authority, as I have already indicated, which is more than enough to last for several months.
Spending taxpayer's dollars without due attention to priority by the Government, or by any person, is an act of irresponsibility and a violation of trust which should never be condoned.
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Further, the Government does not even follow its own guidelines of six and five, because spending for this year alone will be up some 12 per cent. What is even more calamitous is that spending by the Government has risen from 21 per cent of the Gross National Product four years ago to 26 per cent. When one adds all of this up, including the spending of all the provincial and municipal Governments across Canada, this figure is dangerously close to 50 per cent of the Gross National Product. When one takes into comparative consideration the figures for the United States of approximately 35 per cent to 36 per cent of their Gross National Product, one can readily see that the total public spending in Canada is completely out of hand, to the detriment of the private enterprise system which is being financially drained of its capacity to produce jobs and to increase production.
To emphasize this point further, in 1982, borrowing by the federal Government accounted for 51 per cent of all new security issues placed in Canada. Borrowing of that magnitude has a marked effect on the supply and demand for money and on the interest rates, again to the detriment of private enterprise. To make matters worse, the budget points to little by way of deficit reduction over the next four years. If this keeps up, there is no question but that the deficit will be in excess of $25 billion for each of the next four years.
The gross debt of the Government has risen from $134 billion as of March 31, 1982, to between $160 billion to $165 billion by March 31 of this year. However, this does not include the debts of the 306 Crown corporations and the money that is owed by Governments to the various pension funds. All in all, when everything is taken into consideration, the true debt of the Government is a staggering $262 billion to $265 billion, which works out to just about $11,000 for every man, woman and child in Canada.
I would ask, Mr. Speaker, what has happened to common sense? The taxpayers' pockets are not bottomless pits. There must be an end to this terrible injustice done to the people of Canada. What has happened to a responsible Government and to responsible spending by Governments in Canada? 1 believe that all Governments must come down from cloud nine and face the realities of this nation.
1 would also suggest that Ottawa in itself is a very poor example of what makes up Canada. I would suggest that the decision makers in this capital come down from their ivory towers, get out of Ottawa, and face the real Canada of two million unemployed, the real Canada of continuing high interest rates, the real Canada of people living on relief through no fault of their own and living on a subsistence allowance which is often less than what some bureaucrats charge to their expense accounts for an evening out on the town entertaining at Government expense.
That is the real Canada about which many people living in Ottawa know nothing and about which some care even less. Yet the Government ignores these realities and extracts more

May 26. 1983
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and more money from the taxpayers for more and more questionable spending.
I have no quarrel with productive and necessary spending on such things as old age pensions, medicare, hospitalization and other similar worth-while projects. I fully support those, but I draw the line at some questionable spending that has been going on. I have listed just a few examples that highlight the magnitude of these expenditures and provide instances of questionable spending on the part of the Government. 1 have drawn these examples from several sources including the annual reports from the Auditor General, Order Paper questions, newspaper articles and the Estimates.
We all know that bureaucrats have a reputation for being paper pushers. In 1981, the Department of Supply and Services purchased 12,600 metric tonnes of office paper at a cost of $17 million. That works out to roughly 90 pounds of office paper per public servant. Between March 1, 1980, and May 31, 1981, the Government gave out $3.5 million in taxi fares. The largest single bill from any Government Department was perhaps appropriately from Transport Canada, amounting to $422,000. At current Ottawa taxi rates of approximately $1.20 per mile, this is enough to go around the world about 100 times.
In fiscal year 1981-82, eleven Government Departments spent a total of $10.4 million on hospitality which includes food, booze and entertainment. That is the equivalent of
700,000	bottles of liquor. It is also only the tip of the iceberg since it only includes contracted hospitality where the total bill of a Department was greater than $25,000.
Between April 1, 1980 and June 30, 1981, the federal Government spent $674,972 to supply public servants with briefcases. Surely Government employees are paid enough to buy their own briefcases.
With the full blessing and knowledge of the CMHC President, CMHC paid $15,000 to defray the travel costs of employees participating in a staff hockey tournament in Toronto.
In February of 1981, the CNR spent $64,244 to purchase advertising space for wishing the CPR, its chief competitor, a happy birthday.
In 1978-79, the cost to CIDA of late and damaged food shipments was $1.5 million. To date, spending by the federal Government on the metric conversion program exceeds $65 million. Last year alone the Metric Commission spent $12.4 million.
During the 1981 postal strike the Metric Commission spent $12 to send a 14-page metric cookbook by air courier to a Winnipeg woman. In 1981, two TV chefs-Bruno Gerussi and Madame Benoit-were given a six-week TV contract worth $110,000 to promote metric cooking. This list goes on and on.
On the day that the Post Office became a Crown corporation, the Government helped employees celebrate by providing $300,000 of taxpayers' money for free coffee, doughnuts and souvenir envelopes.
In July, 1981, the Post Office spent $200,000 to run advertisements in 39 newspapers and publications to tell Canadians that postal service will improve in the future. One would think that improved service would speak for itself.
Janet Smith, an assistant secretary to the Cabinet, was sent to Nice in southern France for four months to learn French. The cost to the taxpayer of this Riviera education was $12,000 plus Ms. Smith's salary which is in the range of $60,000 to $70,000 per year. I can go on and on.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order.


Hon. Elmer M. MacKay (Central Nova):: system which the Minister has now concluded cost $24 million.
1 still maintain that it cost a lot more than that.
1 have a list of these consultants. I would like to read them into the record but that would take too long. Let the record simply show that all 25 are in this list. Again, I believe that there were probably more than 25 consultants used when one learns the whole story.
We are also disturbed by the way money is wasted, even under the guise of worth-while projects. I can talk about our own region of Atlantic Canada, Mr. Speaker. The replacement of the old ferry Abegwait, which has been probably taken in the past from Borden, P.E.I. to Tormentine, N.B. cost $100 million. It is beyond any shadow of a doubt that CN Marine needlessly spent about $100 million. The old vessel was quite good and seaworthy and, in many ways, a better vessel than the new one of the same name. If $2 million or $3 million were spent on that vessel it would have provided good service for another ten years. Just think of what we could have done with that kind of saved money in Atlantic Canada.
Of course I could go on for hours relating such horror stories. In passing let me mention another story to which allusion has been made today. It is the $125 million spent on a project of which the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) is very familiar since he was very instrumental in it, the celebrated Consolidated Computer debacle. In that case $125 million of taxpayers' money went right down the drain.
While it is not particularly positive, I would like to trace how our image in the world has gone down as our economic capabilities have declined. There was an interesting feature in a recent issue of Time magazine which described how our influence in the United Nations has become that of a bit player. We now have a walk-on part, when Canada once had an influence that was disproportionate to our population, disproportionate because we had the capability, the respect and the capacity to do great things on the world scene. What has happened to us since 1968? Canada's position has declined steadily. Anyone who wants to look at the OECD statistics- you need not believe me-will see that right now Canada is last in terms of the industrialized nations of the West. Why has this occurred? I think it has occurred largely because of economic mismanagement. The results of that economic mismanagement we see here today. The Government wants more and it has to come to Parliament to borrow money which, as the previous speaker said, is not really needed. If this Bill goes through, the Government will have an extra $2 billion to play with, almost as much as the Government is going to spend on professional and special services this year. This is very bad for economic development. I do not understand why this Government continues to abuse the priorities that made this country great.
The Hon. Member for Brant in his previous speech pointed out the ridiculous situation that exists in our North, one of the greatest storehouses of wealth, treasure and pride that any country in the world could possibly have. But we cannot even
Borrowing Authority
patrol it. We are reduced to using native people, who have the skills to be trackers, to provide the kinds of services which other nations have provided by military means, electronic surveillance and things like that. We are reduced to almost frontier Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett techniques in the twentieth century to patrol our own North. We do not have the money to improve the situation. Even the wealthiest nation in the world, the United States with its large internal market, has made some tough choices. By contrast, countries like ours which have placed their faith in unrestrained deficit spending and socialist policies are having extreme problems. We do not have to look very far to see the results.
Recently the great nation of France elected a socialist government. Now its President, President Mitterrand, is reaping the benefits of his particular socialist policies, which have a startling resemblance to the policies this Government has been prescribing for our country. Francois Mitterrand came into power on the basis that France was going to spend its way to prosperity. What does France have now? It has monetary and currency controls, and the freedom of French citizens to take vacations has been curtailed. There are riots in the streets and there is talk about some of their more radical elements beseiging Parliament.
Let us take a look at Michael Foote, the Opposition leader in the United Kingdom. He has espoused all sorts of socialist policies, again similar to the policies which this Liberal Government, under the guise of asking free enterprise to be the engine of economic recovery, is foisting off on this country. What has happened in Great Britain? The Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, has made hard choices for the U.K. She has reduced inflation and put a sense of pride and priority back in that nation. She is ahead in the public opinion polls by an unprecedented lead as the British approach their upcoming election. The socialist opposition is once more having difficulty and obviously will go down to defeat.
Why cannot Canada learn from the experiences of our neighbours? I cannot understand why not. 1 know it is trite in this House to quote cliches and homilies from the past, even though I maintain it is useful, Sir, but if they did not have some intrinsic value they would not have survived.
Let me put a few passages on the record from the statements of a great American president, Abraham Lincoln. He has been noted in the past for uttering the odd word of wisdom. Some of his prescriptions for national development are as follows:
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot establish sounder security on borrowed money. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
I believe, Mr. Speaker, that you are signalling to tell me that my allotted time has expired. That is a pity because 1 would have liked to have put more of Abraham Lincoln's philosophy on the record. Certainly my friends opposite would benefit from reading them.


