1983-09-19

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Friday, September 16, consideration of Bill C-l 10, to amend the Export Development Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motions Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
Hon. George Hees (Northumberland):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am pleased to have the opportunity to address a few colleagues on amendments Nos. 3 and 5 to Bill C-l 10. My colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), deserves a great deal of credit for moving these amendments because by doing so he is drawing to the attention of Parliament a scandalous situation. Canadians are all too aware of the mounting deficits incurred by Crown corporations. Canadair, de Havilland, the Post Office, Consolidated Computer and VIA Rail have all made headlines recently as deficit-ridden corporations. As each corporation makes the headlines, the question arises as to how it could have happened. The blame is ultimately shifted to Parliament and it is to Parliament that Canadians look for redress. But, Mr. Speaker, no redress is found because Governments have given away Parliament's authority for reasons of political expediency.
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Bill C-l 10 is designed to place the Export Development Corporation well beyond Parliament's reach. If the legislation passes without our amendments in place, then we have given the EDC an extremely long rope, and if it hangs itself on that rope Parliament will have very little to say about it.
The problem with the legislation is quite simple. It increases the authorized capital of the Export Development Corporation from $1 billion to $2 billion, which in turn increases the EDCs borrowing authority from $10 billion to $20 billion. Hence the EDC will be free to borrow as much as $20 billion before having to trouble itself with Parliament again. We cannot accept that, Mr. Speaker.
What is perhaps just as galling is the fact that there does not appear to be a particularly good reason for increasing the
authorized capital or the borrowing authority at this time. The Export Development Corporation's 1982 annual report set out existing authorized capital at $465 million and borrowing at less than $5 billion. Both figures are less than half existing limits. Why, we might well ask, do the limits need to be doubled? I believe it behooves the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) to provide the House with a full explanation for not accepting Motions Nos. 3 and 5.
In addition to this explanation, Mr. Speaker, the Minister should ask himself if the EDC will receive entirely the wrong message from that legislation. Despite the statistics, it remains a time of restraint. The federal Government cannot let the deficit rip in good time as well as in bad. There comes a time, and I suggest that time is near, that the Government must start trimming its sails as the private sector opens theirs.
The Export Development Corporation has not been a model of sleek efficiency. Last year 613 employees were on hand to cope with 62 exporters. Two of these exporters accounted for 50 per cent of the funds. That is almost ten employees for each customer, Mr. Speaker. In addition to the 62 customers, the EDC employees wrote up approximately 900 export insurance policies or about one and a half policies per employee over a one-year period. I am not launching an attack on the EDC, Mr. Speaker. I am simply pointing out that additional borrowing authority is neither necessary nor advisable. If the signal from the Government to the EDC is one of: "Here is an extra $10 billion on top of the $5 billion you have yet to use", then where is the incentive to run a lean operation? The EDC would have more credit than it could use and neither the EDC nor the Government would need worry about Parliament for a long, long time.
We have seen that the track record of too many Crown corporations has not been good. These corporations have escaped public scrutiny precisely because of legislation like Bill C-l 10. We on this side are of the opinion that the public has had quite enough of this and wants to see Parliament reassert control. No control is possible if the Government continues to use its numbers to ram through legislation which sidesteps Parliament. The Auditor General has already referred to Crown corporations as a subgovernment.
Part of what the Auditor General is getting at is the new relationship which is becoming too much the rule, the new relationship between the Government and Crown corporations. Parliament is excluded from that relationship because Parliament has been legislated out of an active place in the Crown corporation's existence. The time to halt this slide into irrelevance is now, and one positive step would be to adopt Motions Nos. 3 and 5.

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Before concluding, however, 1 believe it is worth our while to see how the Export Development Corporation's United States counterpart has operated. After all, the Minister of State for International Trade has recently concluded that our trade interest lies chiefly with the United States. The Minister might then wish to go a step further and see how the Americans operate. 1 wonder, as an aside, if one of the high school classes in my riding of Northumberland could have reached the same conclusion about Canada's trade policy at a great deal less cost to the taxpayer.
The Export-Import Bank of the United States is a rough counterpart to the Export Development Corporation. That bank has paid-in capital of $1 billion and borrowings of $16 billion. What is proposed in Bill C-l 10 is authorized capital of $2 billion, twice the amount of the United States counterpart, and borrowing authority of $20 billion, a great deal more than the Export-Import Bank. Who is the Government trying to kid? Our population is one-tenth that of the United States, and our trade volume is considerably less, yet the Americans are operating at less potential cost than is proposed in Bill C-l 10.
1 suggest that it is time to put Canada's tax base into perspective. The taxpayers of Northumberland naturally want to see Canada's trade expanded, and we all do, but not at any cost. If the Government's intention with Bill C-l 10 is to increase the dollars available to subsidize loans to foreign purchasers, then I am even more adamantly opposed. It is not much of a sale if the selling price is less than the cost. Surely to goodness, it makes far more sense to use the taxpayer's dollars to assist Canadian enterprises which can or could make bona fide overseas sales. Monuments in Algeria do not help the unemployed in the county of Northumberland.
The Canadian people have made it abundantly clear that they want Parliament to tighten its control over runaway expenditures. People are sick to death of scrounging for rent and mortgage payments while reading about billion dollar deficits. Accountability is a must, and Bill C-l 10 cripples that. We on this side do not expect to be able to stop the legislation, but there can be little reason for the Government not to adopt Motions Nos. 3 and 5. I strongly urge it to do so.
[DOT]	0120)


Mr. Bill Wright (Calgary North):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am pleased to rise this morning to speak to Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Corporation. I am also pleased to see the Minister here since it is relatively unusual to see Ministers in the House day after day listening to comments for or against their Bills.
The amendments presented by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) are in Motions Nos. 3 and 5. Motion 3 proposes to reduce the authorized capital from two billion, one hundred dollars to one billion, one hundred dollars. Motion 5 is to limit the borrowings so that they do not exceed ten times the paid-in capital and surplus of the company.
If we look at some of the statistics related to the Export Development Corporation, we see that it now has an authorized capital of one billion, one hundred dollars. It has a paid-in capital and surplus of $651 million and its earnings in 1982 were approximately $1 million. In order to earn that $1 million it placed $2.46 billion in loans in 1982 through 63 transactions. There were 613 employees to carry out these 63 transactions. In other words, there were ten employees for each transaction.
When we study this information further we find that for the $651 million which the Government has invested in this corporation it only earned $1 million in 1982, which represents one-quarter of 1 per cent return on capital. What Canadian could operate a business with a .25 per cent return on capital? In effect, this means that it is an inefficient corporation. There are no checks and balances in this corporation, which I will expand upon in a few minutes when I talk about the paid-in capital versus authorized capital.
There is no efficiency lodged with EDC because of this provision. Since there is no efficiency built into the corporation, it does not have to obtain a reasonable rate of return on its capital. Yet the citizens of this country are subsidizing this corporation when it receives a return of .25 per cent on its capital.
I believe the Minister said that no industrialized country in the world is more dependent on exports than Canada. While I admit that we are dependent on exports, 1 suggest that his statement is not true. Technically speaking, Japan is more dependent on exports than Canada. Certainly we are dependent and need exports, but to say that no industrialized country is more dependent than us is an overstatement at least.
Where is the need for this increased lending? EDC has not demonstrated that it needs to increase its authorized capital. It is not using all that it has at the moment even though we disagree with some of the provisions. When a private sector corporation seeks to increase its authorized capital, it usually demonstrates the need. This is not so with Government organizations such as this. In effect, the Government wishes to remove this control of borrowing authority from Parliament and lodge it with the bureaucracy which is then not accountable to Parliament.
If we look at some of the corporations that the Government has set up, we can see some very peculiar things. One can think of Petro-Canada and what a great corporation it is for Canadians. Its potential loss this year will be approximately $15 million. It has laid off 25 per cent of its staff over the last year. It recently negotiated the leasing of 240,000 square feet in a building which it leased in Calgary last year at $21 a square foot. The building has been empty since that time and Petro-Canada is offering to sublease the building at zero rent; one only has to pay the operating costs for the space. That is the "efficiency" built into the bureaucracy by this Government.
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We do not have to look much further than Canadair which lost SI.4 billion last year. If that is not bad enough, the new corporation which the Government intends to set up to oversee these corporations, the Canada Development Investment Corporation, will take on all of the debts of Canadair amounting to $1.35 billion. The Canadian people have to pay that sum. We now have to assume Canadair's debts. This is an example of efficiency in Crown corporations.
We can talk about de Havilland which lost approximately $364 million in 1982 and will have a substantial loss again this year, as will Canadair. We can talk about CIDA. CIDA provides loans to other countries. At the end of the Government's fiscal year, it is not unusual for the Government to give countries which apply for loans more money than they ask for. This is done because the agency wants the money spent before year end, otherwise its allotment could be cut back. This is the "efficiency" built into these Crown corporations. There are no checks and balances. There is no control. We in this Party are trying to restore that control. We do not think the additional capital is needed.
The Government wants borrowing authority ten times the authorized capital. Motion No. 5 by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South seeks to restrict that borrowing to ten times the paid-in capital. That will put a balance and check into the corporation so that efficiency would become the norm rather than the exception. The corporation will have to attempt to increase its earnings. This will allow it to loan out more money based on its built-in surplus. At the moment there is no indication that the corporation has to earn any money.
We are not opposed to the principle of the Bill, but we are opposed to some of the provisions. The amendments moved by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South are worth-while motions.
I would like to conclude by reading a couple of points from the Auditor General's Report. Since 1976 various Auditors General have been indicating their concern about the lack of accountability of Government organizations. The first quotation is this:
In the majority of Crown corporations audited by the Auditor General, financial management and control is weak and ineffective. Moreover, co-ordination and guidance by central government agencies of financial management and control practices in these Crown corporations are virtually nonexistent.
This, together with the results of a prior year's study of similar practices in departments, led the Auditor General to express the deep concern that Parliament-indeed, the Government-had lost, or was close to losing, effective control of the public purse.
The Auditor General's report goes on:
Parliament's involvment both in establishing and overseeing Crown-owned corporations is essential for effective accountability.
At the present time Crown corporations are not accountable to Parliament. Only Members of Parliament are. Unless we bring back that control, we will lose complete control over Government spending.
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Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the Export Development Act for a few moments and to refer specifically to the Export Development Corporation, which provides yet another example of a branch of Government that is out of control and no longer accountable to Parliament. The fact of the matter is that the Export Development Corporation is rapidly on its way to becoming a bureaucratic nightmare. It has a history of making unsound loans to foreign countries, borrowing and lending money at ever increasing rates, extending its empire, and involving Canada in deals which are both expensive and can be proven very inefficient. For instance, the corporation quite often does business for the Government of Canada and, under the provisions of the EDC, can authorize up to $2.5 billion just by Order in Council, a decision of Cabinet, a decision that never comes before the elected representatives of the country. As of December 31, 1982, the Government spent $753 million of taxpayers' money in this manner-Orders in Council.
But this is only the beginning of an horrendous nightmare. There are some 613 employees of the corporation. They have offices in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, with their head office in Ottawa. This translates into almost ten employees for each separate loan customer. This is a fine example of Government mismanagement and economic inefficiency. What bank, what trust company or what lending institution could exist on a ratio like that? It is little wonder that we are burdened with the billion dollar deficit figures which continue to restrict and impede our economic recovery.
For instance, after investing $691 million of public capital, the corporation was able to show a profit of only slightly more than $1 million. This type of gross ineffectiveness is unacceptable to this Party and I am sure to the people of Canada. To make matters worse, we Parliamentarians have literally no control whatsoever over the workings of the corporation.
It is the serious question of accountability which 1 would now like to address by analysing a number of inequities that arise out of the Export Development Act. To begin with, I would like to discuss Section 11(2) of the Act which reads:
Where the board recommends that the Minister subscribe for unissued shares of the corporation, the Minister may, if the Minster of Finance concurs, subscribe for such shares at par as he considers desirable and there shall be paid to the corporation the amount of each subscription out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund at such times and in such amounts as the board requires.
In other words, this authorizes the Government to treat the matter as statutory, as law, effectively eliminating the possibility of a parliamentary vote. We have seen examples of that in the not too distant past. As usual it means that taxpayers are denied the basic rights of a democratic society, and their hard-earned dollars are displaced at the whim of yet another bureaucratic monster.
Also I would like to draw attention to Section 31 of the Act which reads:
(1) Where the Minister reports to the Governor in Council that (a) the board is of the opinion that a proposed loan or guarantee of the kind described in Section 29 would, if made or issued, before a term or in an amount

