1983-03-29

Hon. Paul J. Cosgrove (for the Minister of Finance) moved: that Bill C-143, to provide supplementary borrowing authority, be read the third time and do pass.
He said: Mr. Speaker, I want to conclude my comments on this legislation by addressing three areas under the following headings: Why is the Government requesting authority to borrow at this time? What will the money be used for? How does the Government control these expenditures, and indeed expenditures generally?
I remind Hon. Members of the financial statement of October 27 by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) wherein he made the following comments:
I have also made it clear from the estimates I have presented that further borrowing authority will be required before the end of this fiscal year. In the budget I intend to present early in 1983, I will review again the fiscal situation for the current fiscal year, set out estimates for 1983-1984 and future fiscal years, and then seek additional borrowing authority as required.
The Minister of Finance has indicated that he will set the date for the upcoming budget within the next few days. Addressing the first part of the Bill, in the interim and, second, in the immediate period of the budget and post-budget, interim borrowing authority is sought. That is the purpose of the legislation before us.
What about the funds which are sought under this request for authority to borrow? We know that the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) tabled in this House some 6,000 pages of Main Estimates. This is an indication of the expenditure program of the Government, which is an annual event for programs established under authority of legislation of Parliament. In tabling the estimates, the President of the Treasury Board signalled that two-thirds of these budgetary estimates are slated for statutory expenditures based on continuing authority by Acts of Parliament. These estimates show in great detail the wide variety of programs being carried out by the Government, living up to its responsibilities under the legislation I have just indicated, and assisting Canadians during this very significant downturn in the economy.
The estimates reflect a 21 per cent rise in cash payments under the Established Programs Financing Act whereby the
federal Government contributes to the financing of hospital insurance, medicare, extended health care and post-secondary education. They indicate a $2.9 billion allocation to Unemployment Insurance in order to assist in this recessionary time in the economy. The estimates demonstrate a 21 per cent increase in federal contributions to the Provinces, for example, and to the Canada Assistance Plan.
The federal Government pays for 50 per cent of eligible provincial-municipal expenditures for assistance payments, welfare payments and a number of health programs. We also cover 50 per cent of the cost of child support services such as foster care, daycare, and a broad array of family and social support services. I do not have to remind Hon. Members of the continuing and pressing need for funding in this area. That is what the Government intends to address through the funds sought by the authority in the legislation before us today.
More than that, scarcely a day goes by, Mr. Speaker, but that we are reminded of the initiatives taken by the Government, again signalled in the October 27 statement of the Minister of Finance, for example through the NEED Program, job-generation programs which are designed to assist people whose Unemployment Insurance benefits are terminating. The funding for that program is assisted by the request for authority presently before the House and in the legislation for which we seek approval today.
With respect to the comments which have been made that the expenditures are not wisely or efficiently accounted for- and this is the third point I wish to draw to the attention of Hon. Members-I remind them again that this Government accepted the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability, the Lambert Commission. This Government, together with the former Conservative Government, has accepted the procedure whereby expenditures of the Government are split, in terms of Cabinet responsibilities, into a number of envelopes. Within these envelopes, Ministers of kin responsibilities are obliged to set priorities and to set off against one another claims for expenditures in their areas of responsibility.
There are other controls as well, Mr. Speaker. All budgetary appropriations of funds, of course, must be approved by Parliament, and we have the system of a very detailed examination of the estimates through the Standing Committees of the House. For example, on two occasions I have been before the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs to account for, explain and give detailed responses to

March 29, 1983
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detailed questions of Eton. Members as to the expenditure in the Department of Insurance. Therefore, each Minister of the Government is called before Standing Committees of the House to answer and to account for the expenditures of the Government, not only for the funds which are sought today in this legislation, but all other operations of the Government.
We know as well, Mr. Speaker, some of us only too dearly, that Treasury Board is a mechanism of the Government, this Government and the preceding Conservative Government, which guards jealously the actual implementation and expenditure of funds under general programs. We know as well that the Auditor General examines the Government's financial statements and carefully reports to Parliament on his findings. I would like to repeat again what I said earlier in our deliberations on this legislation, that so much good work was done by the former Auditor General, Mr. Macdonell. He showed such leadership in strengthening the controls and the overview of Government expenditures in that part of Government operations through the exercise of the office of the Auditor General.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, in a broader policy range, in 1975 the Government announced that it would hold the trend growth of its expenditures to no more than the general trend growth of the economy. I remind Hon. Members that over the period from 1975 to 1980 the Government successfully met that objective. In 1981, of course, with the deterioration of the economy, expenditures rose more rapidly and that was witnessed by the Government's response, for example, in increasing its commitment to Unemployment Insurance payments and, unfortunately, as well, calling for a similar increase in contributions by the private sector in order to meet a situation which, as I have indicated, was caused by the downturn in the economy.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I have attempted very briefly, under three headings, to address what I believe to be three important points that Hon. Members will take into account when considering the request by the Government for the borrowing authority in the legislation before us this morning.
I have attempted to explain, first, that the Government requires this authority to meet pressing needs of Canadians. That, I think, in normal times would have been explanation enough; it is to meet the ongoing expenditures of the Government particularly at this time of year.
Second, I have indicated that the Government through the estimates, in thousands and thousands of items, has detailed the expenditures.
Finally, I have attempted to outline the controls and safeguards that guide the Government in its attempt, efficiently and in a businesslike way, to manage the expenditure of funds, not only in this authority to borrow but in all Government expenditures. I urge Hon. Members to conclude this debate and to vote, enabling the Government to proceed with this authority as quickly as possible.


Hon. Erik Nielsen (Leader of the Opposition):: Mr. Speaker, there can be no doubt that the Government has so mismanaged the economy of the country that it is now broke. It is utterly broke. It has exercised emergency powers under Section 39 of the Financial Administration Act for the first time in our history.
Last Friday when I raised the matter with the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) in the House, he tried to draw a parallel between what he was doing in exercising the powers granted to him under Section 39 of the Financial Administration Act and circumstances which occurred in 1962. There is no relationship whatsoever. This is the first time in our history that the Government has gone to emergency borrowing powers, once a week, and has borrowed in excess of $2.5 billion according to orders in council tabled in the House yesterday. That is a shameful situation, Mr. Speaker.
We find statements of the Minister of Finance such as those which appeared in The Globe and Mail recently, when he said that the federal Government deficit is like an accordion, to be a very curious view of the deficit. He should learn to play better than he sings. In his hands the deficit has been more like a balloon which is constantly being inflated by the Government and which, at some point, must burst.
The Minister's role as an accordion player is very appropriate. It conjures up the image of the organ grinder. And what does that make the Minister of State for Finance (Mr. Cosgrove)? Is he the one who carries the tin cup? The problem between the Minister of Finance and the Minister of State for Finance is that it is difficult to know, from time to time, who is playing and who is dancing. I can tell the Minister of State for Finance where the majority of Canadians would like to see him and his colleagues on the Treasury benches these days, and it is not where they presently are.
We confront this Bill among gathering clouds of uncertainty and the highest unemployment rate since the great Depression. It is in this context that the Government seeks authority to borrow $19 billion to meet its cash requirements, in the meantime exercising emergency powers to stay afloat. As has been pointed out time after time in the House, of the total amount, $14 billion relates to the coming fiscal year, to budgetary demands, to fiscal and monetary policies of which the House has not yet been given an inkling. We are being asked to finance policies that we have not yet seen and to underwrite programs which we know nothing about.
The most serious issue in this country today, sir, is the two million Canadians who cannot find jobs. Another 600,000 students and young people are coming on to the labour market in the next month or two with no hope that there is going to be employment in this land which used to be a land of plenty before these rascals did it in. There is no indication, sir, that this Bill will in any way address the problems of those two million unemployed Canadians and the 600,000 young people coming on to the job market this summer. This Government, sir, has shown itself to be totally unconcerned about the
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unemployed. It has taken an utterly cavalier attitude towards unemployment.
This, sir, is the Government that turned off the tap, that froze out foreign investment, that obstructed the oil and gas industry, that fumbled the megaprojects. This is the Government that accorded special treatment to its friends. It put one former assistant of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) at the head of the Canada Development Investment Corporation with powers of life and death over a multitude of companies and corporations, and another Minister to whom the first must report. The Prime Minister showed his concern for the unemployed when he relegated the discussions on the economy to a dinnertime chat with the Premiers and then put it back to the evening prior to the opening of the constitutional meeting in mid-March. He had an in depth discussion of the unemployment problem in this country, an in depth discussion of the serious economic problems facing the country, and in depth, detailed discussion between the vichyssoise and the filet mignon. To hundreds of thousands of unemployed Canadians, the signal is clear: beware the Ides of March. That, sir, is not good enough.
The Conservative Party, in the face of the enveloping crisis rending this country on the jobless issue, would call a national conference lasting from two to three days and bring in the Premiers with representatives of business and industry to organize a concerted attack on the problem of unemployment. The Minister has said he needs the borrowing Bill to pay Unemployment Insurance claims which are speculated to be in the order of $12 billion and to pay welfare and create jobs. If the Government had not turned off jobs in the first place with negative and destructive policies like FIRA and the NEP, we would not have these enormous cash requirements.


Mr. Fisher:: Are you against those, Erik?


Erik Nielsen: I trust that the Member who opens his mouth from his seat more than he does when he is standing will participate in this debate.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: More than happy to. Are you against these-


Erik Nielsen: I am saying to the Hon. Member that those buffoons that he supports have adopted policies which have created two million unemployed in this country, with another 600,000 students coming on the job market this summer with no hope whatsoever. That is what those people on the Treasury Board benches have done. I cannot understand why he, among other backbenchers, continues to support these rascals.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Are you against FIRA?


Erik Nielsen: Obviously, they are supporting policies of unemployment.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Are you against FIRA? You just attacked it; have the courage to answer the question.
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Erik Nielsen: I join the millions of Canadians who say that this Government is doing a rotten job, and the sooner they get off those Treasury benches, the better.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: The Minister knows very well that one of the major reasons for this unusual demand of $14 billion in the coming fiscal year is to service the huge borrowing already undertaken by this Government. Sir, they are borrowing to pay their debts. The Government's debt charges now represent nearly a fifth of all its expenditures. When a Government reaches that point, insolvency is no longer just a word. I emphasize again that the Government's cash requirements in the coming fiscal year should be outlined in budgetary form. That is the practice of this place; that is the tradition of this place; that is the history of this place.
[DOT] (U30)
This Bill should be accompanied by a budget in which the Government sets out the specific purposes of the expenditures, the reasons for these huge cash requirements, and outlines the fiscal and monetary positions which it intends to take in order to restore the country's economy. A few moments ago the Minister of State for Finance was lauding the Committee system and the number of times that he and other Ministers appeared before Committees to examine these expenditures. I see him nodding his head in the affirmative. What time do Members of Parliament get in this great Committee system to question in detail about expenditures of this nature? Five minutes for $14 billion!


Douglas Glenn Fisher: One of them was five hours.


Erik Nielsen: Then Members, like that yappy one over there, dragged red herrings throughout the whole process of the Committee system, taking up time and making excuses for a Government which does not know where it is going or where it has been.
The House and the country are also entitled, as a concomitant of this Bill, to an outline of the taxation policies which the Government intends to impose in order to raise funds to meet these pyramiding debt charges. That is why we need a budget. The country is entitled to know where we are going. The reason we do not know where we are going is that the Government does not know where it is going. This House is entitled to have full information and we get the least.
The reason the Government has not seen fit to fill in the budgetary blanks in its fiscal and monetary position is very simple. The Government cannot tell the House where it is going because it does not have the least idea. There is another reason that it does not tell us. It is because it does not want Canadians to know the deep trouble into which it has plunged the country. It is quite obvious that the Government, in coming here with its hand out for a blank cheque covering the coming fiscal period, without the usual explanations and with no true

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indication of the present state of the economy, is desperately trying to keep from Canadians the raw truth about the serious difficulties in which we find ourselves.
We are entitled to a full budgetary background to this Bill. We do not have it because the Government does not dare to give it. To do so would be to let the cat of fiscal mismanagement out of the bag. The Government does not dare let Canadians know how close to the edge of economic insolvency it is now hovering.
The Minister talks glibly of letting the deficit grow and of spending to stimulate the economy. This is another example of that peculiar irresponsibility by which Members of the Government are afflicted. How could any Government in this country spend more than this Government has spent? They are heading for total expenditures, I believe, of $90 billion. How could they possibly make the deficit any larger? If anyone could accomplish it, they are the gang who can. It is now moving up to $30 billion. If there was any way of stimulating the economy, would it not have been stimulated by the enormous expenditures of the Government? The economy is certainly not suffering from understimulation: it is suffering from raw, bad management. It is suffering from waste, extravagance, lack of direction, confusion and the application of ideological nostrums to our economic problems.
Without exception, every policy application by the Government in the past three years has had a negative impact. Another wave of reckless spending by the denizens of the Langevin Block will not restore investor confidence one iota. A further demoralization of our fiscal standing will not bring back the megaprojects. The only cure for the condition in which the country finds itself is the removal of this Government and a return to coherent, practical policies directed to the realitites of our economy, which those fellows just choose not to recognize.
Turning to just one area of the Government's stumble-footed approach to the economy, let me point out that in the United States oil companies in the private sector pay substantial fees into the federal treasury for the privilege of undertaking exploration. In this country continuing Government interference has destroyed the confidence of entrepreneurs to the point where those who have not pulled up stakes are now being paid incentives by the Government to undertake exploration. What a topsy-turvy fiscal policy!
This is not a sign of lack of confidence in Canada; this is a sign of a total lack of confidence in the Government. It is clear that foreign investment will not come into the Beaufort Sea, to give one example, in the very large amounts necessary as long as the Government's centralist and interventionist policies continue to operate. Therein lies the tragedy of our situation. That is why unemployment is at an all time high. All this is spite of the fact that expenditures have increased under the Government since 1968-79 by some 630 per cent.
Then you ask, sir, where are the jobs? Where are the jobs that should have resulted from this enormous stimulation of the economy? The Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) will tell you, sir, of the thousands and thousands of jobs he has created, paper jobs. The Minister of
Finance will talk of the billions he has poured into job creation. Where are the jobs which have resulted from these enormous expenditures? If they had created one-tenth of the jobs they claim, there would not be a single unemployed person in the country.
It is the duty of the House to vote down this Bill until such time as Parliament has full information. Certainly we in the Official Opposition intend to do just that. To do otherwise is an insult to nearly two million unemployed Canadians and a smack in the face for 600,000 young people coming on to the job market this summer.


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, I am not pleased to rise today to speak during time allocation on a Bill which asks Parliament to approve the borrowing of $19 billion. In fact, $19 billion is the largest borrowing authority the House of Commons has ever witnessed. We are debating this matter today under time allocation, which is a euphemism for closure, for muzzling Parliament, for cutting off debate and for stopping the Opposition from raising critical points. That is what closure or time allocation is all about.
We are seeing a Government which says that it can no longer take the heat, that it can no longer stand the points raised by Opposition Members; so it muzzles the Opposition and makes a mockery out of the House of Commons. The people of this country have felt very strongly about this institution of the House of Commons. We have come to respect the Mother of Parliament in the United Kingdom and Canadians have respected the House of Commons for many generations. Recently, however, the Government of Canada has made a mockery of the House of Commons.
The role of Parliament is to collect taxes wisely and spend them wisely. We have just witnessed the spectacle of Bill C-139 being introduced in the House. Once again, Parliament was muzzled and debate terminated by the Government's closure motion because the Opposition was criticizing the tax system. We said that we did not believe that 139 changes in tax legislation were appropriate at this time and that grabbing more taxes was not an appropriate step. We said that we did not believe that raising taxes for low and middle income Canadians in this country while giving tax breaks to the rich was the approach to take. We were speaking against that Bill until the Government muzzled us in Parliament and eliminated our criticisms by its closure motion.
Today we are once again asked enthusiastically to endorse the borrowing of $19 billion without knowing precisely how the money will be spent. I suggest that if any individual Canadian or Member of Parliament were to go to a bank, credit union or caisse populaire and ask the manager for $2,000, $20,000 or $200,000, we would then be expected to explain how we would use that money. That is not an unreasonable request. A prudent bank manager would expect to be told how that money would be used and repaid.
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That is all that Members of the Opposition are asking the Government. We simply want to know how it will use the $19 billion because past experience does not give us much confidence in simply writing the Government a blank cheque. However, many Members on the Government side have stood up to say that they will not tell us how the money will be spent. They either do not know or have any faith in what they will do, but they will not tell us. It is unrealistic for the Government of Canada to ask us, as concerned Members of Parliament, to endorse a borrowing authority of $19 billion without illustrating very clearly how that money will be used.
Two million people have lost their jobs in this country. Many of those jobs will not be reinstated when the recovery eventually occurs. As well, there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians living daily under the threat of job loss and wondering whether they will be receiving termination or lay-off notices at the end of each week or whether they will be cut back to three or four working days a week. An increasing proportion of our population live in an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear.
One of the most disgraceful acts that I have recently witnessed occurred when the chief financial adviser to the Government, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Gerald Bouey, said that the question asked by the two million unemployed Canadians and the some 600,000 young Canadians who will be graduating from vocational schools, universities and colleges without prospects of employment about what the Government will do about unemployment was the wrong question. His response was that the question should not concern what the Government will do about it or how it will put these people back to work but how soon will the inflation rate be reduced.
Can you imagine anything more ridiculous in your life than to go to an unemployed person who has worked for many years of his or her life in a plant, factory, office or shop, only to find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own and with likely no prospect for work in the future, and say that he or she should not be asking why they are unemployed and how the Government will assist them, but should be asking how the Government will reduce the rate of inflation.
Since he is the one who is giving advice to the Government, it is little wonder it is stumbling, fumbling, and falling all over itself in terms of its fiscal and monetary policies. Obviously, the Government does not know what to do. It is afraid to venture out boldly and show that now is the time to invest in the productive capacity that will not only create jobs today but result in revenues coming to the senior levels of Government in the years ahead.
Let me give two examples. Every industrialized nation but two has launched an aggressive policy of railroad electrification. Those two exceptions are Canada and the United States. For all intents and purposes Canada is not interested in actively pursuing railroads electrification. Our hydro-electric potential in most regions of Canada is so extensive that there is export potential for generations into the future. It is a renewable and clean resource and one which Canada should be developing as part of its railroad system. Sweden has 99 per
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cent of its railroads electrified and countries like Switzerland, Austria and West Germany have 70 per cent of their railroads electrified. The Soviet Union, which is comparable to Canada, has recently electrified approximately 100,000 kilometres of its rail lines.
I must give the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) credit since he has recently taken the initiative to provide some millions of dollars to assist the Province of British Columbia in electrifying the railway which moves coal from the northeast deposit sites down to the railroad systems.


Mr. Parker:: And destroys southeastern British Columbia.


Nelson Andrew Riis: As my colleague indicates, there will be some problems in terms of coal in the southwest, but the point is that I give the Government some credit for giving an indication that railroad electrification is a matter which should be considered. But what better time than now to launch a program of railroad electrification in this country? If such a program were started now, it would put people back to work in the manufacturing sector and on the railways. Since all the tunnels in western Canada will have to be increased in height, hundreds of thousands of steelworkers and miners will be put back to work for up to three years. That is the type of investment the Government should be considering now. That would not be wild Government spending but an investment in the future of the country. It will be done in the future but it will never be cheaper than it is today, and the employment is needed immediately.
Let me make another proposal, since Government Members opposite often accuse Members on this side of criticising the Government and not offering suggestions. I have just made one suggestion and I will make another one. Now is the time to launch a bold, imaginative and creative program in municipal public works across the country. Every municipality in the villages, towns, cities or metropolitan areas have plans on their books for new sewer systems, water systems, streets, sidewalks, parks, recreation centres, cultural centres, docks and marinas. Those plans exist and the implementation of those projects will put people to work immediately. They are not frivolous make-work projects since those projects will have to be undertaken eventually. They will not be any cheaper than they are now and the need for work will never be greater. They will result in returns to local, provincial and federal Governments in the future.
These projects represent investments in Canada's future. Members of Parliament, particularly from the NDP, have stated that the stimulation of our economy is the route the Government should follow. Let us see some serious and thoughtful stimulation not only in terms of short-term job creation but long-term job creation as well.
I want to say that we are not calling for the kind of make-work projects to which too often the Minister of Employment and Immigration relates and we are not talking about a project

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simply to cut a trail for six months or to clean up a beach for six weeks. Those things can continue. We are talking about investment in Canada's future, investment in sound economic development proposals. One could go on and on with a litany of things. We have day after day laid out various proposals, but what do we hear from the Government and Members opposite? Are they concerned about the two million unemployed in this country? If they are, they ought to demonstrate what they are going to do about their plight. They ought to identify as a goal, in this budget that is coming in the next two weeks, full employment.
Canada is a country with 24 million people. It is the second largest land mass of any sovereign nation in the world and we have more resources per capita than any country in the world. If we cannot have a legitimate goal for employment, then no one can. Yet I do not hear Members opposite talking about a full employment option for Canada. Quite frankly, with all due respect to my Conservative colleagues, I do not hear them calling for a full employment option, a goal or an objective for this country. It is time to send a very clear signal to Canadians that full employment is our goal and outline the strategies to accomplish that goal.
However, we become rather disappointed when we hear time and time again that we cannot stimulate our economy, that we cannot take aggressive and bold measures to get Canadians working and to develop our economy in a serious way. We hear about restraint instead. It is interesting, Mr. Speaker, when you look at those folks advocating restraint and who say "Don't stimulate the economy; don't get Canadians back to work", that almost inevitably they are some of the most highly paid in Canada who are very secure in their jobs. One example is the head of Beil Canada, who said recently that Canadians are living with an unrealistic expectation syndrome. It sounds as though he has been coaching Governor Bouey of the Bank of Canada. Governor Bouey also spoke recently about Canadians having too high expectations.
However, two million Canadians simply want a job. Six hundred thousand young Canadians simply want to find a decent job for the first time in their life. Small businesses simply want to expand their operations. Farmers with small farms and ranches simply want to expand their operations or, as some of my colleagues say, they simply want to survive. Is this an unrealistic expectation? But notice that the man who says that Canadians should not be striving for these kinds of things makes only $600,000 a year as head of Bell Canada. Governor Bouey, the man who says "Hold off, bite the bullet, Canadians", tells two million people just to wait it out, that all is fine, and that they are asking the wrong questions anyway. He says to 600,000 young Canadians: "Just relax; eventually things will turn around". Granted, because he is protected by a salary in excess of $104,000 as he is hunkered down in that glass bunker of his protected from the real world, he can say those kinds of things.
It is a sad day when you hear people you should respect, people who ought to know better, suggesting to Canadians that these are the things they have to accept. I say that Canadians
do not have to accept these kinds of situations. Canada does not have to accept two million people out of work, a number that will increase as time goes on. Canada does not have to accept increasing personal bankruptcies, business bankruptcies and farm bankruptcies.
Back in 1972 the Hon. Member for Mission-Port Moody (Mr. Rose), and more recently the Hon. Member for Cariboo-Chilcotin (Mr. Greenaway), pointed out what the Government of Canada was doing to the small farmer and small rancher. Because of the high interest rate policies of the Government of Canada, these people have been forced to leave their farms and seek employment elsewhere on a full or part-time basis. Perhaps a person has a small ranch in Central British Columbia, a family operation. The family consists of a husband, wife and two or three children. Perhaps they have 80, 90 or 100 head of cattle. They are trying to provide Canada with foodstuffs from one of the most critical sectors of the economy. They are trying to provide Canada with a vibrant, realistic and creative operation. Yet because of high interest rates, people like this have to leave the farm and find work in municipal work programs, in logging camps, on railroads, on highway crews, or wherever they can find work to subsidize the banks, to help meet those interest rate payments.
Then along comes Revenue Canada. These tax people who have sat in rabbit warrens in Ottawa for too long are now conducting audits across the country and saying to people: "This is not a full-time farming operation, it is part-time. You make more money off the farm than you do on the farm. Therefore, we have to tax you differently. You cannot have the tax deductions of a full-time ranch operation." Yet nothing has changed in terms of the operation. Just because these people are now seeking work outside, they cannot use the traditional deductions. The auditors tell people: "We are going to cut down your deductions." This will make it impossible for these people to be food producers and it will make it impossible for the family ranch to continue in operation. It will make it impossible for this most critical sector of the agriculture community to survive.
That is happening in western Canada today. I have received dozens and dozens of letters from people. My colleague the Hon. Member for Cariboo-Chilcotin has probably received more because of the number of ranchers in his constituency. The Hon. Member from Mission-Port Moody is experiencing the same thing. He has had letters from people saying they are being audited one, two, three and four years back.
What is the Government of Canada trying to do? The Government is trying to come before Parliament day after day to borrow more money. We are told that the Government is not going to indicate very clearly how the money will be spent. We hear Liberals say that they do not know what to do about the unemployment situation in this country; that they do not know how to build consumer and investor confidence. But it is unrealistic to expect Members of Parliament to support this legislation at this time. It is unrealistic of the Government to
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expect Members of Parliament to endorse that kind of a nonpolicy. We listen to non-speak all the time. Now we have nonpolicy.
Members of the Opposition will simply refuse to go along with this type of Government during these very critical times. What this country needs is strong leadership, a Government with some vision of what this country should be. The Canadian people know what this country can be and ought to be. It is time the Government took that clue itself and gave Canada a vision. If the Government cannot do that, it should look to political parties with a vision for what this country can and should be, and call an election so we can provide an opportunity for the people of Canada to choose the option they see fit.


Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, we are today addressing the last phases of a borrowing authority Bill which asks us without a full statement to give this Government, the most incompetent, the most careless and the most wasteful in the history of Canada, the right to borrow $19 billion. This Government wants to borrow $14 billion without even a statement as to how the money is to be raised and without even a statement as to where we are going in a budget.
This is a Government that decided to abandon all formal criteria in connection with coming to the House of Commons for borrowing authority. I remind the Government that it was only on May 31, 1982 that the former Minister of Finance said:
I would not expect the House to act upon an additional request for borrowing authority without providing it with detailed information on the economic situation and the implications of that situation on the government's fiscal situation. I do not think it would be appropriate to ask the House for additional borrowing authority until I have laid out in some detail an update of both the economic situation and the fiscal situation, and 1 certainly will be doing that before I would come back to the House for additional borrowing authority.
The information with respect to the situation for this current fiscal year of 1982-1983, the year ending on March 31 next, was finally pried out of Government at Committee. But the Government has not given us one iota of detail with respect to where we are going in 1983-1984. It is with that in mind that I thought I would address the House this morning, because we cannot in all justification, as elected Members of Parliament, properly vote for a Bill where all previous practise indicates that no such Bill should be produced. We cannot in all conscience, fulfilling our oath of requirement to our electors, allow the borrowing of money without accountability. We cannot allow the borrowing of money without a budget. When we do so we break with the whole tradition of parliamentary control over the financing of Government.
I think we should look at where we are going. We must look at the history. This Government has been in office for some 14 years now. Only one year in the past 14 has it managed not to show a deficit. In good years it borrowed and borrowed and borrowed, and when we have a recession in some countries and a depression in this country, it borrows more and more and more.
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The Hon. Member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen), the Leader of the Official Opposition, indicated today that we were, in effect, in bankruptcy. The Government has driven us to the point where perhaps we must look at the fact that our currency may not any longer be sound. In Committee yesterday, the Hon. Member for York-Peel (Mr. Stevens) indicated how, in comparing the credit of Canada with the credit of other sovereign nations in the world, Canada had been reduced by all indicators from fifth in the world to seventh in the world. The OECD did a comparison of our economic strength last year. There are 24 countries in the OECD and we managed to rank 24th.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: What is the answer that you heard last night?


Donald Alex Blenkarn: The Government has done it to us. My friend from Mississauga North (Mr. Fisher) asks what is the answer to that. We could not get an answer from the Governor of the Bank of Canada last night because the Governor of the Bank of Canada has become an apologist for the performance of the Government or incompetent Government.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. The Chair should remind Hon. Members that it is against procedure to refer to matters before Committees of the House. A matter cannot be before a Committee and in the House at the same time.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: I want to advise you, sir, that this matter is before the House, but it is sometimes necessary that we get information in the Finance Committee of the House, and the other Parliamentary Standing Committees of the House.
My friend from Mississauga North is trying to defend the impossible. He knows that it is not possible really, but he tries. He is a good Liberal, though I do not know what a good Liberal is. Perhaps a good Liberal is someone who will sell his country out or borrow his country out. That is his purpose. He can face the electors with that purpose and we will see what happens.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: I will be happy to face the electors.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, what we have to do today and through the next month is determine where we are going as a country. What we have to do is determine what obligations there are for a Government to perform. I think we would all agree that it is necessary for Government to defend its people from foreigners, to protect its soil, to protect the integrity of its country, to make sure that law and order are in place. We do not do a very good job of that. I think we would all agree that it is necessary for Government in this world, certainly today, to look after the sick and the weak in our society, to make sure that those who are incapable of really looking after their own affairs in terms of their financial health are able to get by, to have a reasonable standard of living, to be reasonably well cared for, to be reasonably well housed. I think we will agree that it is important that we educate our children so that they will be able to carry on in our place, build our country, make

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our country a progressive place and contribute to world society.
Beyond that, I think it is about time we started looking to what other things Government should be doing and to what extent is Government essential beyond that. Is it Government's function to interfere in the means of distribution and the manufacture of products? Is it Government's duty to be involved in the business community? Is it Government's obligation to make grants to transport companies owned by its friends? Is it Government's duty to look after those who could look after themselves but would rather have the taxpayer bail them out? Is it not time that we as a nation, that we as a Parliament, put some priorities on where we spend Government funds and how we allow money that is borrowed at exceedingly high rates, borrowed on the credit of our children and our children's children, to be spent? Is it not fair that we examine where our priorities are, where we should be going and what Government should be doing? What are the limits of Government?
Can we really expect to carry on when the proportion that we as a society allocate to the management of its affairs by Government has now crept up to very close to 50 per cent of the Gross National Product? Can we really justify situations where federally-owned Crown corporations alone control $34 billion worth of business in a year? That is not taking into account provincial Crown corporations such as hydro corporations and the like.
I think it is about time that we as a nation started looking at what our needs are. What are our needs? Some people say they need a holiday. My wife says we need a new dryer. My daughter thinks she needs a new car. Where are needs? We look around at what this Government spends; we go to certain Ministers' offices. I see the Minister of Transport is here; I had an opportunity when we were the Government to go to the top of his high flying office space. Tie has an office where you could bury your feet in the carpets.


Mr. Pepin:: I never use it. I never go there.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Is that the kind of needs that we should be financing?


Jean-Luc Pepin: I never use it. It is now offices for my staff.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Are those the kinds of needs that we should borrow for?


An Hon. Member:: What about his train?


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Somewhere along the line we must priorize where we are going. What are we doing with this money that the Government wants to borrow? What has happened is that we have gone wrong in the way we manage of our country. We have gone to a situation where somehow Government determines that the needs of Departments are all of a sudden absolute needs that must be financed by taxes and borrowing. If you cannot tax enough you borrow, and it does not really matter because it is a need that must be financed. Therefore it must be borrowed. I suggest that the way we have been
operating this country is to get each Department to produce an estimate, wrap those estimates in blue paper and call them the Blue Book, and say that they are the estimates of Government expenditure, they are our needs and they must somehow be financed, no matter what. That is no longer possible, if it ever was possible; but today it has gone beyond reason.
The Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) says that our GNP last year was an estimated $348 billion. There is really no indication of any huge increase in GNP for the 1983 year. Some indicators show we may have growth of 1 per cent, some 0.5 per cent. No one is saying that the economy will break forth and grow by any consequential amount.
What happens to Government estimates of spending? On a budgetary basis, the Blue Book estimates filed by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) indicates that we will spend close to $90 billion. We all know that budgetary expenditures are part of the tale. We should be looking at the national accounts expenditures, but we are not given those figures. If we compare national accounts with budgetary accounts in the past year, we note that budgetary accounts understate real expenditures by between 10 and 15 per cent. If budgetary accounts are in the neighbourhood of $90 billion, the real expenditure of Government will be in excess of $105 billion. One does not have to be very bright, grade six or seven, I suppose, to tell that if the Government is going to spend $105 billion and we only have a GNP of $348 billion, Government expenditures will likely be in excess of 30 per cent of the GNP.
What about the Provinces and municipalities? Where are we headed? The Government wraps its needs in blue paper, calls it a Blue Book, says it has done some estimates and budgetary control. The fact is that it has not. When anyone wants their office reupholstered, it is done. When the Government wants a new Challenger jet, it gets one. When Canadair is going South, it gets more money. When a Liberal friend who owns a trucking company gets in trouble, they bail him out. That is the kind of "control" this House can no longer tolerate.
Some say we have developed the British disease. The Brits have all of a sudden awakened. At one point in Great Britain the percentage of GNP devoted to deficit was very close to 10 per cent. Sir Geoffrey Howe's latest budget indicates that the British deficit will now be less than 2.5 per cent of the gross domestic product.
Where is ours going? Last year it was 7.8 per cent. What will it be next year? We do not know, yet we are being asked to finance it. If the trend line continues, it will be 10 or 11 per cent. The British have moved up their status in terms of credit worthiness. They have replaced us and are now fifth. The British have reduced their rate of inflation from 18 or 19 per cent to less than 5 per cent. What have we done? We have six and five, you know! But six and five does not apply to Government expenditures. That would not be possible. At a minimum, it is 9.8 per cent on a budgetary basis. If you look at it year
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over year, it is 17.8 per cent. We have six and five, but I think it is six time five in two years. That is the way the Government has increased its expenditures. It does not care and does not get down to things.
Some say we should borrow money to stimulate the economy. Let us look at what stimulation this borrowing has done. In 1968 when the Prime Minister took over, 358,000 Canadians were unemployed. In February, nearly 1.6 million Canadians were unemployed. All we did was borrow more, stimulate more and encourage more; more enterprise development programs, more hand-outs, more grant and loan programs, stimulating housing this way or that. The Government has tried to stimulate by its borrowing.
Do you know what happens when you borrow? When the Government borrows, it raises interest rates for ordinary commercial people because it bids up interest rates. What does the Government do when it bids it up? It squanders it. It does not create any new products, businesses or industries. It does not create anything new. What productivity, product or new creation can the Government show? The British can say that they have a productive Government, one that has reduced the civil service by 65,000 since 1979. This Government boasts of the fact that it has only increased its employment by 1 per cent this year.
This Government has no control over its appetite, its waste or spending. It has no priorizing of any activity it undertakes. Time and again we have asked the Government to form a special committee of this House of Commons with responsible parliamentarians, similar to the committee of the United States Congress which goes over proposed budgets, the proposed totality of spending, so as to priorize those expenditures, cross-examine officials about them, reduce them. In that way we could get our spending down to what we can afford. This Government has refused for the very simple reason that it does not believe in control. It has some idea that all will be well because it can still continue to borrow.
I see, Mr. Speaker, you are signalling that my time is up. Let me conclude by saying that the Bill before us cannot and should not be passed. A responsible Government would not even present it. Responsible Members of Parliament, regardless of Party affiliation, should vote against it. I call upon this House this afternoon to defeat this Bill.


Hon. Don Mazankowski (Vegreville):: Mr. Speaker, when I spoke on Bill C-143 on earlier occasions, I indicated that there are two aspects that Canadians find most disturbing. First, they believe that the financial management of this country is out of control. As a result, they firmly believe that as taxpayers they are not getting a fair deal. They are not getting fair value for the money that is spent for them by the Government of Canada. That view is shared not only by an increasing number of Canadians, but it is shared by the current Auditor General and the late former Auditor General.
Those of us in the House share that view because Parliament has lost effective control of the public purse. This is the 21st or
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22nd time that closure has been invoked in this House this session, and on most of those occasions it was invoked on a measure having to do with taxation, amendments to the Income Tax Act or the principle of extracting revenue from the Canadian public.
Crown corporations, which the Auditor General described as a form of sub-government, are not accountable to their shareholders, namely the public of Canada. Even though we have modified the Committee structure and reformed parliamentary rules, there does not seem to be adequate provisions to ensure that Crown corporations are made accountable to Parliament and, thereby, to the people of Canada. The result is that there is a perception that the Government goes on its very merry way recklessly spending the hard-earned tax dollars which it collects from Canadian taxpayers. It does this without satisfying those taxpayers that the money it is spending on their behalf is being spent with some consideration and regard to economy and efficiency. Look at its acquisition of a string of service stations! I recall that the former Minister of Energy said in introducing the Bill on Petro-Canada that it would not be Government's intention to get involved in the retail gas business. That, to me, meant we would not be in the retail service station business. Today we probably have more than 3,000 bought and paid for by the taxpayers of Canada. Government has a very glamorous and expensive advertising budget. I am not suggesting that it is not important for the Government to advertise, but I believe there is a prevailing view among the taxpayers of Canada that it can be cut significantly.
There is concern about the double standard which is applied to industry with respect to bail-outs, there is one rule for the Maislins, the Massey-Fergusons and the Domes of the world, but there is another rule applied to the small family farm, the small family business and the other enterprises which have heretofore been productive in generating wealth and jobs.
What all this means, Mr. Speaker, in total, is that the excessive amount of Government spending on a national accounts basis has risen by 67 per cent since this Liberal Government was returned to office in February, 1980. That is why we are being asked to approve the borrowing of some $19 billion in this Bill. That is why today that for every three dollars we spend, one dollar of that expenditure is borrowed money; or 34 per cent of our expenditures by the Government of Canada is borrowed money. That is why as well, Mr. Speaker, that for every five dollars that the Government spends, one dollar goes to pay the interest on the debt. That national debt, on a gross basis, has now risen to somewhere in the vicinity of $160 billion to $165 billion. That compares with a figure of $31 billion when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) assumed office.
I would like to speak about the deficits which have been chalked up since this Government was returned to office. For the fiscal year 1980-81 there was a deficit of $12.6 billion. In the fiscal year 1981-82 there was a deficit of $13.6 billion. In fiscal year 1982-83 there was a deficit of $27.2 billion. In this

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current fiscal year there is a projected deficit of $30 billion. In total that amounts to some $83.5 billion.
My colleague the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) referred to the fact that one of the ways of comparing our performance, or our record of financial control, is by comparing ourselves to other industrialized nations, and one way of measuring the depth of our deficit is by measuring it against our gross domestic product. As my colleague pointed out, in 1981 our deficit was equal to something in the order of 3 per cent of the gross domestic product. As a matter of fact, it was 2.8 per cent. In 1982-83 that figure has risen to 8 per cent of the gross domestic product. When I say gross domestic product, I mean all the goods and services which are produced within the boundaries of Canada. So we are at 8 per cent now and with the projection of a $30 billion deficit it could rise to something in the order of 10 per cent. Ten per cent of our gross domestic product will comprise our deficit in this fiscal year.
The United States is seriously worried about its deficit and is making some very heavy expenditures on defence and a whole host of programs for economic recovery. The United States has projected its deficit to equal something in the order of 5 per cent to 6 per cent of its total gross domestic product. Britain, which has had its share of financial difficulties, just recently halved its deficit from 5.5 per cent in 1978-79 to 2.75 per cent of its gross domestic product. Therefore, that indicates, Mr. Speaker, that Canada is following a trend line which is out of step with its industrialized neighbours.
With this kind of a record it is no wonder that we in this country have the second highest rate of unemployment in the industrialized world. It is no wonder that we have the third highest rate of inflation in the industrialized world. It is no wonder that we have higher interest rates than most other industrialized nations of the world, and the highest misery rate of any industrialized nation in the world. We have the lowest generation of growth on a per capita basis. It is now something equal to less than the share which we achieved in 1976.
Another aspect, of course, Mr. Speaker, which disturbs Canadians is the fact that they do not believe that the impact of the recession we are currently expriencing is being shared fairly by all components of society. To Canadians there is little evidence that Government, its bureaucracies, its enterprises, its activities in those areas which are under the control or under the thumb of Government, are feeling the pain of recession which those people in the private sector are. We can take as an example wages and salaries. Notwithstanding the six and five program, we know that 40 per cent of those employed by Government received increases of well in excess of six and five and closer to 10 per cent. Statistics Canada recently reported that public sector wages rose by 15.9 per cent this year over last year versus a figure of 5.8 per cent in the private sector. Another recent study indicated that in the area of small business, one-third of small business managers had no increase in salary last year; one-third had a decrease; the others maintained the status quo. As far as their employees were concerned, two-thirds of them in small business had reductions in
salary or their increases postponed. One in five had increases of less than 6 per cent.
When we consider the burden of unemployment and the pain associated with it, as my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South indicated, in the area of Government employment rose by 1 per cent. But we all know what has happened out there in the real world. Here again, there has been very little impact upon Government enterprises.
Recently the Canadian Federation of Independent Business pointed out that 50 per cent of the unemployed, somewhere in the vicinity of 700,000 to 800,000 people, have been laid off from the small business sector. Of course, I am sure there are many owner-managers who were laid off as a result of their business going down the tube, forced into bankruptcy and liquidation.
Speaking of bankruptcies, well in excess of 10,000 businesses, 91 per cent more than in 1979, were chalked up on the bankruptcy rolls last year in Canada. Over 400 farmers went bankrupt, and that does not tell the whole story because there are many who have gone out of business voluntarily. Look at the prices controlled by Government regulation, Mr. Speaker. They are not subject to the vagaries of the marketplace, so as a result they have increased by something in the order of 16 per cent to 17 per cent while the price component in the real marketplace increased by something in the order of 8 per cent.
What I am saying, Mr. Speaker, is that the burden of the recession is being shared in a very lopsided fashion. The producers, the innovators, the generators of wealth in this country, are suffering while the spenders are being rewarded.
I say to you, sir, that if there was clear evidence coming from the Government that it was seriously attacking waste, extravagance and inefficiency, if it was serious about equalizing this burden, I think there could be some sympathy for this Bill. If there was a clear indication that this Government was moving to reduce the over-all burden of Government in Canada and its cost to the individual taxpayer, there might be some justification for this particular measure. If there was included in these programs, for which the Government wants this money, something to improve the fortunes of the small-business sector, the farmer, the innovator, the entrepreneur, the job creator, I think we could look at this bill in a more positive light.
The small business sector is hurting, Mr. Speaker. So is the agricultural sector, which up to this point is the only industry which could be a bright spot in Canada. When you look at the importance of agriculture, it is absolutely shameful that we make such a trivial effort to support and enhance the industry. While agriculture employs only 5 per cent of the population directly, the agri-food business accounts for 18 per cent of the total labour force in this country and 40 per cent of the total economic activity. The spin-off benefits are enormous. Yet we see the Government bringing in a measure to increase the freight rate for the movement of grain. We see a Government
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which has imposed a very heavy burden by way of energy taxes. I see my hon. friend across the way who has been championing the plight of those who are less fortunate. I refer specifically to his initiative with respect to Bill C-653, and I congratulate him for his efforts. Some may disagree with the content of the Bill, but no one can question the sincerity of the Hon. Member. He is clearly trying to do something to help the Canadian farmer, but it is kind of a last resort.


Mr. Ferguson:: A first step.


Donald Frank Mazankowski: A first step. Well, the Member knows we share his view and we certainly are supporting his efforts in that regard. But we need something more to assist our young farmers and those who are facing financial difficulties, those who have been locked into high interest rates. There has to be a mechanism to assist them in extricating themselves from that unfortunate occurrence. There must be some federal Government initiative to provide some help in that regard.
We have also called for the establishment of an agri-bond program which would provide medium-term credit at a lower rate of interest. Time and time again we have called for a massive reduction if not a total elimination of taxes on farm fuels used in the production of food. When I talk about farm fuels, I am not merely talking about diesel fuel and gasoline; I am talking about natural gas which is used in the manufacture of fertilizer and in the operation of greenhouses. It is a crippling burden on the producers of Canada. The Government could provide relief in that area.
We are calling as well for the Government to maintain, in view of current difficulties, the current level of initial grain prices in this country so farmers can plan with some degree of confidence. We have also asked time and again for legislation-we agreed that we would pass a Bill with one day's debate-to double the farm cash advances for grain sold through the Canadian Wheat Board. That would provide some measure of confidence for the future. We have also maintained that the Government should move ahead with its beef stabilization program in conjunction with the Provinces. We believe that is something that could be done to provide some stability and confidence in that very important sector.
So there is much that could be done, Mr. Speaker. There is much that needs to be done. If some of these measures were incorporated into the Government's program, I think we could look at this Bill in a different light. But since the Government is wanting to borrow on the basis of a blank cheque, without telling us what it is going to do and how it is going to do it, and simply continue its wasteful, extravagant and irresponsible expenditures, there is no way that we can support this measure. Therefore, it is for that reason that I have risen today to speak out against this Bill and to speak out against this Government. It has completely lost touch with the reality out there.


Mr. Pierre  Gimai@: Mr. Speaker, I see they are starting to warm up a little on the other side. It seems
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to happen every time I rise in the House. My Progressive Conservative friends get all excited, and of course I do occasionally say things that upset them a little bit. I would not want to hurt the sensitive ears of these poor little Progressive Conservatives who are either against the metric system or for bilingualism but do not want to spend any money on it-they are a mass of inconsistencies. I have asked your permission, Mr. Speaker, to speak again this week because as a good Member of Parliament who represents his riding and who comes to the House to listen to the debate, I have a few comments to make on what is being said about the Government's borrowing authority request.
Mr. Speaker, up to now we have spent exactly fourteen days on this debate. The House has been sitting fourteen days to consider the Government's request for a borrowing authority of $19 billion. The previous speaker gave a typical example of the incoherence that is rife in the Progressive Conservative Party. But first of all, we had the Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) who told us that we had to fire 65,000 public servants, cut Government spending and stop everything. The next Member who spoke told the House that new policies had to be designed to spend even more money, to help farmers borrow money and to help beef and grain producers. The same incoherence is apparent every year. I just wonder because obviously, if the Government is asking for authority to borrow $19 billion, it is because it has made an undertaking, through its policies, to distribute money to Canadians, and we have been saying this all along. Every year, another debate forces the Government to impose closure, and every year we hear the same old speeches. This year, I heard some Hon. Members repeating the speeches they made the week before on the same subject, with basically the same rhetoric and a few variations here and there. It is incredible that the House of Commons should have to spend fourteen days on this question. As far as 1 am concerned, I would like to hear one Member of the Official Opposition and one Member of the New Democratic Party express clearly and simply the respective positions of their parties for the Canadian public. The Government would then give its position, a vote would be held and that would be the end of it, because in any case, the Members of the Opposition know perfectly well that the Canadian Government must act on the legislation passed by Parliament, no matter whether Parliament was right or wrong in passing the legislation. If legislation is passed requiring the Canadian Government to pay for medical services, the Government must do so.
Every year, they take advantage of the fact that the Government is obliged to ask Parliament for borrowing authority because there are deficits, and hold long drawn out debates for fourteen days, Mr. Speaker. Imagine! I am not going to dwell any longer on the subject, but it has been taking as long as the bells crisis. All this to vote on whether or not the Government will be given the requested borrowing authority, and when Opposition Members tell us that they were willing to have a