Mr. Robert C. Coates (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, I am especially pleased to follow the Hon. Member

May 26. 1983
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for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay) in this debate. Many things that affect his contituency also affect mine. We are neighbours and we attempt to work together over and over again to be of assistance to the constituents of northern Nova Scotia. One of the facts of life, as I see it, as much as I object to this borrowing Bill, is the gigantic sums of money that will be taken out of the free market system. This will do two things. First, it will take away money that could be used by free enterprise to inject the economy in a productive way and to provide the employment required that we do not have. Second, there is a real danger that interest rates which have slowly declined are going to escalate once more because of the tremendous interference in the money markets by the central Government. This takes away potential funds that would be available at more sensible interest rates to small business and medium sized business, the real effective backbone of this country. These business people are the people who produce the jobs that would eliminate the unemployment problem facing us today.
Right now we have an unprecedented rate at which home building grants have been requested. This has happened because of lower interest rates and because of a re-evaluation by the Canadian public which has created new confidence. Instead of the Government using additional funds to assist those new home owners to build the homes that will provide the jobs-the home building industry is the best indicator of the degree of prosperity that will exist-what does the Government do? Because of its intransigence and insensitivity to the individual Canadian, no more funds are available. Indeed, for a period of time the Government initially said it would. Assistance to prospective new home owners and the home building industry would be the greatest single stimulus we have to help this nation pull out of this recession. We do not have that.
In Atlantic Canada, the Maritimes and in many parts of Quebec we are still in a very deep recession. The one thing 1 have found out in the time I have served in this House is that even when we are coming out of a recession we, in Atlantic Canada, experience it last. Usually we need an extra degree of stimulation to catch up with the rest of the country that starts enjoying the new prosperity that happens following a recession.
One of the sad things about this Government and its insensitivity to our part of Canada is that we see no new capital works projects of any significance. We had the Minister from Nova Scotia, the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) come to Halifax. Rather than trying to produce some industrial infrastructure for Halifax to stimulate the building of new industry, what does he do? He announces that he is going to build another office building to interfere with the private sector. If additional office space is required in Halifax, the private sector will produce it.


Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Right.


Robert Carman Coates: But what does the Minister say? He says, "We are going to build a new office building". This is to be built on a piece of land which the federal Government does not even own. In other words, the federal Government is trying to take
a piece of land from the provincial Government that could be used for industrial purposes to put up an office building which will be in competition with office building owners in the private sector who would be quite willing and able to produce new office space, if that is what is required. That is the insensitivity of this Government to our area and the difficulties we face.
The Government wants to take money out of the money market and run a deficit in excess of the six and five it is asking public servants to accept over a two year period as increases in their incomes. The new spending estimates for this year are running something like the 11 per cent in one year that the Government is asking public servants to accept as increases in their salaries over two years. Members of the House of Commons are faced with a situation where they are not in a position to give their office staff even a 1 per cent increase because of the passage of the Bill which put the six and five in place. Some people wonder why there is bad morale on Parliament Hill. The Government's insensitivity to the people who work here is the best example.
We hear talk about the things the Government will do for our areas. At the same time we are facing a cut in the transportation subsidy available to our businessmen upon whom the Government relied to move their products to central Canada. What will the Government do with that subsidy? It will cut it by 10 per cent. It will try to eliminate it altogether and put us in the position where we were after World War I when we were nothing more than the captive market of central Canada.
I say to western Members of Parliament, who are now thinking about allowing the Government to do something with the Crowsnest Pass rate, to use Atlantic Canada as an example of what happens when one gives away something that is one's birthright, as were the Maritime freight rates to Atlantic Canada. What happened? We found out that the Government sold us a bill of goods, and just when things started to happen, it pulled the rug out from under us. I say to western Members that the Crow rates are a birthright of the people of western Canada. Canadians gave tremendous advantages to the railways of the country which made CP one of the largest multinational companies in the world. I say that we should let the railways work under the Crowsnest Pass rate from here to eternity. I say to western Canadians that they should never give away what they have to bureaucrats, especially to Government Members across the way who will tell them one thing today and something else tomorrow.
The Crow rates should be protected. Every Member of the House, regardless of where he comes from, should tell the railways to work out some other scheme. I say to the Government that if the railways figure they are being shortchanged by the Crow rate, they should work out a scheme whereby they can present evidence to Canadians that they are not being paid the equivalent of the difference between the Crowsnest Pass rates and their actual costs. Also I say that they should pay
May 26, 1983

them out of the general revenues of Canada but keep on the statute books forever the Crowsnest Pass rates. It was a special deal given to western Canadians. It was to entice people to go to western Canada, to entice people to farm and to grow wheat and other grains in western Canada. That is what made our country great today. I ask Members from western Canada to stand firm and fight against any tinkering with these rates. If they do not, they will get the same double deal as we in Atlantic Canada got as far as the Maritime Freight Rates Act was concerned. Tomorrow they will discover that they are not able to sell their wheat because the federal Government has shoved up the prices of wheat so that we are no longer competitive with the other great wheat growing nations of the world.
Those are just some of my concerns about this borrowing Bill and some of the ways in which I think we might be able to do something that would be advantageous to the people of Canada, especially the people of Atlantic Canada.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: 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 Central Nova (Mr. MacKay)-Ships and Shipping-Protest against use of foreign-owned vessel on Atlantic coast; the Hon. Member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields)-Western Grain Transport Act-Report of Prime Minister's statements, (b) Position of Prime Minister; the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Mrs. Mitchell)-Income Tax-Deductions for child care expenses, (b) Request that tax credit replace current provision.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-151, an Act to provide supplementary borrowing authority, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs.
James Ross Fulton: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to put a few remarks on the record regarding another proposed borrowing by the Government. I think most Members of the House are aware of the rather
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unusual and somewhat immoral borrowing practices of the group across the floor. With Bill C-l 11 just less than a year ago, the Liberals borrowed $6.6 billion. With Bill C-l25 last July, they borrowed another $7 billion. With Bill C-l28 they borrowed another $4 billion in November. Will Bill C-l43 they borrowed another $19 billion just over a month ago. Now they come before the House to borrow another $14.7 billion. This accounts, in just 11 months, for $51.3 billion. 1 think the House should look quite carefully at the matter this time. The Government comes before us with $16 billion in borrowing authority still available to it.
According to its budget, which was brought down only a few weeks ago, it estimated a $26.7 billion deficit. The amount proposed here, combined with the existing borrowing authority which is still available, means that the amount of deficit listed in the budget will be exceeded by an additional $4 billion. Once these kinds of amounts are being borrowed ahead of time and we have bureaucrats from the Department of Finance telling the public that they are just for a contingency fund, we have to start informing Canadians and looking inside ourselves to see just what exactly is the Government's plan. Some people say that it is patronage. Some people say that it is slush. Some people say that it is a pork barrel. But the Government's own record demonstrates its inability to spend the dollars of Canadian taxpayers appropriately.
I would like to put a few examples of this on the record. A recent one was Consolidated Computer with $100 million down the tube. There has never been a proper parliamentary investigation into it. It has never really been revealed as to who in the chain of command was responsible or the kinds of firings that would be appropriate. Then we had Candu. I am glad to see the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) in the House. We know that the Candu program is running into continued rough times. It is continuing to write off more than $100 million per year just on its heavy water production. Our recent customer, of course, is Argentina. Its head of state is on record as publicly saying that he wants the Candu reactor program to continue so that Argentina can make atomic weapons, perhaps to use against Great Britain or even against Canada. Who knows whether or not we would be drawn into the Falklands conflict?
The Cruise is another example of where the Government has gone to seed. The majority of Canadian public opinion is opposed to it, but because of some desire to have more credible links with the White House and the Pentagon, the Government is dragging us along on that. As the former speaker mentioned, now there is the proposed Crow change where the Government, through the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin), is trying to describe the position of the New Democratic Party as reactionary. Of course we have some concern about the position of the Tories on this. We have some Tories who are for it and some who are against it. It should be clear that what

May 26, 1983
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is being proposed by the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) and the Minister of Transport will certainly not help farmers on the Prairies. The Minister of Agriculture knows that by 1990 it will take at least $1 billion out of the farming communities on the Prairies. These are dollars which will simply not stay there. These are dollars which will not go into the purchase of new machinery or new equipment. These are dollars that will not go in the form of municipal taxes for road upgrading, so everybody has to rubberhaul and so on. Yet Government Members, the few it has who will travel west of Ontario, are saying that the NDP position is reactionary and will stop the movement of all kinds of commodities.
The fact of the matter is that we have proposed the only sensible way to deal with any kind of rail line upgrading, that is, to pay the difference between the Crow and the real costs to the railroads for grain and other commodity movement to their point of exit from Canada and to take Canadian tax dollars to pay for the actual upgrading. However, to change the Crow is ridiculous. That is the sleeper in that Bill, along with the sleeper on the Dominion coal blocs.
I am not going to spend a lot of time speaking on the record of the Liberals because they will not be the Government very much longer. 1 am worried that there may be a minority Tory Government and we will have some trouble keeping them in line. Perhaps Canadians will come to their senses and elect the NDP in the next federal election. Perhaps they will do so as a result of a few of the remarks I want to make. We do not get to hear any Liberals speaking in the House. They rely on their flacks and hacks upstairs with the machinery to put the glint on everything and then put it out on the street and try and make it saleable. The Party is so unsalvageable now, the flacks and hacks are beginning to head for cover knowing there will be a change in Government fairly soon.
The Hon. Member for Central Nova (Mr. MacKay) made some interesting comments. He said the Government of France is in great difficulty because it is a socialist government. What he tried to focus on in that case was exchange controls, particularly related to people travelling outside the country on holiday. The Hon. Member for Central Nova should recall, since he likes to rely so frequently and heavily on Americans, that his idealogical predecessors, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson, brought in exchange controls in the United States, something the Tories do not like to talk about too often.
1 want to deal with the relevance of his argument with regard to Margaret Thatcher's lead in the polls. That is because of the way she is taking food out of the mouths of children. Many people in this world are aware of that kind of reactionary politics of taking milk money away from families with school-aged children who cannot afford to provide milk for their children. That is where a pretty good chunk of the funds in terms of cutting those kinds of social programs came from for Mrs. Thatcher and her Party. I seriously hope that the Brits show a little more sense in the coming election than
to re-elect the "iron lady" who has laid all over the working people in that country.
I would like to talk about what 1 see as the main difficulty with the Liberal-Tory policy. I think the Liberals waste more than the Tories would, but it is hard to know because we have not had a chance to observe them in action for more than two decades. The Liberals have a tendency to throw money at things rather than having any kind of industrial plan or a plan that involves the workers and small business people. The Tories are always saying that if you only give private enterprise a chance, away it will go. An example of free enterprise failing to operate is B.C. Timber in my area. Prince Rupert was shut down. The operations in Terrace were shut down, as well as The Nass, Kitwanga and over into the Hazeltons where Rim Products is still down.
What does the Government come in with? The Tories say to leave them alone, they will come back to life, don't worry about the fact that all these communities are dying. That is what you get with free enterprise, a lot of dead communities all over the place. What do the Liberals do? They use a new kind of right-to-work legislation which is called NEED, FLIP, JET, all Government programs that are supposed to salvage the communities. They are, of course, short-term. They get everybody up on their feet again. They really are right-to-work. However, what it does is effectively to lower the wages being paid to those working on these sites. It effectively destroys the concept of collective bargaining, or at least makes it much more difficult in many of those communities where literally thousands of workers are out because of this "free enterprise".
I want to say that this is another sleazy attempt by the Government to borrow money when it does not even need the money. It still has S16 billion. It wants to slip this through so that if it has to go to a quick election in the Fall, it will have a little bit of pork to throw around.
It is about time there was some kind of intelligent approach to expenditures. There should be a certain amount of statutory expenditures for social programs, and all Parties should work to keep those safety nets and social programs in place. The important money should be put forward to encourage co-ops, worker-owned and operated industries. We have seen the problems private enterprise gets into when it does not go out and find adequate markets, as with B.C. Timber. It should be going into panel board, chipboard, paper, furniture and other items. That will only come if the local communities are given the opportunity and some support, technical, R and D and financial, to re-tool and re-finance those industries to make them locally owned.


Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on Bill C-151. It brings back memories of the Liberal platform in the 1980 election. They were going to be all things to all people. What have we seen? They asked the people for their confidence, that they will lead them to the Promised Land, and everything else. This is a complete reversal. It has been nothing but downhill and borrowing all the way.
May 26, 1983

This budget, were it tabled when the polls showed the Liberals in an advantageous electoral position, would be called an election budget. This borrowing authority Bill will provide the pork barrel, as mentioned by the Hon. Member for Skeena (Mr. Fulton) used to finance the next election, whenever it comes. I want to say this: the people will not be fooled as easily as they were before.
I will deal with the summer student program because it affects my riding to a great extent. There was an allocation of a further $70 million in addition to the $170 million already allocated to try to beef up the unemployment situation with respect to students across Canada. In my constituency of Victoria-Haliburton, last year we received $151,876 in funds for this program. The formula devised for the allocation of funds this year was based on a survey of the student surplus rate in each constituency. This survey, taken last summer, indicated that only 358 students were unemployed in my riding. I am not sure who did the survey, but I can assure Hon. Members that that figure bears no relation to reality. The method used in conducting the survey varies from riding to riding.
There was a great discrepancy with regard to rural ridings. My riding is 150 miles east and west and close to 150 north and south. There is a manpower Outreach office in Halibur-ton, a manpower office in Peterborough, one in Lindsay, one in Oshawa and one in Newmarket. Students in rural Ontario do not have the facilities nor the funds to travel to the manpower offices. They know perfectly well that there is no work for them. Why should they travel 100 or more miles to a manpower office to be told, "We will take your name and if something comes up, we will let you know"? This formula was wrong for determining the number of students unemployed in a riding such as mine.
I have appealed the additional allocation of only $4,194 to the Minister, but as yet I have not had a reply. It is unbelievable that neighbouring constituencies have received thousands of additional dollars. Why is that? They are close to a manpower office. There is no problem for the students there to register. It is a totally different situation from the one in my riding.
If this survey is upheld, the additional funding in the budget will not be seen in my riding, even though we have applications this year for well over $500,000 on an allocation of only $156,100. Obviously, judging by these figures, the additional $4,000 funding is welcome and is most needed, but it will be only a drop in the bucket. The $100 million allocated to the Farm Credit Corporation will be helpful only to a few farmers, those who are really in distress. When you realize the depth to which farmers are in debt, you quickly see that $100 million will not go very far in this day and age. The change in loss carry-over rules will help the struggling farmer, but it will do little to help those who are in dire straits and cannot get any of this $100 million. The expansion of the role of the Federal Business Development Bank may or may not be of assistance to farmers. Details in the budget are quite sketchy as to
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exactly how the role of the Federal Business Development Bank may be expanded.
1 want to say something about Government institutions and how their employees treat farmers. I may say that 1 personally have experienced this treatment when speaking on behalf of my constituents to some of the managers of the Federal Business Development Bank. I want to tell you at this time, Mr. Speaker, that their attitude was less than co-operative, and yet these civil servants are there to serve the people. Their attitude could be a little better, and I have been very disappointed especially by the attitude of one manager whom 1 personally contacted on behalf of a very sincere, dedicated business within the farming community. I was more or less told that the affair was none of my business, but this businessman eventually got the money. I do not want to go into detail about how he received the money, but he received the money from the Federal Business Development Bank. There probably was a change in the people who were dealing with his specific application. Now, this should not happen. This did not happen on only one occasion, and I think that this is something that the Minister in charge should probably look into. This is just not the way people should be treated when they go to a Government office.
The Government's intention to remove the Canadian ownership special charge in respect of companies was merely a formality. 1 do not think that anyone expected the Government to remove this tax even after Petrofina and Dome had been paid for. It is, however, an additional tax that was originally to have been of limited duration. Yet another new 6 per cent tax has been added on probably in order to pay for cable TV and Pay TV.
Related to what I said a few moments ago regarding Dome and Petrofina, let us look at the gasoline tax situation. Approximately a week ago, we in Ontario saw a gasoline price war. Gasoline was selling for 25.6 cents per litre. The price of gasoline went down as low as 24.6 cents or 24.5 cents per litre, but today at the same pumps this gasoline is selling for 45.6 cents per litre. This can be seen here in the City of Ottawa, it can be seen any place in Ontario. This is a 20 cent difference in the price of a litre of gasoline.
What does the price of gasoline do to inflation in our economy? The price of gasoline in this day and age is probably one of the biggest creators of inflation in the cost of productivity, and hurts the tourist industry and probably every sector of the economy. Why is there such a discrepancy in the price of gasoline, a discrepancy of 20 cents a litre? I have put this question to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) in the House of Commons before. The Minister has never really given me an answer; he just skates around the question. The tourist industry is a big industry in Canada today and it is especially big in my area, and one of the biggest deterrents to the tourist industry is the difference between the cost of gasoline per litre or per gallon in Canada and the cost of gasoline in the United States.

May 26, 1983
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The second deterrent to the tourist industry is the Government tax on the cost of beverages. I do not argue whether or not beverages, as we know it in the tourist industry today, are needed. It is something which is there and it is there to stay, my friends, and it is something which plays a big part in bringing tourists to our country.
Then we may move to the field of accommodation as well. These are all services which are greatly affected by the Government tax here and the Government tax there. I will conclude in just a moment, Mr. Speaker, if you will give me a second. The Government is very, very prone to imposing a tax here and a tax there in order to raise money that is ill-spent. Thank you very much for your patience, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Bill Wright (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, it gives me no great pleasure to rise again to discuss another borrowing Bill. Not too long ago, the Government came before the House to ask permission to borrow money under a previous Bill. Bill C-151 seeks the aproval of the House to borrow $14.7 billion. This, Mr. Speaker, is almost an unbelieveable amount of money in view of the fact that the Government has come before this session of Parliament with the same request seven times. It came before Parliament under Bill C-30 to borrow $12 billion, under C-59 to borrow $14 billion, under Bill C- 111 to borrow $6.6 billion, under Bill C-125 to borrow $7 billion, under Bill C-128 to borrow $4 billion, under Bill C-143 to borrow $19 billion, and now the Government is seeking to borrow $14.7 billion. That is a total of $61.6 billion, an unbelieveable amount of money to be borrowed in one session of Parliament.
This year's deficit as forecast by the Government will be approximately $31.3 billion, but can we believe that figure in view of the changes that have been made over the past year? I believe that we all recall the $200 million which was tacked on to the budget so that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) could squeeze out from under the allegation that he had leaked some of the provisions in the budget. In addition to that, Mr. Speaker, the Government has said that its financial requirements are $26.7 billion, and yet, as of April 1 this year, it had $16 billion in unused borrowing capacity, which means that it really needs to borrow $10.7 billion. However, the Minister has told us that he needs a cushion of $2 billion this year just in case. He does not really tell us what "just in case" means. Then he wants a surplus of another $2 billion next year "just in case", and again we do not know what that means. But we do have a clue that perhaps there will be a run on the Canadian dollar. That does not augur well for any of us. If the Government has to borrow money in the case of a run on the Canadian dollar, then we will be in desperate trouble over the next year.
I believe that it can be said without any exaggeration, Mr. Speaker, that the Government's expenditures are out of control. I do not think that it really knows how much the deficit will be this year. I do not think that it really knows about or has planned for a true expenditure plan. In effect, the Government is just hoping. It is hoping that the American economy will turn around sufficiently to pick up the Canadian economy.
The Government's expenditures boggle the imagination, Mr. Speaker. We are told that it spent $6 million each on two water bombers for the Yukon, and of course the fire season in the Yukon occurs at a time when ice covers most of the lakes. We would like to know what the Government are going to use the water bombers for. Perhaps they will be used to take Liberal Cabinet Ministers to the Yukon on fishing trips. As we get closer to the election, we will need to have these little handouts just in case they do not come back.
We heard in committee just recently, Mr. Speaker, about some of the wasteful expenditures of the Canadian International Development Corporation. Last year, the Government of one of the developing nations asked for an advance of $20,000 against a loan that it would be receiving from the Canadian Government. Did the Canadian Government give it the $20,000? Of course not. It gave that country $250,000, and no one knows why. The acting Deputy Minister says, "We don't have an answer". Last year over $8 million was allocated in such a manner. The record goes on and on and on. Petro-Canada, the window on the oil industry, has investment capital of somewhere around $7 billion, and last year had earnings of $10 million. That is unbelievable. This oil company is supposedly in the private sector yet it is wrapped up in bureaucracy. Perhaps this is speculation, Mr. Speaker, but it would not surprise me if one of the greatest scandals in this country in the next five to ten years will be the way the Government has operated Petro-Canada.
How did we arrive at this stage of excess, uncontrolled expenditure by the Government, with one hand not knowing what the other is doing? For the answer we must go back and consider a number of things. First, there is the National Energy Program. No one really believes that the National Energy Program ever did any good. One does not just have to read the newspapers; one can easily tell by talking to the bankers and investment people in many parts of the world. I have visited England, Germany and the United States in the last three months, and people there all repeat the same thing. They have told the Government their opinion, but Government Members would not repeat that in the House. They have said, "If you want investment capital in Canada, get rid of the National Energy Program, get rid of FIRA." The Government knows this.


Mr. Whelan:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Recently the head of the Bank of Cologne from West Germany was in my city. He said that Canada was one of the easiest countries in the world in which to invest and one of the best countries in the world to invest in.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. That may be a contribution to the debate but it is hardly a point of order.


Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. All day the Liberals have not got up once. Why do they not get up and make a speech if they have something to defend instead of rising on fake points of order?
May 26, 1983


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


Frederick William Wright: Mr. Speaker, it does too take much imagination to know what the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) is good at flinging.


Eugene Whelan: Mine would grow something, but what you are flinging will not grow anything.