September 19, 1983
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in excess of that which the corporation would normally undertake in relation to any one export transaction, person, country, government or agency thereof or in relation to a particular export transaction, person, country, government or agency thereof, and
(b) in the opinion of the Minister it is in the national interest that the proposed loan be made or guarantee issued, the Governor in Council may authorize the corporation to make the proposed loan or give the proposed guarantee, as the case may be.
In effect, loans of this nature may be made by the corporation, by the convenient method of Order in Council. Once again parliamentary authority has been drastically superseded and the current Government has managed to go one step further in eroding the magnanimous institution known as Government.
While continuing its assault on parliamentary tradition, the Government simultaneously manages to interfere at an alarming rate in the business of the private sector. This is very disturbing to our Party. It is by now quite evident that a great deal of the activities currently delegated to the Export Development Corporation could successfully be turned over to private enterprise with the proper reorientation and structuring, where the dollars would be spent with far more justification than, as referred to earlier today, in monuments built in Algeria. Also the funding has been conducted on a narrow basis with a great deal going to limited sources.
In conclusion, the Progressive Conservative Party looks upon the Export Development Corporation, as it does all other Crown corporations, with a great deal of scrutiny and concern for control of the public purse. There is a serious need for increased control by Government and increased accountability to Parliament as recommended by the reports of the Lambert Commission, the Auditor General and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts. I am afraid from time to time that these reports go unnoticed by the Government.
The present structure of the corporation being discussed today is not conducive to efficiency and cost accountability. Funds must not be allowed to be granted solely by Order in Council or a decision of Cabinet behind closed doors without proper parliamentary debate. For this and many other reasons, the arrangement currently prevailing must be eradicated by amendments in favour of a structure more accountable to Canadian taxpayers.
We have had enough of monuments being built at taxpayers' expense. We have had enough of Crown corporations spending at will the dollars of Canadian taxpayers without a word being said in this place about where such decisions should be made. I am sure Hon. Members on the Government side as well as those on the Opposition side would like to know more than Cabinet knows about decisions concerning the spending of taxpayers' dollars. We hope there will be sufficient amendments to the Act we are discussing today to return accountability to where it should be, here in Parliament with its elected Members, whose sole job it is to represent the constituents who sent them here to speak on their behalf.


Mr. Bob Ogle (Saskatoon East):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on behalf of my Party to the amendments now before the House. The entire question of the Export Development Act
and the institutions for which it provides are very important to the country. Anything concerning the relations of a modern state such as Canada with other countries and states is important. Naturally I am interested in different parts of our relationships with other countries. The export development part is extremely important. Another area of particular interest is the matter of international aid. Both these areas are closely linked.
I have difficulty accepting some of the facts which the Progressive Conservatives bring forward about the misuse of aid. The example which has been given repeatedly of a monument in Algeria-unfortunately I have never seen it-is a poor example of Canadian aid; but I know of hundreds of examples where aid has truly helped and brought about better lives for many people. I would say that a broader look in this regard is required.
In so far as these amendments are concerned, I think we are at a small logjam. Yesterday I travelled through a portion of Quebec and saw some logs. As soon as I saw them I remembered the stories about logjams. In a logjam, the logs pile up because certain logs will not break loose. If someone finds the logs causing the problem and dynamites them or uses some other means, the logs begin to move again. With regard to this Bill, if the Minister was willing to discuss some concessions with the Opposition, we might be able to get out of our present logjam and get this Bill moving again.
There are basically two problems with the amendments now under discussion. The first is that the Government is asking for $2 billion in this Bill and the Opposition is speaking to $1 billion. As others have mentioned, $2 billion is a large amount. I wonder whether there is a possibility of the two sides coming to an agreement and rather than $1 billion or $2 billion, there could be a meeting of the ways somewhere in between. It is necessary to reach a compromise in order to get the Bill moving. Possibly we could speak about $1.5 billion and agree to such an amendment.
I suggest that the Minister and the Opposition think in those terms. Possibly we could find a middle of the road solution which recognizes the Opposition speaking against the $2 billion in funding, but at the same time satisfying the Government.
There is a second matter holding up the passage of this Bill. Here, too, a compromise could be reached. The Opposition is asking that the majority of the directors be from the private sector. I can see that as something the Minister could accept. Everybody who would be a director would be a Canadian. I cannot see that the ministry would suffer if people were selected from both the public and private sectors, with the majority from the private sector. I do not see any difficulty with that. If we want brains, skills, history and experience, the Minister should be conscious of the fact that that kind of Opposition move is an interesting point of view. I do not think the Bill or Canada's relationship with other parts of the world would suffer.
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I ask the Minister to look seriously at the two problems I have mentioned and to work with the Opposition in finding a solution in order that we can clear up the logjam and get the Bill under way. What is important is that we live in a very mobile, rapid society. International society is moving at a great speed. Anything that stops Canadian input into the world society causes a problem. It is a problem that we face and one which affects every Canadian.
This Bill could be moved along with compromise between the Opposition and the Government. All of us want to see an Export Development Act put in place, one that will bring about international relationships between Canada as a modern nation state and other modern nation states.
This is a complicated world and this is a very complicated situation. Even if we bring in more people from the private sector as directors, 1 do not think that will be an absolute solution. I do not see that in our modern times. If the brains, skills and goodwill are there, the Minister should consider appointing the majority of directors from that area of the country. We will not lose anything in the long run.
The Minister should also consider the fact that the Opposition is opposed to the $2 billion figure. It is just too much. At the same time, the Government is considering cutting back on our aid program. I suggest if we could cut back with this Bill, some of those funds could be used for aid programs. If the Minister and the Opposition could discuss these points, I feel that the Bill could move forward. That would be for the good of us all. It would be the right thing to do.


Mr. Fred King (Okanagan-Similkameen):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-110. The tragedy of Canada is that the federal Government continually demonstrates that it has no feel for the mood of the country and has no apparent desire to understand the psychology of its people. This is the product of a Government that is stale, having been too long in office. For more than a decade the only thing important to this Government was to appeal to central Canada's electoral majority, ignoring in the process any necessity to relate to the yearnings of the people generally.
Ignoring people has become the mark of this Government. We have seen this in a number of issues of the day, such as metrication and in the objectionable, insensitive manner in which it has pursued the legitimate goals which pertain to Canada's two languages, as well as in the national energy policy. We have seen this in the Government's mammoth appetite for spending which has produced deficits so large as to be unimaginable just a few years ago. We have also seen it in Government interference and the injection of regulations into nearly every aspect of the life of the individual and the business community. Unfortunately, we have seen it in the divisive nature of its dealings with the Provinces and other areas.
Now, when the people of Canada are crying out for governments to truly show restraint by paring their expenditures and demands on the Treasury, the national Government of Canada persists in maintaining its extravagances and its waste based
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on a detailed commitment to control the economy and the nation.
The single act of restraint by this Government was the enactment of the six and five legislation. Having done so little in the direction of reducing its commitment to spending the nation into poverty, this Liberal Government now shows through every piece of legislation which it puts before the House and the nation that its real intent is to expand its influence and its control over Canadians in every aspect of their lives. This is at a time when people throughout the world are begging governments to back off. In Canada we saw this desire of the people demonstrated in Saskatchewan, which rid itself of a burdensome socialist Government. The people of British Columbia made that same point in re-electing the Government headed by Premier Bill Bennett. For those who may not show much interest in what happens outside of central Canada, I might point out that the main issue in that election was the question of Government spending. If elected, the NDP proposed to provide more programs, fewer constraints and to spend more, which has been the tradition of that Party wherever it has achieved power. The people of British Columbia soundly rejected the NDP platform, supporting Mr. Bennett's call for a leaner, more efficient Government service, more accountable to the people.
The necessity of greater accountability was identified last fall by Canada's Auditor General, who said:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of Government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
It is because of this focus of accountability that we are being most critical of Bill C-110. It is within the areas of restraint and accountability that the Government has been most irresponsible in carrying out its mandate.
Bill C-l 10 is another example of this. Let us look at what it attempts to achieve. It would alter the current structure of the board of directors, thus increasing its power. It would increase the number of directors that the Government can appoint to 15 from 12 to reflect Government priorities. It would give full authority to the Export Development Corporation to take property as security. It would double the authorized capital to $2 billion of taxpayers' money. It would permit the corporation to borrow up to $20 billion for any of its purposes. It would permit the corporation to accept insurance liabilities up to a further $20 billion. It would expand the definition of the types of transactions in which the Export Development Corporation may involve itself. It would give authority to the corporation to subsequently alter an agreement or guarantee which had been undertaken on the direction of the Governor in Council.
It is interesting to observe that any loss, expense or default which may ensue would be chargeable to the taxpayer through the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Elsewhere in the Act there is a built-in authority for the Cabinet to intrude and force upon