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quick debate, provided the Government spends more money on agriculture, provided it spends more here and more there- finally, it all ends with the Opposition saying that it does not make sense to let the Government borrow $19 billion, that is just too much money, it does not make sense and it is just giving them a blank cheque. The incoherence of it all is really incredible. It is like a yard full of turkeys who are running back and forth, trying to establish some kind of totally incongruous pecking order. From time to time, we do hear the occasional good speech, which helps to restore a modicum of logic to the debate. However, looking back on what has been achieved during the past four years-my first years in the House-and considering the number of days spent on discussing the issue of the Government's borrowing authority, I wish I could count the number of times a Member of the Official Opposition has said: I refuse to give the Federal Government a blank cheque.
Every time a Member opposite says those words, and they are repeated several times in the course of a single speech- they have been using the same words for four years, and it makes no sense at all, because as Members of Parliament they ought to know how our money is spent. They are supposed to know, unless they are not doing their job, because as Members of this House, we are close to the Canadian people and we are in the best position to know where every cent spent by the Government is going. If my hon. friends in the Official Opposition do not know where that money is going, either they are not doing their job in committee or they never go home to their job in their ridings. Mr. Speaker, it is always the same Members who are asking for more money. Just look at question period. At least half, if not all, of the questions are put by Members asking the Federal Government to spend more money or asking the Government why it did not spend more. The Members of the New Democratic Party are incredible in this respect. All they do is ask for money!
I was listening just now to one of their Members who was asking the Government to electrify all the railways in Canada. Not a bad idea, but, Mr. Speaker, I am taking the position of a Quebecer who has seen Mr. Parizeau making Quebec residents who are further away from the Ontario border pay more than $1 taxes on a gallon of gas, which is blackmail, because they have to go to the gas station. If tomorrow morning, all the railways in Quebec were to be electrified, it would mean that once again, the people of that Province would be liable to be blackmailed by Mr. Parizeau, because electric power is a provincial monopoly across Canada. The Provinces set the prices through their provincial transport commissions, and that is the kind of situation the Hon. Member wants to get us into. I am inclined to be a bit reticent. People have been talking about the Canadian Government's deficit and comparing our country to countries like Great Britain-which is hard-pressed to operate normally three days a week-and we are being compared to our neighbours to the south and to other countries with the same economic system, and people seem to be saying
that Canada's performance has been very poor. But there are major differences which they forget to point out to the Canadian people. There is not a single country where the national Government gives a blank cheque to the provinces. Does anyone know that our Progressive Conservative friends never speak about their colleagues who are provincial Premiers? We never hear anything about them, and yet several of them now hold office. Several of those people are provincial Premiers, genuine Tories, including a few who even want to lead the national Party and who are now heading provincial Governments. They never tell the Canadian people that the provinces unilaterally decide what they will spend for health insurance or post-secondary, college and university education without even consulting Ottawa about it, and all we get here at the end are the bills. They forget to mention that all those cash transfers represent this year an expenditure of almost $ 18 billion for the Canadian Government. They forget to say that Canada is the only country which has shown enough respect for its provincial institutions to give them the power to spend and to implement provincial policies which, by their own admission, are tailored to their own personality and their own requirements. They forget to point out that the Federal Government accounts for nearly 80 per cent of the budget of a province such as Newfoundland. They forget to say that, Mr. Speaker. Why? Because those provinces are led by their own friends.
Let us try the American system since that is what the Progressive Conservative Members want. Let municipalities pay for schools as they do in the United States. Let spokesmen for a city similar to New York tell us: We are going to be near bankruptcy tomorrow, help us. That is the experiment those people want to try. What makes our country so great, Mr. Speaker, is indeed the fact that a Canadian owns a part of Canada, no matter where he lives. His origin, his religion, his culture, his tongue and his colour do not matter at all, as long as he is a resident of a great country called Canada where resources are plentiful. All that makes up a national Government which has the responsibility to support each and every Canadian as well as our Canadian institutions, be they provincial, municipal or otherwise.
As a resident of Quebec, I have a problem on my hands- perhaps my colleagues from the other provinces are in a similar predicament, but I am not sure-in that municipalities in Quebec no longer have the right to speak to the Canadian Government, because they are told that they fall under Quebec City's jurisdiction. We have just had another experience, this time related to the NEED Program under which the Canadian Government will spend $170 million in the province. We have tried to co-operate with the provincial authorities and explain to them that they would contribute $45 million and administer the whole program jointly with us in such fields as non-profit corporations. Normally, we would not need you, we could choose to act unilaterally, but we will administer the program
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in co-operation with you and live a common experience. The outcome of the common experience is that after three months of delays we are forced to answer: Very well, give your $45 million to the municipalities by yourselves and we shall invest our $170 million in non-profit-making corporations, private companies and Federal Departments. Why? Because we, in Quebec, also have people with closed minds.
The Progressive Conservatives are not the only people who oppose the metric system and have a closed mind. We also have such people. There are people in Quebec who say: The municipalities belong to Quebec. If a mayor is elected, he must deal with his MLA. He must not speak to the Federal Member of Parliament because he must not deal directly with the Government of Canada. He has no right to do so. This is the type of constraint which we have to deal with in Quebec, with the result that useful policies which normally could be applied in a spirit of co-operation in a well-structured manner by both levels of governments have to be applied unilaterally, that is by us on one side and them on the other. We have about the same experience. I would like to quote a comment by the Right Hon. Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) when he was wondering what would become of co-operative federalism which the Liberals under Mr. Pearson had so well promoted by giving the provinces certain taxation powers as well as health insurance and post-secondary education programs for which the Canadian Government guaranteed to pay at least 50 per cent of the cost. Where are we going and why? The provinces have administered these programs in such a way that their purpose is now completely distorted. Look at Quebec! Our hospitals are now completely run down. I shall not tell you what is going on in my own constituency, but it is almost catastrophic. Look at what is happening in education. Recently, all Quebec public servants have been blamed by the Quebec Government. Apparently, they are guilty, but of what? They are guilty of having accepted the wages imposed by their own provincial Government. Now they are guilty. They are being blamed by this same Government. Why? God knows! Why was all this accepted? What is wrong today was good yesterday. Mr. Parizeau himself said so when the last collective agreement was signed: "We signed for peanuts." He is now telling these people: "You are robbing the state; I shall take away 20 per cent of your wages."
Such things are clearly unacceptable and this raises a few questions for the central Government. I want to ask my hon. friends opposite, who have friends among the leaders of provincial parties, and friends who are heading some of our provincial governments, to ask their own parties to think about the kind of administrative powers the Federal Government has given them during the last 20 years and where those powers are taking them. What route do they want to take? Are they trying to prove that a country like Canada should not give more powers to the Provinces or are they perhaps trying to prove the opposite?
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Personally, I am all for having the Provinces develop their own powers and preserving their charateristics, but when I see what is happening in Quebec, where the tax burden has become absolutely incredible, and the billions of dollars that are being taken from the Caisse de depot du Quebec to buy companies, to bring in companies like Pechiney in Becancour, to take over companies like Alcan in my area and to compete in Quebec with our own companies that are already being forced to lay off workers, I really cannot begin to express my feelings about this. I will never be able to agree with policies that are based solely on Government power, not on the welfare of the people. Coherent policies are absolutely necessary, if we are to run this country the way it should be run. The Provinces will have to discharge their responsibilities, Mr. Speaker, and the Opposition parties will have to stop their little cat-and-mouse game. They will have to stop telling the Federal Government it is spending too much, when the vast majority of federal expenditures goes directly to the Provinces, who are their own political friends, and who are spending the money. There will have to be more consistency, because the party opposite has spent the last four years between two leaders. They will have to choose a leader who will determine their party's political destiny. The Members opposite will have to stop telling us that the price of oil is too low in Canada, as they were saying three years ago, and now the price has gone up, we are killing the oil industry because we have set prices too high.
They will have to clarify their stand on a number of issues. If they want the oil industry to function properly, they will have to ask the Canadian Government to abolish the Provinces' authority to levy taxes on gas, because their own political friends who are heading their own Provincial Governments, as in Ontario, for instance, are levying gas taxes and adding to the taxpayers' burden, while they are also killing the oil industry. They know all this, but our friends opposite are not raising these issues in the House.
Mr. Speaker, I am certainly not afraid to ask my Government to restrain provincial powers with respect to gas taxes. It is really incredible! And when I see the New Democratic Party come up with one of its pipe dreams that we should electrify the railways, when I know perfectly well that when Mr. Parizeau decides to sell power to the Canadian Government to run the trains, those kilowatts are going to be so expensive that not a single train will be running in Quebec, I fail to see any consistency in that. It is unbelievable! As if that were not enough, year in and year out we are forced to waste 10 or 15 days of debate on a borrowing Bill which is required to help needy Canadians.
Mr. Speaker, I said last week and I say again today that I am proud to be a Liberal because the policies which we are now implementing and which cost a bundle to the Canadian Government are designed to help the population. I would be ashamed of myself if I had to return to my riding tomorrow


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. MacGuigan:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I understand that there would be consent to sit beyond one o'clock to consider all remaining stages of Bill C-141 and to conclude all stages of this Bill no later than two o'clock, with any divisions required being deferred until immediately after the divisions scheduled for 5.45 p.m. later today.
If this could be put to the House, I believe the House would be prepared to make it an order. I should say as well that I
understand there is some disposition to proceed with all of these stages without further debate. If that is the case, the Government would certainly agree.


Mr. Lewis:: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party, we are prepared to agree to that order.


Mr. Deans:: Mr. Speaker, we also agree to it. It is too bad the Government House Leader has not asked for it personally.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: The House has heard the proposal put forward by the Minister of Justice. Does the House agree to the proposal as read?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


CANADIAN HUMAN RIGHTS ACT
[Stage Direction]
The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-141, an Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and to amend certain other Acts in consequence thereof, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. There are six Motions standing on the Order Paper in amendment to Bill C-141, an Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and to amend certain other Acts in consequence thereof. As Motions Nos. 3 to 6 are consequential to Motion No. 1, it is my intention to group motions Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6 for debate, with a vote on Motion No. 1 disposing of Motions Nos. 3 to 6 inclusive. Motion No. 2 should be debated and voted on separately.


Philip Derek Lewis: Motion No. 2.
That Bill C-141, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and to amend certain other Acts in consequence thereof, be amended in Clause 7 by striking out lines 27 to 39 at page 4.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.
Motion No. 2 agreed to.


Mark R. MacGuigan: that the Bill be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: When shall the Bill be read a third time?


Some Hon. Members:: Now.


Mark R. MacGuigan: that the Bill be read the third time and do pass.
Motion agreed to and bill read the third time and passed.
March 29, 1983


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: It now being one minute past one o'clock, this House stands adjourned until two o'clock p.m. later this day.
At 1:01 p.m. the House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Madam Speaker, within the next few months, Cabinet will decide on the final adjudication of a contract for the construction of six frigates for the Department of National Defence.
On behalf of the people of the Quebec City area and the riding of Levis, I would like to point out to the Government that this $3 billion contract will have economic spinoffs that are of considerable interest to Quebecers who expect, and rightly so, to benefit quite substantially from the contract. The Quebec City area, which according to the last census has over one million people, has never been very lucky as far as large investment projects are concerned. For instance, not a single contract was or will be awarded for the construction of the latest patrol aircraft. That is understandable, since the area's infrastructure is not suited to aircraft construction. However, the situation is entirely different where shipbuilding is concerned. Davie Shipbuilding Limited in Lauzon is among the leaders in this field in Canada, and failure to acknowledge this fact would be most unfortunate. The people of the Quebec City area are anxious to have a substantial share of the 30,000 jobs involved in the construction of the frigates.



AGRICULTURE


Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Madam Speaker, I wish to raise a question that is of very special interest to farmers and farm workers across Canada. More specifically, on behalf of the Federation des producteurs maraichers, the Syndicat des producteurs de fraises et de framboises du Quebec, the Federation des producteurs de pommes du Quebec, the Federation des producteurs de pommes de terre du Quebec, the Syndicat des producteurs en serres du Quebec, the Federation des producteurs de bleuets du Quebec, and also on behalf of the Federation des producteurs de fruits et de legumes du Quebec,
I want to ask the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) to act on a request sent by telegram, asking the Minister to reinstate Section 16 of the Unemployment Insurance Regulations, since the absence of this section seems to be seriously hurting both farmers and farm workers. In the circumstances, and in view of other representations made by Members of this House, I hope the Minister will realize the importance of this issue and will agree to this request, for the benefit of these workers and producers.



SOCIAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Robert Daudlin (Essex-Kent):: Madam Speaker, as reported in today's press, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Ontario suggested that couples should take publicly sponsored premarital courses in an attempt to cut the social and economic cost of divorces. This suggestion, in my view, is something that should be supported by Parliamentarians. The suggestion no doubt emanates from the appalling statistics on the ever-increasing divorce rate in Canada. Recently, as reported by Statistics Canada, 40 per cent of Canadian marriages end up in divorce. These rates have been eroding away at the family as the foundation of our social framework and should be cause for grave concern on the part of this House.
Given this statement and the statistics, I would urge the Government, through the Department of Justice, to take very seriously the recommendation and any others that might be made that would have the effect of bolstering the family as a strong and stable social unit and, through that means, the Canadian social fabric.
In addition to facilitating the dissolution of marriages which are inretrievably damaged, the Government should be leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the strength of the basic building block of our society is supported and encouraged.



PENITENTIARIES


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, Canada's prison staff must, day in and day out, maintain a patient and understanding relationship with a shifting and sometimes dangerous population, and must take the brunt of unacceptable conditions such as double bunking and severe overcrowding, as well as suffer frustrations, aggravations, and anxieties beyond most occupations. In a recent meeting with some 90 officers and guards, I was told that 50 per cent of
24258

March 29, 1983
these worries are caused, created, and aggravated by regional and headquarters staff, many of whom have no idea of what actually goes on inside prison walls.
For example, the staff in the Drumheller Institution have, over the years, worked out an excellent duty roster, with which the staff and the administration are happy. Just recently the Commissioner of Penitentiaries decreed that all institutions must operate on a seven day on and three day off, seven day on and four day off rotation. This system, instead of reducing the abuse and solving problems, is creating aggravation and dissatisfaction among the staff.
The squad system used by the Drumheller Institution has many advantages over the proposed system which I cannot enumerate now because of the time restriction. Suffice it to say that it has worked well and is working well, and there is no need for blanket uniform procedures when this one is doing the job.
I urge the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan) to overrule the Commissioner and permit the continued use of the squad system, which will help greatly in dealing with the severe problems this staff is already facing due to overcrowding, and a mixture of medium offenders with dangerous criminals.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Ms. Lynn McDonald (Broadview-Greenwood):: Madam Speaker, at the meeting of the Senate and Commons Standing Committees on External Affairs and National Defence with the Prime Minister of Greece, a number of concerns of this House were discussed which are of particular concern to many of my constituents who are of Greek origin.
Prime Minister Papandreou raised several problems of security in the eastern Mediterannean, First, Cyprus, where 34.6 per cent of the territory is still occupied by Turkish troops despite United Nations resolutions and bilateral talks. Canada's ongoing role as peacekeeper is crucial until a secure peace is achieved.
Canadians who want Canada to be recognized as a nuclear-free zone will be encouraged by Greece's efforts in the same direction and, indeed, for a broad Balkan-wide nuclear-free zone, which would desirably join up with a nuclear-free zone in northern Europe.
More negatively, there was also discussion of the possibility of a serious imbalance of forces in the Aegean, with increased American military aid to Turkey. And, although Mr. Papandreou did not say it, it is well known that the threat of increased military strength in Turkey is a means of pressuring Greece to keep its American bases, a decision that Greeks should be able to make on their own for their own reasons.
My Party welcomes the Prime Minister's visit, both as an opportunity to discuss important international questions, and
Greek-Canada relations, and to see an old friend again. We are delighted also that Mrs. Margaret Papandreou, who is the President of the Women's Union of Greece is part of the visit.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member for Megantic-Compton-Stanstead (Mr. Tessier).



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Claude Tessier (Megantic-Compton-Stanstead):: Madam Speaker, historically, the Crow rate has provided Western grain production with a special status. Now that this policy is being revised, we feel there is a case for demanding equivalent special status for Eastern producers. I am therefore asking the Government to include in its Bill on Western grain transportation a "special status" that would put the Livestock Feed Board of Canada and the Canadian Wheat Board on an equal footing. While I am on the subject of stability and permanence and equality between Eastern and Western producers, I feel these points should be entrenched by the Government in legislation for Canadian producers of industrial milk, at the same time as its new grain policy.
Madam Speaker, these measures must be accompanied by compensatory financial guarantees for Eastern producers if they suffer losses as a result of the new grain transportation policy. That is how we-and I believe I can speak for the seventy-four Liberal Members from Quebec-want to safeguard the growth of agri-food business in Quebec. Quebec farm producers ought to be told that the post-Gilson dossier is doing very well and that their Liberal Federal Members are not only keeping an eye on the grain policy but are also working daily to ensure that the agricultural industry in Canada and Quebec will prosper.



INDIAN AFFAIRS


Mr. J. R. Ellis (Prince Edward-Hastings):: Madam Speaker, in the November 1981, budget, a figure of $345 million was set aside for economic development in native programs. Since then the area to be covered has been expanded, the method of dispensing funds has been altered twice, but the hard cold fact is that not one cent of the money has been put to use.
Based on the promises given, the Ontario Indian Agriculture Association prepared plans, issued guidelines, and generally set out to improve agriculture on reserves by training and other forms of assistance. As a result of the complete lack of activity by the Government, they have been unable to deliver.
March 29, 1983

I have written letters, asked questions, and spoken to Ministers, as has the Chairman of the Association, the former Chief of the Tyendinaga Mohawks, all to no avail. The Government has just not kept its word in this matter.
Now we understand that the Liberal caucus has set up a committee to administer the funds. As objectionable and unethical as that is, I would hope that someone could make the Government keep its promise. Surely more than lip service is due to these people.



POLITICAL PARTIES


Mr. Doug Anguish (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Madam Speaker, the farmers from Saskatchewan brought a petition to Ottawa with over 15,000 names on plywood crows. I am not surprised that the Liberal Government found the petition objectionable, although the farmers found it in their best interests to try to impress upon this House of Commons their serious concern about the Crow rate. It is unbelievable, though, that the Conservatives would object to this kind of an action. The Conservative Leader, the Hon. Member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen), insinuated that the farmers were nothing more than a bunch of clowns.


Erik Nielsen: No, you guys.


Some Hon. Members:: No, no.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame.


Douglas Keith Anguish: This is the most important issue in the history of western Canadian farmers. What is the Conservative policy on the Crow rate? Do you put your finger up each morning to the wind to find out what the policy is going to be for that day? The Conservative Party spent 15 days of bell-ringing in the House of Commons to support the oil companies, and would not give 15 minutes to the farmers of Canada.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Keith Anguish: When it comes down to the crunch we can always tell that the Conservatives will be in bed with the Liberal Party, just as they were yesterday in the House of Commons.


Some Hon. Members:: No, no.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Keith Anguish: We would like a clear statement on the record of where the Conservative Party stands in relation to the statutory Crow rate, which is the only real benefit that western Canadian farmers have in getting their product to the ports. We want to know, when the crunch in this House comes again,
will the Conservatives be in bed with the Liberals, or will they stand up and support the farmers of Canada?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Erik Nielsen: You are not clowns at all; you are turkeys.



AIRPORTS


Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, regional airports play a vital role in Canada's air transportation system, yet the performance of this important function is diminished considerably in some such airports for want of updated facilities. At the Hamilton Civic Airport, for example, inadequate runway and approach lighting often forces Nor-dair, the airport's only major airline, to cancel flights in and out of Hamilton and to divert flights to Toronto in bad weather, at a high cost to the airline and inconvenience to Nordair passengers. Given high intensity approach lights and sequential flashing strobes, I believe that many cancellations could be avoided, and possibly other airlines would look at Hamilton Civic Airport more favourably.
Since this type of infrastructural development is vital to the growth of the Hamilton community, I strongly urge the Department of Transport to investigate this situation and to install additional approach and runway lighting at the Airport as soon as possible.



SHIPBUILDING


Mr. J. M. Forrestall (Dartmouth-Halifax East):: Madam Speaker, about 18 months ago the Canadian Shipbuilding & Ship Repairing Association conducted a domestic shipbuilding survey covering market requirements through the 1980s. The survey showed a requirement for over 400 new ships and floating equipment at a cost in 1981 dollars of $33 billion plus.
Of this amount, the Government's projected requirements accounted for $3 billion. On the surface this augured well for our future. However, instead of full order books and healthy employment levels, we see some 6,000 fewer men and women at work in our Canadian shipyards today than one year ago. Why? One reason can be found in the 80 per cent grants policy for exploration of gas and oil and its supporting equipment. We see PetroCan selling its offshore service boats, for example, in order to lease back and gain the advantage of the 80 per cent grant which is not available through private acquisition and ownership. Esso, as well, has seen the advantage of this, and is operating through Citibank. Husky Oil, as well, has equipment up for sale. It wants to sell it offshore and lease it back. What does this do? Who loses? I will tell you who loses. There are no orders in the Halifax shipyards.

March 29, 1983
Oral Questions
Fergusson Industries is about ready to come to the end of their building program. St. John-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Madam Speaker, I would like to address a question to the Minister of National Revenue, and in his absence I will go to the Acting Minister who is Minister of Supply and Services. In the latter's absence, I would like to go to the Minister of Finance and, in his absence, I probably should go to the Minister of State for Finance-


An Hon. Member:: He is here.


Lorne Everett Greenaway: -or the Deputy Prime Minister, whomever wants to answer the question.
My question has to do with Section 31 of the Income Tax Act which breaks down farmers into three categories, full-time farmers, part-time farmers, and so-called hobby farmers.
Because of current economic conditions approximately
125,000	farmers across Canada have been forced to take jobs off the farm to supplement their incomes. As a result, Revenue Canada auditors have been reclassifying many of them from full-time to part-time, and part-time to hobby class, and then assessing up to four years in back taxes to these people, in many cases forcing them to sell out or else go bankrupt.
Will the Deputy Prime Minister or the Minister of State for Finance ask his colleagues to review Section 31 of the Act, as has been urged by the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Canadian Bar Association since 1976? Furthermore, in the interim will the Minister instruct his officials to stop harassing an already badly hit sector of the economy under this unjust Section of the Income Tax Act?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his question. There are so few Members of the Opposition in their seats this afternoon I wonder if we will have enough questions to fill out the Question Period.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Paul James Cosgrove: Be that as it may, the Hon. Member in his first question raises a very interesting matter. It is one that has
been brought to the attention of Ministers previously. I have sought the support of the Minister of Finance and of the Minister of National Revenue on this issue, and we have asked officials in the Department of Revenue to review their practices in this matter. We certainly are sensitive to the questions that are raised by the Hon. Member.


AMOUNT OF BACK TAXES DEMANDED
Lorne Everett Greenaway: Madam Speaker, I will address my supplementary question to the Minister of Finance, in the absence of the Minister of Revenue. This problem was addressed in the House in 1972 when the Hon. Member for Mission-Port Moody extracted a commitment from the then Minister of National Revenue that, in a case where the tax auditors had assessed back taxes he would only charge people one year's back taxes. Now people are being charged with four years' back taxes. Will the Minister make the same commitment to people who are now being charged for four years, that he will reduce this to just a one year back tax?


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member has an advantage. I was not in the House at that time.


Erik Nielsen: You are not here now.


Paul James Cosgrove: I, of course, would have to take a look at the record and what was the undertaking of the then Minister, specifically what he was referring to, but I certainly will take the question as a representation by the Hon. Member and discuss it, along with the representations in the first part of his question.


Lorne Everett Greenaway: Madam Speaker, I would like to point out to the other side of the House that a Liberal backbencher told me yesterday that no audits were being done in Quebec. I will guarantee that they will be whistling a different tune when they start auditing Quebec.


AMOUNT OF LOSS DEDUCTION
Lorne Everett Greenaway: Madam Speaker, this question is directed to the Minister of Finance. Under Section 31 of the Income Tax Act, deductions of farm losses by part-time farmers is limited to $5,000 per year. This figure was set in the year 1952. According to Statistics Canada, this figure should now be approximately $20,000 to reflect current realities. Would the Minister, at the very least, see that this 30 year old figure is indexed to inflation?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, I shall consider the question as a suggestion for the budget, and I intend to give it serious consideration.
March 29, 1983


REVIEW OF AUDITING PRACTICES
Mr. Albert Cooper (Peace River):: Madam Speaker, my question relates to the same issue and I would like to address it to the same Minister. The Minister should know that this is not only affecting present farmers but is having a very serious effect on future farmers. Young Canadians who consider going into farming would have a very difficult time with the high cost of going into that business, as well as the present situation.
The Minister earlier said that we can expect some kind of a review of what is going on at the moment. Flow soon can we expect some kind of a review, and when will we see the results of that?


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, I have indicated that I have already made that request of the officials and I would expect in the not too distant future that we would have a response on the practice of the Department. If indeed there is a policy issue, as there have been some suggestions that the practice of the Department is not in accord with the policy as laid down by the Ministry, we will report that to the Hon. Members who have indicated an interest in the subject.


REQUEST THAT REVIEW RESULTS BE TABLED
Albert Glen Cooper: Madam Speaker, the concern is when, because it is an immediate problem. We would like to know whether the Minister will table those in the House as soon as possible so that we can give an answer to our constituents right across the country.


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, I already indicated that I have requested that information from the Department. As soon as I receive it, 1 will make it available to Hon. Members. The question has been raised by Members on both sides of the House. I say to those Members who have indicated interest that we will get the information to them as quickly as possible.


SCOPE OF AUDIT IN PROVINCES AND RIDINGS
Mr. Mark Rose (Mission-Port Moody):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to any Minister who knows anything about this problem. 1 raised this ten years ago when National Revenue was harassing and threatening part-time farmers in my Province and in southern Ontario, and there were no similar audits going on in Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. These were all ignored. I would like to ask whether they are now going on in these other Provinces. Will the Minister assure the House that, when sanity returns and reverts to the one-year or current back-taxes policy, the policy will apply, one, all across Canada and, two, not just to ridings held by Opposition Members but to ridings held by Liberals as well?
Oral Questions


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, as I have indicated, this question has been raised by Members on both sides of the House. The question has been raised by constituents in ridings that are held by Members of the Government. I am aware that the question has been raised in different Provinces. On the issue of whether it is applied in all Provinces, I will inquire of the Minister of National Revenue and take notice of the question.