Frederick William Wright: What he says about the head of the Bank of Cologne is hog wash.


Eugene Whelan: I would not try to wash any hogs in what you are saying.


Frederick William Wright: He knows that and he knows that not one Canadian ambassador in Europe, the United States or any western country will agree with the statement he made. He knows, or should know, that reports have come back from our ambassadors, in either written or verbal form, outlining the problems. They have said, "We will not invest money in your country".
The Minister of Agriculture is interested in figures. He should know that $6.8 billion in investment capital left Germany last year for the United States. If the Minister is so bright and knows what is going on, he should be able to tell us how much came to Canada. I can tell him that it was not very much. He can sit there and say that people tell him this is a great country, but that is not true. He cannot back it up.
Until we get rid of the national energy policy and FIRA we are not going to solve the problem of investment capital in this country.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: According to the best of my information, the Hon. Member's time has expired.


Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Hon. Member for Calgary North (Mr. Wright) was interrupted by the Minister of Agriculture. Surely that is not going to be taken off his time.


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


Frank Oberle: Mr. Speaker, it may appear from your vantage point that the side of the House to your right was ready for the question before the debate even started. That is the side of the House where the sheep sit. They have been told to be here today but not to participate in the debate because, after all, it is just a little Bill. 1 hold it in my hand. It is unfortunate that the automatic cameras are not permitted to scan this place. Those Canadians who keep an eye on it would be interested in the fact that we are discussing Bill C-151 to give the Government authority to borrow on our behalf the sum of "fourteen billion seven hundred million dollars as may be required for public works and general purposes." We are permitting the Government to spend that amount on our behalf and to put the signature of the taxpayers of Canada on instruments that will be marketed throughout the world and which the taxpayers of Canada will have to pay back at some point.
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If the cameras could scan the House they would see five Liberals, none of whom has made a speech or given any explanation of why-


Eugene Whelan: Oh, oh!


Frank Oberle: If the Minister of Agriculture interrupts me-


Eugene Whelan: What are you going to do about it?


Frank Oberle: He will find it very difficult to do that because he is one of my very special friends. He has a sort of foghorn voice and only speaks when his gas moves him. That usually happens when someone else has the floor.
Canadians would be interested in the situation we have here because they know full well the crime of taxation. They know full well that the promises of today usually end up as the taxes of tomorrow. Canadian taxpayers and small and medium-sized businessmen know that today's deficits are going to be the taxes of tomorrow. Canadians have become accustomed to the fact that the Government adjusts its economic forecasting almost every three months.
Over the last two years we have gone from a projected deficit of $11 billion to $19.8 billion; that is almost double. And that was just a miscalculation, Mr. Speaker.
For people who do know what a billion dollars is, Mr. Speaker, I can tell them that it is 1,000 million dollars, which would make a stack of one dollar bills about 85 miles high. At one time there was a Member of this House who said, "What's a million?" It was a large sum of money when the Government took over power. I say "took over power" because there is no longer any power with the Canadian people or with Parliament. That has all been usurped by the Government. When these people took over, the total spending authority that the Government used to lay before Parliament was about one-third of what it is now running in deficits alone. The deficit went from $11 billion to $19 billion to $24 billion, and it is projected now at $31 billion. One could say, "So what, we live in difficult economic circumstances. We have entered into all kinds of social contracts from which we cannot extricate ourselves. The Unemployment Insurance bill this year is $12 billion and there are of course statutory arrangements with the Provinces where the federal Government is locked in, and these agreements cannot be renegotiated. So up goes the deficit".
There is another way to pay back borrowed money rather than raising taxes later on. You can pay it back through inflation. That is the great con game which governments of this type have become accustomed to and comfortable with throughout the world. Spend money today, water down the currency, and pay your debts with watered down dollars. Not only are governments like that cheating themselves, they are really cheating the old age pensioners and people on fixed incomes who rely on governments for their sustenance. They are being paid in watered down dollars. When the currency is

May 26, 1983
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devalued through inflation by 10 per cent, the old age pensioner who thinks he is getting $480 a month is really getting 10 per cent less, but for all intents and purposes the social contract has been fulfilled. But the Government has cheated them out of a lot of money. This is even more serious for people such as civil servants who have, in good faith, paid into pension funds all their lives and find that the benefits are much less than what they thought they had contracted for. That is how the con game works. That is how you can pay for a deficit of $31.8 billion.
There is one other part of this Bill I must point out to you, Sir, because it is the one which causes me even greater concern. Listen to this very closely, Mr. Speaker. I know you will be shocked by it. Clause 2, Subclause (3) says:
For greater certainty, any amount borrowed under this Section may be borrowed in a currency other than that of Canada and may be repaid in the currency in which it was borrowed.
What that means, Sir, is that the Government no longer has any lenders in this country from whom it is welcome to borrow money.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Wrong.


Frank Oberle: Our pension funds have run dry.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Wrong.


Frank Oberle: They are already over-committed. Our banks are in such a precarious situation, they are now looking for Government to bail them out because of stupid decisions they made in international lending and financing of certain Canadian companies with the endorsement of the federal Government. They are now coming to Government to bail them out, so they do not have the extra $14 billion to lend to the Government. Where does the Government go then? It goes to New York and Switzerland-


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Wrong.


Frank Oberle: -and I assume it will borrow from the Arab countries or wherever the Government can find the money. That is particularly important because the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) gets up repeatedly in this House, as does the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), to compare our situation with that of the United States. That is rather like the first mate of the Titanic who said, "I am no worse off than the captain". Well, they all sank together.
The fact is that the U.S. deficit in comparison with ours is roughly half, if you calculate it on a per capita basis. But the problem is that when we go abroad to borrow money, the interest is paid to foreign lenders, it does not recirculate in this country. In the U.S. the Government does its borrowing internally and the interest paid stays in the country and is recycled. It is available to small business for venture capital and risk capital and for the development of a much needed recovery in the economy. In our situation the interest we pay on this $14.7 billion will all be paid abroad.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Wrong.


Frank Oberle: That money will come right off the top, so that 25 cents of every taxpayer's dollar will of course go to a foreign lender, to some American or Swiss bank. It will not stay in our economy, and that is why it will take so much longer for our economy to achieve the recovery necessary to create jobs and build a bright future for our children.
I see you rising, Mr. Speaker. I think I have made my point.


Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, if I remember correctly, you came into the House about the same time that I did, that is, in 1972. Well, I stand to be corrected, but anyway, in 1972, as you will remember because you were here at that time, we had a minority Government. That was the time when the Government started to get into trouble because, as I understand, prior to that time the federal Government had a surplus of approximately $700 million. That was in 1970. In order for that minority Government to stay in power for as long as it did, and it lasted two years, it had to respond to the wishes and kicks of the NDP. That is where we started to go wrong. Then, of course, the problem escalated until the Auditor General, in approximately 1978, made the statement that to all intents and purposes Government expenditures were out of control.
1 believe that to be true, Mr. Speaker. I do not think that even today the Government has the public purse under control. In fact, I was speaking to an individual not so long ago who made the comment that unfortunately the Government is not aware that it does not have control of the purse strings. This is where the danger comes in. If we do not do something very quickly, we are going to create the situation where we are going to have a financial collapse. Consider our total debt, including provincial debt. It increased last year approximately $35 billion. We cannot stand that, Mr. Speaker. The total debt of the Third World is somewhere in the vicinity of $700 billion, and yet here we are in Canada with a debt of about one third of that amount. Certainly that is a disastrous situation to find ourselves in.
The worst part of it all is that this year the Government will increase that amount, possibly up to $35 billion, and it will probably be the same next year. How long can we stand that? Surely the members of Government should have enough basic business knowledge and understanding to know that the Government cannot continue along those lines. Surely they must realize that Government is the biggest business we have in Canada today, and that the guidelines which must be followed by any successful businesses in our communities must be applied to the federal Government. This is not happening. This is the part that concerns me. For instance, as I said earlier, this year it will cost us $18 billion just to pay the interest alone. If one uses one's mathematics, one will find that that amounts to $2 a day for every man, woman and child living in Canada. Every Canadian should realize upon rising in the morning that the first two dollars each person makes must go to pay for this interest cost.
May 26, 1983

So much of our funding is going without any return. Take, for instance, payment of interest. We do not make any financial gain from that. There is no productivity. The Government is placing a heavier load, as each successive year goes by on our people, on our Canadian taxpayer, on our business community. Actually, it is killing the goose that laid the golden egg, and yet it does not seem to realize it. Unless a change is made very soon, we will find far too much of the productivity of our country going simply to finance the debt. There does not seem to be any inclination on the part of any Hon. Members opposite to stop that.
Some years ago I was flabbergasted when the Minister in charge of the Canadian Wheat Board, the Hon. Otto Lang, brought in the stabilization program for the western Canadian grain producer. It was set up in such a manner that the farmer, the producer, paid his dollar into the fund and the Government was to pay its $2 into the fund. I would have thought that it was a fair, honest and straightforward way to set up any program. However, what happened shortly there after? Your Honour will remember that Mr. Lang brought in another piece of legislation providing that the Government did not have to put in its $2. It would calculate it and keep it as a paper figure; but it would pay interest on it. However, somewhere along the line, there must be a payout. Otherwise, the program will not do the job for which it was intended. So what will happen? Next year, in our Estimates, and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) will probably have to be responsible, a pretty substantial payout to the western grain producer will be necessary because of the fact that we are now going through times of extremely low prices. This is the irony of the whole situation.
In 1970 there was a surplus in the budget. These 12 or 13 years have been good years to us, except perhaps for the last two or three years. Those were the times when the Government should have been building up a balance in the bank. However, what did it do? Each successive year it went further and further into debt. What will happen now? Suppose that in 1984 or 1985 the economic cycle makes a turnaround. It is said that it makes a turnaround every 50 to 60 years. If Hon. Members opposite would remember, it is now just exactly 50 years from the 1930s. Now we are going into a down cycle and must pay off the tremendous debt. It will put a tremendously heavy load on our children and our grandchildren. However, there does not seem to be any thought concerning this matter. That is my concern.
What is the Government doing during these good years, by exploding the budget to this extent? It is unbelievable, the way it is exploding. For instance, last year when the budget was presented to us, it was supposedly to be just a bit over $10 billion; but it ended up being $25 billion or $26 billion. We do not have the final figures. However, it will be somewhere between those figures. Then, of course, as the Minister said, next year there will be a deficit of $31 billion. Are we to have
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another escalation of $16 billion? That would put it up in the $47 billion bracket, if that holds true.
Certainly, as my colleague, the Hon. Member for Prince George-Peace River (Mr. Oberle) mentioned, and also my colleague, the Hon. Member for Calgary North (Mr. Wright), a part of the problem was the National Energy Program. It is true that the Government saw some bucks out there and wanted to get its hands on the money, and it did. It took a few hundred million dollars out of the system. However, what has happened now? The chickens have come home to roost because of the fact that this year it is estimated that there will be a $6 billion payout on refunds on income tax alone, simply because the oil energy business has been cut back.
I could go on with other figures and show Your Honour where the Government is going wrong, but hopefully some Hon. Members opposite will be wise enough to see what the Government is doing to our country.