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the corporation actions which may not be in its interests or in the interests of Canada as a whole. All of this is done outside the purview of Parliament.
Bill C-l 10 will increase from $2.5 billion to $10 billion the amount of liability which the Cabinet can impose upon the corporation by Order in Council, and always without going to Parliament for approval. In this, as in so much of its legislation, the Government bypasses Parliament with a blank cheque provision. According to Professor Andre Raynault of the University of Montreal, the Export Development Corporation is "rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient."
The amendments to the Bill that we have put forward are designed to restore the degree of accountability to Parliament which is a necessary ingredient of parliamentary democracy. We would leave the authorized capital at $1 billion and, most important, to bring rational economic considerations into play, we would restrict the corporation's borrowings to ten times the actual paid-up capital, plus any earned surplus.
Our friend to the left said that he did not appreciate the references to the Algerian monument to Marxism. I believe this incident requires repeated emphasis because it demonstrates the length to which the Export Development Corporation can go if it is allowed a free hand, given too much money and the licence to spend money to create its own priorities. We are not impressed by such deals as the Algerian monument to Marxism. The Export Development Corporation lent that country nearly $100 million at 7 per cent interest at a time when Canadians were paying 20 per cent or more. Restricting the amount of the borrowing authority of the corporation would certainly serve to curb this type of excess which so offends Canadians.
Financing of the Export Development is obtained by the corporation borrowing on the credit of Canada on the international money markets so as to finance the sale of Canadian goods. With the Government guarantee, the corporation is able to borrow money on the international market at a cheaper rate than any commercial borrower. The farmers of Canada would ask the Government why the Farm Credit Corporation, which is so restricted in capital that it is no longer making loans in some areas, has not been given the authority to borrow on the capital markets of the world at a favourable rate so that it can service Canadian farmers to a greater degree.
It is the purpose and responsibility of the elected Parliamentarians of Canada to exercise control over the purse strings of the national treasury. I find it difficult to understand the reluctance of Hon. Members opposite to accept that democratic principle.


Mr. Bill Vankoughnet (Hastings-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington):: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to speak in this debate concerning Bill C-l 10, to amend the Export Development Act, and the motions moved by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn).
Once again, Mr. Speaker, I find myself in my place in the House of Commons debating a piece of Government legislation which seeks to circumvent the prime responsibility of Parliament. Once again, I find myself in opposition to another Liberal attempt to deny Parliament its historical right as guardian of the taxpayers' funds.
What I find particularly obnoxious is that the federal Government can produce funds like pulling rabbits out of a hat for the Export Development Corporation for activities the public is not even aware of, while on the other hand it has difficulty providing funds to the Farm Credit Corporation for Canadian farmers who are in real need.
At first glance one would believe that Bill C-l 10, a Bill to amend the Export Development Act, and particularly Motions Nos. 3 and 5, are truly comparable to the motherhood issue. After all, who could speak against the export of capital goods from Canada and therefore the creation of much needed jobs? But we must also realize that there is something far greater at stake here, and that is the role of parliamentary authority and control of the public purse.
Fiscal responsibility and the lack of accountability to Parliament is the real question raised in this Bill. The Bill allows the Export Development Corporation's board of directors to spend $60 billion dollars without accounting to Parliament until after it is spent. The people of Canada are beginning to ask questions about how the Government has spent and is spending their money. Because Crown corporation after Crown corporation has lost the confidence of the Canadian public, people want parliamentary control of public funds. It is not unreasonable to expect that appropriations should come before the House as they are required, but not with this blank cheque approach. The House of Commons has lost control over Crown corporations, to say the least. We do not even know how many there are, let alone how much money is involved or for what valid reasons they are doing business. No one is questioning the validity of the EDC. What is being questioned is the authority of Parliament and our ability to question the spending of public funds before, not after, they are spent.
It is difficult to imagine what $60 billion really is, but I am told that just $1 million in $1 bills laid end to end would stretch from this Chamber to Sharbot Lake, a community in my riding 80 miles away. Just imagine how far $60 billion in $1 bills would go.
We are now considering $20 billion of borrowing authority to be lent to various concerns around the world. The Farm Credit Corporation needs another $300 million but the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) and the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) say no. The amendment we are dealing with today reduces the capital to $1 billion, $100 instead of authorized capital of $2 billion.
We hear a great deal of flak from Government Members about what a PC Government would do. Mr. Speaker, this Party has for some time, including 1979 when we were the Government for a short period, promoted parliamentary reform. Parliamentary procedures must be put in place that scrutinize expenditures before they are spent rather than after.
September 19, 1983

I urge the Minister responsible to consider these amendments to this Act and to start the process of giving some accountability back to Members of Parliament and, therefore, to the people of Canada. Year after year the Auditor General warns that financial management and control of departments and agencies is well below acceptable standards. The raising and spending of money goes to the very heart of the role Parliament plays. My colleagues and 1 are determined that this institution shall retain the integrity and responsibility with which it was originally endowed.
Recently 1 read in the local press that over 50 per cent of the Canadian population believes that the role of Parliament in our society is limited. With the current situation which the federal Government is trying to develop, I see this situation deteriorating, not improving. Fiscal accountability is fundamental to the rights of Parliament. Unless that responsibility is strengthened and preserved, I am afraid the institution we know as Parliament will cease to exist.
My colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South, has pointed out, among other things, the lack of private sector businessmen to sit on the reconstituted board of directors of the Export Development Corporation. Our desire to place businessmen on the board of directors of the EDC is to inspire a sense of reality in the decisions of the Crown corporation. As has been stated on several occasions in this House, the monument to the Algerian revolution which was financed by Canadian taxpayers is an example of where the isolated world of the civil servant lacks credibility.
In the same vein, I shake my head in disbelief when I witness this Government's response to the agricultural community. My Party has advocated on numerous occasions policies which would help farmers who are currently caught in the web of high interest rates, policies which would provide long-term credit at affordable interest rates. However, the Minister of Finance does not believe that farm bankruptcies are occurring, and he does not believe that the current situation in which a farmer finds himself when he approaches major lending institutions is cause for concern. It was reputed earlier this year that a mid-eastern country offered Canada money at 7 per cent interest to be repaid with food supplies, and the Government refused. The Minister of Finance is said to have stated that we did not need it.
The Government now wishes to develop a new wrinkle in deficit financing for its Crown corporations. Currently, a trust company or other financial institution must have money in the till to do business. They are able to borrow in ratio to their paid-in capital and earned surplus. This Act will allow the Export Development Corporation to borrow ten times its authorized capital. In layman's terms there may be only one dollar in the till, but the company is authorized to borrow $10 billion even if it has nothing with which to back this borrowing. The federal Government will allow this to occur. This represents no control whatsoever and is totally irresponsible.
The federal Government can find money to build monuments to a revolution in Algeria, but when the federal Govern-
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ment is requested to provide the necessary funds to help the average Canadian farmer produce food and hold off bankruptcy, a condition which has not developed through any action on the part of the farmer but through the high interest policy of the Government, the federal Government states that current funding is adequate.
Past experience dictates that parliamentary control of spending is necessary. Out of the 62 companies which received EDC financing last year, three companies received more than half the total. EDC has no business financing foreign development which will jeopardize jobs in this country. However, it would be remiss of me to claim that a double standard exists because I do not believe this Government operates by any standard of conduct. This Government could regain some stature if it would allow Parliament its natural historical prerogative of accountability for the taxpayers' dollars.


Hon. Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Mr. Speaker, you will have heard in the last few days a number of speakers rise in their places in this House and address themselves to Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Corporation. The reason. Sir, that a number of Hon. Members have been rising to speak is in the dim, fleeting hope that somehow or other the Government might get the message that there are major things wrong with the Bill which it is presenting to the House. We hope, like advertising with its repetition, that with the repetition of that message to the Government it will finally sink in. I have been watching the response of Government Members this morning and I must say to you, Mr. Speaker, that I really do not see the dawning of any recognition on their faces as yet. I can hope and 1 can pray, and I trust that they will come to that recognition before this debate is over.
The amendments which have been put forward by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) are really worth while considering. There is no question but that they would improve this Bill. Beyond the amendments which the Hon. Member has put to the House, there are ramifications in this Bill which extend well beyond Canadian trade policy, well beyond the Export Development Act itself, well beyond Crown corporations, and which come to the fundamental reason why this House exists and what parliamentary tradition is all about. It goes to the very heart of our system of government.
1 would like to make it clear, Mr. Speaker, right at the outset, that we all understand, appreciate and value the position of trade policy in our over-all operations, in our economy. We know how important it is. We think there should be greater emphasis by the Government on creating the proper economic climate, the proper environment in this country for an expansion of Canadian trade policy. Not that it will be limited, not that it will be restricted, but that it will be expanded. That will mean a stronger economy. It will mean more jobs. It will mean greater prosperity in this country. It is necessary, indeed, that Government provide that climate as much as possible. It is, therefore, not a question of trade policy which is under scrutiny or attack here. It is the provisions by which the Government is trying to bring about the extension or