RECLASSIFICATION OF FARMERS
Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker,
I have a question for the Minister of Finance. Will the Minister agree that the problem being raised here this afternoon of full-time bona fide ranchers and farmers being forced into part-time categories having to go off their land to seek alternate employment, is the direct result of his Government's high interest rate policy? It has resulted in these people seeking alternate employment in some other form of occupation.


Marc Lalonde: No, Madam Speaker.


ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock-North Delta):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Solicitor General. The Senate has now trashed S-32 with its Government majority, and the courts across the country are trashing the gating procedure and are eliminating the power of the National Parole Board with respect to dangerous offenders. In the latest case in British Columbia Chief Justice Nemetz said, "No doubt this prisoner is a menace to society." What plans does the Government have to provide legislation that would put the security of society first and provide a review of dangerous criminals before release, with the possibility of an extension of incarceration?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, that is precisely what I am doing. Bill S-32 has not been trashed by the Senate. A few days ago I had a very productive meeting with that Committee, and some subsequent informal discussions, which lead me to believe that the Bill, with some amendments which will increase protection of the public, will be acceptable to the Senate. I certainly hope so. 1 will continue to work with them in the hope that the Bill can be approved and sent to the House of Commons.
As far as gating is concerned, I was the Minister who gave the green light to that practice, based on legal opinion. At the moment, in spite of what the Hon. Member has said, judicial opinion is divided on the subject, with Chief Justice Menetz being in favour of it, although the majority of his court were

March 29, 1983
Oral Questions
against it; a court in another Province being in favour, and a court in the third Province being against. Therefore, the responsible thing to do is to appeal further, which is exactly what we are doing. We expect an early hearing from the Supreme Court of Canada. If the National Parole Board is found by that body not to have the authority which it has been asserting, I will introduce an amendment right away and, hopefully, have the co-operation of Members here and in the other place to improve our legislation and the protection of the public very promptly.


REQUEST FOR REVIEW OF OFFENDERS BEFORE RELEASE FROM PRISON
Benno Friesen: Madam Speaker, the Solicitor General obviously does not read his mail. He has received a letter from the Senate committee saying that that Bill will go nowhere.
Since gating is only a very temporary help, because ultimately dangerous offenders still have to be released at the end of their sentence with no review at all that will protect the public, will the Minister tell the House that he will provide legislation that will include a review and possible extension of incarceration for those prisoners deemed to be a danger to society?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Madam Speaker, what the Hon. Member is asking for is something that I think is impossible in a democratic society, that is, that a person who has been given a punishment by a court and served that punishment should, at the order of an executive, without committing any additional offence, have his incarceration continued. That is a remarkable proposition. It is certainly not one that would be consistent with our Charter. When persons have served the time that the courts imposed on them, however dangerous the Hon. Member and others may think they are, they are entitled to be free. The only justification for reincarcerating them would be if they committed some other offence and were convicted again.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Under the National Training Act certain jobs are designated as national in importance, and then the Minister's Department funds them. The occupation of nursing assistants is not designated as a job of national importance under the Act. As a result, funding for this course has been cut in Midland, Ontario. There are three hospitals in that area, one of which employs over 700 people. Will the Minister undertake to review the question of funding of the nursing assistants program and perhaps review the classification of this program as a "job classification of national importance", in view of the
large number of Canadian men and women who are employed in this occupation?


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for the representation. I should point out to him that, under the National Training Act, we have established joint committees in each of the Provinces on which there are federal and provincial officials who make recommendations regarding the designations for those courses or occupations to be designated under the National Training Act. In this case it is up to the regional representatives of the provincial Government to bring forward representations if there is a shortage in that region. If that has not happened, I will be glad to take the representation of the Hon. Member, refer it to that committee, and see whether it is eligible for such a designation.


REGIONAL DEMANDS FOR TRAINING COURSES
Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, the machinists' trade is designated as a national program where future shortages may occur. Despite that designation in the machinists' program at Georgian College in Orillia, it is being cut back 37 per cent with respect to the number of job trainees. What steps does the Minister's Department take to ensure that, where an occupation is of national importance, the Department is sensitive to the demands of each region in the country?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I should point out that the determination of courses in the community colleges is a decision made by the provincial authorities. We purchase courses. We do not initiate their establishment. The level of funding that they receive is in large part determined by the Department of Community Colleges and Higher Education in the Province of Ontario and in other Provinces. I am prepared to undertake to look at the question raised by the Hon. Member concerning the shortage of machinists in that area and the matter of whether the courses could be adapted in that college.


FOREIGN INVESTMENT REVIEW AGENCY
Mr. Keith Penner (Cochrane-Superior):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. On March 8 American Can of Canada announced the sale of its Marathon Ontario Pulp Mill to the James River Corporation of Richmond, Virginia, and Buchanan Forest Products of Thunder Bay. Such a sale requires the scrutiny and approval of the Foreign Investment Review Agency. Is the Minister now in a position to tell the House what was the decision of FIRA and how soon will the Marathon Mill be allowed to proceed with full production under its new owners, James River-Marathon Ltd.?
March 29, 1983

Oral Questions


REQUEST THAT MINISTER INSIST ON COMMITMENT BEING MET
[Stage Direction]

Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, by law I cannot divulge the contents of any application. I can assure the Hon. Member, however, that we are doing everything possible to expedite the assessment of this proposal, assuming the conditions of significant benefits to Canadians are met.


INDUSTRY
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Industry. On March 12, 1982, the then Minister of Industry announced a $3 million assistance program for Inglis to purchase Admiral. At the same time Inglis received an additional $1 million from the Province of Ontario. The commitment it made was to reestablish existing levels of employment in the plants which it was taking over, and to create new employment. To this point in time, it has not yet met its commitment to re-establish existing levels of employment. What action does the Minister propose to take, given the fact there were four million taxpayers' dollars given to that company to ensure that the employment levels which existed prior to the takeover were in fact maintained?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, the company in question did undertake certain commitments. I will assess the Hon. Member's allegations, and review the commitments made by the company to ensure they have fulfilled those commitments.


TRANSFER OF JOBS BETWEEN PLANTS
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, as a supplementary question I would ask the Minister, when he is discussing this matter with Inglis, to pay particular attention to a practice which it is now pursuing of taking jobs which now exist in the previous Inglis operations and transferring them to the new operations in order to attempt to meet the quota levels which were established and to which they themselves agreed at the time the money was made available by both the federal and provincial Governments? Will he also make clear to Inglis that the movement of a job from one plant to another plant is not to be considered by the federal Government, at least, as the creation of a new job?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I understand the Hon. Member's concern in this regard and I will investigate his allegations.


Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, I have a final question for the same Minister. I am sure from the tone of his answers the Minister realizes that this is a practice which has gone on for some long time with a number of companies. I put to him that in the last quarter of 1982 Inglis has enjoyed a net sales increase of something close to $4.6 million. That is the equivalent of the amount of money given to it by the federal and provincial Governments. Will the Minister meet with Inglis and insist that either it meet its jobs commitments or it repay the federal Treasury the money it got from the federal Treasury which has been turned into windfall profits for the company and its shareholders at the expense of the employees?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, while I do not agree with the preamble of the Hon. Member, I will investigate his allegations, as I indicated in my previous responses, and I will ensure that the job commitments which were made by the company will be followed.


INDUSTRY
Hon. George Hees (Northumberland):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. On November 30 last I asked the Minister the following question, as reported at page 21117 of Hansard:
As the Japanese system of having many small groups made up of equal numbers of management and labour working together in plants to improve productivity, quality and design, has proved far more successful than the Canadian system of confrontation between management and labour, will the Government give leadership by taking steps to encourage Canadian industry to adopt the far more successful Japanese method of industrial operation, and in that way make it possible for Canada to become a leader rather than continue to be a follower in today's very competitive world?
Did the Minister follow my suggestion and, if so, would he advise the House what the results have been to date?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, I nearly always follow the advice of the Hon. Member who was a very distinguished former Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. I agree wholeheartedly with the Hon. Member that nothing is more important to improving productivity in this country than better labour-management relations, and if I may I add one caveat, better labour-management as well as government relations should be included. If I recall, about six weeks after the Hon. Member asked his question I did follow up with respect to implementing a task force co-chaired by senior representatives of labour and management in the automotive sector, and I am hoping that before the end of the week we will

March 29^1983
Oral Questions
be able to announce that two more task forces which have been structured along these same lines.


INDUSTRIAL REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
George Harris Hees: Madam Speaker, as the Minister knows, when he first took over the Export Trade Development Board I strongly supported him in this move and the work which he was doing. I would like to ask him now if he plans to follow this example on the industrial and regional development side by appointing a similar board reporting to his Department.


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, the Export Trade Development Board, where business, labour, government and academic representatives have been working together for the last few years, I believe has proven to be very successful, as originally expected by the Hon. Member, and we are giving serious consideration to formulating a board on the industrial and regional development side with a similar structure.


HOUSING
Mr. Jean-Guy Dubois (Lotbiniere):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance. Both the Minister and the House are of course aware that the $3,000 home construction grant plan expires on April 30. When the House came back from summer recess on October 27, the plan, which was due to expire on December 30, was extended until April 30. I should therefore like to know whether the Minister has received representations from the Provincial Homebuilders Association urging him to continue the plan, and whether the Minister intends to include the grant in his forthcoming budget, for the benefit of Canadians and Quebecers who intend to build new homes.


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, this particular program has been very successful. The Hon. Member is no doubt aware that we have allocated over $700 million to the program since it was announced last year. The results are clear if we consider the number of units that have been started in recent months. On an annual basis, it is expected that housing starts will total approximately 170,000 units per year, which represents a very substantial increase over last year.
As for continuing the program, I can inform the Hon. Member that I have received suggestions from various groups
of builders, and that these suggestions will certainly be considered.


ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of the Environment. As the Minister is aware, the EPA in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency, now has a new director, Mr. William Ruckelshaus. Could the Minister tell us if he has been in touch with this new director, and have arrangements been made for a face to face meeting with him?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of the Environment):: Madam Speaker, I have written to Mr. Ruckelshaus to congratulate him on his nomination, but until he is confirmed in office by the Senate, as I understand it, by the conventions of the American Government, it is unlikely he would wish to see me. I have written to him, however, to express my desire to get together as quickly as possible and I am confident of meeting him very quickly.
I hope, in this context, the Hon. Members of the House subcommittee on acid rain will find an occasion to meet with me soon, so that when they undertake their trip to Washington we will have the opportunity to discuss what information I might have from Mr. Ruckelshaus before that takes place. I expect to meet with him quite quickly. Clearly, it depends on his availability to meet with me. I understand that that should be taking place very soon after he has received confirmation by the Senate.


ACID RAIN POLLUTION
Stan Darling: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the same Minister. As we are all aware, U.S. Vice-President George Bush was here last Wednesday, and I hope that the Cabinet, and possibly the Minister himself, had an opportunity to speak with him, and to bring up the very important topic of acid rain pollution. Could the Minister give us his comments on that?


John (Moody) Roberts: Yes, Madam Speaker. This was not a matter of substantial discussion because it is on the agenda for discussion between my colleague, the Secretary of State for External Affairs, and Mr. Schultz, early in April. However, it was a question which was discussed informally during the visit of Vice-President Bush, particularly with some people on his staff, so he is certainly aware of our views. It was not a very substantial discussion. That should be taking place early in April.
March 29, 1983


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
John Raymond Ellis: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. In the rural parts of my constituency, many students, both high school and university, housewives and others, look forward to earning money through the summer from the various fruit and vegetable crops grown there. The growers welcome the availability of the part-time labour. A busy farmer can hand out between 300 and 400 cheques, amounting to $10,000, in any given week. The Department has now moved to stop this by the imposition of Regulation 16.
Will the Minister not reconsider this unfair burden on both growers and workers in both mine and other rural constituencies?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I think the Hon. Member has phrased his question in a very unusual way, as if somehow it is a burden to have extended unemployment insurance coverage to agricultural workers who have been demanding it for literally decades.


Some Hon. Members:: Where?


Lloyd Axworthy: Well, if the Hon. Member does not know where, then I guess he does not know his riding very well. The fact of the matter is that agricultural workers, who put in a very hard day's labour, should have the same right to be covered under the Unemployment Insurance Act as other workers in this country. That is a very important principle of equity, one which this Party happens to believe in, even though the Hon. Member obviously does not.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER REVIEW REGULATION
John Raymond Ellis: Madam Speaker, the "where" came from somewhere other than this corner. I do know my riding intimately, and every grower there. I know those growers do not like this plan being put before them. In fact you will be forcing teenage high schoolers to get social insurance numbers years before they will ever need them, and the paper burden placed on growers in the area is absolutely unreal. It will simply prevent their using much of this parttime labour. Will the Minister not accept that-never mind his easy paper work-and have another look at Regulation 16?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, the fact of the matter is that we are addressing a very simple principle, which is that people who work should have some income protection. We have been
Oral Questions
meeting very closely with the agriculture organizations to find ways of developing administrative techniques or other ways to ease the burden they might face with large numbers of workers arriving in a very short period of time. I still go back to the basic principle that the unemployment insurance system is designed to protect workers and give them some income protection. As a result, we do not intend to revoke the stand we took last summer and cancel Regulation 16.


EFFECT ON STUDENTS
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary to the same Minister. Can he tell this House how a high school student is going to benefit by paying UIC premiums? How does that help the high school student or the person who wants to get a short-term job on a farm? Will he tell this House where that person benefits?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, the fact of the matter is the beneficiaries of that particular program are the many agricultural workers across the country who are not in high school but who are trying to make a decent living for their families in the agricultural field. That is who we are trying to cover.


SUMMER EMPLOYMENT CONSEQUENCES
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, has the Minister done a study on how part-time agricultural workers, students who work on the weekend or through the summer only, are ever going to get any help here? Are they not going to find that the farmers will not hire them now? Are you not really putting those students out of work for the summer?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I think I already pointed out to the Hon. Members opposite, who really show they are not interested in providing decent and fair coverage to agricultural workers, that we are sitting down with the agricultural organizations to work out any difficulties they might face in administering the program, including those which might apply to under-aged workers who are coming in for a day or two. We are working on those problems. But if the Hon. Member is suggesting that we somehow change the basic objective and principle of the system, then frankly we do not intend to do that because we on this side of the House happen to believe in fairness and equity.


Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Ontario.


Mr. Fennell:: Madam Speaker, because of the noise on my left I could not tell who was going to be recognized.


Ian Deans: That noise is called "Blenkarn".

March 29, 1983
Oral Questions INDUSTRY


MAISLIN COMPANY LAY-OFFS IN TORONTO
Thomas Scott Fennell: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. I had a phone call today from a driver with the company which received $34 million from the federal Government. He is one of ten drivers, 10 per cent of the driving staff in the Toronto yard, who are being laid off as of the end of the month. Madam Speaker, these funds provided for Maislin were to maintain the employment of those people and make sure the company survived. Now, I find this situation disgraceful. Would the Minister look into it and find out what Maislin Transport is doing about employment in its Toronto yard?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I will investigate the Hon. Member's allegation with respect to the individual in his constituency. However, I would like to remind him that, contrary to the statement made by one of his colleagues in a question to me earlier today, rather than 800 Canadians working for Maislin in Canada there are approximately 1,400 Canadians still working for Maislin. Obviously the company is doing its very best to try to recover, and 1 would hope that all Hon. Members on both sides of the House want to ensure the survival of this particular company.


REPORTED TRANSFER OF EQUIPMENT
Thomas Scott Fennell: Madam Speaker, I have also found out that equipment in Maislin's Toronto yard was taken from Quinn Transport in Boston, which is older equipment, continually breaking down. I am also advised that all the modern new equipment happens to be in the Buffalo yard. Will the Minister do a complete review, even though it is a public company, of what is going on in Maislin Transport?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I will look into the allegations of the Hon. Member.


MEDICAL CARE
Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg-Birds Hill):: Madam Speaker, last night the Alberta Health Minister gave the kiss of death to medicare in that Province by imposing a variety of user fees for emergency, out-patient and in-patient services, on top of recent hikes in premiums and the toleration of a 35.5 per cent extra billing rate. The Alberta Tories are openly inviting the insurance companies to move back into the insuring of basic health care costs, setting the stage for the destruction of medicare. This complements the damage the Ontario Tories
are doing to medicare in this Province. Indeed, Madam Speaker, if this is the way that Peter Lougheed and Bill Davis show how truly Conservative they are, then let us all be thankful that they appear to be uninterested in federal politics. My question, Madam Speaker, is coming.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Presumably-


Mr. Young:: Today. Just today.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: -Davis and Lougheed will leave the federal attack on medicare to other Tory hopefuls.


Madam Speaker:: We are all very disappointed; we all thought the question was coming.


Mr. Nowlan:: So is the Resurrection.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the question is this: when will we see some action on the process by which Canadians can get the long-awaited Canada Health Act, and get it in a form which will prevent what we are seeing happening in Alberta? Are we going to see some real draft legislation this spring, or are we going to have to wait until the fall? What kind of timetable does the Minister have in mind for dealing with this serious problem?


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, I am very surprised at the question of the Hon. Member because the situation in Alberta, as we heard on the news this morning, is extremely serious and of very serious concern to all Canadians. There is an act respecting medicare, in case the Hon. Member does not remember, and this situation in which it seems user fees will be created for October 1 for all sorts of categories of patients, including acute care, emergency, out-patient, et cetera, may well be in breach of the existing agreement signed between Edmonton and Ottawa. I have therefore sent a Telex to the Alberta Minister of Health telling him of the possible breach of agreement and requesting very detailed information, especially as to the uniform terms and conditions under which that new measure will be applied. We will then have to make an assessment visa-vis the covenants signed and the conditions of accessibility in the three pieces of legislation covering medicare, and then it will have to go to cabinet for a decision.


William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, I do not think there is any further assessment required. I think what the Alberta Government has done is clearly an attack on medicare. The Minister should bring in draft legislation and seek the support of the Canadian people for that legislation, which I am sure will be forthcoming.


INQUIRY RESPECTING INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION
William Alexander (Bill) Blaikie: Madam Speaker, the Minister did not answer my question. When will we have a Canada Health Act before us? Will she be meeting with the
March 29, 1983

Health Ministers promptly in order to deal with this problem? I am not referring just to the health minister of Alberta but to all the Tory health ministers who are secretly jeopardizing the future of medicare. There is nothing but silence over there- silence on the Crow, silence on medicine, but plenty of noise when the oil companies are at stake.


Madam Speaker:: Order.


Monique Bégin: Madam Speaker, I must say that I am even more surprised. I thought the Member was governing for the present, not only for the future. He does not seem to remember that in New Brunswick there is a Conservative Government which tried much smaller user fees, and which had to backtrack after a year because the seniors, the women and the high risk groups in terms of health in that Province, did not let it happen. Of course the Liberals helped.
I just want to remind the Hon. Member that right now the same situation, if not worse, can be the case in Alberta. We intend to apply the Act in the way it stands now.


GARRISON DIVERSION
Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Last week in the City of Winnipeg, Manitoba, an incident took place in front of the United States Consulate. There was a demonstration in which two members of the cabinet of the Manitoba Government participated, one of them being the Deputy Premier who reportedly was there on instructions of the Premier. During the demonstration the United States flag was burned. May I put a question to the Secretary of State for External Affairs with respect to this rather appalling display of bad manners on the part of a minister of the Crown?
Given the genuine concern of many Manitobans that this deplorable act could have a detrimental effect on rather sensitive bilateral issues which exist between the United States and Canada, can he assure the House of Commons that the on-going negotiations, for instance with regard to the Garrison diversion project, will not be negatively affected by this most insulting behaviour of two ministers of the Crown of the Government of Manitoba?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I would tell the Hon. Member that we had some discussions with the minister from Manitoba responsible for the Garrison and we intend to continue those discussions in the United States shortly. I would hope that the United States authorities are mature enough to overlook the kind of incident the Hon. Member has mentioned.
Oral Questions


REQUEST THAT MINISTER PROFFER EXPLANATION TO UNITED STATES AUTHORITIES
Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question. I wonder if the Secretary of State for External Affairs could further assure Members of the House and Canadians generally, by undertaking to explain to his United States counterpart that this abnormal behaviour on the part of two Canadian ministers of the Crown is not representative of the normal behaviour of Canadian governments at any level. After he has so communicated with his United States counterpart, could he inform the House of the results of that exchange?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, I do not think it would be appropriate for me to raise this matter with the United States authorities by explaining the conduct of Canadian citizens who, despite the views of the Hon. Member, are still entitled to the right of assembly and freedom of speech. It would be quite inappropriate for me to go to the United States authorities and begin to explain a particular incident in Canada. If that were my responsibility, I fear there would be a great many occasions when I would have to explain why a particular group in the country took an action that was opposed to American policy.
I do not think the Hon. Member is basically interested in the health of relations between Canada and the United States. I think that the Canadian people share that view. They believe we ought to maintain a sound relationship with the United States. I believe that the Canadian people can judge the conduct of other citizens, including ministers of the Crown in Manitoba. Surely the people of Manitoba will have the opportunity to judge that conduct themselves.
It is certainly not my intention to go to Washington to explain the conduct of any Canadian citizen on any particular matter.


LEADERSHIP OF MANITOBA DELEGATION TO WASHINGTON
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Yellowhead):: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs or for the Minister of the Environment. Will either Minister tell the House whether the Government of Canada holds the view that Canada's position in relation to the Garrison project might be jeopardized by the fact that the Manitoba delegation en route to Washington to discuss it, will be led by a minister of the Crown who was present at a demonstration at which the flag of the United States of America was burned?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, it is not my responsibility to express an opinion on that particular matter. The Hon. Member for Yellowhead is quite capable of forming his own opinion.
Canada has very important interests insofar as the Garrison is concerned, and we share those interests with the Province of

March 29, 1983
Oral Questions
Manitoba. We intend to press those interests. I have stated already that 1 do not believe that the United States Congress will determine its attitude on the Garrison on the basis of the incident to which the Hon. Member for Yellowhead referred.


POTENTIAL NEGATIVE REACTION OF UNITED STATES
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, may I put a supplementary question to the Minister of the Environment. Could he tell the House whether his Department is considering any sort of contingency plan to take account of a potentially negative reaction in the United States to the fact that the Manitoba delegation going there to discuss the Garrison will be led by a minister who was enthusiastically present at the burning of the United States flag?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, we continue to consider all options at all times. I doubt whether the United States Government would be put off by the silliness of the minister in Manitoba any more than by the perpetual silliness of the former Leader of the Opposition.


CANADIAN NATIONAL RAILWAYS
Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Transport may I direct my question to the Acting Minister, or to the Parliamentary Secretary.
Northumberland Ferries Limited is a private company which operates a car ferry service between Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia. It is the only alternative car ferry service to that operated by CN Marine between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. May I ask the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport if the Government is aware that Canadian National is making concerted efforts to take over Northumberland Ferries Limited or, failing that, to seize the contract that Northumberland Ferries Limited has with Transport Canada when that contract comes up for renewal in May, 1984?


Mr. Jesse P. Flis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, I can inform the Hon. Member that Transport Canada has received no representation from CN Marine to purchase Northumberland Ferries Limited. I think this is a local rumour that started out in the Member's constituency. I can assure him there is no validity to the rumour. Transport Canada has received no such representation. He is correct that the Northumberland contract will expire in May 1984, not 1983. This may have prompted the rumour.


Thomas Michael McMillan: The rumour did not emanate from within my own riding, but from within the boardrooms of Northumberland Ferries which received an offer to purchase from CN Marine, an agency of CN.


PROPOSAL TO BUILD TWO FERRIES
Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Parliamentary Secretary. In view of the fact that the federal-provincial P.E.I. Mainland Transportation study recommended the construction of two vessels for Northumberland Ferries in order to lengthen the season, to increase capacity and to improve efficiency in the Prince Edward Island-Nova Scotia ferry service, what is the response of the Department of Transport to that concrete proposal of Northumberland Ferries? Has the Government studied the recommendations of the commission to which I made reference? Has it received and studied the proposals from Northumberland Ferries Limited for the two vessels? If so, is the Government favourably predisposed toward the excellent proposal of that company?