Cyril Keeper: Mr. Speaker, 1 welcome this opportunity to speak today with regard to the borrowing legislation, because it gives me an opportunity to put on the record my concerns over the economic policy, the taxation policy, of the Government. When we consider the borrowing Bill, we really must not look only at the numbers. Certainly, the numbers involved in the Bill are enough to impress anyone. The number of times the Government has come before the House to borrow are impressive in and of themselves. However, the real question upon which we must focus our attention is: What is the purpose of all of this borrowing? What kind of policies have led to this present situation? What are the values, the fundamental priorities of the Government when it comes to borrowing?
I think I would feel much better about this borrowing request if I thought it related to meeting the needs of people and to providing employment for Canadians. However, if we consider what is going on in the country, if we take a brief look at the budget which the Government introduced and which was recently passed through the House, we find that there is double-digit unemployment in Canada. We find the fact that the budget has accepted unemployment of 12.4 per cent for this year and unemployment of 11.4 per cent for next year. It even made predictions that after recovery, after a number of years, the best we could hope for would be to bring unemployment down to 7 per cent or 8 per cent.
In this context, it is very difficult to accept the notion that this borrowing will continue for the purpose of putting people back to work, because it is clear that the economic and manpower policies of the Government have failed to put Canadians back to work. The Government has, in fact, accepted a level of unemployment in this country which, until today, was unheard of. This is unprecedented in terms of a Government accepting such a level without really facing up to the problem and making a commitment to do something about it. So there is no way we can justify this borrowing by saying that the Government has turned its effort toward employment creation.

May 26, 1983
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I might approve of this borrowing if I thought it would improve equality in the country. For example, if the money were used to bring about greater equality between men and women in the Public Service I would be in favour of its expenditure. We know from a recent report that was made public and tabled recently that the gap between the wages of men and women in the Public Service has increased by some 12 per cent between last year and this year. That is a direct result of legislation brought into the House by the Government. The Government's policies have had the impact of increasing inequality, certainly in the Public Service. Therefore 1 cannot justify this legislation on the grounds that the Government is borrowing money that will fulfil worth-while human purposes and result in greater equality between men and women in the work place.
If I thought that this legislation concerned rational economic policies for the country, I might be able to approve of it. However, when one considers the budget which was recently passed through the House, the words that stand out are those of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) when he said that he was leaving the lead in economic matters to the private sector. The Government has actually washed its hands of the very tools that could allow it to provide employment for everyone and bring about a real recovery in this country. It has ignored its opportunity to give some energy and thrust to economic activity in the country. I make that point because when one considers a country such as Japan one can see that it learned long ago the lesson of economic planning, which is, that you cannot leave the direction of the over-all economy to the private sector. Unemployment in Japan is currently in the neighbourhood of 3 per cent, while our unemployment rate is well over 12 per cent. We should learn from our neighbours on this planet.
We should understand that we have a responsibility for what happens in our community and our country. We must set objectives and goals and be committee to the importance of employment for every Canadian in order that we might grow as individuals through meaningful work.
If this borrowing authority being requested by Members opposite were put to a useful and sane purpose, 1 would approve of it. So long as the Government washes its hands of economic matters by saying that it no longer takes the responsibility to steer the ship of state and to provide employment for every Canadian, it is incumbent upon Members of this side of the House to condemn the financial activities of the Government. It is important to condemn the amount of money that the Government continually asks for authority to borrow.
The Government's request for this money could be legitimate if it came to the House in good conscience to borrow that money for Canadians so they could meet their own basic human needs and find employment for individuals who are unemployed today. This borrowing request would be acceptable if it were meant to bring about greater equality between men and women, between handicapped and other Canadians
and between natives and the rest of the population. But borrowing without reason is irrational and deserves to be not only questioned but condemned.
I call upon the Government to re-examine its commitment. Rather than attempting to redefine the notion of full employment upwards, which it has been doing lately, it talks participation rates, the regional nature of the country and the difficulty of penetrating foreign markets. All of this talk is an attempt to convince Canadians that it is acceptable to have the number of people unemployed that we have today. That certainly is unacceptable to our Party and unacceptable to a majority of Canadians.
Before the Government comes to the House to ask for borrowing authority it should first examine its purposes and adopt as its first objective the provision of employment for all Canadians and the greater equality for the people in this country.


Mr. Alex Patterson (Fraser Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, my colleague, the Hon. Member for Red Deer (Mr. Towers), lamented the fact that in spite of all the serious problems and challenges facing the nation today and the seeming inability of the Government to react, he felt that the Government did not even realize the seriousness of those problems.
As is my usual custom, on Sunday I went to church. 1 listened to the minister as he referred to the fact that it is sometimes necessary to use dramatic or sensational methods in order to catch the attention of the people before they are willing to listen. He used this illustration: a man had a donkey which was hitched to a cart. No matter what he said to it, it would not move. He kept shouting at it until he got rather disgusted and took a hammer and hit the donkey between the eyes. A bystander asked, "What in the world did you do that for?" Why did you hit the donkey in the head?" He said, "I had to do it to get his attention."
I believe that is similar to the situation we have today. It seems to necessitate the use of some dramatic or sensational effort to get the Government to realize the seriousness of the situation and to act upon it.
I am not implying that the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) or anyone else is a donkey. 1 do not know if that would be parliamentary. 1 am not implying that the Minister of Finance is a donkey, but it appears as though he shared that proverbial characteristic of a donkey, that is stubbornness.
It has been pointed out that this is the seventh time that the Government has introduced a measure asking for authority to borrow more money to finance its operations. Therefore, it has been seven times that we have endeavoured to use that hammer of reason to convince the Government that the direction in which it is headed is not the one which will lead us to a satisfactory destination.
Instead, the Government is leading us in the opposite direction. Rather than bringing us out of the problems and difficulties which we face at present, it is driving us deeper into the ground and making the problem even more difficult.
May 26, 1983

The Government has failed to recognize and acknowledge the challenges that have been drawn to its attention and the warnings which have been given to it by successive Auditors General, the Comptroller General, taxpayers of this country and Members of the House. We are convinced that continuing overspending, increasing deficits and massive borrowings could bring this country to economic collapse.
The amounts for which the Government has asked borrowing authority have been placed on the record. They are in the following order: $12 billion, $14 billion, $16 billion, $11 billion, $4 billion, $19 billion and $14.7 billion. Clearly this indicates that this request is not a request to meet an emergency but is consistent with the Government's propensity to overspend. Then, with indecent and unblushing arrogance, it forwards a dunner to the taxpayers of Canada to pay up or face the consequences. Everyone knows that the country has been going through a very difficult period and, although some signs would indicate some slight improvement, I have seen nothing to indicate that anyone is about to celebrate a dawn of a new era. In fact, I saw three economists on the television not long ago. One said that things are looking better, another said just about the opposite, and the third one was in between the other two. He indicated that even among economists, which is perhaps usual, there is such a divergence of opinion that they know nothing more about the situation than any other sectors of the community.
If we reviewed the record of the Government we would find there is little to justify the Government's calling upon the people of Canada to increase the borrowing and the money available to Government. Not only should we consider the following facts: That Gross National Product is falling sharply, that capital investment is to fall again, that manufacturing is at only 63 per cent of capacity, that business bankruptcies continue to increase, that we have record unemployment, that corporate profits are down, that manufacturing and shipments are declining together with inflation-that is the record-but we have to take into account the predictions for the future. Woods, Gordon in its April, 1983 "Business Conditions" report expresses concern that inventory shortages could lead to higher prices. In that document we find this paragraph:
In particular, inventories of many raw materials appear to be exceptionally low and cannot be replenished quickly. The business recovery could trigger sudden bottlenecks and sharp price increases, which could, in turn, touch off renewed fear of inflation, tighter monetary restraint, and rising interest rates.
The record is pitiful, the forecasts are discouraging, yet the Government continues on the course, and rather than improving the conditions of this country it is even threatening to make them much, much worse.
Speaking about the deficits, an article appeared in the paper under the heading "Deficit cuts needed as soon as possible." The article is written by Mr. Ronald Anderson. He pointed out a very significant factor. He wrote:
-the proposed increase in federal spending this year and next, together with the absence of any new spending restraints in later years, will result in an increase in the federal Government's share of the Gross National Product. In 1980, before
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the recession, Ottawa absorbed 21 per cent of GNP; in the November, 1981. budget, the federal share was projected to increase to 22 per cent; this proportion now is expected to increase, in the 1983-1984 fiscal year, to 26 per cent.
I want to put more on the record from this article but there are time constraints. However, the C. D. Howe Institute said:
-the federal public debt will rise to 46 per cent of GNP in 1987, compared with 29 per cent in 1982 and 15 per cent in 1975.
This statement concludes with these words:
-the commitment contained in the budget to reduce the deficit is not a convincing one. If the deficit persists, little room will be left for stimulative measures if they are needed in the years ahead.
The Government is moving in such a direction that it is evident that rather than improving the situation it will eventually make it worse. I call upon the Government, without hitting it on the head with a hammer, I beg the Government to take another look at the course it is following and the course it is leading us into and request that it change direction and do something really worth-while for the great nation of which we are a part.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Mr. Speaker, it almost seems like yesterday when I last spoke on a borrowing authority problem. I spoke during the budget debate about what the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) indicated would be his financial requirements for the coming year. At that time it was indicated we would have this present Bill sometime during the course of this year. We have not yet reached the month of June and already the Government is upon us with Bill C-151.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Four more days.


Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Bill C-143 asked authority to borrow $19 billion. In between Bill C-143 and Bill C-151 only eight Bills have been introduced. Let us look at the totality of what has happened in this session which started, of course, in April, 1980, and is now well on into its fourth year. We get this cradle of numbers, I said cradle, 1 should have said litany of Bills-Bills C-30, C-59, C-lll, C-125, C-128, C-143 and C-150. They come along like a series.
Last year the Government came before Parliament four times. I suppose this year it says, "Never again", and yet it has come twice with ever increasing gulps. It may be that this is what the Government is going to do in the future if this administration continues for another year. We have been told, on the good authority of the Minister of Finance, that the projected shortages, the Government requirements, will be something like $93 billion by the time we get to 1985-1986. One can understand that the gobbets will be bigger and bigger each year. It may be that the Government is doing a job on the public, accustoming it to a bigger dose every time.
What will be the result of the Bill? Several of my colleagues have indicated what it will do. At the present time there is a carryover of $2 billion for 1982-83, and there is at least $5 billion now. Bill C-143 provided for a carryover of $2 billion

May 26, 1983
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for 1983-84. This particular Bill also provides for an unexpended portion of $2 billion to be carried on into 1984-85. What do they do with all this money? Is it an absolute necessity? The public tells us, "halt". I do not know whether the present administration has stuffed cotton wool or noise preventers in its ears. It simply continues to spend and spend and spend. Unfortunately, the expenditures are of a kind that are temporary. There is no lasting effect. There is no multiplier effect, with the possible exception of the $3,000 grant for the acquisition of new homes. That program has come to a halt. While the Minister of Public Works (Mr. LeBlanc) boasts about the increased rate of new home construction, as soon as that program effectively stops, there will be a most dramatic downturn in the construction of new housing units. Canadians lack sufficient confidence in this administration and in economic recovery to say that they will take chances because their employment is insecure. There are still very serious lay-offs. Some of them are reaching very high levels. As soon as one sees serious cuts in mid-management, those below who still have employment in the firms become very, very conscious of just how precarious their employment tomorrow may be.
We are going through a very unbalanced time. What this massive borrowing will do to the domestic market of savings, I do not know. It could be that this will wipe out a lot of funds sitting in pension plans and others that are not normally active in industrial investment. Certainly I think it is the Government's good fortune that at this time the industrial demand for funds for investment is not as high as it might be, because there is a great deal of unused capacity and uncertainty as to the value of future investment and the Government has more freedom of action in the sale of its bonds. What the Provinces will do under the circumstances is hard to say. In view of the fact that the Government only needed about $10.7 billion in order to arrive at a fair balance of figures, why must there be a cushion of an additional $2 billion?
When we talk about $2 billion, we are not talking about a weekend's expenditures. For the likes of Hon. Members of the House and most of the public, $2 billion is a great deal of money. It is difficult to provide for a $2 billion carryover, but personally I think it is totally wrong for the Government to come at this time and ask for this much money. The Government must become accountable, and to that extent I am opposed to the Bill.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to address a few remarks to Bill C-151 with which the Government seeks to borrow $14.7 billion. That amount of money is rather difficult for anyone to imagine in terms of his or her own funding. I thought it might be interesting to try to relate it to how it affects the average Canadian in my riding of Simcoe North.
Government spending for which it is borrowing money this year will be equal to $10,100 per taxpayer. That is quite a sum of money, especially when one realizes that when the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) took office in 1967-68 the Government was spending $1,700 per taxpayer. The Government, on a per capita basis, is spending $4,000 per man, woman and child in Canada, as opposed to $500 per capita
that it spent in 1967-68. One tax dollar in three is used to service the Government debt, compared with one tax dollar nine or ten years ago.
The people of my riding are quite concerned about deficits of $31 billion per year and about a Government with runaway spending. When I am in my riding, they stop me and ask, "Doug, how can the Government spend that kind of money; where is it going?" I tell them about the pork-barrel which the Government has going with a sort of bottomless pit. I tell them that they have to be like Maislin Transport which needed $31 million to $34 million because it made a bad business deal and the Grits, the Government, decided to bail the company out. They shake their heads. I tell them about Dome Petroleum which got into trouble-


Douglas Glenn Fisher: How much did we put into Dome?


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: -because of the National Energy Program.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Not a penny.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I tell them about the Great City of Windsor and ILAP. I compare the City of Windsor and its three Liberal Cabinet Ministers with metropolitan Toronto, represented by my noisy friend across the way, which has 30 seats and five Cabinet Ministers, none of them with anywhere near the power of those from Windsor. One might think about that if one represented Mississauga North. One might find it embarrassing to explain to one's constituents the case of Windsor with three seats and three Liberal Cabinet Ministers and that of metropolitan Toronto with 30 seats and five Cabinet Ministers. That might be a little tough to take home to Mississauga North, if my friend had the nerve to go back there on occasion.
The ILAP Program, on which the Government was spending money, was rather important to Simcoe North, in particular the areas of Penetanguishene and Midland which has 33 per cent unemployment under this Liberal Government. It applied for an ILAP grant. I put together a brief. 1 was at the initial meeting of the committee. It worked long and hard putting together a comprehensive brief indicating exactly what the situation was, thanks to Liberal economic planning. It was sent here in February.
There was a latecomer, Allan Martin, a former Member from the unrepresented City of Toronto. He jumped on the bandwagon at the last minute. He went to great lengths to say how he would get an ILAP grant and that the money would be spent on Penetanguishene, thanks to Mr. Martin. On budget night, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) found that the ILAP restrictions were rather tight. He had only been able to get it for nine or ten Liberal ridings, one NDP riding and one Conservative riding. He wanted to spread the pork. ILAP was dumped.
Mr. Martin had another excuse. He was going to do something else. We now have what is called the special recovery fund, which is the pork-barrel gone global. The Minister is
May 26, 1983

going to spend money according to a development index. Very nice. For years the Government has calculated unemployment according to 60 economic regions in Canada. Now it is going to be 260. It will be done by census regions. That is one part of the development index. The other part is average income and the ability of the Province to pay. That is how money will now be spent. We, as a responsible House of Commons, are being asked to condone that kind of hokery-pokery.
Today in the House we heard the epitome of Government spending gone mad on the Canada Development Investment Corporation. It is a neat little corporate manoeuvre, in place for some six months, designed to allow the Government to invest taxpayers' hard-earned money in some of the classic income earners such as Canadair. It is an opportunity for more of our money to go to Grit ridings, an opportunity for the Government of Canada to have a Crown corporation in the hands of an esteemed Member of the other place. One would have to caution the corporation not to try to float any share issues on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, not under the management of the esteemed Member of the other place.
We heard the Minister of National Revenue (Mr. Bussieres) go on at great length. He is our link to that Crown corporation which is spending our money. He is the House of Commons link. The only problem with the link is that he is not part of the chain. The Minister has not been made part of the chain because the Economic Development Committee of Cabinet includes Senator Austin, but does not include the Minister who reports to this place. He comes in and waxes eloquent at great length, but he has no idea of what is going on because he is not a Member of the Committee. That is how the Government is spending our money. When I go to Simcoe North, my constituents ask what the Government is doing. I have to try to defend the Government in its mad spending. That is how it is seen at the riding level. It is not seen that way by Members on the Treasury benches. They think they are helping by spending money. However, it is the people of Simcoe North who pay the shot.
We are opposing this Bill. We are opposing this grand scheme which asks for more than $4 billion, more than the Government needs, according to his recent budget. This is the seventh time this Government has come to this House to ask for more borrowing, and we oppose it. It has some $16 billion worth of borrowing authority left. The Government suggests it needs only $26.7 billion. The balance, according to my arithmetic, is $10.7 billion, not $14.7 billion. Once again, under the aegis of the Minister of Finance, who found $200 million worth of spending over the course of 24 hours, we see sloppy arithmetic from the Government.
In closing, we oppose the mad spending of this Government as we have opposed all of its roughshod tactics. We continue to stand on behalf of the taxpayers, not only of Simcoe North, but of every riding in this country. It is obvious the Members supporting the Government have no interest in supporting their ridings. We are pleased to do the job for them as well.


Mr. Len Gustafson (Assiniboia):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I am both pleased to speak on this Bill and not pleased. I represent constituents who are very concerned.
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Farmers, business people and other taxpayers are as concerned as Members of Parliament about the additional borrowing of $14 billion.
It is significant to note that when I came to this House four years ago, the total debt of the Government of Canada was $78 billion. Today the total debt is almost $160 billion. The increased debt for each man, women and child is in excess of $800, and for each taxpayer it is in excess of $1,700. These figures are very alarming.
It is not enough to just point out the problem. There must be a solution. We on this side of the House have some very positive solutions regarding the direction in which this country has been going. One of the major vacuums in this place is the complete lack of understanding of supply-side economics. We must stimulate the private sector to create wealth in this country. You cannot continue spending money to create jobs or in any other direction that is not, in return, building and strengthening this country.
We have a very serious problem in Canada. Governments are too loose with the taxpayers' money. I represent an agricultural riding. Productivity is very imporant in my riding. Productivity has been eroded by the reckless spending by Government. We see this in our oilfields and farms. Taxpayers now find there is not a great deal of incentive to work and to produce, basically because taxation is so high. When an employee works overtime, he finds that he is taxed to death by the income tax department. There is no incentive to produce. As a result, the balance of payments in the country has dropped to a level where we cannot compete in many ways in the international marketplace.
1 believe that we must take a whole new look at production, a whole new look at taxation in Canada. The Government's whole taxation program is counterproductive in many areas of society, and particularly in the House.
One area of expenditure that the Government does not seem to be concerned with is the larger bureaucracy which is being created year by year, day by day, in the House of Commons. It is significant to note that while 5 per cent and 6 per cent guidelines were created, many members of our society, and particularly farmers, realize that they face increased costs of production along with dropping world prices for wheat or beef, or whatever it is that they produce, and in that case, the six and five guideline is not there. But the bureaucrats are protected by the 5 per cent and 6 per cent increase, and if one makes a wage of $70,000 and gets a 6 per cent increase, that is a pretty healthy increase, Mr. Speaker. This is happening year after year at the expense of the taxpayer.
Somewhere down the line, there must be some accountability to the taxpayer by the Government, and I as one Member of the House believe that the Government and each Member sitting in the House owes a great deal of responsibility to the taxpayers of the country. We in the House, and I suppose I am speaking for the Government now, have not in many cases

May 26, 1983
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been accountable to productive people who have found it difficult to pay the kind of taxes that are demanded of them by the Government of the country. I call upon the Government to be more accountable to the taxpayers and to bring into practice some incentive program for production that will allow this Government to decrease some of the heavy-handed taxes which have been placed upon the people of Canada.
1 suppose that there are many areas which I could look at in terms of expenditure. I have already mentioned a couple of items like the large bureaucracy that the Government carries and the circulation of funds in many areas. In latter years, the Auditor General has spoken out and suggested that Government spending was out of control, that it was not being controlled by the Finance Minister, and yet year after year the deficits have been rising and the budgets have been coming later and greater.
Four years ago when I came to the House of Commons, I believe that the deficit was $13 million. Today we are looking at a $31 billion deficit. Expenditures are out of control, Mr. Speaker. I call on the House to bring them under control. I call on the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde), each Cabinet Minister and the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to be accountable to the taxpayers of the country to whom I am sure we owe a debt of responsibility as Members of Parliament.