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the amendment of the mandate of the Export Development Corporation.
As we have seen, the Government intends to double the authorized capital of the Export Development Corporation. This means that the corporation will then be able to borrow up to $20 billion as opposed to the original $10 billion which it had been authorized to borrow. The Government may also now make insurance commitments by Order in Council which are not of a proper commercial nature. It will be able to make these commitments up to a ceiling of $10 billion instead of the original $3.5 billion. This will all be done without any parliamentary approval.
That is what 1 meant when I said that this Bill goes much beyond trade policy or the Export Development Corporation or Crown corporations. It is the fact that the Government is trying to do this without proper parliamentary approval, which I oppose most strongly and which my Party opposes most strongly. It is in an effort to redress this situation that my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South, has put forward his proposals.
As elected officials representing Canadians from coast to coast, we as Hon. Members of this House have a responsibility to see that the public purse is scrutinized at all times. That is where Parliament began. That is the foundation upon which it was laid. And, Sir, not only are parliamentary expenditures to be scrutinized, but it is to be shown to the people of Canada that those expenditures are not being abused. Because, after all, it is not our money or the Government of Canada's money; it is the hard earned income of millions of Canadians which is being discussed here.
There will be people, Mr. Speaker, who would like to ask whether the borrowers who are able to take advantage of the borrowing measures under the EDC are going to get more preferential rates than, say, the small business community in Canada. More importantly, will the small business community of Canada ever know what those preferential rates might be? So much of this is done in secrecy, Sir, without the scrutiny of Parliament. If one were to look, as has been mentioned here many times, at some of the readily available examples of spending which have not been approved by this House or even come before this House, then one can see the potential for abuse which lies in the Bill as presented to us. It becomes very clearly visible. Some of these examples have been mentioned on a number of occasions and I wish the Government would take them to heart.
The fact is that Canadair lost $1.4 billion and that was never allowed to be scrutinized by Parliament, de Havilland lost $226 million, Via Rail lost $440 million, and Canada Post lost $300 million. There was no scrutiny by the elected Members of Parliament of those Crown agencies which together lost a total of over $2 billion. No one here in this House of Commons or in a parliamentary committee had a chance to examine that situation, and these are just four of more than 300 Crown corporations presently in existence.
Sir, 1 would like to refer to a statement made in the Report of the Lambert Royal Commission on Financial Management and Accountability some four years ago. The Report warned the Government of what would happen if the essence of accountability was further eroded. Commissioner Lambert said this:
In examining the bewildering array of Crown agencies we have found that existing provisions for classifying them and for accountability for each category have been rendered obsolete. The resulting state of confusion, if left unattended, will seriously impair the value of these agencies as instruments of public purpose and do further damage to the tenuous and sometimes obscure accountability links that... they now have with the Government and Parliament.
He talked about the obscure accountability links and said they were in danger of being further eroded. Despite this warning the Government is now seeking to increase the funding available to another Crown corporation which is not adequately accountable to Parliament, and more importantly not accountable to the Canadian taxpayer; and we on this side find this simply unacceptable.
The importance of having Crown corporations strictly accountable to Parliament, Mr. Speaker, was emphasized once again in the Auditor General's Report last fall, which said this:
The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for over-seeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
I see you are rising in your place, Mr. Speaker. In closing, I just want to reiterate that what the Auditor General was talking about was the fundamental responsibility of Parliament to be accountable for the expenditure of funds. 1 remind you, Sir, and through you the Government, that King Charles I lost his head because he refused to acknowledge the supremacy of Parliament. I predict, Mr. Speaker, this Government will lose not only its head but its position to your right, Sir, because it continues to ignore the supremacy of Parliament.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Geoff Scott (Hamilton-Wentworth):: Mr. Speaker, my friends on the Government side and to my left in the New Democratic Party may find this almost impossible to believe, but 1 had no intention of speaking on Bill C-110, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, including the amendments put forward by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). Coming as I do from the world of broadcast journalism, I never exported anything except perhaps ideas. I have never even had relatives who were remotely connected with the Export Development Corporation, at least that I know of. So I have not had the benefit of learning the intricacies of the exporting business, nor do I serve on the Standing Committee of Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs. So Hon. Members can see from my credentials that I enter this debate with a pristine pure mind, without prejudice, without biases cluttered up by technicalitities.
1 must say that I do believe in the principle of an Export Development Corporation in terms of its benefits to the
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Canadian economy, and the Government must create a climate to expand our trading opportunities.
What has brought me to my feet today, Mr. Speaker, is a weekend's reflection on the many excellent points made by my colleagues in their interventions on Bill C-110 during last week's deliberations on the subject. Members from one end of this country to the other, from the Western Arctic to Erie in my part of southern Ontario, all sounded alarmed about the implications of this legislation if this House passes what the Government wants in connection with the EDC. The two buzz phrases which caught my attention over and over again were "Crown corporation bureaucrats" and "no control by Parliament".
Well, Mr. Speaker, I may not be an expert in high finance but I do know something about the danger to our democratic way of life, particularly the damage to our rising defict, when Crown corporations run by bureaucrats run amok. As one who has watched and reported and loved Parliament for 25 years, I know of, and indeed fear, the prospect that we as elected representatives may have literally no control over the actions of this Export Development Corporation. Even if the average citizen on the street has not the slightest idea of what the EDC is or does, that person understands one thing very clearly: a Government money grab. I wonder how the man or woman on the street would react to the prospect of this Liberal Government allowing the EDC to make loans in the billions of dollars without myself or any other Member of Parliament needing to approve them. That is something that every Canadian citizen can and should know.
What we have before us in Bill C-l 10 is a bureaucratically controlled mechanism, which means that the Hon. Member for Saint-Denis (Mr. Prud'homme), the Hon. Member for Cochrane-Superior (Mr. Penner), the Hon. Member for St. Boniface (Mr. Bockstael), the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), the Hon. Member for Churchill (Mr. Murphy), the Hon. Member for Huron-Bruce (Mr. Cardiff), the Hon. Member for Kingston and The Islands (Miss MacDonald), the Hon. Member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid), the Hon. Member for Parry Sound-Muskoka (Mr. Darling) and any of the other Hon. Members here would not be able to vote upon this and we would be regarded as totally unnecessary. Well, I am sorry, Mr. Minister, but my constituents in Hamilton-Wentworth just will not buy that complete lack of a parliamentary safeguard. Otherwise, why are we here if the House of Commons cannot question and control the Government's spending powers?
Bill C-l 10 touches the very heart of Parliament. My colleague, the Hon. Member for Bow River (Mr. Taylor), put simply and eloquently why we on this side are so concerned about the accountability and control of the public purse when he said:
Our country has a parliamentary system under which the Government should be reflecting the thinking of the people. 1 want to tell the Hon. Members of the Government that this section does not reflect the thinking of Canadians. The polls have shown that Canadians are heartsore over what has been happening.
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The present Government is no longer representing what the people want. It has been telling the people what is good for them for a number of years and this Bill is a typical example of where the Government has given authority to a group of appointed people to spend money that has not been authorized by the House of Commons or the Senate. That is basically wrong.
The section to which my colleague, the Hon. Member for Bow River was referring, is the one that we are trying to correct. Just to refresh the memories of Hon. Members and to point out the importance of the amendments before us, let me read Motions Nos. 3 and 5. Motion No. 3 states:
That Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 5 by striking out lines 23 to 26 at page 3 and substituting the following therefor:
"11.(1) The authorized capital of the Corporation is one billion one hundred dollars divided into ten million and one shares with a par value of one hundred dollars each."
Motion No. 5 states:
That Bill C-l 10, An Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 7 by striking out lines 39 to 41 at page 3 and lines 1 and 2 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
"14. The aggregate amount of borrowings of the Corporation pursuant to sections 12 and 13 shall not exceed the amount equal to ten times the aggregate of the paid in capital and earned surplus in the accounts of the Corporation."
The explanation, as I see it, may be stated quite simply: the Government proposes that there be $2 billion in authorized capital for the corporation and that the aggregate amount of borrowing of the corporation shall "not exceed an amount equal to ten times the authorized capital of the corporation". Therefore, if one puts the Government's proposal against our amendments, one finds that the Government proposes to allow the corporation to borrow $20 billion without further parliamentary authorization. That is the basis for our strong objections, the objections taken by many Hon. Members in the debate.
Several Hon. Members have pointed out that it has become almost routine when dealing with the Government to speak in terms of "a billion dollars" or "a half-billion dollars" or "hundreds of millions of dollars", figures which are almost impossible for the average person to comprehend; yet here in this Bill the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) is attempting a money grab of gigantic proportions.
The provision with which we are now dealing calls for a total capitalization of the Export Development Corporation of $2 billion. When one multiplies that by ten-and that is the way the Bill works-one is considering that the Government is asking for $20 billion of lending authority which, in turn, means borrowing authority. That money comes from the taxpayers of this country. The Liberal Government proposes to accomplish this without parliamentary accountability because the Export Development Corporation does not have its spending scrutinized by Parliament. It is not required to table an operating budget, a capital budget or even to provide information on the size of its payroll. The mind boggles.
Earlier 1 mentioned the proliferation of Crown corporations in this country and how their spending can run amok. Let me conclude these brief remarks by quoting Professor Andre Raynauld, who is president-elect of the Economic Association