Jesse Philip Flis: Madam Speaker, in response to the preamble of the Hon. Member, I do not feel the Minister is privy to what goes on between the directors of one boardroom and the directors of another boardroom. It becomes the Minister's responsibility only when an official representation is made to the Minister of Transport. I stand by my first answer.
As to his second question, Transport Canada is interested in any proposal which will provide more efficient and safer service to Canadians using such service. Transport Canada is interested in lengthening the sailing season. It is interested in increasing capacity, but it has to measure such proposed projects against whether they are affordable to the taxpayers of Canada. Keeping those objectives and affordability aspects in mind, the Minister and Transport Canada officials are studying the proposal mentioned by the Hon. Member, but they have not come to a decision whether or not to accept the proposal for the two new vessels.


PETITIONS
Madam Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the petitions presented by Hon. Members on Monday, March 28, 1983 meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.
Also I want to be very clear about the petition presented by the Hon. Member for Yorkton-Melville (Mr. Nystrom), who mentioned in his presentation that he had photocopies of the names taken from an original petition. That would not have been in order, but upon examination it was found that 16
March 29, 1983

pages containing approximately 450 original signatures were presented to the Table, and of course that is in order.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Thomas H. Lefebvre (Pontiac-Gatineau-Labelle):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour of tabling on behalf of all my colleagues of the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure, the Committee's Sixth Report, in both official languages of Canada.

I would like to add that these recommendations would make changes in the Committee system for consideration of legislation by Special Committees.


PENSION REFORM-PRESENTATION OF FIRST REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE
Mr. Doug Frith (Sudbury):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the first report of the Special Committee on Pension Reform and, if the House pleases, I intend to move concurrence in this report later this day.


PUBLIC ACCOUNTS-PRESENTATION OF EIGHTEENTH REPORT OF STANDING COMMITTEE
Mr. Bill Clarke (Vancouver Quadra):: Madam Speaker, I have the honour to present the eighteenth report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
[Editor's Note: For above reports, see today's Votes and Proceedings.]


PETITION
Gordon Edward Taylor: Madam Speaker, I have great pleasure in presenting a petition signed by some 850 residents of Canada urging Parliament to move rapidly in order to pass Bill C-671, an Act respecting the execution of Clifford Robert Olson. Mr. Olson is really worse than the war criminals, having planned and killed at least 11 young people. He is a menace and will be a fear to all Canadians as long as he is alive.
Order Paper Questions PENSION REFORM


CONCURRENCE IN FIRST REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMITTEE
Douglas Cockburn Frith: Madam Speaker, I move that the first report of the Special Committee on Pension Reform presented to the House earlier this day be concurred in.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. David Smith (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 3,936, 3,939, 3,944, 3,945, 3,946, 3,947,4,472 and 4,717.


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Stony Mountain Institution, Stony Mountain and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far as
the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
A.	The Warden at Stony Mountain Institution is Terrence Sawatsky. (a) Date of appointment to present position: October 15, 1979. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Assistant Warden, Socialization, Stony Mountain Institution, (c) Salary range: $39,700 to $48,500. *(d) The minimum educational requirements for this position are successful completion of secondary school or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination 320 coupled with relevant experience.
B.	There is no Deputy Director at Stony Mountain Institution but the Assistant Warden, Industries, Richard Sheppard, is presently designated by the Warden to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. The responsibility may be rotated periodically in order to provide experience and training opportunities to three other Assistant Wardens.
(a) Date of appointment as Assistant Warden, Industries: October 16, 1982. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Assistant to Chief Trade Instructor, Stony Mountain Institution, (c) Salary range: $24,564 to $34,039. *(d) Same as part A(d).
* Information provided is for previous work experience in the federal Public Service only. The provision of any additional information on individuals regarding previous work experience outside the federal Public Service and personal educational qualifications is of a personal and confidential nature, the disclosure of which is governed under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Part IV.

March 29, 1983
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Saskatchewan Penitentiary, Prince Albert and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far as
the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
A.	The Warden at Saskatchewan Penitentiary is James O'Sullivan, (a) Date of appointment to present position: September 9, 1975. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Assistant Warden, Industries, Saskatchewan Penitentiary. (c) Salary range: $39,700 to $48,500. *(d) The minimum educational requirements for this position are successful completion of secondary school or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination 320 coupled with relevant experience.
B.	There is no Deputy Director at Saskatchewan Penitentiary but the Assistant Warden, Administration, Archie Ellis, is presently designated by the Warden to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. The responsibility may be rotated periodically in order to provide experience and training opportunities to three other Assistant Wardens.
(a) Date of appointment as Assistant Warden, Administration: July 29, 1975. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment Regional Records Manager, Correctional Service Canada, Regional Headquarters, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, (c) Salary range: $26,212 to $29,168. *(d) Same as part A(d).
* Information provided is for previous work experience in the federal Public Service only. The provision of any additional information on individuals regarding previous work experience outside the federal Public Service and personal educational qualifications is of a personal and confidential nature, the disclosure of which is governed under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Part IV.


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Drumheller Trailer Unit and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far as
the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned: Drumheller Trailer Unit is under the management responsibility of the Warden, Drumheller Institution. Please see reply to question No. 3,946.


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Bowden Institution, Innisfail and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far as
the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
A.	The Warden at Bowden Institution is Raymond Desroch-ers. (a) Date of appointment to present position: October 15, 1979. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Warden, Stoney Mountain Institution, Winnipeg, Manitoba, (c) Salary range: $38,020 to $42,919. *(d) The minimum educational requirements for this position are successful completion of secondary school or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination 320 coupled with relevant experience.
B.	There is no Deputy Director at Bowden Institution but the Assistant, Warden, Socialization, Gary Sudol, is presently designated by the Warden to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. The responsibility may be rotated periodically in order to provide experience and training opportunities to five other Assistant Wardens.
(a) Date of appointment as Assistant Warden, Socialization: February 7, 1977. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Head of Living Unit, Stony Mountain Institution, Winnipeg, Manitoba, (c) Salary range: $33,689 to $37,913. *(d) This position requires a university degree, preferably with specialization in sociology, psychology, social work, criminology or some other specialty relevant to the position or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination, "General Intelligence Test 310" and possess the experience qualifications for the position.
^Information provided is for previous work experience in the federal Public Service only. The provision of any additional information on individuals regarding previous work experience outside the federal Public Service and personal educational qualifications is of a personal and confidential nature, the disclosure of which is governed under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Part IV.


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Drumheller Institution, Drumheller and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far as
the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
A.	The Warden at Drumheller Institution is Daniel Kane, (a) Date of appointment to present position: August 4, 1981. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Executive Assistant to the Regional Director General, Ontario Regional Headquarters, Kingston, Ontario, (c) Salary range: $39,700 to $48,500. *(d) The minimum educational requirements for this position are successful completion of secondary school or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination 320 coupled with relevant experience.
B.	There is no Deputy Director at Drumheller Institution but the Assistant Warden, Socialization, Daniel Denis, is presently designated by the Warden to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with
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Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. The responsibility may be rotated periodically in order to provide experience and training opportunities to six other Assistant Wardens.
(a) Date of appointment as Assistant Warden, Socialization: June 1, 1979. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Assistant Co-ordinator, Inmate Classification, Correctional Service Canada, Regional Headquarters, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (c) Salary range: $33,689 to $37,913. *(d) This position requires a university degree, preferably with specialization in sociology, psychology, social work, criminology or some other specialty relevant to the position, or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination, "General Intelligence Test 310" and possess the experience qualifications for the position.
Information provided is for previous work experience in the federal Public Service only. The provision of any additional information on individuals regarding previous work experience outside the federal Public Service and personal educational qualifications is of a personal and confidential nature, the disclosure of which is governed under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Part IV.


Mr. Lawrence: What is the name of the present (a) Director (b) Deputy Director of the Edmonton Institution, Edmonton and, in each case (a) for how long has he/she held the position (b) what position did he/she hold previously (c) what is his/her salary level (d) what formal education does he/she have?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far
as the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
A.	The Warden at Edmonton Institution is Robert Benner, (a) Date of appointment to present position: July 16, 1980. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Warden, Bowden Institution, Innisfail, Alberta, (c) Salaray range: $39,700 to $48,500. *(d) The minimum educational requirements for this position are successful completion of secondary school or to have passed the Public Service Commission Examination 320 coupled with relevant experience.
B.	There is no Deputy Director at Edmonton Institution but the Assistant Warden, Security, Arthur Steedsman, is presently designated by the Warden to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. The responsibility may be rotated periodically in order to provide experience and training opportunities to two other Assistant Wardens.
(a) Date of appointment as Assistant Warden, Security: December 20, 1977. *(b) Position held prior to present appointment: Assistant Warden, Security, Joyceville Institution, Kingston, Ontario, (c) Salary range: $30,567 to $34,090. *(d) Same as part A(d).
Information provided is for previous work experience in the federal Public Service only. The provision of any additional information on individuals regarding previous work experience outside the federal Public Service and personal educational qualifications is of a personal and confidential nature, the disclosure of which is governed under the Canadian Human Rights Act, Part IV.
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Friesen: 1.	How many employees (deputy ministers, administrators, clerks, typists) are at the National Headquarters of the Canadian Correctional Services in Ottawa?
2.	How many line officers (guards) are in each of the regions?
3.	How many regional directors (all classes), wardens and assistants, directors (all classes), and administrative officers are in each of the regions?
4.	How many classification officers (counsellors) are in each of the regions?
5.	How many (a) instructors (b) doctors (c) nurses (d) grounds keepers (e) personnel directors are in each of the regions?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: In so far
as the Correctional Service of Canada is concerned:
1. No. of employees at National Headquarters: 541.
Atlantic	Quebec	Ontario	Prairie	Pacific2. No. of Correctional Officers (CX-COF, CX-LUF) in each region:	364	1,466	985	902	7233. In each region: No. of Deputy Commissioners (Regional Directors are now called Deputy Commissioners)	1	1	1	1	1No. of Regional Managers	10	11	11	10	11No. of Regional Executive Officers	1	1	1	1	1No. of Wardens	2	10	9	5	5No. of Superintendents	4	5	5	6	5No. of Farm Managers	1	0	2	2	0No. of Directors (This includes Directors of Parole Offices and Directors (all classes) at Regional Psychiatric Centres)	6	3	7	8	7No. of Area Managers, Parole office	4	17	11	9	6*No. of Assistant Wardens	13	51	43	34	36No. of Assistant Farm Managers	1	0	3	3	0No. of Assistant Directors	0	0	0	2	2** No of Administrative Officers	126	339	254	253	1694. No. of Classification Officers (including CCC Counsellors)	79	203	142	127	77
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Order Paper Questions
5. (a) No. of Instructors (This includes teachers, shop instructors, arts and crafts instructors etc. in relation to inmate programs. It also includes staff
instructors)	59	171	181	25	32
(b) No. of doctors, including psychiatrists (It also includes doctors and psychiatrists under contract.)	5
(c) No. of nurses	18
(d) No. of grounds keepers (Including maintenance
employees)	62
8	20	15	1355	74	108	111199	171	121	79
(e) No. of Regional Managers
There are no Assistant Superintendents, Assistant Directors, Parole Offices and Assistant Area Managers, Parole Offices, however, there is one employee designated by the Superintendent, Director or Area Manager to act in his absence through a Commissioner's Directive issued in accordance with Section 29(3) of the Penitentiary Act. These employees are at the managerial level or have managerial experience.
Administrative Officers: The information is provided for administrative officers as designated by Treasury Board classification standards. This includes those employees in the Administrative and Foreign Service Category: AS-FI-IS-OM-PE-PM-PG-WP and CS.
It excludes those employees accounted for in other portions of the response to part 3 of the question, i.e., Wardens, Superintendents, Area Managers, Parole Offices, etc.
It should be noted that many other employees perform a certain degree of administrative duties in their day-to-day line of work. For example, a CX officer in a supervisory position has to do a certain degree of administrative work, i.e., running the office, preparing appraisal forms, preparing reports, etc.


Mr. Young: 1.	Did the Chairman of the Canada Museums Construction Corporation mail a package of documents to Canadians on February 10, 1983 concerning the selection of the sites and the architects for the construction of the National Gallery of Canada and the National Museum of Man and, if so (a) what were the total postage costs incurred in mailing the package (b) to whom was the package mailed and for what purpose (c) what was the total number of packages mailed?
2.	Were press releases from the office of the Minister of Communications included in the package and, if so, for what reason?
3.	What was the total cost of printing the letterhead of the communique used by the Corporation in this instance?


Hon. Francis Fox (Minister of Communications):: I am
informed by the Canada Museums Construction Corporation as follows:
1.	Yes. (a) $2,218.42.
(b)	The package was mailed to museum professionals, interested politicians and officials, and Canadians who have demonstrated their active support for the two institutions in a variety of ways, and especially through their membership in various museum-related organizations. The mailing was done to apprise these groups of development concerning the two projects and maintain the interest they have demonstrated.
(c)	The mailing was comprised of 3,359 packages consisting of a total of 15 pages of material in both official languages.
2.	Yes, in order to apprise the groups referred to in 1(b) above of developments concerning these projects and to maintain the interest they have demonstrated.
3.	$676.40.


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


Madam Speaker:: The questions enumerated by the Parliamentary Secretary have been answered.


Mr. MacKay:: Madam Speaker, on February 9, 1982, which is more than a year ago, I put on the Order Paper some statistical questions regarding our diplomatic staff in communist countries and the diplomatic staff of these countries here in Canada. On June 8, 1982, as reported at page 18213 of Hansard, the Parliamentary Secretary, the same Hon. Member who responded today, assured me in the House that the Government's silence was not deliberate on this issue and that he would look into the matter. I have had nothing but silence in the meantime, and that is a long time to wait.
I have no option at this stage but to put on the record my conclusion that this is a conspiracy of silence and that the Government is simply trying to cover up a scandalous situation concerning our diplomatic relations with communist countries. The information which I am seeking and the Government is denying to me as a Member of the Parliament of Canada is readily available to the communist countries concerned. The only people who are kept ignorant about this state of affairs are the Canadian people.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, I wish to assure the Hon. Member that there is no effort to suppress information on my part. Whenever I am asked to look into a question on the Order Paper by a Member, 1 do so. I would like to assure the
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GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
Hon. Member that in fact I sent off an inquiry. Obviously I have not obtained the answer yet. I regret that and will send off another inquiry.
["It being six o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.\nAt 6.15 p.m., the House rose, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.", 'Wednesday, March 30, 1983']
Mr. McKinnon:: Madam Speaker, I should like to raise a similar matter with the Parliamentary Secretary. Question No. 4,336 has been standing in my name since May 19, 1982. It concerns a Lieutenant Geoff Wright of Victoria who was discharged from the regular army and is not being admitted into the reserves for some reason that the Department seems unwilling to divulge. He has been assured that if he could get permission from a reserve commanding officer they would reenlist him. He has done so but they still refuse to re-enlist him.
I want to know why. Also I would like to know why this interminable delay in answering questions of that easy a nature.


David P. Smith: I will pursue that matter on behalf of the Hon. Member. I do not know the answer offhand, but I will look into it.


Mr. Stevens:: Madam Speaker, I know the Parliamentary Secretary is trying to do a very good job, but I want to point out to him a gross oversight on his part. Despite the fact that he has repeatedly told the House he would be answering question No. 2,042, asked by myself on January 29, 1981, to date the question is still unanswered.
As we all know, this session may be coming to an end. Surely the Government does not want this dreadful blot on its record because the question simply asks what the total cost was of the Prime Minister's December, 1980-January, 1981 world tour and what percentage of the total cost of the trip will be paid by the Canadian taxpayer.
We know that the Prime Minister is fond of going on these capers. Surely the Government owes it to the people of Canada to tell them what the tab is that we are picking up for this type of tripping around the world.


David P. Smith: Madam Speaker, to refer to a hard-working trip undertaken by the Prime Minister on behalf of the Canadian people as a caper is really going too far. I find it difficult to accept the good faith of the Hon. Member when he couches his question in such terms as that.
My day would not have been complete had he not raised this question with me. I will certainly be happy to look into it, as I have before. I am somewhat puzzled as to the unusual delay in answering this question. I can assure him that I expect to see this question as Question No. 1 on the Order Paper in the event that there is a new session. But we may get an answer before then and I will certainly do my best.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. Cosgrove that Bill C-143, to provide supplementary borrowing authority, be read the third time and do pass.
Thomas Michael McMillan: Madam Speaker, Bill C-143, which we are now debating, seeks to give the federal Government authority to borrow $19 billion. This legislation represents the largest borrowing Bill in the history of Canada. Never before has the Government been required to come to Parliament, cap in hand, for the authority to borrow such a massive amount of money. The reason it must do this is that never before has the Government been so broke or the Canadian economy so badly mismanaged.
In the time I have available I want to focus on the area of Government waste and extravagance to which I made reference a few moments ago during Oral Question Period. That area concerns the operations of Transport Canada, and Canadian National in particular. I want to focus on this area of spending and waste because it, more so than any other that I can think of, threatens what little fiscal responsibility remains in the Government of Canada. I am referring more generally to that labyrinth of sub-government commonly known as Crown corporations.
The current Government has allowed Crown corporations to become so plentiful and so large and so unaccountable that it was utterly incapable of providing the Opposition with even a ballpark estimate of the number of such agencies that actually exist at the federal level. Nowhere is the problem more acute than in my own backyard, the Atlantic Provinces, vis-a-vis CN Marine.
CN Marine is an independent profit centre of its parent company, Canadian National. In the Atlantic Provinces its primary function is to operate ferry services from one Province to another. In my Province of Prince Edward Island, CN Marine operates a car ferry service across the 14-mile Northumberland Strait, which separates the Island from New Brunswick.
The most famous of the Corporation's several ferries is the icebreaker Abegweit. When it was built in 1947, it was the world's largest and most powerful icebreaker of its kind. Since then she has earned a special place in the hearts and minds of Islanders, for she has served us well. On the worst days of our sometimes brutal winters, the tenacious "Abby", as she is affectionately called, has kept us from being totally cut off from the rest of Canada.
I mention the Abegweit because now, after 35 years since her maiden crossing, the Abegweit is being replaced by the Abegweit //, a spanking new vessel out of the Saint John Shipbuilding and Drydock. As the Auditor General made only

March 29, 1983
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too clear in his celebrated 1982 Report, the new Abegweit has come to symbolize Government ineptitude, waste and extravagance every bit as much as the old Abby symbolized dependability and service.
The facts are as follows. The Department of Transport paid some S25 million, as a partial payment toward the total cost of the vessel, to CN Marine ostensibly as an upfront advance payment to the builder for the stated purpose of achieving savings of $2.9 million in anticipated cost escalations. However, instead of advancing the $25 million to the shipbuilder immediately, as CN Marine was committed to do, the corporation stashed the funds in a special interest-bearing bank account for a time. The interest earned on the money deposited accumulated to an amount in excess of $4.8 million. That most of the money was eventually applied to the capital cost of the vessel does not mitigate one iota the fact that CN Marine's actions were utterly irresponsible and self-serving.
In effect, CN Marine used public funds to amass hundreds of thousands of dollars to which it was not entitled through a sleight-of-hand that flew in the face of every accepted Government accounting practice, even by the lax standards of this incompetent Government. To boot, CN Marine paid the shipbuilder $163,000 to consent to the arrangement. Some may call that an inducement or moral suasion, but I call it an outright bribe.
As if the situation were not bad enough, which it clearly is, CN Marine and CN have stonewalled all efforts by the Government's Auditor General to obtain information about the funding of the Abegweit. The Auditor General has determined that CN Marine's handling of the cash advance from the Department of Transport, though done ostensibly in the name of frugality and of saving the Government money, realized not one cent of savings on the total cost of the vessel in question.
Moreover, the Auditor General has seriously questioned the ethics of an agency of the Crown paying $163,000 to a shipbuilder from a special trust account that it was not entitled to set up in the first place.
The point is that, while the Abegweit incident may have little effect in the context of the Government's $90 billion budget, such practices could cause the Government significant problems if all of the hundreds of other Crown corporations conducted their affairs in the same manner. And many of them do so. A former senior Government auditor, now retired, whom I trust implicitly, told me in confidence-in the sense that I cannot attribute his remarks to him personally-that this kind of practice is commonplace. According to him, cases of money being obtained in advance from Government Departments ostensibly to make an immediate payment toward the total cost of a project, and then stashing the funds in a special trust account to earn interest for God knows who, are not at all rare. In many cases, according to this auditor, interest of that kind has been allowed to accumulate in special trust funds, ending up in the pockets of people who have no entitlement whatever
to that money. This money belongs to the taxpayers of Canada, so it should not be used in such a way. But when that kind of thing occurs, no one is the wiser. Certainly the Government does not know about it or, if it does, it does not care. The taxpayer is bilked millions of dollars each year through shoddy practices of that kind.
Crown corporations are, in effect, chunks of Government placed at arm's length from Parliament and Canada in a way that makes it virtually impossible for the elected representatives of the people to scrutinize their spending or operations. They have become empires unto themselves, controlling hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars with only the skimpiest of accountability to the Government and to the Parliament of Canada. As the CN Marine example demonstrates, the scope of Crown corporations for circumventing acceptable Government accounting procedures is almost boundless, as is their capacity to stonewall Government auditors once the corporations put their minds to it. And, ultimately, the taxpayers, whom those agencies are thereoreti-cally supposed to serve, end up paying the price.
The irony is that, having demonstrated its inability to manage effectively the taxpayers' money in connection with current Crown assets, CN Marine has set its sights on buying Northumberland Ferries Limited, a privately-owned company on Prince Edward Island that provides the only alternative ferry service to CN Marine's between the Island and the Mainland. That company was established in 1939 and operates four car ferries between Wood Islands, Prince Edward Island, and Caribou, Nova Scotia. Experts in the field consider the quality of its management exemplary, especially when contrasted to that of CN Marine. Yet here we have a Crown agency, CN Marine, making concerted efforts to buy out its competitor or, failing that, to seize its contract with the federal Department of Transport to operate the Prince Edward Island-Nova Scotia ferry service when that contract comes up for renewal in May, 1984.
Such a monopoly of car ferry service for CN Marine on the Island would be nothing less than catastrophic. It would be a tragedy for the Government, for CN Marine itself, and certainly for the people served by the car ferries in question. It would give the Crown corporation a stranglehold on the Province of Prince Edward Island, placing the company in a position to hike rates, slash services and dictate other conditions of operation without fear of restraint by market forces that only healthy competition can provide.
Moreover, a monopoly of that kind would render our Province terribly vulnerable in the event of labour strife, within CN. If such a monopoly had prevailed for example in the summer of 1973, when a Canada-wide CN strike shut down the Prince Edward Island-New Brunswick car ferry service, the consequences would have been disastrous for the local economy. Even as it was, despite the alternative service available from the Northumberland Ferries Ltd. at the time, when the CN Marine strike crippled the car ferry service operated by it between P.E.I. and New Brunswick, the Island suffered great losses, especially in the area of tourism. Think,
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sir, what would have happened had we been totally cut off from the Mainland, as would have been the case had CN Marine operated the Northumberland ferries Ltd during the strike.
If I seem hard on CN, it is because I intend to be. I respect Crown corporations and especially the employees of CN. But what I do not respect is the fact that the corporate elite of Canadian National, operating from Montreal, have generally given Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic region as a whole a bad shake.
Prince Edward Island entered Confederation in 1873 largely to save its railway. P.E.I. came in because its railway was floundering and the Province thought that its joining Confederation would be the best avenue for saving the railway in perpetuity. Indeed, unlike any other Province that I know of, P.E.I. enjoys a constitutional commitment, written right into the Constitution of Canada, by the federal Government to provide a continuous link with the rest of the country by rail. Yet CN has chipped away at the Island railway with such persistence that in recent years we have found ourselves in the position of having practically nothing left worth saving. We have lost direct passenger service. We have lost important freight rail lines. We have lost any real on the spot capacity to maintain and repair rail cars and rail lines. We have lost the heart of the Carload Centre, the central operation for the administration of freight to, from and within the Province. We have lost CN Express services everywhere on the Island except Charlottetown. Finally, and most recently, the car ferry service has been drastically reduced, and we face the possibility of a monopoly which would altogether threaten the whole ferry system.
In Prince Edward Island, where highways cannot provide an alternative to rail for commercial purposes because the Island lacks the rockbed required to sustain heavy road traffic, we will soon be bereft of any transportation system worthy of the description. Clearly, CN has written us off and the federal Government is allowing Canadian National to do so. The federal Government is a ready accomplice in this scheme to strip the Island of what little remains of its railway system.
Established by the Government to forge a country out of a vast and thinly populated land, CN has long since, in my view, given up its public service mandate everywhere in the country

not just in P.E.I.-in favour of amassing huge profits, no matter what the cost to the public interest. In fact, in many parts of Canada, Canadian National is no longer interested in operating as a railway company, so preoccupied and obsessed is it with turning a fast buck in glamour industries such as gas and oil, in which it is investing heavily at the expense of traditional operations.
The recent formation of CN Exploration, Inc., an oil and gas subsidiary that has become an active participant in resource development out West, particularly in Saskatchewan, demonstrates where P.E.I. stands in the pecking order of Canadian National. My seatmate in the House of Commons, the Hon. Member for Kindersley-Lloydminster (Mr. McKnight), said it perfectly:
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Taxpayers' money funnelled into (CN) has made it one of the biggest transportation companies in Canada. Yet CN is forgetting its primary responsibility and is overspending and investing taxpayers' money in the oil industry.
Canadian National, like so many other Crown corporations, has become a monster virtually beyond the control of either the Government, of which it is nominally a part, or of Parliament, let alone the people of Canada which these corporations are supposed to serve. It is bad enough that those conglomerates are spending hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollars without proper accountability, but many are now assuming what I can only describe as a life of their own, far removed from the purposes for which they were established in the first place.
Let me conclude by saying that, if someone in Parliament or someone in the public, or some accountant within the Government, wants to get a grip on uncontrolled Government spending, he need look no further than Canadian National's books for a place to begin. This is one Member of Parliament who would relish the opportunity to help him turn the first page.