Laverne Lewycky: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to address myself to the particular Bill under consideration as we resume debate on the motion of the Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Cosgrove) on this, the second reading and reference of Bill C-151, an Act to provide supplementary borrowing authority.
This afternoon, Mr. Speaker, I would like to be able to register some of the concerns I have as a Member of Parliament who represents a western riding, a riding which is in northern Manitoba, and I would just like to state why we are in opposition to this particular Bill. Doubtless, Mr. Speaker, you have heard quite a bit from this side of the House with regard to the position we have taken on the Crow rate, for example. The way the Government has been spending money is of real concern to us because in debate on the Crow rate, for example, a great deal of attention has been paid by the Government to trying to bring forward its position. I am referring especially to the Crow advertising which was seen all across the country. The Government spent a considerable amount of money, and in the process of spending that money, it purported to bring forward its position. However, when the Bill was finally introduced in the House by the Hon. Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin), we found that the Bill was incomplete in its form and that whatever changes would be introduced would make the advertising obsolete. I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, if this type of Government spending on obsolete advertising is not a waste of taxpayers' money.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: You people sound like good Tories.


Laverne Lewycky: As I mentioned, that advertising is obsolete. 1 think it is important for us to consider this sort of thing.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: I have been listening to this from the NDP all day.


Laverne Lewycky: The Hon. Member opposite is shouting and is trying to generate a little bit of noise because he is afraid to listen to the concerns which we have in this regard. I think one of my hon. colleagues has also indicated that the CNR has been purchasing bankrupt railways in western Canada. What is happening with regard to money which should be spent to upgrade the railways and upgrade certain branch lines in constituencies such as mine is that we find that that money has been given to the railways without proper accountability. I personally have never been able to get a reasonable explanation from the railways with regard to the formula which is used for money that the railways are receiving and expenses which they claim for depreciation of equipment, and it is of great concern to us that the Government constantly gives money hand over fist to agencies or companies such as the CPR, a corporate welfare giveaway, and there are no real results in various constituencies such as mine.
There has been no focus or plan with regard to some of the expenditures which the Government has brought forward, and by this I am underlining what is of great concern to many of the younger people in my constituency, a group of people with a high percentage of unemployment. I know that we in the House have heard that the unemployment rate among youth is well over 20 per cent, but I would just like to point out to the Hon. Members opposite that there are quite a few Indian reserves in my area. There are some seven Indian reserves, and if I were to look at any one of them, Hon. Members would be horrified to find out that the unemployment rate for youth would be 100 per cent, Mr. Speaker.
I am concerned that this borrowing authority does not have the kind of focus that is needed to deal with the problems which we as Members of Parliament are facing on a day to day basis. Our constituents come to our constituency offices and bring to us some of their concerns. As well, a high proportion of women are unemployed, especially in the rural areas. There is supposed to be an affirmative action program that is concerned with unemployment in this area, and yet there is nothing from the Government which really addresses these concerns and problems.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

[Stage Direction]
A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 45 deemed to have been moved.
May 26, 1983

Elmer MacIntosh MacKay: Mr. Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) apparently did not really understand, or deliberately chose to evade my question about vessels of foreign ownership or registry being permitted into this country. The Canada Shipping Act does give the Minister of Transport authority to do something about foreign vessels of dubious quality and design being allowed to serve as offshore vessels for standby rescue and supply purposes.
I want to read into the record Section 22 of Part I of this important piece of legislation as the basis for what I am about to say. It is as follows:
Notwithstanding anything in this Part, a ship built outside Canada shall not, without the consent of the Minister, be registered in Canada.
The Minister knows that shipbuilding and ship repair is an important industry in this country. He must know as well, that the Canadian Shipbuilding and Ship Repairing Association has been making very sensible recommendations to see that our Canadian interest may be protected. Henry Walsh has been very assiduous in bringing certain things to the attention of the Government.
On September 2, 1980, the Association made a number of proposals for non-subsidy measures of support for the shipbuilding industry. Proposals No. 9 and No. 10 recommend the banning of importation of old vessels, and No. 9 reads as follows:
Fishing vessels over five years of age should be prohibited from importation into Canada.
Proposal No. 10 says:
"All other vessels over ten years of age should be prohibited from importation into Canada."
Even so, we have the current example of an old, obsolete Norwegian whaling ship being brought in to Halifax by the Karlsen Shipping Company Ltd. and undergoing sea trials in Halifax harbour. At the same time, as I pointed out to the Minister yesterday, Ferguson Industries Ltd. of Pictou, Nova Scotia, has been attempting to secure a charter for a vessel that it has extensively modified in order to make it suitable to fit in with offshore oil and gas development and the attendant regulation. You would think that the Government and the Minister would be anxious to help an industry like this in an area of Canada that suffers from high unemployment. Apparently that is not the case.
On January 6, 1983, the Government of Canada announced a series of measures to promote Canadian shipbuilding, including the extension of custom and excise laws for goods used in resource exploration and development, from the present 12-mile limit out to the limits of Canada's Continental Shelf; the closing of loopholes to existing customs jurisdiction, resulting in a 25 per cent duty to all ships and 20 per cent for offshore drilling rigs, and the retention of the 3 per cent performance improvement grant and the extension of the 9 per cent shipbuilding industry assistance program subsidy for ships delivered by June 30, 1985.
Adjournment Debate
I want to give the Government credit for taking some constructive steps. These measures made some sense, but why is the Minister so slow in acting on other measures that are needed to protect our coastal shipping and our small shipbuilding yards? Frankly, although I like the Minister of Transport,
I am sick and tired of his cordial but very often evasive and ill-informed answers on vital matters. I am also very disturbed at the obvious prejudice being exhibited against small industries in certain parts of my Province of Nova Scotia.
Recently I pointed out that one of the largest employers in Nova Scotia, Hawker Siddeley, Canada, Ltd. situated in Trenton, is not being given fair treatment. Now we have another example of a key industry, again in my constituency, Ferguson Industries Ltd., being prejudiced by the inconsistency, or perhaps even outright negligence of the Department of Transport in not putting Canadian marine interests first.
The sensible thing to do is to take some of the actions that other countries have taken to inhibit fishing vessels of over five years of age, and other obsolete vessels over ten years of age from coming into service in our waters. If nothing is done these kinds of vessels can come in under international rules and conventions in the absence of any specific ban or controls by Canada.
Our fleet is aging so we need modern and upgraded vessels. Our shipyards can do the job. As usual, it is the indifference of the Department of Transport and the carelessness of the Minister that is making it hard for them to get on with this type of program. Once more I ask the Minister and his officials to read the very sensible proposals made by the Canadian Shipbuilding and Ship Repairing Association, and, after reading them, to do something positive.
The Department of Immigration, I might add, should also take a very close look at some of the practices being followed in allowing mariners from other countries to come in and take jobs from Canadian seamen. Certain companies often advertise very complex job descriptions which are not really indicative of the actual work which has to be done, and use that as a basis for taking in mariners from other countries, often the United Kingdom, to do jobs that could be done just as well and sometimes better by Canadian seamen.
I hope the Government will do something about this because it is ironic that, at a time when we are discussing the borrowing of billions of dollars, a little bit of help to some of the indigenous industries we have could generate some wealth in this country and stop the financial hemorrhaging which sees Parliament tied up in a constant parade of Borrowing Authority Bills.


Mr. Jesse P. Flis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Mr. Speaker, I will take the Hon. Member's representation for review by my Minister and also by officials of the Department.

May 26, 1983
Adjournment Debate
The Government's policy, as the Hon. Member knows, is to support an environment whereby shippers and shipowners have freedom to make commercial choices with a minimum of interference from Government. Surely that policy should be supported by the Hon. Member. This allows shipowners, for example, to purchase vessels from the cheapest source. This policy is consistent with Canada's international position on free trade. However, this policy of minimal interference does not prevent the Canadian Government from taking steps to protect shipping interests in Canada.
On January 6, 1983, the Government announced policies to extend and modify the coasting trade regime, thereby providing greater opportunities for Canadian flag vessels to work, increasing employment opportunities for Canadians. At the same time an extension of the customs and excise regime to the offshore was announced which will encourage the building of more ships in Canada. I was pleased that the Hon. Member gave the Government credit for that. This will support the new shipbuilding policy which extends the shipbuilding assistance program until July 1, 1985, and which provides for duty rates on ships operating in Canadian coasting activities of 20 per cent to 25 per cent of the fair market value.
With particular reference to the Rescue Kim, standard procedures must be followed by those wishing to register ships in Canada. Entry is not normally denied to ships which meet the ownership criteria and Canadian safety standards, which are among the highest in the world. The Rescue Kim has followed normal procedures and has complied with coastguard requirements.
The Government is concerned about Canadian shipping interests and, until new legislation is introduced into the House, all applications for foreign ships to work in Canadian waters, either temporarily or permanently, are being monitored closely. However, it is not the intention, through powers given by the Minister under the Canada Shipping Act or otherwise, to embark on a program of import restrictions that could be contrary to Canada's international obligations under GATT.


WESTERN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION ACT-REPORT OF PRIME MINISTER'S STATEMENTS. (B) POSITION OF PRIME MINISTER
Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am thankful for this opportunity to respond to an answer I received from the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) during Question Period on May 20. This flows from my feelings as a sitting Member in this House representing every man, woman and child in my riding, whether they be Conservative, Liberal, NDP, Communist or Rhinoceros. That is the fundamental tenet underlining the parliamentary system.
When an election is called and the writ is handed down, everyone lines up behind their favourite candidate and goes hell bent for election to get every possible vote so that candidate can arrive here in this House. But once those candidates arrive they become Hon. Members of certain ridings, as I am the Hon. Member for Athabasca. It really upsets me when the
Prime Minister of my country, holding the highest office in this land, goes from one end of the country to the other stating certain things to western producers who question the Crow rate changes because they are going to have such detrimental effects on western farmers.
Mr. Mills represents the cattle producers in Alberta. The Edmonton Journal of May 17 states:
Mills said Trudeau told the prairie wheat pools and farmer and cattle industry representatives "he didn't think this was the best solution they could come up with . . . not the best economic solution".
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) was admitting that the Crow was bad.
I would also like to quote from the Edmonton Journal of May 19, which states:
At his recent Jasper dinner to discuss freight rates, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau told agriculture industry representatives legislation to replace the Crow will not be changed to suit the West because the region "can't deliver Liberal votes in Parliament".
It is easy to be outraged at a statement from the Prime Minister of my country to western producers because they happen to vote NDP or Conservative. I see two Hon. Members sitting across the way who think that this is a big joke.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: No, no, we're just looking at you, Jack.