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of Canada, former President of the Economic Council of Canada, and a former Liberal M.N.A. in Quebec. This is what Professor Raynauld says about the Export Development Corporation:
It is rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient.
A poll taken during the summer indicated that a large number of Canadians consider Parliament to be irrelevant. People do not feel that Parliamentarians are representing them or protecting their interests. That is what we on this side are determined to do in connection with Bill C-110. Through our amendments we are determined to make the Export Development Corporation accountable to the people. That is why I, as well as many other Members of Parliament concerned about control over the public purse, decided to enter the debate today. I thank the House for its attention.
Mir. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka): Mr. Speaker, it is a privilege to take part in the debate on Bill C-110. 1 am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on Motions Nos. 3 and 5, the amendments which were put forth by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). The amendments to the Bill call for an increase in the capitalization of the Export Development Corporation. Of course, we wish the amount to be reduced from $2 billion as requested in the Bill.
When it comes to Crown agencies and the experience we have had in the House over the past number of years, our main focus of attention should be accountability and control of the expenditure of taxpayers' money.
The amendments brought forth have been introduced for the purpose of closer scrutiny by elected Parliamentarians to correct the inadequacies of accountability that are present in the Bill as it stands. The increase of capital authority to the Export Development Corporation from $1 billion to $2 billion should be further reviewed. This would give the Export Development Corporation the authority to borrow up to ten times against the capital authority. Is this really warranted? This means $20 billion worth of borrowing authority. In total, the Bill will increase to $62 billion the amount of money that the Export Development Corporation can borrow, lend and insure, all without adequate parliamentary scrutiny and control. The Government is asking for a blank cheque, and the answer should be no.
Although there may be good reasons for this extra borrowing authority, the purse strings do have to be tightened. As the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) stated in the House earlier in the debate, the Export Development Corporation is not the only organization that finances exports; the vast majority of this financing is done by the private banking system, as it should be. We must see to it that it stays that way in the present Bill. As it stands, these huge sums of money will be borrowed without having to come to Parliament for approval and there will be less accountability by the administration for the spending of these funds.
Surely through legislation of this kind we continue to see the erosion of Parliament's control over Crown corporations. Has the Government not learned anything from its past experiences? Has it such a short memory as to forget Canadair, which I believe was in the red to the tune of $1.4 billion, and VIA Rail, which lost $449 million in 1982? 1 understand that VIA Rail forecasts a loss in 1983-84 of some $755 million, de Havilland lost $265.2 million last year. The Post Office has reduced its usual deficit and I believe this past year it was only $300 million, and this with its greatly increased postal rates.
1 recognize and support the fundamental purpose of the Export Development Corporation to assist our manufacturers and small businesses to seek new customers in the international marketplace. On this point, most Hon. Members will agree. The difficulty in the first place, is that there is no requirement that the authorized capital be in the accounts of the corporation; that is, both used and unused authorized capital.
The recent Economic Council report, "Intervention and Efficiency", devotes a full chapter to the subject of export finance and the Export Development Corporation. Government members opposite would do well to read the report, as its thrust is to scale down and reorient the Export Development Corporation and not to enlarge it. Seven of the report's 31 recommendations relate to the Export Development Corporation. One recommendation is that the corporation do less direct financing and that the private sector do more. We could not agree more. The focus of the Economic Council report, as I interpret it, points to a greater say by Parliament in the operations of the corporation. What the amendments propose to do is in the spirit of the report, as the Export Development Corporation presently does not have its spending adequately scrutinized by Parliament. It is not required to table an operating budget or information on the size of its payroll. Moreover, it borrows money in the name of the Canadian taxpayers without seeking parliamentary authority to do so.
The corporation is quite large, with 613 employees. In 1982 it dealt in loan accounts involving 62 exports. It had one customer for every ten employees. As well, it had just over 900 separate insurance policies in 1982 which represented 1.5 policies per employee.
The Government has approximately 306 Crown corporations employing over a quarter of a million people. I believe these corporations have assets totalling close to $75 billion and liabilities of $63 billion. This Bill will increase the borrowing authority of this particular corporation by $35 billion.
I want to assure the House that our Party is dedicated to improving Canada's trade performance and expanding its participation. It is not, however, dedicated to increasing the lack of accountability and control that characterizes the EDC and other Crown corporations.
Indeed, given that there exists the capacity within the existing EDC financing limits, further study hurts no one. As a Crown corporation, EDC should become as commercially viable as possible. As an instrument of public policy, it
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demands accountability, scrutiny, responsibility and good financial accounting. Would we not be irresponsible if we were to allow for this magnitude of borrowing?
The more the corporation grows, the more it will gobble up tax dollars. The larger the borrowing, the greater the risk. The taxpayers of Canada, particularly in my riding, no longer feel they are getting value for their money and they have good reason. There have been too many instances of Parliament losing control over the constant growth of its size and expenditures.
1 conclude my observations by urging greater responsibility and scrutiny in relation to the present Bill. I believe the amendments are sound and should be adopted. Finally, the Export Development Corporation as a governing policy instrument should not be abused.


Mr. Jim Hawkes (Calgary West):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise to speak in favour of the amendments proposed by a Member of the Conservative Party of Canada. I do so with a certain sense of knowledge that our nation of Canada in which we have so much faith needs to do more in terms of exports.
I am reminded this morning that in 1968, when the present Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) took office in this country, Canada exported more goods and services than did the nation of Japan. I stand here some 15 years later with the knowledge that Japan today exports twice as much as Canada. That 15-year period of history is an indictment of the Liberal Party of Canada and the policies which it has put in place in this country as they relate to exports.
Today we are dealing with Bill C-l 10 and two amendments proposed by the Conservative Party of Canada. What is the essence of Bill C-l 10? In its basic thrust, the Liberal Party of Canada, the Cabinet and the Prime Minister are asserting to Canadians that they want to continue in the direction they have been heading and double the amount of money that is flowing to this corporation. The Government has indicated that it does not want to do so with taxpayers' dollars but with borrowed money. It has the mistaken belief that taxpayers' dollars are not at risk by simply turning around and borrowing money.
1 say to the Minister that there are lessons which should be learned from history. I remind him again that this nation exported more than Japan 15 years ago and that Japan now exports twice as much as Canada. Surely the message the Government should learn from that is that we have been on the wrong track as an exporting nation in terms of our policies. Surely we should not have to stand in the House to deal with a Bill which would simply double the amount of money being spent on those policies. Surely 15 years is long enough to make the Government realize that it has been on the wrong track and should not be asking to double the amount of money that it is spending in that direction.
This Bill exemplifies the basic thrust of the Liberal Party's policies over the last 15 years. It represents a denial of the democratic process because it turns power and authority over to appointed bodies with increasing frequency. There are now
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approximately 239,000 Canadians employed by the federal Government who work in Government departments that are accountable to Parliament's elected representatives. Crown corporations, which are removed from the control of Parliament, employ some 262,000 Canadians. More Canadians are employed by Crown corporations than by the federal Government.
As I sat here listening to the interventions of Members of our Party this morning, 1 asked myself what the difference between a democracy and a dictatorship was. There is really very little, if any, difference between the two in a governing sense. Governments of both a dictatorship and a democracy make rules which can take away people's liberty and lives. This is done through criminal laws. As well, these governments pass rules, regulations and laws which take property away from people. The classic example of that is the tax law through which the Government can take a portion of one's goods or money. This is done both in a dictatorship and a democracy.
Therefore, if the powers of a governing dictatorship and democracy are the same, what differentiates a democracy from a dictatorship? The essential difference between the two is simply the ballot box. In a democracy we give a group of people, whether a municipal council, provincial government or federal Parliament, power to take away our lives, liberty or our property in whole or in part. In a democracy these people are elected on a regular basis for perhaps two, three or four years. Those people to whom we give that power are held accountable through universal suffrage, the freedom to vote. That is a very precious principle and I suggest to Liberal backbenchers opposite that it is a very important principle. When people are given the power to remove our liberty or to take away some of our goods or money, we have that vote which holds them accountable. If they do not proceed in a fashion which their electors feel is appropriate or correct, they can throw them out at their next opportunity to vote.
What happens when we give that power to an appointed group, when we give it to a Crown corporation, in this case the Canadian Export Development Corporation? Those appointees are not voted into office, and therefore they cannot be voted out of office. In this piece of legislation before us today we are giving this group of people the same powers that we give to governments, and it is done through the medium of a Crown corporation which is not accountable to Parliament. We are setting up a small, mini-dictatorship. We are transferring powers from Canadian voters to appointed bodies. We are transferring them from a democracy to a dictatorship. That has been the characteristic of the policy of the last 15 years by the present Prime Minister, the present Cabinet as well as preceding Cabinets.
We in the Opposition consistently attempt to enunciate that principle with the greatest clarity possible. We say to the backbenchers opposite: "You have a role and a responsibility. You can participate in the erosion of democracy, you can go into the privacy of your caucus or stand in the public glare of

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this chamber and say to the Prime Minister and to the Cabinet that democracy is the most important principle at stake. It must be protected. The good of the nation requires it and you can hold the Cabinet accountable."
Time after time after time we are disappointed because the backbenchers of the Liberal Party will not hold the Cabinet accountable. This supposedly small piece of legislation which sits before us today would empower an unknown group of 15 people to put the taxpayers at risk to the tune of $62,000 million; or to express it another way, to the tune of $62 billion. That amounts to better than two-thirds of total federal spending this year which will be put into the hands of 15 unknown people who cannot be ousted through the ballot box procedure. It is transferring $62,000 million to a dictatorship.
I urge all Members of this chamber to hold this Cabinet accountable and to vote for the amendments proposed by the Conservative Member of Parliament for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn).


Hon. Michael Wilson (Etobicoke Centre):: Mr. Speaker, 1 am very pleased to speak today to the amendments to Bill C-110, an Act to amend the Export Development Act.
At the outset I want to make it very, very clear that the Conservative Party is fully committed to increasing foreign trade.