Mrs. Margaret Mitchell (Vancouver East):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-143, and I would like this afternoon to take a somewhat different perspective on this Bill. We all know that $19 billion is an almost incomprehensible amount of money for most of us, and certainly for most Canadians, to grasp. We certainly are most concerned that this money will be spent productively and for types of expenditure that are going to help with the recovery of Canada's economy.
We would like to know, as my colleagues have already said, how this money will be used. We do not feel that the Government has given us a clear statement on this question. We would like a more specific breakdown of how this tremendous amount of money, which is to be borrowed at very high interest rates, will be spent, and in what specific areas.
I would assume, in this time of very high unemployment, that a good proportion of this amount of money will be spent for job creation. It is therefore to this particular area of expenditure that I would like to address my remarks this afternoon.
Furthermore, on this whole question of unemployment and measures to counteract unemployment, to create jobs and to get our economy rolling again, we have been asked again and again by the Government-let us see if they are serious or not-to make positive suggestions rather than just to criticize. So this afternoon this is what I propose to do.
We have over two million unemployed. There are many hidden unemployed people who are not shown in our statistics, such as the women in the home who have not been able to get into the work force. There are many who have been laid off through attrition are not registered on Unemployment Insurance rolls. There are 600,000 young people coming out of school. Many people have been on welfare for some time and others have just given up looking for work. The Government's token effort to deal with this situation is to put money into

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short-term make-work projects. They are spending millions of dollars in this area. There are not enough jobs created. But also these are not the kinds of projects that are making some impact on the whole question of how to use human resources more productively. Nor do they create permanent kinds of community services and community enterprises.
Today I would like to talk about an alternative employment proposal for which we would like to see money requested by this borrowing Bill C-143. I would like to encourage unemployed people and many workers who are facing lay-offs also to consider worker co-operatives, enterprises which are owned and operated by workers themselves. Third sector co-operative enterprises have not been encouraged in Canada. We feel that they should be considered for job creation. Some of the $19 billion that the Government is asking us to authorize by this Bill could certainly be spent on permanent kind of job creation that is working very well in certain countries in Europe.
In European countries, workers' co-ops are flourishing. Some of them are community kinds of co-operatives and selfhelp services. Others are building co-operatives to help extend housing. Many workers' co-ops are very sophisticated high-tech industries which include a good deal of research and development into new technologies.
I propose that the Government allocate some of the funds to be borrowed under Bill C-143 for research and also initial development of workers' co-operatives, as an alternative third sector way of helping to create jobs and deal with unemployment.
During this period of high unemployment, people are searching for alternatives that will use their skills and experience. People who have worked all of their lives, who have so much experience and capability, are beginning to feel very depressed because they have been chronically unemployed now many months. These people are sitting at home doing nothing while they have tremendous experience and capabilities that should be put to work.
One alternative employment strategy which has been given little attention in Canada is the development of these workers' co-ops. Workers' co-operatives may be small, community-based services or large industrial enterprises. The common characteristic, however, is that workers own the enterprise collectively and they all invest their labour in the enterprise. They hire a manager or manage their effort collectively. They have a democratic say in all policy decisions.
This past fall, Mr. Speaker, I joined with over 20 cooperators from across Canada to study workers' co-operatives in Britain, France and Spain. I would like to take the time to put some of our findings on the record because I think it is very relevant to Canada. We visit small community co-ops, particularly in Britain, such as print shops, restaurants that were run co-operatively by the workers, bicycle repair shops, adult education centres and feminist co-ops, as well as toured older, larger industrial co-ops, some of which have been in existence for 30, or more years. They were producing shoes, chemicals, glassworks and even Triumph motorcycles. These were large enterprises that had been owned and operated by workers for many years. In most communities there also were
building co-ops that use the skills of carpenters and tradespeople who were formerly unemployed to produce housing and also to undertake repairs and renovations, something which is very much needed in every community in Canada.
In England Co-operative Development Agencies in local municipalities receive Government grants to assist workers to form co-operatives, as well as to conduct feasibility studies and to learn successful business techniques. In Wales, a particularly interesting experiment was just beginning. Unemployment in that country, is very high since many of the major industries such as the coal mines have closed down. There was a desperate situation in which trade unions also were very much involved. The Wales Trade Union Council is assisting in promoting workers' co-ops, and these in turn become a trade union affiliate. So it is a co-operative effort between cooperators and trade unionists who are equally concerned with the plight of workers as well as developing a viable industry.
In France we found very modern, sophisticated, co-ops that were working successfully in the high technology field. But of major interest to co-operators was the co-operative developments in the Mondragon region of northern Spain, the Basque area of Spain. In that area there are 80 industrial workers' coops. They produce a very wide range of industrial products such as furniture, bicycles, auto parts, tools and computers, some of which are exported to Canada. These co-ops are supported by a major co-operative bank. Our credit unions in Canada should be helping in this way. They have a technical co-op college to train young people. The young people attend technical school for half a day and work in co-op factories the other half. Thus they are able to pay their own fees and expenses.
There is a very significant research and development component which helps to develop high technology products for export. To assist their network of co-operatives, they have coop insurance programs, and welfare services are available to all co-op members. There are child care centres so that workers, women in particular, are able to have an equal chance of employment. There are producer and consumer co-ops which complement each other. These co-operatives form a network that provides jobs for almost 22,000 workers in the Mondragon community. They are worker owners.
That there have been no business failures in workers' cooperatives since 1956 at which time they were started by Catholic priests to encourage more self-help development in the Basque area. There have been no failures in over 100 industrial firms during that period.
During a time of very high unemployment in Spain, where the recession is as bad if not worse than in Canada, in the Mondragon area where the workers' co-operatives are the base of activity, there has been less than 1 per cent unemployment. Their last resort is unemployment insurance. They try to find jobs for their workers. If workers are unemployed in one co-op they transfer them to sister or brother co-ops.
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Co-op workers who own their own businesses have a strong commitment to their job. Studies bear this out. They have a strong commitment to the total operation. They do not work for someone else. They work for themselves. They work together for a productive and successful operation. In successful worker co-ops, profits are re-invested in the business. Workers do not take their profits home in their pockets right away. However, when they retire many of them have a considerable equity in the business.
Workers often contribute sweat equity labour during the initial stages of business development. Modern marketing and business practices are essential components of successful worker co-ops. Union membership provides a wider affiliation and mutual help between different co-operative endeavours, as well as ensures good working conditions and a concern with national and international issues affecting working people.
Workers' co-operatives are not a solution for replacing obsolete or unsuccessful businesses. We were warned about this over and over again. Like any private business or state-operated business, co-ops have to be run efficiently with adequate initial capital, and sound management. Friendly Government legislation is needed to assist co-ops in the same way as it does other small businesses.
Research studies of workers' co-ops have concluded that industrial democracy results in higher productivity than in either private or public-owned enterprises. If they are established on a sound basis, co-operatives can be a most successful and fulfilling experience for the worker members. We found tremendous enthusiasm among workers. We found that an investment or labour effort far beyond usual working hours was common in most of these co-op developments.
We would not oppose Bill C-143 quite as strenuously if we were sure that the Government would put some of the billions of dollars which it intends to borrow into developments that would help to solve some of our industrial problems and put Canadians back to work. I am seriously presenting workers' co-operatives as one alternative that I hope the Government and Opposition Parties will look into.
What can the federal Government do to promote additional successful co-operative enterprises? First, it should look at the model developed in the co-operative housing field. The experience there is very relevant. It would not appear to require massive Government expenditures. A revolving fund of capital could be used for start-up funds which could be recycled as the enterprise becomes viable. That would be one consideration.
Unlike the make-work projects we now have in our communities, which are very debilitating, workers' co-ops would not be short-term job creation. At present people are not being trained, getting into permanent jobs and becoming productive. An investment in workers' co-ops would be much more productive. It would not be a handout or welfare program, but an investment in developing human resources and viable enterprises.
There would need to be regional co-op resource centres in Canada, such as there are in England. Housing co-ops in Canada also have them. Training resources would be available
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to provide advice, research and public education. That would be a first step. Help with feasibility studies also would be needed. Regional co-op resource centres should be developed in co-operation with the labour union movement as well as with Government. Otherwise there would be a competitive situation. As in Wales, mutual help between union members would be the ideal.
Start-up funds would be most important to assist co-operative enterprises. In England workers often used their redundancy pay as their initial investment in co-op ownership. A pool of capital should be available to provide start-up funds and help initiate feasibility studies.
In most new co-operative ventures there is a period of development when it is not yet a viable business with a product that brings in income for wages. It would make sense, at least during the initial period, if co-op workers could continue receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits, as is done now in some job-creation programs. This would build toward a permanent salary from a viable co-op enterprise.
There should be Government support for co-operative enterprises, just as there is for small business. We learned that it is important that there also be a co-operative banking system which would provide favourable loan arrangements. Co-ops could help each other through a credit union type of membership. Eventually networks of workers' co-ops would be developed. There would be national and regional support organizations such as have developed in the co-op housing field.
Through this Bill the Government is asking for blanket approval to borrow $19 billion. This is a typical Liberal tactic. We would like to know on what this money will be spent. Canadians would also like to know. We would like to see some of it spent on productive investment in workers' co-operatives in order to assist improvement in our economy and put workers back to work. Workers want to contribute as productive human beings. This would be a practical investment rather than a handout. Canadians have a right to know where the moneys borrowed under this Bill will be spent. Because of our huge debt load, they want every cent spent wisely and productively to rebuild our economy. During this time of very tragic high unemployment, I can think of no wiser investment, than to invest in the development of viable, self-reliant co-operative enterprises which are owned and operated by workers themselves, which will employ essential expertise, and which will produce Canadian goods and services both for domestic use and also for export.


Benno Friesen: Mr. Speaker, I was fascinated by the remarks of the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Mrs. Mitchell) representing the New Democratic Party, and her proposal that some of the $19 billion of increased indebtedness, the borrowing Bill which we are now debating, Bill C-143, be used to fund workers' cooperatives. It is a fascinating theory. It is amazing that the New Democratic Party can always import ideas which have

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been rejected somewhere else, and then try to make them work here. If the Hon. Member would like to see how well those workers' co-operatives work, she should go to those countries where it has taken its purest form, and that is, behind the Iron Curtain. If she would take a look at the East Bloc countries she would see how well those workers' co-operatives function. As a matter of fact, before those co-operatives were in place, the Soviet Union was a food-exporting nation, and it was not long after the co-operatives were instituted in that country that the Soviet Union became consistently a food-importing nation. It is always crop failure or it is always the weather that does it to them, but somehow the workers' co-operatives have never been at fault.
The Hon. Member should visit East Germany and see the lineups of citizens of that country waiting to get into a consumers' store, wanting to buy consumer goods. At a shoe store, for example, the lineups go out on to the street when a new shipment of shoes comes into that store because they know that a month later there will be none, because the co-operative system, you see, works so well, according to the Hon. Member for Vancouver East. There is an absolute paucity, a barrenness of consumer products in these countries, and the consumer products of the West are used as currency in the East Bloc countries where those workers' co-operatives work so well.
She should also take a look at the People's Republic of China where, for the past 25 years or 30 years, the workers' co-operatives have been functioning so well that they are now being rejected and they are turning to what was called in the Soviet Union in 1927, "The new economic policy". Because the whole concept of workers' co-operatives worked so well, Mr. Speaker, they were running into such consumer goods shortages that they had to give the small-businessman a break. So they introduced the new economic policy. They called those short-term business people "NEP-men". Now, Mr. Speaker, in Mainland China, they have to do the same thing because there is continual shortages of goods in that country. They have to introduce somewhat of a market system there. The Hon. Member for the New Democratic Party now wants to take an idea which has failed all over the world, has been rejected all over the world, and wants to impose it on the Canadian people. That is the kind of service the NDP wants to perform.
We are now in the last day of debate regarding the borrowing authority, Mr. Speaker. We are in the last hours of this debate. But while we may be completing debate on it, the effects of this Bill are going to go on literally for decades, because, as other Hon. Members and myself have said continuously throughout this debate, we will be paying for this literally for generations. We, sitting here in this House, are not going to pay this bill. It will be our children's children who will pay this bill. That is the inequity that this system is forcing on us.
I would like to mention the latest development, Mr. Speaker. The Government has known this is the last day of debate and that within hours this House will approve the further indebtedness of the Government to the tune of $19 billion. The Government knows it will be able to pay its bills after Thursday, or on Thursday. It knows that it is going to happen, yet
the Government has sent out notices to the RCMP headquarters all over Canada saying that the RCMP officers are not going to be paid Thursday, obviously because the Government has no money, so it says. That, Mr. Speaker, is about as sleazy a trick as the Government can impose on the RCMP force. These are people who are working for us every day, doing their best to serve the Canadian people. The Government knows it will be able to pay them.


Mr. Thacker:: It imposed time allocation on us.


Benno Friesen: As the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker) said, we are under time allocation because the Government has imposed that on us. It knows it is going to get this Bill passed today. Yet it has gone out with this ruse across Canada telling the RCMP that they are not going to be paid on Thursday. That is sleazy, Mr. Speaker. There is no other word for it but "sleazy".
What we are seeing here, as other Hon. Members have said, is the pattern of the Government. The pattern over the past 20 years has been to spend all of the cashflow which comes in during years of prosperity, to spend it as it comes in, and then, during years of hard times, to borrow. I suspect many of us have forgotten some of the spending programs which were carried on by this Government during times of prosperity. It occurs to me, first of all, how this runs counter to the pattern of behaviour of the citizens of Canada themselves. I believe you are aware, Mr. Speaker, that Canadian citizens, on a per capita basis, have more money in savings accounts than the citizens of any other industrialized nation. Canadians, by nature, by history and by tradition are savers. They put their money into accounts. They are not the kind of spenders which the Government itself is.
It seems to me it is because of the frontier pioneering education which Canadians over the years experienced that they have become a nation of savers. They realized out on the frontier, on the old homestead, that whereas there might be a good crop this year, even a bumper crop, next year there could be a famine, a drought, an early frost, late spring rains, a total crop failure, a grasshopper infestation, or rust. Just because there is a good crop this year does not mean that next year there will be that kind of surplus. So over the years the Canadian frontiersmen, the Canadian homesteaders, the farmers, learned to lay by during the years of prosperity so that when the years of famine came there would be something to tide them over. That is the Canadian experience which is just the opposite of that of the Government. Whereas the Government ought to lead the way and set the example, in Canada it is the people who set the example, which the Government refuses to follow. We have a Government which, in years of prosperity, when the tax dollars are flowing, spends money like a drunken sailor-and I should not impute that to sailors.
Ten or 15 years ago, the Government was encouraging the young people of Canada to tour Canada, "Forget about the cost. The Government will provide hostels. The Government
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will provide bus service. The Government will look after you. If you want to leave home, go to a local welfare centre wherever you happen to hit town. There will be a cheque waiting for you there." In terms of social costs, we must stop and wonder how many families the Government helped to break up because it was so easy for a kid of 12, 14, 16 years of age to leave home, strike out on the road, pick up easy money at the welfare office and forget about his relationship with his parents.
We must not forget also that great noble experiment in Toronto 15 years ago called Rochdale. That community college was a sump hole of Government funds through, I believe, CMHC. It became a byword, not only of Government financial failure but of social irresponsibility. Young people were making a garrison out of that place. It was so tough in there that the police were afraid to go in. The President of the Privy Council (Mr. Pinard) must remember those days. Those young people were getting unlimited funds, and their major skill was not in attending classes and taking a disciplined course of study because that was a college where you just sat and grooved. Do your own thing. You are not going to have any stricture or structure imposed on you because that would be confining and you would warp the personalities of these young people. You have to do your own thing in order that the personality blossoms. Well, it blossomed so much that those poor young people became society's rejects. Their major skill was not passing courses; it was filling out application forms for more money. That is the way the Government was spending money in those days, instead of setting some of it aside so when hard times came we would have some money in reserve. That seems to me to run counter to our traditions and history.
It also seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that deficit spending in the guise of helping the unemployed has also been an abysmal failure. You would think that if deficit spending to help the unemployment problem worked, we would now be drunk with success because the deficit has certainly been going up. I just want to read some statistics on how it has been going up. The spending forecast of November, 1981 was for $75,450 million. The deficit would be $10,490 million. By June of 1982, seven months later, the spending estimate had gone up by almost $3 billion to $78,100 million, and the deficit was now estimated at $19,550 million. By October, five months later, the spending estimate was $79,210 million, and the expected deficit was $23,550 million. In February, 1983, four months later, the spending estimate was $80,400 million and the expected deficit was $27,200 million. So from November, 1981, to February, 1983, a matter of 15 months, the spending estimate rose from $75,450 million to $80,400 million, $5 million more, and the estimated deficit rose from $10,490 million to $27,200 million, almost three times as much in a matter of 15 months.
I have two points, Mr. Speaker. The Government has done a miserable job of planning and estimating. It is just out of control. Secondly, if deficit spending were to be the solution for unemployment, we would have had all of our problems
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solved in the last 15 months because of the ballooning deficits we have before us. But then I have before me a news release from the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Axworthy) dated March 28, 1980. He talks about the Employment Tax Credit Program and he says:
"This will be a temporary measure designed to ensure that an effective job creation program continues while an employment strategy is being prepared for early announcement in the House of Commons," Mr. Axworthy said.
He went on to say:
After a slow start the program developed quickly. It is estimated that, by the end of March, more than 46,000 agreements will have been signed with employers-agreements providing for the creation of more than 67,000 jobs.
The simple question, Mr. Speaker, is: where are they? Where is the massive success that the Minister predicted just two years ago to the day? He said this would be an interim measure, a temporary measure while employment strategy is being prepared for early announcement in the House of Commons. That was two years ago and the announcement has not been made yet. Was it the NEED program, which was announced last fall and which is another abysmal failure? I guess, Mr. Speaker, the truism is that there is nothing so sure about history but that we do not learn from history. It is time for the Government to reassess its approach. Spending simply is not going to do it. It had better get in tune with the business community of this country to make sure they have some confidence in the Government. Rest assured, Mr. Speaker, that when an announcement is made by this Government which the business community is waiting for, the second response of the business community is going to be: when are they going to change it? The over-riding attitude in the business community is that you cannot be sure any policies announced by this Government will be in place for any length of time. There is insecurity in the business community. They cannot plan, they cannot predict what is going to happen. They do not know whether the Government is a friend.
I trust that when the Government announces the date of the new budget, Mr. Speaker, and as they prepare this budget, they will not only bring some kind of financial relief but will begin to foster an air of stability and trust in the country so that the business community can do the kind of thing it needs to do if the Government expects it to invest the kinds of dollars it wants to. No businessman is going to invest dollars if he is afraid that he will lose them because of the insecure climate which has been promulgated by this Government.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: The Hon. Member for Cariboo-Chilcotin (Mr. Greenaway).


Mr. Kristiansen:: Mr. Speaker, it is not appropriate at this juncture to either make comments or ask questions of the Member who has just spoken?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Yes, that is quite in order. The Hon. Member wants to put a question?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Rather a comment, but if the Member chooses to take it as a question I would be quite agreeable to hearing his reflections on the comments I make.

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I was interested in the Hon. Member's opening remarks in which he so obviously misunderstood the basic thrust of what the Hon. Member for Vancouver East (Mrs. Mitchell) was saying. I find it difficult to believe that the Member who said, "We must learn the lessons of history", which were almost his concluding remarks, should somehow fail to understand the difference in the concept of workers' co-operatives outlined in some complexity and detail by the Hon. Member for Vancouver East in her remarks which immediately preceded his. He fails to understand that that is different from the state-operated approach, the history of which in many parts of the world she decried. She suggested that worker co-operatives were a better solution to harnessing both individual initiative and the willingness of people to work co-operatively together with Government and the private sector in order to achieve economic growth. That is what she was suggesting. Nothing that I heard in her remarks could conceivably be misconstrued and, I am sure unintentionally, misinterpreted in the manner in which the Hon. Member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friesen) did a few moments ago.
If the Hon. Member did not deliberately misconstrue them-and I do not think that is what he did-then I can only say that his comments are a product of that peculiar kind of Conservative mind that seems to follow a single track. It does not open itself and its thinking to other ways of organizing economic structures that have been experimented with both in the East and the West, for almost 50 years.
In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, it appears that the Hon. Member's mind is like a razor blade-sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, but inevitably narrow. That makes it a typically Conservative mind, but I hope the Hon. Member will learn to widen his.


Benno Friesen: All I can say, Mr. Speaker, is that obviously the Hon. Member has been cut by it.