Jack Wendele Shields: Come with me to my riding and speak to some of the producers who are going bankrupt. They are upset because of the Crow debate and the change in statutory freight rates which will actually increase their shipping costs by 500 per cent within three years. Just think of that, 500 per cent! Yet people have come from across Canada to march on the House of Commons because they had mortgage rates which, when they renewed them, rose by 100 per cent. In some cases, their mortgage payments doubled. They marched on this House, they made their feelings known, and legislation was brought in to help these people. They were helped by the Provinces and by this Government.
In the last two years input costs to the farmer, the producer in western Canada, indeed in all of Canada, have increased four fold or five fold. They are hit with high energy costs.
One might think that increase applies only to gasoline and diesel fuel. Of course, it does not. One of the largest single outlays of a producer is the cost of the fertilizer he uses when he plants in the spring. Where does the fertilizer come from? It comes from plants that are users of energy. The energy is being taxed. Fertilizer comes from Petrosar and some of those plants which are paying the wellhead tax, the petroleum gas revenue tax. All of those taxes are included in the price of the very basic commodity of the fertilizer.
The producer must use diesel fuel to move his machinery around. Where does that fuel come from? He pays the same amount for his diesel fuel as the trucker or anyone who drives a diesel car. There are increased gasoline taxes. The Government is hitting the farmer with all those taxes, not recognizing
May 26, 1983

or considering the fact that the farmer produces from renewable resources-constantly renewing-and adds to the balance of payments of this country by something like $8 billion.
Yet the Prime Minister goes out to western Canada and says, "1 know that this is not the solution", and he shrugs. "I know that this is not the best economic solution for the producers in western Canada, but they cannot produce votes in western Canada. You people cannot produce Liberal votes". That underlines a feeling in this House.
1 had a totally different perception when I came to Ottawa. I felt that 1 would be able to work hand in hand with many of my colleagues on the other side and, indeed, many of my colleagues in the NDP. At times, we have sat on committees and have done that. It must be at the direction of the Prime Minister and a bankrupt front bench that the Government has taken this different attitude toward these matters that have come before the House for discussion.
SIS)
The Government has now introduced a borrowing authority Bill through which something like $4 billion or $5 billion will be held in reserve to be used to buy votes. 1 was aware that this does happen, but I was surprised to see it done so blatantly.
It is totally bankrupt, immoral and unjustified on the part of the Prime Minister to go to western Canada and say such a thing to producers who are worrying about their very livelihood, about losing their farms, who fear they will not be able to pass their family farms on to their children because they foresee bankruptcy as a result of a change in statutory freight rates that the Government is forcing through under closure. He has the unmitigated gall to tell those people, "You cannot deliver votes, therefore the Bill will go through."
Mir. Jesse P. Flis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport): Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the Hon. Member when he says that once a Member arrives in the House he or she represents every Canadian in that riding. If we expand that, the Prime Minister and this Parliament represent all Canadians across Canada.
The Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) did not say what the Hon. Member suggests. If the Hon. Member spent more time in the House, and it has been quite some time since I have seen him in his seat, although I am pleased to see him here during the Adjournment Debate, he would not misquote the Prime Minister as he has today in an attempt to score a few political points. I think it is a disgrace that the Hon. Member stands in his place and misquotes the Prime Minister of Canada the way he has done tonight.
I think the Crow rate debate involves a very emotional issue. I think we can categorize it into two areas. The first is whether there should be a change. I think most organizations across Canada agree that there has to be change. Even those organizations which want no change, proceed to give five or six points they would like to see changed in the Bill. They are saying, "yes, give us the Bill but with these changes." I suggest that we have come a long way in an effort to accommodate those amendments that Canadians, especially those out west,
Adjournment Debate
have asked for. Whether there should be change is not negotiable. There must be change.
The second element of the Crowsnest debate is what sort of change should take place. The bigger question is what change is considered desirable. It is clear that on this question there are deeply held differences of views in the west and across Canada.
The Prime Minister and the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) have been candid in admitting that the original proposal was perhaps better-that is what the Prime Minister was saying out west-but that the present proposal under Bill C-155 is still considerably better than doing nothing, which is what the Hon. Member and the NDP want to do. His Party does not want to do that. Their official critic and Members speaking on that side have been saying we should bring the Bill to committee, but with changes. I do not know where the Member has been during these weeks, because he seems to be missing what his own Party is asking for. His Party is not rejecting the Bill outright. It is saying to bring in the Bill but with some changes.
I urge the Opposition to understand the need for the revision of the Crow rate to allow for the upgrading of the western rail transportation system. It is important to all Canadians that this legislation should pass.


INCOME TAX-DEDUCTIONS FOR CHILD CARE EXPENSES. (B) REQUEST THAT TAX CREDIT REPLACE CURRENT PROVISION
Mrs. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to elaborate on my question of May 2 to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde).
The child care expense deduction is intended to help defray expenses incurred for the care of children under 14 while parent or parents are working. The system of providing some relief for child care costs through the current tax deduction is inadequate, inequitable and discriminatory. The Minister's answers were also inadequate.
A change to the child care expense deduction proposed in the April budget which removes one discriminatory aspect of this deduction creates a new and more insidious discrimination against the unemployed. Prior to the April budget any working mother could claim the deduction, regardless of the husband's presence or absence, and regardless of his activities, whether he was working, studying or unemployed. However, a man could claim the deduction only if his wife was clearly not available to care for the children, one circumstance being separation. In addition, the man had to meet stricter requirements, such as legal proof of separation. No one would deny that it is overwhelmingly women who assume child care responsibilities, or that the law was seen to reinforce the traditional view that women are responsible for child care, but as well created inequities for some fathers.
The budget proposes to remove sex discrimination from the Income Tax Act and make the child care expense deduction

May 26, 1983
Adjournment Debate
available equally to men and women. Once the proposed change comes into effect the spouse with the lower income will be required to claim the deduction. For a couple, both spouses must have jobs to be eligible for the deduction, unless one spouse is infirm, in an institution or a full-time student. Before the change a mother could claim the deduction if her husband was laid off or unemployed. When the law is changed neither the mother nor the father will be able to claim it if one of them is unemployed. This is the point I was trying to stress to the Minister.
With a record number of unemployed, this inequity will hurt many Canadian families who require assistance with their child care costs. Many, as I pointed out, have been unemployed for a period of over one year. The lack of child care is often a barrier for women looking for jobs. The costs of child care are even more prohibitive for people without an adequate income or for a family with both parents normally working suddenly faced with only one pay cheque.
The new budget change will be of greater aid to rich mothers. Tax deductions always benefit higher income families more than lower income families. Even though many people in lower income brackets claim this deduction, those in the higher brackets receive a bigger benefit.
An example of how this inequity comes about was mentioned in an article by George Brett in his column "Dollars and Sense" in The Toronto Star on May 2. It referred to two Ontario women, a secretary and a lawyer, each of whom has two children in day care. The low paid secretary when she makes out her 1983 tax return will get back $1,124 while the high paid lawyer will get back $1,776. Doubling the deductions simply increases this inequity and the regressivity of the tradition. Neither women receives anything close to the actual amount she spends on child care costs estimated at $12 a day or $3,200 a year.
There are other problems with the child care expense deduction besides its inherent regressivity. Many people cannot claim the deduction because of the requirement for receipts and the social insurance numbers of the care givers. A large group of parents not claiming the deduction are low income parents who are unable to get the required receipts. While receipts are readily available from day care centres and live in nannies, these types of care are the most expensive and, therefore, used by higher income parents. Lower and middle income families tend to use unlicensed less expensive babysitters who do not provide receipts. More families in the coming year will find that they cannot claim the child care expense deduction if one of them is unemployed.
We believe the Government could have chosen other mechanisms to spend money more equitably on child care. In the 1980 taxation year the cost to the federal Government in forgone revenue was approximately $54 million. This money should be spent in the most equitable manner possible.
The NDP believes that all families regardless of income must have access to affordable quality child care. Our longterm goal is a universally accessible fully funded child care system. In the interim, a refundable child care expense tax
credit would be the most equitable system. This conclusion was supported by the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in 1970, by the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the National Action Committee and many other groups across the country. The National Council of Welfare and the Canadian Council on Social Development have long been calling for a restructuring of the child benefit system. The Government should stop ignoring good advice and act to create a better system of contributing to child care costs.
1 am sure, Mr. Speaker, being very interested in child care services yourself, you will agree with this.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member has raised four points which I would like to address very quickly. First of all she claimed that the new measure discriminates against unemployed people. For the second time I would like to clarify for her that this is not the case. The work status of the taxpayer is irrelevant. The income level of the taxpayer is the only relevant standard applied here. The taxpayer cannot claim more than two-thirds of earned income under this deduction. If a taxpayer with two children wants the full $4,000 deduction, that taxpayer must have $6,000 of declared earned income; from where it comes is irrelevant. Whether it is unemployment insurance, private income or working income is irrelevant. It must simply be no more than two-thirds of earned income. That is the only test.
Second, she said that in the past we discriminated against fathers. That was true, and that discrimination was removed in the budget.
Third, she said that the budget measures discriminate between rich and poor. I ask her to look at the other measures which are connected very directly in the budget to this one. For example the employment expense credit can only be used to its fullest impact by low income earners, by people who earn up to $16,000. People with incomes beyond that level do not obtain the full benefit of that deduction. The high Child Tax Credit is being continued and indexed fully because of our concern for lower income workers.
Finally she said that low income people cannot obtain receipts for their child care expenses. She should recognize in those circumstances that the people providing the child care will not give receipts because they do not want to pay income tax. She is asking us to approve and to continue a system of cheating. We are not about to do that.
I would like to close with the observation that I agree with her that there should be a full system of child care available from the day of infancy until a child graduates from school. I ask her to join with the Government and with other spokesmen to pressure some of the provincial Governments into accepting their responsibility. We pay half the cost of the Canada Assistance Program and the other cost sharing efforts in this regard, and it is about time people like the Honourable Bill Davis in Ontario accepted their full responsibilities under these measures.
May 26, 1983

Adjournment Debate
[Translation]	this House stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at 11
o'clock.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please! The motion to adjourn At 6.29 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, pursuant to Standing Order.

Friday, May 27, 1983