Mr. Regan:: Baloney.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: This has always been an integral part of our policy. In fact, the Hon. Member opposite who just said baloney will have to recognize and acknowledge that in 1979 the Conservative Government first made it a provision to have a Member of cabinet fully responsible for foreign trade, and I had the honour to be that first Minister.
It is very clear that the Conservative Party is very much in favour of increasing foreign trade. Increasing foreign trade is the best way possible to increase employment. The way to increase employment is either through domestic or export business. Clearly the increase in domestic business will continue in a normal pattern; sometimes a little faster and sometimes a little slower, but a normal pattern of growth. If we can increase our share of foreign trade by a small percentage in proportion to the over-all export business in the world today, it can have a very large and significant impact on Canada's economy.
Our opposition to this Bill is very clear. It has nothing to do with our position on foreign trade. It does not reflect any weakening in our resolve to increase foreign trade as part of our over-all policy. Our opposition is based on the concern that we have over the accountability of Crown corporations to this Parliament.
It has been very evident over the past few years that this accountability has slipped, and slipped drastically. The Cana-dair example is a text book case of how Crown corporations should not be run. There are some clear strains in the Cana-dair case that apply directly to the Export Development Corporation, and I will be coming to them in a minute, Mr. Speaker.
Bill C-110 asks for a blank cheque for the Government and for the Export Development Corporation. It is asking for borrowing authority that could last quite conceivably for the balance of this decade. I want to point out what Professor Andre Raynauld of the University of Montreal said. When referring to the Export Development Corporation, he said it was "rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster". That, I think, says it all. That is something we have to be very aware of and very sensitive to. I hope the Minister is taking account of these observations being made about a corporation under his authority.
The EDC Act normally comes before Parliament about every three or four years. If this Bill goes through in the form proposed, we will probably not see the EDC Act before this Parliament for the next eight or nine years, probably not before 1990. What we are asking for is reasonable control over this Crown corporation. In Motion No. 5 we have asked for a ten to one borrowing ratio on paid-in capital and surplus. Motion No. 3 requests that that authorized capital be limited to $1.1 billion. The current surplus today is close to $200,000. What we have here is an over-all paid-in capital and surplus of $1.3 billion. Ten times that is $13 billion. That means there would be borrowings authorized of $13 billion.
Let us look at what the borrowings are today which total about $4.3 billion. What is the concern? Why are these two amendments, a combination of amendment No. 3 and amendment No. 5, restrictive on the Crown corporation? We have to ask that question and we have not had an answer from the Minister.
We are asking for a borrowing multiplier also on paid-in capital and surplus. The Government has said it wants the multiplier on authorized capital which means capital that is authorized but not necessarily paid into the company. There is quite a significant difference and a very important difference. We have seen how Canadair, as an example, operated on a very low equity basis, borrowed an awful lot of money from banks, from the Government and from international investors, and got into a tremendous amount of trouble, so much so that we had a disaster on our hands and a write-off of $1 billion in taxpayers' money that was invested in Canadair.
If the Government is going to run the Export Development Corporation in the same way as Canadair, we could quite conceivably have another disaster on our hands because there is not that proper check and balance so necessary in running a financial corporation. The Government has not learned the lesson. The Government wants to run this company on fresh air, the same way as it ran Canadair on fresh air. You cannot run a company primarily on borrowings; you have to have that solid equity base. That is why we want to have the borrowing multiplier related to solid equity capital being invested in the company. I am not referring to equity capital in some Minister's mind who says: "Some day we may invest in that company, but not necessarily today". The Minister has not answered that question. He has not stated why the Govern-
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ment is not prepared to base its borrowing requirement on hard cash which it is prepared to invest directly in the corporation. 1 hope he will respond to that in due course.
The fifth amendment would ensure that the borrowing base is money in the company, not out there in an airy-fairy way in some person's imagination. When I look at the details of our amendment, I realize it is more generous than what 1 originally thought the Bill was allowing. I wondered why we were making an amendment that was more generous. I thought the borrowing multiplier would be based on paid-in capital, and we proposed paid-in capital plus surplus. Then I read it more closely and discovered that it was authorized capital. I look forward to the Minister's explanation on this.
I recognize that there can be some debate on the third amendment. Should the authorized capital be $1.1 billion as we have proposed or $2 billion as the Government has proposed? There is a $900 million difference which represents, with a ten times multiplier, $9 billion of borrowing.
The borrowing of the corporation today which has been built up over its life is approximately $4.5 billion. The difference between what the Government wants to put in and what we want to put in is equal to two times the total amount of borrowings built up over the many years the company has been in existence. That is excessive. It is not responsible and does not demonstrate that the Government is learning its lesson from giving Crown corporations a free hand to run away for three years to ten years before being called to account in Parliament. That is the fundamental issue we are facing today.
I would like to look a little more closely at this area. The growth in borrowings according to the annual report was about $800 million in 1982, the latest year for which we have figures available. That $800 million can be supported by an increase in the capital base of the company of $80 million. The existing authorized capital is $1 billion. That will support borrowings of $10 billion. The borrowings today are $4.5 billion, so there is a tremendous gap between the existing position of the company and where it can go under the current authorized capital, but a tremendous increase over what it wants to do in the next few years.
There has been a lot of pressure put upon us, which I am sure has been instigated by the Minister and his staff, by the exporting community to get the Bill passed because we will reach a crunch where it will not be possible for the EDC to lend any more money to support exports. The Minister has yet to say when that crunch will come. The implication left with us by these people is that it will come in a very few days. I say to the people who are putting this pressure on us that they should show a responsible attitude toward the control of the Export Development Corporation, encourage the Government to show that responsible attitude, and we will show a responsible attitude toward the passage of the Bill. We are reasonable people. We feel that foreign trade should be strongly developed, but we will not roll over or step aside while the Government rapes Parliament and takes taxpayers to the cleaners
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once again with irresponsible action and uncontrolled operations of Crown corporations.


Mr. J. M. Forrestall (Dartmouth-Halifax East):: Mr. Speaker, lest Elon. Members opposite feel we can move, let me assure them that we will not move until some reason is brought to bear on their apparent unwillingness to move even a little in the direction suggested by the amendments of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). 1 wish more Government backbenchers and indeed some of its frontbenchers, apart from the distinguished three who are here, were present to listen to the arguments being put forth. Then when it comes time to vote on these important matters, they might not simply react to their Whip or Leader, but possibly might find it a useful occasion in which to exercise their best judgment.
I want to deal just briefly with some of the recommendations concerning the question of accountability, which is our fundamental concern and fear. Also 1 would like to deal with the size of the borrowings and the extensions provided in the Bill. They are mind-boggling. In fact, they are more than that; they seriously put into question the capacity of a country the size of Canada to deal with this amount of money. If we look at our weighted borrowings, Government debt, public and private debt for the first 116 years, we realize that the Government is doing more here than government process has done since the mid-1800s. It behooves us to look very closely at it.
The Economic Council of Canada considered these questions in its report on intervention and efficiency. It made a number of recommendations. I will deal with those which pertain to the Export Development Corporation because 1 think they are important. Its recommendations, among others, included the suggestion that the EDC should gradually, not abruptly, move toward providing export credit re-insurance, leaving the field of insurance where it belongs, in the private sector. It further recommended that the EDC serve as the insurer of last resort. Historically it has been attempting to do that, but the Bill before us takes it out of that category and places it in an entirely different position. It is not a lender of last resort, it is not an insurer of last resort. Indeed, Hon. Members over the last several days have indicated that in fact it is becoming a lender of first choice in opposition to the private sector.
Also the report recommended that the EDC continue to provide direct financing for Canadian sales abroad, but only when there is reason to believe that the private sector is unable to provide the required credits. Also it suggested that public financing should be made available only under terms and conditions commensurate with the risks involved, and the cost of such assistance, including the opportunity cost of the funds used, except in cases where it is deemed necessary to take into consideration the export support programs of other countries.
It further recommended that the gradual withdrawal of the EDC from most direct lending activities should be accompanied by an increased concentration of its efforts in the fields of credit insurance and bank guarantees. The corporation

September 19, 1983
should also stand ready to provide refinancing facilities for private lending institutions engaged in export financing. There were eight or ten fundamental recommendations that in fact made sense, all of which pointed to the general problem of Government supplanting that as a policy or principle. Also it recommended that the Government should continue its efforts aUmeetings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade to obtain an international agreement to limit further subsidized export credit. I will deal with that matter a little later.
May 1 call it one o'clock?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: It being one o'clock, 1 do now leave the chair until two o'clock this afternoon.
At 1 p.m. the Elouse took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Gus Mitges (Grey-Simcoe):: Madam Speaker, nine years have passed since Turkey invaded Cyprus, an independent country and a member of the Commonwealth and the United Nations. The continuing occupation of almost 40 per cent of the territory of Cyprus deprives many Cypriots of their human rights, and hinders the negotiations between the two ethnic communities to work out a formula to live compatibly in peace with each other. The occupation has effectively prevented the United Nations from investigating approximately 1,600 missing persons taken hostage during the days of the invasion, despite repeated resolutions to that effect.
Canada on many occasions in the past has condemned military rule and foreign occupation of sovereign countries, but in the case of Cyprus no such stand has taken place. I respectfully request that our Government demonstrate a more just and courageous position toward Cyprus by voting in favour of all resolutions in the United Nations aimed at condemnation of the continuing occupation of Cyprus, and seeking to resolve the human tragedy of missing persons. Unless the Cyprus problem is resolved according to the principles of self-determination of sovereign nations, the cause of democracy, freedom of all nations, and human rights for all people of the world, will not be sincerely served.



FARM CREDIT CORPORATION


Mr. Bud Bradley (Haldimand-Norfolk):: Madam Speaker, since 1959 the Farm Credit Corporation has been a valuable tool for farmers in their quest for funding. However, the demand now for Farm Credit Corporation funds grows faster than the Corporation's budget. The Farm Credit Corporation recently asked the Government's permission to borrow $600 million on the financial market, but was allowed to borrow only $250 million. The amount is already spoken for. This action by the Government confirms that it does not understand the importance and need for Farm Credit Corporation money in agriculture.
If the Government is truly concerned about jobs it had better look at the agricultural industry, an area where its action, or lack of it, is causing unprecedented bankruptcies and unemployment. In the short term, the Farm Credit Corporation should be allowed to borrow all the funds it needs. In the long term, an agribond system must be introduced, that is, if the Government is concerned about saving agriculture.



HUMAN RIGHTS


Mr. Jim Peterson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Madam Speaker, approximately seven years ago Lilia Karp and her husband, Lev Karp, were allowed to leave the Soviet Union, but only after considerable pressure had been exerted by President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger, and Senator Hubert Humphrey of the United States. The difficulty Mr. Karp had found himself in was that, in his home in Moscow, he had endeavoured to teach Soviet technocrats a number of the new western technologies. By leaving Russia he was able to escape the pressure of the KGB. He and his wife are now living in North York with their two children.
On August 22 the mother of Lilia Karp died in Moscow. Upon learning of her mother's death Mrs. Karp sought to go to Moscow but was unable to obtain Soviet permission. Last Saturday morning Lilia Karp learned of the death of her father who, according to her, died of a broken heart because he was unable to have his daughter with him at the funeral of the mother. The funeral of the father is going to be held next Saturday.
I urge members of the Soviet Embassy here to work with the Karps to ensure that Lilia Karp can be in Moscow for her parents funeral. This is not a time for politics. This is a time for humanity.
September 19, 1983



PARLIAMENT HILL


Robert Joseph Ogle: Madam Speaker, on the last sitting day one of my colleagues in the House of Commons complained about the aesthetic damage caused by the Peace Camp on the lawns of Parliament Hill. Probably many people agreed with that. However, I would like to say that if an atomic weapon of the size of the Cruise missile, which can carry a 200-kilaton bomb, which is equal to 200,000 tons of TNT, which is equal to 400 boxcar loads of high explosive, fell on the lawn of Parliament Hill, this building and all the buildings around here would be vaporized. Everybody in this building would likewise disappear.
We would be the fortunate ones because, within the one kilometre to 1.5 kilometre range in Ottawa, all buildings would be pulverized, destroyed, and left in ruin. Within three kilometres, 90 per cent of all people would die. That would include all of downtown Ottawa, as far away as the Governor General's home, and would include Hull and Vanier.
A firestorm would take over for 80 square kilometres and suffocation from heat, and a lack of oxygen would leave the people in Gatineau, Kanata and Old Chelsea dying or dead. A firestorm would start the forests of the Gatineau Hills on fire. Finally, there would be a crater 600 metres across and 75 metres deep where the House of Commons now stands. The demonstration is a bit messy, but what the people there are trying to say is, "stop in the name of humanity".


Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Member's time is up.



ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Madam Speaker, I want to express my pleasure at the recent signing of the U.S.-Canada agreement to track long-range pollution, the Captex project. I note that this is the first act of the Minister of the Environment (Mr. Caccia), and 1 hope that this will be far from his last.
In looking more closely at this experiment, however, I wonder about its real significance. Do we not already know that acid rain comes from the valleys of Ohio? What about the Minister's caution against attaching undue significance to the experiment? What does that mean? Has he that little confidence?
1 trust that the Minister will be more optimistic, forceful, and more representative in bringing this vital issue to the attention of his cabinet colleagues. That means more money so that we may have a higher profile and the issue will have the true representation it deserves. In other words, we must put our money where our mouth is.



S O. 21 INDUSTRY WHITE FARM EQUIPMENT LTD -THREAT TO DEALER NETWORK

Mr. Doug Neil (Moose Jaw):: Madam Speaker, the jobs of 1,000 employees, and the future of 125 White Farm Equipment Ltd. dealerships across Canada and their employees, will be in jeopardy if the Government of Canada does not take action to ensure that the company continue in operation. It is understood that the Government has refused to consider the offer of the U.S. division of the company which submitted the highest bid, and favours the sale of the technology for the axial flow combine to Massey-Ferguson. Such a move could result in the dissolution of the White Farm Equipment dealer network in Canada with consequent bankruptcies and/or substantial financial loss, and the elimination of hundreds of jobs for those employed by the dealers.
In addition, well over 100,000 farmers across Canada who own White equipment would be unable to take action on the guarantees covering their equipment, would be unable or find it difficult to obtain repairs and at the same time be faced with the situation where their equipment will have little if any trade-in value. This matter is urgent and requires immediate action on the part of the Government to negotiate an arrangement to ensure the continued operation of the company.



HUMAN RIGHTS


Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Madam Speaker, I want to raise with the House of Commons a problem which confronts Lev and Ina Elbert, in Kiev in the Ukraine. You will recall when we were in Moscow I raised with Soviet officials the problem of Lev Elbert, in as much as he had been improperly arrested and jailed simply because he wanted to leave the Soviet Union. I raised that question with them as a result of his wife having come all the way from Kiev to meet with me in Moscow.
When she arrived back in Kiev, she was arrested after KGB agents walked in and picked a book off the bookshelf, opened it, and found some substance which they claimed to be drugs. Her husband is now under detention. He has done no wrong except to ask that he be granted the privileges and rights that are afforded each world citizen under the Helsinki Accord. She is on a hunger strike. She is going to die unless some action is taken to try to right this terrible wrong. I ask each and every Member of Parliament to write today to the Supreme Soviet, asking them to look into this matter and find some reasonable humane solution.

September 19, 1983



AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, on November 16, 1982, I moved a motion under Standing Order 43 urging the Canadian Government to take all necessary steps to protect Canadian workers from the unfair competition of the Russian-made automobile, Lada, because many of its parts are made in prison camps and it is manufactured by non-union workers.
A few days later I received a telephone call from someone who would not give his name and who spoke broken English, who wanted me to rescind the motion, and I told him that I had no intention of so doing. He was quite angry and advised me that it would be much better if I did not move any further motions of that kind. I advised him that I intended to continue to deplore and publicize the slave labour of the communists, not only in manufacturing Lada, but also for invading Afghanistan, imprisoning Walesa in Poland, et cetera. He banged down the receiver. Premier Davis of Ontario has now asked Ontarians not to buy Soviet made Lada cars because of the shooting down of the Korean passenger plane, which again indicates the low value the communists place on human lives.
I urge the Canadian Government to prevent the importation of Lada cars or, at the very least, impose a tax or duty that would make their retail price competitive with the vehicles manufactured in countries where the workers receive a living wage for their work.
Why should Canadians help the Soviet communists who would, at the drop of a hat, invade northern Canada just as they invaded Afghanistan-if they determined that we could not defend ourselves?



PROVINCIAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Madam Speaker, on July 26, this year I wrote to the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) about the British Columbia budget legislation as being an assault on human rights and fundamental justice. I said that in my opinion parts of it could violate the due process clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights. I have a reply from the Minister dated September 13. The Minister refuses to state an opinion as to the legality of the legislation. In my letter I had asked that he give aid, through the Department of Justice, to litigants who want to challenge the legislation in court. The Minister refused to do that as well, saying that the court program is restricted to language cases. It seems to me, Madam Speaker, that this is in conflict with what the Secretary of State (Mr. Joyal) said this summer, and it also makes it very hard for the little guy to fight the legislation in the courts.
I urge the Government to do more than simply monitor the British Columbia legislation because as an assault on human rights in Canada, it could be a foretaste of things to come. I urge it also to give aid to people who would like to launch a case to test the constitutionality of that legislation.



AIR SAFETY


William Henry (Bill) Domm: Madam Speaker, there seems to be an urgent need for a public inquiry into the crash landing of an Air Canada Boeing 767 at Gimli, Manitoba, this past summer, because this aircraft is reported to have taken off with insufficient fuel to reach its scheduled place of landing, with some 69 people aboard.
In the United States there is a tradition of holding public inquiries over safety matters in air travel. In contrast, in Canada there is a "behind closed doors" approach, with that information only becoming public if the president of Air Canada wishes. It should be noted that Members of Parliament will be denied access to the evidence given at the Gimli investigation.
As a matter of public safety in air travel, the Government owes Canadians an open public investigation, with the press in attendance. For an Air Canada jet to be allowed to take off with insufficient fuel is a serious matter in the minds of Canadians. If the Government sits idly by and watches the seven-man commission study this incident behind closed doors, with five of the committee being paid employees of the Boeing company, it will be guilty of a dereliction of its responsibility to the Canadian public. It would be like asking five engineers of the General Motors Corporation if the car they designed is safe. The public of Canada will not accept this Air Canada coverup.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Mr. S. J. Korehinski (Mackenzie):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. For months the Minister has been sitting on the problem related to White Farm Equipment. To date, there does not seem to be any resolution of the problem other than the fact that an order appears to be imminent, or has already been given, for the liquidation of the company. This will result in the loss of dealers and the loss of Canadian White equipment
September 19, 1983

line, leading to the loss of many jobs. What has the Minister done to date to avoid this disaster?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member will recognize that we are not one of the lenders in this specific transaction; all we are is an insurer. The court has appointed a receiver to look at various proposals.
What we and the receiver have been trying to do since the situation first came to our attention has been to find somebody we thought would be interested in operating White Farm Equipment as a viable operation. We have been hoping for someone who, first of all, would try to preserve the dealer network of which the Hon. Member speaks; second, the technology to which the people of Canada contributed almost $5 million and, third, the jobs in Brantford which we think are very, very important. At this point I am advised that no viable offer has been put forward, as determined by the receiver.


MINISTER'S MEETINGS WITH INTERESTED PARTIES
Stanley James Korchinski: Madam Speaker, I understand that a request has gone to the Minister for a joint meeting of all dealers, Borg Warner who has some financial interest in the matter, U.S. White, the Province of Ontario, and the Minister's Department, to resolve any outstanding problems. To date the Minister has apparently refused a joint meeting to resolve the question of technology leaving the country, and so on. Why has he steadfastly refused to this?


Edward C. Lumley: First of all, Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member knows that the situation is under the control of the receiver. I have already met with the dealers and I have met with the UAW. I have had a number of meetings with respect to this situation.
I want to emphasize to the Hon. Member that the receiver is in control of the situation.


TAKE-OVER OFFER BY MASSEY COMPANY
Stanley James Korchinski: Madam Speaker, despite the fact that the Minister assures us that there has been no offer, it is my understanding-and 1 stand to be corrected-that Massey has offered $500,000, as opposed to U.S. White's offer of $9 million, for the take-over of the company. Apparently this is being ignored and the push for liquidation is coming from the Minister's office. This totally ignores the fact that many pieces of equipment will be rendered obsolete and that the jobs which dealers provide will be gone forever if another company takes over.


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member knows that to fulfil his court appointment the receiver must obtain the greatest recovery to the secured lenders. The Government of Canada is not a
Oral Questions
lender-I repeat, the Government of Canada is not a lender; it is only a guarantor. The Hon. Member should address his question to the receiver.
We have requested that the receiver do his utmost to find someone who will operate White Farm Equipment as a going concern to protect all the interests the Hon. Member has
raised.
With respect to the offers put forward by the receiver-it is the receiver who has rejected the offers put forward to date, not the Government of Canada.


REQUEST THAT TECHNOLOGY BE RETAINED IN CANADA
Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. I appreciate the response the Minister made to my colleague, but surely, where the Government is the guarantor, it will have some input as far as the decision made by the liquidator is concerned.
The Minister said earlier that one of his concerns was that the technology developed in Canada might end up in the United States. Can he advise whether the Government has considered the sale of the company assets, excluding the technology rights, to White U.S., or having the CDC or some other organization purchase the technological rights to the axial flow combine and then licensing the U.S. company to construct the combines in Canada, thus keeping the technology here?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, if the Hon. Member wants to refer to the several questions asked by the Hon. Member for Brant before the summer recess, he will find my response then was the same as it is now. We have done everything we can to ensure that someone will take over this company as a going concern and keep that technology in Canada. Canada has already invested over $3 million and has committed $5 million to the development of this leading-edge technology in Canada. We have also guaranteed on behalf of the people of Canada an additional $10.5 million so obviously, Madam Speaker, we are extremely interested in keeping the company viable to create jobs for Canadians.


MINISTER'S ROLE
Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, has the Minister recently sat down with the liquidator and discussed the problems of this company with a view to trying to determining a scheme to retain the operation and technology in this country? Does the Minister realize, for example, that if this company goes into liquidation, all those guarantees which were given by the company, and by the dealers, will disappear? What will the Government do in that event? What will happen to those guarantees?

September 19, 1983
Oral Questions


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I believe if the Hon. Member would like to check with the receiver and with the Ontario Government he will find out it was the Government of Canada, and myself as an individual, who tried to precipitate a decision on this issue over six months ago, in order to try to preserve that technology for Canadians, as the Hon. Member has recommended.


AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. There has been a lot of discussion since the House resumed its sittings about the need to create some additional jobs for people who need them. The Government has had in its hands for over four months a task force report on the automotive industry in Canada, which outlines how we could get an additional 35,000 jobs on a fairness principle, if the Government cared to act. Has the Minister finally made a recommendation to the Cabinet on the basic principle of this report, which is, if the automotive producers are going to sell cars to Canadians, they must start using Canadians to make some of them? Has the Minister made that recommendation to Cabinet? If so, when can we expect an answer from the Government?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member will know that during the month of August the Government of Canada did respond to several recommendations of the automotive task force report, most of which were very well received by the industry.
With respect to the very specific question of content, that decision has not been made as yet, and we are undertaking negotiations with the Japanese automobile companies at the present time.