Lorne Everett Greenaway: Mr. Speaker, I hold a copy of Bill C-143 in my hand. I maintain that this is more than an innocuous piece of paper; it is actually a mortgage document. It mortgages the future of the young people of this country for years and years, and probably for their children as well. Clause 2(4) reads as follows:
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.
That adds insult to injury, Mr. Speaker. What is going to happen when the time comes to pay for this is that the Canadian dollar will probably have slipped. The money will be borrowed from countries which base their currency on the U.S. dollar, so we will be paying back the billions borrowed, plus interest, plus the exchange. It is even worse than it looks on the surface. Now, we all realize that income tax is the major method of extracting revenue from the Canadian people and that the squeeze is on.
My untimely departure from the House last week unfortunately prevented me from making several key points about the
nature of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act and the profound effect it is having upon farmers in this country. I want to bring that up in this debate because one of the reasons we are borrowing money is that the Government's planning is so inept that not only has it had to squeeze farmers but it is going to have to mortgage their children's future as well.
As I recall, prior to exposing the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) for what he was-and in my opinion still is-I was about to note the legal ramifications of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act. As I noted, it breaks farmers into three groups-full-time, part-time and hobby farmers. Revenue Canada has lately been reclassifying farmers for tax purposes from full-time to part-time and from part-time to the hobby classification. Our present definitions of these categories stem largely from the Muldowan v. The Queen case which reached the Supreme Court in 1977.
In Muldowan v. The Queen, the original Section of the Act was described by Mr. Justice Dickson as awkwardly worded and intractable. He pointed out some interesting anomalies in Section 31. The first question addressed by Justice Dickson was whether farming could constitute a source of income in a year in which a loss was suffered. He pointed out that the Section came into play only when the taxpayer had had a farming loss in the year. "That being so," he said, "it may seem strange that the Section should speak of farming as the taxpayer's chief source of income for the taxation year ..." In other words, how can you talk about using income to determine whether a farmer is a full-time, part-time, or hobby farmer when all three, under this Section, would be claiming losses.
The March 8 edition of the "Canadian Taxpayer" deals with this case in a very lucid manner. In an article entitled, "Why Not Kill Section 31?", this publication notes that Mr. Justice Dickson ruled that farming could constitute a source of income in a year when there was a loss as long as there was a reasonable expectation of profit. This reasonable expectation of profit has become a very important point in the classification of farmers under Section 31.
The second issue considered by Mr. Justice Dickson was the legal meaning of the word "combination" in the phrase "combination of farming and some other source". According to Section 31, a full-time farmer can have a part-time job off the farm and still retain his full-time status, and similarly a part-time farmer can have an off-farm job without being reclassified as a hobby farmer. Justice Dickson clarified these classifications as best he could. In his ruling he introduced the following classifications.
First, a taxpayer for whom farming may reasonably be expected to provide the bulk of income for his livelihood is free of the limitation of Section 13(1)-this is now Section 31 of the Act-in those years in which he sustained a farming loss.
The second classification is that of the taxpayer who does not look to farming, or to farming and some subordinate source of income for his livelihood, but carries on farming as a
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sideline business. Such a taxpayer is entitled to the deductions spelled out in Section 13(1) in respect of farm losses, that is, $5,000 per year.
The third classification is that of the taxpayer who does not look to farming, or to farming and some subordinate source of income for his livelihood, and who carries on some farming activities as a hobby. This is the so-called hobby farmer. The losses sustained by such a taxpayer on his non-business are not deductible in any amount.
These classifications raise the question of whether we in fact need Section 31 at all. Once again, the "Canadian Taxpayer" deals with this matter in a very logical manner. The article
says:
The judgment, however, gives rise to the question of whether there is any need or justification for keeping the Section in the Act at all.
It does not apply to the first or third of His Lordship's classes of farmers. Taxpayers in the first class can claim their total losses like any other business people, while those in the third class cannot claim any deduction at all, because the Act specifically prohibits deduction of personal or living expenses.
That leaves the second class, but who is in it? Anyone who farms with a reasonable expectation of profit is 'farming', as the courts have confirmed. Where, then is the justification for restricting the loss such a person may claim as a deduction? In the Court of Appeal in the Muldowan case, Mr. Justice Pratte said that because of the Section "A limit is placed on the deductibility of commercial farming losses where farming is carried on as a subordinate activity, even though no such limit appears to have been placed on the deductibility of other types of subordinate commercial loss." Obviously the provision can be extremely unfair to some taxpayers.
As long ago as 1976 the Joint Committee of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants and the Canadian Bar Association recommended to the then Minister of Revenue and the then Minister of Finance that Section 31 be repealed. The Government has failed to act on that advice. Instead, it has continued to tax farmers on a basis that is patently unfair and discriminatory. We must question the motives of the Government for keeping this Section of the Income Tax Act in existence.
The only rational explanation for the retention of Section 31 of the Income Tax Act is that it is a money-maker for the Government. It is a tax grab by a Government that is desperately trying to cover a mounting debt. Never mind that farmers are being forced into bankruptcy by this unfair rule. Never mind that no other commercial venture is subject to similar regulations. The Government does not care. Section 31 brings in revenue, and that is all that matters to a Government which is both financially and morally bankrupt.
I should like to refer to an editorial which appeared on March 15 in the Cariboo Observer, a prominent paper in my riding. It commented upon Section 31 under the heading, "Greedy Attacks". It reads:
Ranchers and farmers in the Cariboo are feeling the heat from relentless attacks by our provincial and federal Governments. The undisputed backbone of our nation, ranchers and farmers brought this wilderness out of the dark ages and into the twentieth century mainstream almost singlehandedly. It is tragic, under present economic conditions, that those ranchers and farmers trying to make ends meet, now find that that very activity which makes their operations viable is used against them by income tax investigators.
These internal revenue "revenooers"-call them what you want-are not interested in illicit whiskey distillers. They are out after tamer game: respectable,
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responsible, hard-working people trying to build a future with sweat, sacrifice and scarce dollars.
This is free enterprise? This is the land of endless opportunity?
No way. This is pure greed, displayed for all to see by a grasping group of civil servants, punishing people for trying harder.
There are choice words for this type of injustice. We can't print them.
One such person in my riding has been assessed four years of back taxes, amounting to $28,184.07, because he was classified as a part-time farmer. The man has put his heart and soul into his ranch since 1972 when he inherited it from his father. This individual is currently living with his wife and three young children on his land in the basement of an unfinished house. He cannot afford to finish the house. It currently does not even have running water. Yet the Department of National Revenue has determined that this man owes them $28,184. Where was the Minister of Agriculture, that great defender of the Canadian farmer, when my constituent was assessed these back taxes? The Minister of Agriculture wrote to me on this case when I referred to him for help. This is what he wrote:
Yours is one of a number of representations I have received on this issue, and I thank you for bringing to my attention these examples of the impact of present tax law.
That is the help we received from the Minister of Agriculture. I should have been named and removed from the House of Commons last week. However, I should have been named for understating the case against the Minister of Agriculture; that is why I should have been thrown out. The Minister says that the world is one big roast beef; the Minister is one big ham.


Mr. Kempling:: That is not unparliamentary.


Lorne Everett Greenaway: That is not unparliamentary, but it is true. The $19 billion for which the Government is asking in Bill C-143 is just one more example of its desperate circumstances. The Government argues that it needs to borrow this money to make Unemployment Insurance benefits, for job creation and other such programs. This is only partially true. The Government is expected to spend $18.6 billion in interest in 1983-84 on past borrowings. I do not think it is fair that a family, living in the basement of a half-built home with no running water, should be expected to shoulder the burden of the Government's lack of financial responsibility. I do not think that his or anyone's children should be expected to pay interest on the billions of dollars which this incompetent Government has borrowed and is borrowing. Our children are being mortgaged into bankruptcy.


Mr. Bill Wright (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on third reading of Bill C-143. In effect, the Government has come before us and asked for approval to borrow $19 billion-$5 billion for this year and $14 billion for next year.
I should like to turn to the statement of the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) on February 17, 1983, wherein he said that upon his appointment as Minister of Finance one of his basic tenets would be to inform the Canadian people fully of

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the economic situation as he saw it. He said that he had done this repeatedly and consistently since his appointment as Minister of Finance and that he would continue to do it in the future.
The Government's deficit in the coming year may be as high as $30 billion, yet we were told by officials in the Department of Finance-and this perhaps goes back one year-that they could judge six months ahead what would be the state of the economy and the borrowing requirements of the Government. Now we have a Government which comes before us almost weekly and tells us how much more it needs to borrow.
A couple of years back, in November 1981, the Government forecast a deficit of $10.4 billion. At that time we had real economic growth in the economy of 2.2 per cent. In June 1982, the deficit was $19.5 billion, with a real economic growth of minus 2 per cent. In October 1982, the Government projected a deficit of $23.5 billion, with a negative growth rate in the GNP of 4.4 per cent.
In the statement of the Minister of Finance of February 17, 1983, he suggested that the deficit would be approximately $27.2 billion, with a negative GNP growth of 4.8 per cent. One wonders how long we will have to put up with a Government that does not really know where it is going. Week after week it adjusts its figures on the deficit. Week after week it adjusts its figures on the borrowing requirements. In effect, it does not know which way it is going. Perhaps this reflects somewhat upon the business community because in reality businesses in Canada say that they cannot plan ahead. It is impossible to plan more than one year ahead in any business in Canada because one does not know what tax changes the Government will make.
The previous Minister of Finance, in the budget of June 1982, made what could be best described as a death-bed confession when he said:
Some say it should print more money. Others say it should let the deficit rip. But that would fail miserably. Inflation and unemployment would get worse. Interest rates would rise even more. Canada would price itself out of world markets. Recovery would be postponed.
If a deficit has been incurred as a consequence of measures to promote economic growth, there may be some economic benefits. At the same time, irrespective of how the deficit occurred, there are economic and financial costs.
There are two ways to Finance the deficit. One is by printing money. Over the past 12 years the Bank of Canada has financed $12 billion of the Government's cash requirements by monetizing its debts. Printing money leads to an expansion of the money supply, which may lead to an increase in the rate of inflation. The other method to finance the deficit is by borrowing money. In 1982, borrowing by the federal Government accounted for over 51 per cent of all new security issues placed in Canada. In 1983, the figure will be even higher. Borrowing of that magnitude clearly must have an effect on the supply and demand for money, and thus on interest rates which must be borne by the private sector. In effect, the Liberal Government has failed to exercise adequate cost controls. When one
examines the use of tax dollars, one sees that one out of every four dollars in tax revenue is used to service the public debt. That is an unbelievable figure. The total tax dollars spent to service the public debt is $16.7 billion. This works out to approximately $1,800 per taxpayer.
It is a fact that the Liberal Government cannot balance its books. Surely, if all businesses in Canada conducted their affairs like the Government, they all would have gone bankrupt. If a business does not balance its books, it cannot remain in business, nor would the Government allow it to stay in business unless it was a company like Maislin Transport to which the Government pumps in money to keep it afloat.
It is interesting to compare the Government's spending with the growth in the Gross National Product. The Liberals have maintained that the rate of Government spending will be less than the rate of growth in the GNP. In the year 1980-81, spending grew by 15.2 per cent while the GNP grew by 10.8 per cent. In the fiscal year 1981-82, Government spending grew by 16.7 per cent while the GNP grew by 13.2 per cent. In 1982-83, Government spending grew by 18.8 per cent and GNP grew by 5.3 per cent. In the projected year 1983-84, Government spending will grow by approximately 17 per cent and the GNP will grow by 8 per cent. The fact that the Government continues to increase its spending is incredible. Yet the Government attempts to maintain that it will not increase its spending. When will it adhere to policies that it sets down? The Government is devoid of ideas and does not follow through with any of its policies. Its policies only exist day by day.
Let us consider this from another perspective. Between the 1968-69 fiscal year and the 1982-83 fiscal year, federal Government spending increased by 624 per cent as compared to a 192 per cent increase in the Consumer Price Index for the same period. Since 1980, Government spending has increased by 68 per cent, while the Consumer Price Index during that same period grew by 37 per cent and the GNP grew by 33 per cent.
We have undergone two recessions since the Liberals came to power in 1980. The second recession began in the third quarter of 1981 and was exacerbated by the massive tax grab in the MacEachen budget of November, 1981. This recession has been the longest and most severe since the "Dirty Thirties". Canada's real GNP fell by 4.8 per cent in 1982. Since the second quarter of 1981, Canada's GNP has fallen by
7.5	per cent.
Businesses have suffered because of this decrease. Business bankruptcies were up by 33 per cent in 1982 as compared to 1981 and were 63 per cent higher than in 1980. Since August, 1981, there has been a net loss of 551,000 jobs. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate in February of this year was 12.5 per cent, not including the hundreds of thousands who have given up hope and have dropped out of the labour force.
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One must also pause and consider the plight of those helpless students who will be coming on to the job market this summer only to be faced with the evident lack of jobs for them.
Other evidence of Government ineffectiveness can be seen in housing starts in Canada. In 1982 there were 126,000 housing starts in Canada, which is down from 178,000 in 1981 and far below the 210,000 units that CMHC has stated is necessary to stave off a housing shortage. This was due to extremely high interest rates and the poor state of the economy, all caused by the Liberal Government.
While it is true that we are experiencing a world-wide recession, it is also true that Liberal policies have made the recession far worse in Canada than it need be. One needs to look no further than the National Energy Program. The only explanation for the implementation of the national energy policy was the potential revenue that would have accrued to Alberta. It was never put in place to obtain self-sufficiency for Canada. Canada will not be self-sufficient by 1990. The National Energy Program was a short-term appeasement of the NDP and the other socialists on the Liberal side. They knew that if they did not act quickly, too much revenue would accrue to Alberta and they would not be able to stop that influx of money. Therefore, this program was a method to delay the large revenues that were accruing to the Alberta Government, the British Columbia Government and also to the companies.
It is interesting to reflect upon why the Government was unable to help Canadian companies, if that was its intention, through slowing down the increase in revenue to the foreign-owned companies. It is well known that the only companies in the oil industry to be hurt were the Canadian-owned companies. The foreign-owned companies were never hurt, nor was it intended that they be hurt. Elowever, through this policy the Government was able to buy some of these companies. It will be able to buy some of these companies at fire-sale prices.
Only the Canadian-owned companies have gone bankrupt or have lost massive amounts of revenue since only part of the revenue of foreign-owned companies is derived from Canada. Those companies do not have a problem. The other thing, of course, was that there was a massive amount of revenue from these companies leaving the country. Yet statistics have shown that 98 per cent of all the money that they received was retained and used back in the country. Therefore, the National Energy Program was only devised to appease the socialists who were in a hurry and those socialists who have lots of time.
Statistics Canada suggests that we will perhaps have an economic recovery in the next year. There has been some evidence to indicate that perhaps the recession is coming to an end. The major question now appears to be whether the positive evidence concerning consumer confidence and retail sales in the fourth quarter represents a beginning of the recovery in consumer demand.
Just as we need confidence in the business sector, so we need confidence in the consumer sector. If consumers are afraid to spend and do not do so, the retailer will not purchase goods.
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That is the present state of the economy. Until confidence is restored in the consumer, the economy will not pick up.
In order to restore that confidence Canada needs stable policies instead of hearing the Government say every week that its deficit will increase. The situation will not improve as a result of the Government's introducing new tax policies. The tax law is complicated enough now. People no longer know how to fill out their income tax forms. Businesses spend up to 20 per cent of their time filling out Government tax forms. We cannot continue to go on like this if we intend to turn this economy around. We need stability in our economy. We do not need abrupt changes like the National Energy Program. We do not need abrupt changes like higher deficits that scare people and investors off.
A month and a half ago, I was in England with one of our committees. I visited a number of investment people in the City of London. I asked about the economic climate in a number of countries. I was told that the worst place for investing capital is North Korea, and next to that is Canada.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Wrong. Start paying attention to the facts of life. You are crazy.


Frederick William Wright: I think the five Liberals over on the other side have woken up.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: How many?


Frederick William Wright: Five of them. I think it is time that we settled FIRA and put it on the back burner. It is not all bad. But surely as a young country we must encourage foreign capital. I realize the NDP Members do not like foreign capital. They do not like any capital other than what the Government provides. If we want to see this country progress and come out of the recession, we have to provide stability. We must project this to the population, the business community, the consumer and the retailer, and unless we do that, we will barely come out of the recession before going back into another one.


Mr. Terry Sargeant (Selkirk-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity this afternoon to add a few comments on third reading of the borrowing authority Bill. Like many other Members of Parliament this is the second time that I speak to this Bill. I found some of the comments made by the last speaker quite amusing. I never cease to be amused by the Tory allegations and the slurcast on socialism by calling this crowd across the aisle socialists. I take it as a personal insult. Some of the monetary systems and policies which they have followed in the last few years have put them to the right of the right rump over here. I would caution the Hon. Member not to use the word socialism so loosely around here. It is really quite a highly respected term. To associate the word socialist with Liberals is less than desirable for many of us.


Mr. Cousineau:: Watch out now, Terry.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: I was just being a little friendly here, Rene.
I was surprised at the Hon. Member's comments about London and how the London investors find Canada to be such

March 29, 1983
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a bad place to invest in. That may very well apply to the Government across the aisle, but I do know for a fact that probably the most responsible and best administered Government in this country is the Government of Manitoba. It had no problem at all borrowing money in London, and the London investors found the Manitoba economy to be one in which it was worthwhile to invest.


Frederick William Wright: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The Hon. Member is referring to something I said. I was talking about equity capital, not debt capital. There is a tremendous difference.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: Mr. Speaker, I do not think you need point out that that was not a point of order.


Mr. Laniel:: Let the Chair decide.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: Speaking directly to the Bill, it is clear enough what the Government wants from Parliament with this Bill. It wants the authority to borrow $5 billion for the remainder of this fiscal year which, incidentally, ends in two days. There will be great amounts of spending in the last two days. As well, this Government wants another $14 billion for the next fiscal year. It is not clear, in spite of the best efforts of Members of the Opposition, on what the Government plans to spend this $14 billion.
We are being asked to approve this additional borrowing authority without even the benefit of a budget outlining the Government's spending priorities for next year. I understand this is the largest unbudgeted borrowing in Canadian history.
When I spoke on second reading of this Bill, I said my concern was with how the Government uses its deficit, not simply that one exists. Modern Governments have been using deficits as an instrument of economic policy for decades now. The Government should not be increasing the deficit in a reactive manner. It should not abandon its responsibility for guiding Canada's economic development, and resort only to deficit financing to cover its shortfall in tax revenues. No, the Government should be using the deficit to invest in economic recovery, to stimulate economic development that will increase Government tax revenues and, in the long run, reduce the need for deficit financing.
Instead the Government, in its last three budgets, has set its sights on cutting Government spending, hoping in turn to be able to reduce the deficit. But as we in the NDP warned the Government and the Tories with their new-found faith in the economic theories of the thirties, tightfisted fiscal and monetary policies brought on the recession that is now strangling the Canadian economy and causing the Government's deficit to skyrocket. The Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) himself has admitted that the increasing deficit is due in large part to the impact of the recession on Government revenues and expenditures.
It must be a bitter pill for the Government and its Conservative economic planners to swallow. In spite of their singleminded efforts to reduce Government spending and, hopefully,
reduce the deficit, the deficit has done just the opposite. The cost has been almost two million people out of work in Canada.
Let us look at past Government budgets just for a minute. In November, 1981, the Minister of Finance tried to speed up the pace of deficit reduction, setting his sights on a reduction from $13 billion to $10 billion in 1982-1983. But that did not happen at all. By the time he brought in the June, 1982 budget, the deficit was expected to be $19.6 billion. Now we are talking about a deficit for 1982-1983 of somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30 billion. That is three times what the Government had set its sights on barely 18 months ago.
It would be much better, I would say, Mr. Speaker, if the Government had had the foresight to bring in the kind of economic stimulation that would have blunted the impact of this recession; if it had chosen to invest its deficit in November, 1981, to speed up economic recovery, instead of sitting on its hands while the economy went into a tailspin, with the Government subsequently being forced to borrow billions of dollars to make up the shortfall in Government revenues caused by the recession. What the Canadian economy needs is not more Conservative economic quick fixes, but the kind of controls on Government spending that will ensure the economy picks up so that Canadians can benefit from Government expenditures.
I want to speak briefly about some expenditures related to my area as critic, namely that of the National Defence. The Tories love to minimize the importance of defence spending on the federal budget. Their constant cry is for more and more defence spending. We in this Party do understand that the Government must spend significant amounts of money in order to maintain an effective and modern defence force. But we do not believe that the answer to improving Canada's defence capabilities lies in throwing more and more money at it. It would make more sense for the Government to re-assess its defence priorities and then systematically set out the means by which it intends to meet those priorities. Currently Canada's number one defence priority is the surveillance of Canadian territory, waters and air space. Yet it is clear that successive Ministers of National Defence having ignored that priority in favour of training and equipping troops for their role in NATO. I agree with the Government that Canadian sovereignty must be our first defence priority, but it must be our first priority in deed, not just on paper.
I think this is very important when considering this borrowing authority Bill because defence spending consumes a great deal of the Government's operating and capital costs. Government spending on operating and capital costs, and by that I mean sending which excludes transfer payments, public debt and payments to certain Crown corporations, is estimated at $20.7 billion for 1983-1984. Almost 38 per cent of that spending, $7.84 billion, is consumed by National Defence. That is a pretty healthy chunk, and I think the people of this country have good reason to be concerned about how it is used.
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For example, what possible value could it be to the Department of National Defence to purchase two Challenger executive jets with a price tag of $27.5 million?


Donald W. Munro: Two people can go to Winnipeg at the same time.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: I am getting to that.
Flow could two executive jets help the Canadian Forces improve their ability to enforce Canadian sovereignty in the Arctic? Could it be that the Government is hiding in defence spending the purchase costs of additional jets for the fleet available to whisk Cabinet Ministers around the country? The reports that I have read say that the direction to buy these two air limousines came from Cabinet. The two Challenger aircraft are neither what the Department of National Defence needs nor what it wants.
Of course, while we are talking about defence spending and aircraft, there is always the F-18. The Department of National Defence goes to great lengths to tell the Canadian public what a lovely little fighter aircraft we have bought for some $37 million a copy.


Blaine Allen Thacker: The greatest submarine we have ever had.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: I might be inclined to agree with you. It leaks, like the rest of the submarines.
Last year the total cost of the F-18 program increased by 26 per cent to more than $5 billion. I think it is more than appropriate to ask if our new "Star Wars" fighter, the F-18, is a good buy. I do not think it is. Why do we need the most advanced and the most temperamental new fighter planes to act as interceptors in policing our air sovereignty? A few years ago it was suggested that we might buy 50 used F-4 Phantom jets, refurbish them in Canadian factories and task them solely for Canadian air sovereignty missions. It was argued that the money saved could be used for such things as developing an ice breaking capability for our navy to do coastal surveillance and fisheries patrol. But that suggestion obviously did not wash with the Department of National Defence nor with the Liberal Cabinet, for that matter.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, there is another area of Government spending which I think Canadians should be very concerned about, and I am speaking about the Defence Industry Productivity Program. Government assistance to Canadian defence companies is estimated to be $169 million in 1983-1984, an increase of more than 190 per cent since 1979-1980. That is a pretty healthy boost in spending. It works out to a yearly increase of about 47 per cent for the last four years, for a Government which is supposedly committed to six and five.
I would hope that if the Government is prepared to increase spending on a program that much, it would make sure that it is getting good value for its money, but that does not appear to be the case. In the contracts for DIPP assistance, provisions are generally made for a repayment of the Crown contribution, once a reasonable and fair profit has been derived. But the Auditor General, in his 1981-1982 Report, said that there is no documented rationale for what is a fair and reasonable profit.
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So we have a situation where the Government has given out some $400 million over a four-year period but was only able to recover 6 per cent of that amount from completed projects.
Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General also slammed this program for its lack of documented industry strategies, for its lack of cost benefit analysis, and for the inconsistent monitoring of the use made by companies of money they receive from DIPP.
In closing, Mr. Speaker, let me reiterate that the Government does not need the kind of tight-fisted spending controls inspired by conservative economic theories that squeeze the life out of the Canadian economy. Instead, what is needed is a rational approach to Government spending and to the deficit so that the most value is obtained from Government spending and so that the deficit is not used only to react to the effects of the recession, but is used to invest in economic recovery.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Is the Hon. Member from the Conservative Party rising in debate, or is he rising either to comment or to ask questions?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: If there are Hon. Members seeking to ask questions, they will obviously have priority over debate. Is the Hon. Member for Kootenay West rising to ask a question?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: If there is no Member from another Party doing so, Mr. Speaker, I would like to.
Very briefly, my colleague, the Hon. Member for Selkirk-Interlake (Mr. Sargeant) talked at some length about the use of the deficits which this Government has enjoyed, for lack of a proper term, over the past several years and what he perceived as a need to use those deficits more constructively in structuring and re-investing in our economy.
Over the past 15 years, there has been a large increase in public debt in Canada, and the Government has increased its interventionist policies in certain areas. These interventionist policies were largely supported by the Party that is now the Official Opposition. They have been directed basically to what has been traditionally the area of equity investment, whether it was by investing directly through grants, subsidies or interest-free loans to industry, or indirectly through special tax writeoffs, incentives and accelerated allowances. Considering these facts, I would ask the Hon. Member if he thinks that really what we have had is equity investment without the public sector getting equity? Would he agree with that analysis, Mr. Speaker, and is that not the major problem that he would see facing our economy?


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I sat on that original Standing Committee that made recommendations on the orders of the House, and it was agreed unanimously by all Party Members, including the Member for the NDP who sat on it, that interjections during the ten-minute period should be short, succinct questions, leaving the response-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair was about to point out to the Hon. Member for Kootenay West that he appeared to be making a speech. Certainly it is his privilege to rise and to be

March 29, 1983
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recognized in debate, and I hope the Hon, Member for Selk-irk-Interlake will be brief in his response.


Terence James (Terry) Sargeant: Mr. Speaker, I assure you that I will be brief in my response. I think my colleague for Kootenay West put it very well, and I can only say that I agree completely with his analysis of the situation.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I too am rising in the last 45 minutes before the bells will ring and we will be called forth and the Government Members opposite will stand once again and put the Government demand for more money.
As you know, we are standing here today under time closure on third reading. You will recall that, on second reading of the Bill when we discussed the principles of Government and the executive authority for borrowing this amount of money, time allocation was applied. It was closure. We were limited in our rights as Members on behalf of our constituents to object to this massive $19 billion borrowing Bill. After closure it went to a committee. The committee was effectively closed out by marathon sessions, lasting until 2 a.m. Yesterday, we had one day at report stage when we could ask questions. That, too, was under time limitation. We now have 45 minutes left at third reading on a Bill that will extract $19 billion from the Canadian public, $5 billion to get us over the next couple of days and $14 billion to get us into the new fiscal year.
This Bill is an affront to Parliament, an affront to each Member of Parliament, whether we sit on this side or the Government side. Members opposite would not in any instance get authority from their constituents to treat a borrowing authority Bill so cavalierly, but they will stand. Why? If they do not, they will be punished, as has been shown when Members opposite dared to stand for the rights of their constituents as compared to those of the monarch or king who sits with his appointed group of advisers.
They do not want Canadians to understand this Bill. I can understand that. It is an affront to every Canadian. Let us not forget our history. When this Government came to power in 1968 it was just following the days of Expo 67. We were a positive country with a health insurance and medicare system second to none in the world. We had a post-secondary education system that was turning out graduates who were young, excited and keen to get on with making this country work. Our economic system created ten jobs at least for every university graduate and jobs for all of the high school and community college graduates.
We had an Old Age Security system, Family Allowances and balanced budgets. The Government would come in with an expenditure program, followed by a budget that would raise every cent with no borrowing domestically or in the international marketplace. In spite of the fact we had come through the Depression and a world war in which 40,000 of our citizens died, we had a minuscule national debt. In short, when this Government came to power, we were a powerful nation with
the second highest standard of living in the world. We were charging up the mountain. It was an exciting place and we could hold our head high.
Then the Liberal Party went left. It made the mistake that so many absolute monarchs made so many times in history. We now have massive Government. The Government did it innocently. It offered all sorts of attractive programs. It agreed we should retain the small capitalist tax. The secret was, "Don't worry folks, we will borrow the difference". The Government said we were borrowing it from ourselves so there was nothing to worry about.
We had the benefit of the programs and a low income tax system. The Government was borrowing year after year. Government Members stood up and put the motions through, always on closure. Year after year Members on this side stood up and pointed out that while it may look good today, it will come back to haunt us. That is exactly what is happening today. It is true that chickens do come home to roost.
What are we faced with today? There is a lot of division among ourselves. There is an elected separatist Government in Quebec. A percentage of the voters in western Canada are committed to separation equal to the percentage that was in Quebec some 15 years ago. We have a national debt that is $200 billion, if you include the debt of the Crown corporations. We have a yearly deficit of $30 billion.
That means that over 30 per cent of all tax revenues go to pay the interest on the debt. We cannot create any programs with that money. It goes straight to those who already have wealth. As was discussed before, billions of dollars go to service that debt, concentrating wealth in the hands of people who already have wealth. That is leading to a class society, which is exactly what happened in Third World countries where there is a small percentage of people who have vast amounts of wealth and huge masses of people with no money at all.
That is what 15 years of Liberal Government is doing to this country, our mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children. It is something we would never do in our individual lives, yet somehow the Government has been able to convince us that it can do what we in our hearts know we cannot do at home.
Like every other country that has suffered massive Government intervention, we have had a devaluation of our dollar. It has gone down more than 20 per cent since these guys came into power. We all chuckled when France elected a socialist Government. Two years down the road now, it has massive debts. It has had three distinctive devaluations of its currency. I could have told you that the minute they were elected and tried to give people something for nothing, because it has happened time and time again. You simply cannot spend yourself to prosperity.
We are one half of 1 per cent of the world's population sitting on the resources of half a continent, and yet we are $200 billion in debt. It is absurd. Imagine what 24 million Japanese would do with this country. They are 114 million or 115 million people sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean
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with not one barrel of oil, yet their standard of living is much higher than ours. It is absolute absurdity, but it is the logical outflow of 15 years of the Liberal-NDP philosophy that Government can do things rather than people.
Fortunately, we still have those resources. The solution is a change of Government and to put back into place a Government that will create wealth by freeing up individuals from the restraints of Government. The combination of concentrating power in Ottawa, creating more and more Crown corporations and more and more regulatory agencies puts roadblocks in front of our entrepreneurs. Small-businessmen, such as those who set up and operate a fertilizer distribution service, a gas distribution service, a farmer, a small-businessman on the corner who starts with five or six employees and then 10, 15 or 20, is where the real economic wealth is created in this country.
The combination of regulatory agencies, municipal regulatory zoning bylaws all create so much red tape that these people simply give up. You then lose that momentum of growth and building. That is what happens when you get too much Government. The solution is simply, we simply have to cut it back.
The difference between the Liberal-NDP philosophy and ours is that they want decisions to be made by a small group, the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), his Cabinet and a small group of economic planners. They want to make all the decisions on the capital of the nation, as compared with our philosophy, the philosophy that built this country, and indeed the western world. It was to take that absolute power that only the kings and queens had prior to the 1700s, split the capital of the country into millions and millions of individual pieces and let the individuals make the decisions as to how the capital should be allocated, used and renewed. Under that system, with millions and millions of individual decisions, men and women spent their whole lives on the allocation and operation of their small farms or businesses. That led to the generation of wealth to the point where the poor people in our country were better off than the kings and queens were prior to that time.
With increasing Government control and regulation since the war, we are now getting back the same problems people had before the 1700s. The ordinary citizen, the small farmer or small-businessman is essentially becoming a serf. Within 10 or 15 years, if we keep on with this philosophy, our farmers will be nothing more than serfs. We will be back to a form of feudalism.
I do not have to point out how badly off are our hospital insurance and medicare system. Our post-secondary education system is still turning out graduates. Because we have interfered with our economic system, we do not have ten jobs for every graduate today. In fact, we have ten students unemployed for each one who has a job. We have essentially reversed the formula and that, too, is simply a logical outflow of a small group of 40 or 50 people sitting here in Ottawa thinking that they can run this whole vast country. It has never occurred before, Mr. Speaker, and it will not happen in the future.
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We are experiencing the result of huge deficits which lead to inflation just as surely as the sun comes up after the night, which in turn leads to the high interest rates, which in turn leads to a collapse. There is no doubt, Mr. Speaker, that it is a logical conclusion that this would happen because it has happened before. Is it an accident, Mr. Speaker, that even the Bible records that high interest rates are usurious? High interest rates became a sin because of the practical experience of the Jewish people who had been through this. It so affected them and so crushed the ordinary citizen, that the prophets picked it up, and it was put into their guiding book, the Bible, that it was wrong to have high interest rates. It is usury.
The Government seems surprised that we are in such trouble, Mr. Speaker. The New Democratic Party seems surprised. What is their solution? Their solution, Mr. Speaker, is more of the same, more Government. But we say, "Look. You have to break this cycle." They create the problems, and then their solution is more Government, which causes more problems, and what do they say? Let's have more Government. Why do they not try it the other way? If they looked at the United Kingdom today they would see that that country is truly starting to get its act together. For every year of a socialist Government, it will take at least two years of a Conservative Government to fix it up. Where would they rather live?
Something else which the NDP and the Liberals just cannot seem to get through their heads is again a lesson which comes to us from the Bible. All the great works from the past whether philosophic or economic, say that in the good years you put something aside for the bad years. Those Hon. Members deny the operation of the international marketplace, the invisible hand of Adam Smith. They simply wish to deny it exists, but it does exist. It exists whether you are a socialist country or a capitalist country. It is simply this: if you do not put something away in the good years, you will not have it for the bad years. Keynesian economics says that during bad times, such as a World War or the Depression of the 1930s, it is quite appropriate for us collectively to borrow money and to apply that to the creation of jobs. And it worked, Mr. Speaker, because the Government took only about 20 per cent or less of our GNP. Free enterprise was in trouble as a result of an adjustment phase which had to be made. Therefore, it worked. Then, during the good years, you must apply the other side of the coin, which is to pay the debt back, and the Liberals and NDP cannot escape from the criticism that during the 1970s, which were good years, instead of paying back the debt so we could be positioned in the 1980s to make the necessary adjustment to high technology, they took us further and further into debt.
We had balanced budgets in 1968. Now we have a $30-billion deficit. We had an absolutely minuscule national debt in 1968, during the good years, and we have taken that up to $200 billion. So that today, when collectively we in this House should be deciding that the Government needs to borrow $30 billion or $40 billion in order to take us into high technology,

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in order to restructure our farming community and transportation in the West so we can get our products out, so that this tremendous industrial infrastructure in Ontario can be updated to employ our young people, we cannot do it.
Even the Government admits, Mr. Speaker, that once you reach $200 billion you are in trouble. When we had the programs and the low tax and Government was borrowing, some 5 per cent of tax revenue would go to service the debt, we would say that we thought that was too high. The Government Members would say, "No, it is not too high." Then it became 10 per cent, then 20 per cent, then 25 per cent. Now over 30 per cent goes to servicing the debt. I ask this Government, why is it stopping at 30 per cent? If it was fine to go from 20 per cent to 25 per cent to 30 per cent, why is it not appropriate to go to 40 per cent, 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 70 per cent? We would cut if off at probably 5 per cent. Government is cutting it off at 30 per cent. But what is the principle, Mr. Speaker? The principle is that you should not have any at all because in the good years you should build up your surplus, reduce your tax loads, so that in the bad years you can pay it off.
The Liberalism of today is not the Liberalism to which many of our parents and grandparents were attracted as the philosophy of a genuine reformist Party which was concerned about the individual. We no longer have the classical Liberalism. This Party is the classical Liberal Party which starts with the individual, then goes to the family. So it is no surprise to me that 15 years of the current Liberalism has led to four out of ten marriages failing. I am surprised that the six are still together. It is no surprise to me to see drug abuse, opting out and the suicides that are occurring today because they are a logical and absolute certainty in terms of the policies we have had and the view which the Liberal philosophy has of the state and the individual.
What a shame that our senior citizens are having to suffer as they are today. They felt they were building a future for themselves by paying into Canada Pension and putting their savings into RRSPs. They felt that when they retired at 65 with 2 per cent or 3 per cent inflation per year, by the time they were 80, sure, their dollar might be worth 50 per cent, but they could cope with that. They were proud and could hold their heads high. But as a result of the Liberal and NDP philosophy we have had inflation of 10 per cent, 15 per cent, and now the dollar has decreased in value in five years to 50 per cent. They are uncertain now. They do not have the future they should have. Young people coming out of our universities should be looking forward to jobs galore, because we still have only one-half of 1 per cent of world population, yet we are sitting on the resources of half a continent. However, resources do not mean a thing, Mr. Speaker, unless you have the entrepreneurial spirit of people to go out and develop those resources and create jobs for our people. There is a solution, Mr. Speaker. The solution is to get rid of that Liberal Government and put in a Progressive Conservative Government.
[ Translation]


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Does the Parliamentary Secretary have a question?


René Cousineau: Mr. Speaker, my Hon. friend, the Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker), spoke at length about the deficit. It is of course the Official Opposition's role to criticize, but it is also its role to propose measures. The Hon. Member mentioned cutting the deficit. He said that people should vote for a Progressive Conservative Government. Does his party intend to cut federal contributions to hospital insurance and health insurance and the amounts transferred to Provincial Governments for post-secondary education? Where would he make his cuts?


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, I remind my friend opposite that it is his Government that has made these cuts in postsecondary transfers to the Provinces. The seniors are taking 6 per cent. We in this Party have put forward all sorts of proposals. We recognize the tremendous difficulty caused by the Government's digging the hole so deep. When you have a $30 billion deficit, where do you make the necessary cuts? We could wipe out National Defence, Old Age Security, Family Allowances, wipe out all the interest on the national debt, and still be in debt. The Government has dug the hole that deep.
However, Mr. Speaker, here is an idea for the Member. I put this forward and it was rejected before. Why did we have 6 per cent settlements across the board when the Member opposite and myself this year put an extra $3,900 in our pockets and the senior citizens get something like $186? That is unfair, and I said it was unfair and that the solution was a flat across-the-board increase. Whether it was $1,000 or $1,200 does not matter, because in times of inflation percentage settlements make the rich incredibly rich and the poor never catch up. We need across-the-board settlements for very little money. That would tend to bring our society closer together. That is consistent with the Canadian pioneering spirit, particularly in western Canada where it did not matter where we came from, whether Hungary, Poland or the United Kingdom; when you were facing a western Canadian winter, 40 below and the wind raging, it did not matter where you were from, you huddled together to keep warm in order to survive.
My friend, the Hon. Member for Portage-Marquette (Mr. Mayer), has suggested all sorts of ideas, not one of which the Government has picked up. Here is one that I suggested, and what does my friend think of that?
[ Translation]


Mr. Maltais:: Mr. Speaker, I shall be very brief. I listened with interest to the speech by our hon. friend opposite, and I am glad to see that the Minister of National Health and Welfare is in the House, because when we considered the 6
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and 5 policy, it was understood that the purpose of the legislation was to help reduce the rate of inflation, so that if we managed to bring it down to 6 or 5 per cent, no one, neither senior citizens nor public servants would lose. On the contrary, everyone would stand to gain because the purchasing power of Canadians would remain intact.
However, I was surprised to hear my hon. colleague opposite talk about cuts in National Defence. I remember when the Parliamentary Committee held hearings in Schefferville three weeks ago, the then President of the Iron Ore Company, Mr. Mulroney, suggested making Schefferville a National Defence centre. Perhaps the Hon. Member would care to inform the House where he would cut National Defence agreements? Furthermore, would he be agreeable to establishing a defence centre in Schefferville in order to create jobs in this particular area in Quebec?


Blaine Allen Thacker: I can only presume, Mr. Speaker, that my friend opposite sits on the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence. If he does, he knows I do not sit on that Committee. But in general, we agree that we as Canadians should be spending a fair percentage on defence. It should be spread around the country. For example, the Armed Forces stationed in Edmonton were moved to Ontario and Quebec. There were reasons for that, but it still caused real economic hardship in Edmonton. I presume that if I were to agree that National Defence should open up a base in Sheffer-ville, the Hon. Member would agree that the Forces should be returned to Edmonton as well.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Lac-Saint-Jean (Mr. Gimai'el) has the floor, if he wishes to ask a question.


Mr. Pierre  Gimai@: Thank you Mr. Speaker, but my colleague has already commented on the issue I wanted to discuss.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The period for questions and answers has not expired. Are there other Members seeking to ask questions?


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Mr. Speaker, I was fascinated by the Hon. Member's fairytale lecture on the invisible hand of Adam Smith. Does the Member not recognize any difference at all between what is often referred to as free enterprise and corporate enterprise, that is, the kind of corporate enterprise which left us a legacy of unheard of industrial pollution, outdated plant capacity, failure to invest and modernize to keep our productivity up to date on this continent. I refer to a corporate enterprise which forced that Government, with the support of the Hon. Member's Party, to start pouring in public money without receiving any equity in return, which built up this huge debt we are all complaining about today. Does he not recognize that in fact is what happened, and how does he have the audacity to complain about the results of what he is as guilty of as those people across the way?
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Gordon Edward Taylor: Baloney.


Blaine Allen Thacker: Mr. Speaker, that is so easy. My friend denies that the principle of Adam Smith survives. Well, it does. Even the socialist states recognize that if you do not keep up your competitive edge you will simply lose out to somebody else. When we in this Party talk about free enterprise, we are not talking about the free enterprise of the 1700s. We never have. Society has an entrepreneurial group which competes. The weak and inefficient are thinned out, but these are small companies so that no one is really hurt because the people are reabsorbed into other companies. The problem arises from the Liberal and NDP philosophy of massive Crown corporations. When they fail, then you have hundreds of thousands of people out of work.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Massive private corporations can fail.


Blaine Allen Thacker: The Government cannot allow that to happen, so we end up putting more taxpayer's dollars into these corporations. We believe Government should set the economic climate, and it should also be the regulator-


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Then why do you vote for all the handouts?


Blaine Allen Thacker: -so that the pollution problem would be solved if the Government did its job. But the Liberal-NDP philosophy is not to set the rules; it is to set up a Crown corporation. Then you have a situation such as Mexico where Pemex, the state oil corporation, had a well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. That did more ecological damage than the entire private industry of the whole world. When you ask: were there any regulations for that state oil company? The answer is, well, heaven's no. Why would we have regulations? We are the state corporation, we do not need regulations. Then the Hon. Member got into the question of profit, that word they just hate, because he said capital was not being invested. The reason for that was that the NDP has for so many years turned people against the word "profit" that, as a result, entrepreneurs did not have the money to improve their equipment because it was all taxed away.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Before 1968?


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, I am indeed grateful for the chance to participate in this discussion this afternoon, especially after both an instructive and entertaining injection by the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills (Mr. Thacker) who has given us his usual well thought out point of view. I did not agree with much of what he said but I always respect the fact that he puts a coherent set of ideas together and presents them persuasively.


Gordon Edward Taylor: Flattery will get you nowhere.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: One thing I do find very disturbing about the debate we have heard from the other side of the House is the continued reference to our international reputation and
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standing. I would refer Members on the other side to the discussion which took place when Governor Bouey visited the Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs last night. A very coherent presentation on our international status was made. Among other things, he was asked how it would be possible that our credit rating had declined. His reply was clear. Our credit rating has not declined, not at all. In fact, he pointed out that the people who make that argument have done so despite the strength of our currency, despite the continued good performance of our interest rates, especially the fact that they are now much closer to American interest rates than they were a few weeks or months ago, thereby indicating considerable strength within the economy itself. Finally, Mr. Speaker, he pointed out the marvellous trade surplus that our economy has developed over the past year-a record trade surplus.
These are the facts that international money lenders consider. They see an economy which, like all economies all around the world, is suffering greatly from the recession. We are not "Pollyannaish" about this. We are in a recession, as everyone
is.


Mr. Mayer:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If our reputation around the world is so great, can the Hon. Member explain why our dollar is roughly 80 cents compared to the United States dollar?


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Mr. Speaker, first of all I object to the Hon. Member's presenting that as a point of order. I think he should present it as a question during the proper question period.
I urge him to look at the performance of the Canadian currency against currencies all over the world. He will find that ours has done extremely well, especially against OECD currencies. We have a devalued dollar as against the U.S. dollar but this is the only place where it has a downward movement, as has the currency of all other industrialized countries.
I urge the Hon. Member to look at the facts and not the myths that have been presented. I ask him to look at a report which appeared in the Globe and Mail approximately a month and a half ago when Salomon Brothers, one of the important bond houses in the United States, indicated that the Canadian debt instruments are as valuable as the American ones. We are not, as described by our colleagues on the other side, some declining sunset country.
Our currency is the only currency in the world to hold its own against the American currency. Our debt instruments are ranked equally by one of the great American companies. I suggest that before my colleagues opposite run our country down they should find out the facts to back up their allegations.
I was very interested in what the Hon. Member for Leth-bridge-Foothills had to say. He was able to recommend areas where we should spend millions and millions of dollars-on such things as youth employment, for example. He did not recognize that the Government has increased the allocation of funds for youth employment for this coming summer from
$120 million to $170 million. He wants even more. And he wants even more money to be spent on health care, although millions and millions of dollars are already spent there. Of course, these are worthy areas for spending and I will return to them.
The Hon. Member was happy to raise these things and then to say that we must cut Government spending and Government borrowing. He wants us to do these worthwhile things with one hand tied behind our backs. He brought out a bunch of the old Tory boogeymen. He had great ideas about where we should spend, but he wanted it to be done without a tax increase and with diminished borrowing. That just does not work.
With this Bill we will engage in some of the biggest borrowing programs the country has ever seen. I think they are worthwhile. I think Government spending is helping to stimulate the economy in a time of great need. It is helping to maintain a vital safety net for thousands of Canadians who need it. It is replacing the vital private sector spending that will come about as recovery occurs.
As all of us admit, Mr. Speaker, borrowing is always a careful balancing act. If there was too little borrowing or too little Government spending, we would be plunged into new depths of recession. Let us be honest about that. If the Government were not involved in this spending program, if it were not practising an extra $25 billion worth of stimulation in the economy, we would sink even deeper into the depths of recession. That is a point that our critics have not conceded, however. They live in this "balancing the books" dreamland and forget that in tough times, debt and extra spending are legitimate tools for Government because they stimulate a sluggish economy.
We have said frankly and honestly to the Canadian people that too much debt and too much spending will re-inflate the economy and get in the way of the private sector recovery when it comes. We must constantly remind our friends in the NDP of that. I agree with the Hon. Member for Lethbridge-Foothills and the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis) who want us to spend more money on human services. I cannot think of a politician who would want to see suffering or who would cut spending and ignore the results for individuals and their families. All of us feel that way, but the situation could be made worse for the people we are trying to help. We could stimulate inflation and high interest rates if we are not careful.
Borrowing is a balancing act. We cannot close our eyes to it completely the way some of the neanderthals and Reagan admirers want us to do. Equally, we cannot go hogwild and ignore our obligations and let the economy burn itself out.
We have tried to balance the act in two ways. We have watched the commonsense signals and not let the economy overheat. There are signs that our economy is recovering. In face of all the criticism that we are not doing things properly, that one fact stands out. The six and five program works; interest rates are coming down; inflation is coming down and jobs are being restored. These are the initial signs of recovery.
March 29, 1983


Thomas Scott Fennell: Where?


Douglas Glenn Fisher: The Hon. Member for Ontario (Mr. Fennell) asks where. Apparently he has not gone back to his riding to see the numbers of people being rehired by General Motors in Oshawa. Despite his claims to be a friend of the auto industry he has not been to Oakville to see the rehiring there. The Hon. Member for Burlington (Mr. Kempling) knows about it.
The economy is recovering despite the gloom and doom we hear from Hon. Members opposite. These are the common-sense signals I was talking about, and we have watched them to make sure that our behaviour was not creating gloom and doom.
The second thing we did is to reallocate money. We did that in June. We went through the six and five exercise to find honest ways to save hundreds of millions of dollars and reinvest it. We heard from our friends opposite when it was time to vote for that principle. The Tories voted in favour of the six and five program and the reallocation idea. They liked it, but when it came time for the specifics, to put it into practice, they voted against us. They voted against the reallocation which they say is so vital.


William James Kempling: Louder.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: None of us are kidding in the House. We know that the Hon. Member for Burlington is busy shovelling away over there. He voted against cost cuts which were justified and legitimate, but we did not. We cut costs under the six and five program and put the money back into the economy in places where it was more badly needed. For example, we put it into housing. Thousands of housing units across the nation have been started with grants which we initiated and put forward to Canadian people. We found the way to restore that industry by reallocating money, by saving it from a place where it was not needed and spending it in a place where it was more badly needed.
That is the balancing act about which I am talking, not only watching the vital signals in the economy and watching the recovery, but also going constantly through our expenses and kicking out those that are not needed, kicking out those which do not have as high a priority, and bringing in ideas that are more useful today. This is what we have been doing with our borrowing and spending.
Also we have heard criticism that somehow we are condemning our grandchildren to eternal bondage to pay off the debts which we supposedly irresponsibly encouraged. It is better, according to this line of thought, that we should leave a blasted economy. It is better, according to the Tories who stand up so gleefully and preach gloom and doom, that we should do nothing and let the situation get worse. Now, would our grandchildren thank us for that? Would they be grateful if we left them with a blasted health care system, with a ruined education system, with no welfare and no unemployment insurance? Would they thank us for that? Those are the programs on which we are spending our money. We make no
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apologies for that. Those programs are not destroying the future of our grandchildren. They are preserving the vital safety net system which we have worked so hard to put in place. Why bother helping to build that network? My generation needs it and uses it as a right. We are passing it on intact to our grandchildren. We do not worry about that. In my own family, my father has been crippled for two years now by arthritis. He has said very clearly to me, "Do nothing about medicare, do not ruin medicare, or I will be a bankrupt man". We borrow money to finance medicare to help people like my father. I do not make any apologies for that kind of borrowing. It is responsible.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Douglas Glenn Fisher: Let us put to rest this idea that we are destroying the country's future by the way we are spending today. We are not doing that. We are preserving the country in the face of enormous difficulty. The country wants us to do that. Let us go out into a public place-


Philip Derek Lewis: All right, let us go.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: The Hon. Member for Simcoe North (Mr. Lewis) is willing. Let us go to his riding or mine and find out how many older people want their pensions cut the way he would do it, how many people want medicare cut the way his Party would do it, or how many want social services cut. Those are the implications of the program they are suggesting.
In conclusion I want to say that our spending has stimulated-


William James Kempling: Your spending has stimulated unemployment.


Gordon Edward Taylor: There are two million unemployed.


Douglas Glenn Fisher: -our economy in a time of great need. Our spending has gone to the needs of ordinary people. Our spending has been constantly examined and reallocated. New priorities and new needs have been identified. Those are responsible acts by a responsible and humane Government.
[ Translation]


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. It being 5.45 p.m., pursuant to Order made Thursday, March 24, 1983, it is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of the third reading stage of the Bill.

Accordingly, is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.

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


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Call in the Members.


Madam Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
Motion agreed to and Bill read the third time and passed.


Madam Speaker:: It being six o'clock, I do now leave the chair until two o'clock tomorrow afternoon.
At 6.15 p.m., the House rose, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, March 30, 1983