SITUATION VIS-A-VIS AMERICAN, JAPANESE AND GERMAN COMPANIES
John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, what the Minister has said is that the Government has dealt with all the peripheral matters and has not come to the guts of the issue. Today, as the Minister knows, General Motors Corporation is celebrating its Seventy-fifth Anniversary in this country, and the American corporations, General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, accepted the principle some time ago that, if they are going to sell to Canadians, they have to use Canadian labour to produce those cars and parts. If it is good enough for General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, why is it not good enough
for Toyota, Datsun and Volkswagen? Why is the Minister not making that recommendation to his Cabinet colleagues?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member, I assume, was at the Seventy-fifth Anniversary ceremonies this morning. He will also know that General Motors has made a request to the United States government to exempt it from the basic restrictions so that it can import 290,000 cars from Japan for the North American Market. Is the Hon. Member now expressing the view that we should endorse the position of General Motors with respect to importing cars from Japan?


REQUEST THAT MINISTER SUPPORT CANADIAN CONTENT RECOMMENDATION
John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, the Minister knows that what he has just talked about, of course, was action taken in the United States. General Motors, as well as the other companies, in terms of this country, has said it accepts the principle, and if the Government will act on it, in terms of other producers, General Motors has said it will increase its level of production in this country. Therefore, if the Minister and the Government are concerned about fairness for Canadian workers which will provide 35,000 additional jobs coast to coast, when is the Minister going to make that recommendation to his Cabinet colleagues? When can we expect some action from this Government on that?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I am sure the Hon. Member would not want the Government of Canada, acting on behalf of a country which depends on its export market for over 30 per cent of its GNP, to act irrationally with respect to a decision on content, which could hamper our sales to Japan and to other countries around the world. Obviously, we are most concerned about jobs in the automotive industry, our largest manufacturing sector. As a matter of fact, Madam Speaker, 1 believe there are something like 15,000 more automobile workers working today than there were a year ago. I believe that gives some kind of indication that the Government of Canada is very seriously concerned about jobs in this most important sector.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. The Minister must not be allowed off the hook on this very serious issue because it is just not good enough for these 100,000 farmers to have their question go to the receiver. These people are on the hook as far as repairs are concerned. I am wondering, Madam Speaker, just exactly what action the Minister is going to take in order to protect those farmers, to
September 19, 1983

ensure they will have repairs, and that the Government will live up to that obligation which it has to supply parts for ten years.


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I will not take the time of the House to repeat all of the responses 1 have already given to this very important question raised in the House. I do want to reiterate one of the points I made, however. It was this Government, and this Minister, who tried to bring this situation to a head over six months ago in anticipation of what would happen today, knowing that the longer we waited the worse it was for the Canadian industry. Therefore, we have used the levers of the Government of Canada which were available to us.
With respect to the parts situation, Madam Speaker, we made arrangements with the receiver and with some of the lenders to ensure that those parts were available during the summer, and we still feel that situation will be rectified. What is more important is that we find some individual or consortium which is willing to take over White Farm and take advantage of the investment the Government of Canada has already made, in order not only to protect the dealers of western Canada and to ensure that parts are available to the farming community right across this country, but to also use the leading edge we have in the technology, which was financed by the people of Canada, for our long term benefit.


REQUEST FOR GUARANTEE OF TEN-YEAR PARTS SUPPLY
Thomas Gordon Towers: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the same Minister. Is the Minister going to guarantee that there will be a ten-year time frame in which there will be protection for the farmers for parts?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, 1 do not believe that any Minister of the Crown can undertake that kind of guarantee. We have power, but I do not believe we have that kind of power.


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Brian Mulroney (Leader of the Opposition):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister. However, in his absence I would be inclined to address it to a candidate for his job.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
Oral Questions


Martin Brian Mulroney: The Chair should ban such blatant campaigning in the House, Madam Speaker.
My question is directed to the Deputy Prime Minister who will be aware of the IMF report released in Washington which indicated that, of the seven major industrialized nations, Canada's deficit was the highest of those nations in proportion to the size of its economy. As the Minister will know, because of his background in finance, this has an adverse effect on interest rates and employment capacity. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House how his Government proposes to correct these disastrous policy errors which have been so clearly censured by the IMF in an international report last week?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I have not had the opportunity to read this particular report by the International Monetary Fund. The Fund does annually make comments on the economy of its members and, in the absence of reading it, 1 cannot put the particular comment on the deficit in context.


Mr. Nielsen:: Why have you not read it?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: However, 1 would think one would have to probe much more deeply than the simple relationship between the size of the economy and the size of the deficit itself. There are other important factors which bear upon the matter, including the savings rate in Canada which, in comparison with other industrialized countries, particularly the United States, is quite favourable and permits the borrowing authorities in Canada to manage the debt without any undue effect on interest rates. I do not feel the size of the Canadian deficit has had that effect. If that were the relationship, then the Leader of the Opposition would have to explain why it is, with current levels of deficits, interest rates have consistently come down.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


REPAYMENT OF DEBT-GOVERNMENT POLICY
Martin Brian Mulroney: Notwithstanding that little homily, Madam Speaker, the Deputy Prime Minister will know that the IMF specifically blamed the Government of Canada for a deficit which has been incurred by expansion in the public sector. There is where the expenditures were made, without any job creation capacity. That is what it is all about.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: The IMF zeroed right in on the profligate spending of this Government. That is the reason it gave for its negative report on the economy. Can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us, in light of that-


An Hon. Member:: Schefferville.

September 19, 1983
Oral Questions


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Erik Nielsen: Wait for it. Simmer down.


Martin Brian Mulroney: Madam Speaker, to the Hon. Member who just yelled "Schefferville" may I just say firstly 1 received a letter-one paragraph-


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Madam Speaker:: I am sure everyone enjoys the Hon. Leader of the Opposition's barbs, but this is the time for questions.


Martin Brian Mulroney: 1 was just about to say, Madam Speaker, that 1 received a commendation from the Government across the way for our handling of Schefferville and Iron Ore.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Martin Brian Mulroney: In light of this direct and devastating indictment, Madam Speaker, can the Deputy Prime Minister tell us what plans the Government of Canada will be introducing with regard to paying down that debt and to making sure it does not cripple the interest rate structure and job creation in this country? Can he tell us that today, please?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, that is a big mouthful the Leader of the Opposition wants to get in a simple answer. In his budget the Minister of Finance has maintained the deficit within limits. He has indicated it was his intention to reduce that deficit over time, and I believe what has happened in the Canadian economy in the past year, the rate of growth, the relative decline in interest rates, the renewed confidence in the business sector, has justified the approach the Minister of Finance has taken to the deficit. I would be very suprised, Madam Speaker, if the International Monetary Fund has made the kind of judgment and used the kind of headline language the Leader of the Opposition has used-


Erik Nielsen: You better read the report.


Allan Joseph MacEachen: -with respect to the operation of the economy.
1 would tell the Leader of the Opposition, just by way of another little homily he will get accustomed to if he comes into the House more frequently-


Some Hon. Members:: Where is the Prime Minister?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: -than last week, that the OECD itself, in the course of the past several months, has graduated the Canadian economy to the top rank of economies in the world which have managed so well that they are able to participate in the renewed recovery. So maybe the Leader of the Opposition would take a look at the OECD report.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Bill McKnight (Kindersley-Lloydminster):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Has he or his Government, either officially or unofficially, directed or placed an objection to the receiver's selling the White Canada interests to White U.S.A. or TIC U.S.A.? Either officially or unofficially has the Government directed the receiver?


Edward C. Lumley: We
have not directed the receiver, Madam Speaker, but yes, we have indicated to the receiver that we do not favour that particular proposal that went forward.


William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Madam Speaker, that being the case, the Government directing the receiver, the Minister stood in this House and said it was not the problem of the Government, it was the problem of the receiver.


REQUEST THAT LIQUIDATION BE DELAYED
William Hunter (Bill) McKnight: Madam Speaker, the manufacturing in Canada by another combine manufacturer of the axial-flow combine will only mean that, instead of a three-month combine run at Massey-Ferguson, there will be a three-month run out of which two months are conventional and one month will be axial-flow, and the jobs that would have been in the White plant are gone with no increase in jobs in Massey-Ferguson. Will the Minister use his good offices and take this opportunity to delay the disbandment of White until either an organization of White dealers in Canada, or some of the provincial Governments with investments in this operation, have an opportunity to make an offer to the receiver?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, there are two parts to the Hon. Member's question, and I totally agree with the second part. My officials right at this very moment are sitting down with a very important player in the whole process, trying to encourage that particular company to get directly involved with respect to taking it over as a going concern. I have also suggested to the dealers, and 1 have even indicated in my response to the Minister of Agriculture of the Province of Saskatchewan, that if they are prepared to put something forward we are prepared to assist in every way we can.
I think it is important to note, Madam Speaker, that not only has the Government of Canada some objection to the proposal indicated by the Hon. Member, but so does the Government of Ontario. But the receiver, who does not report to the Government of Ontario or to the Government of Canada, in his own judgment found that there were some deficiencies in the particular application. I understand, as I
September 19, 1983

have not personally met with the receiver, that it would not only require another $1 million from the Government of Canada on top of our SI0.5 million already, but also there would be no assurance that it will be operating as a going concern for the period of time that this colleagues have advocated. So I suggest the Hon. Member and his colleagues take a look at the proposal; I would be very interested to see if they are really endorsing the proposal the Hon. Member has put forward.


FINANCE
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Finance in the absence of the Minister of Finance. I think it is perhaps his first time to answer a question, so 1 would like to congratulate him publicly on his appointment.
Can the Minister tell the House whether it is the Government's intention to proceed with the Indexed Security Investment Plan to be in effect as of October 1, 1983?


Hon. Roy MacLaren (Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, I want first to thank the Hon. Member for his kind words. I have worked with him in the past and I look forward to continuing that relationship in the future.
Regarding the indexed Security Investment Plan contained in the budget and subsequently outlined in detail and developed with the business community, it is our intention to bring forward that legislation with the amendments to the Tax Act which will, we hope, be tabled later this calendar year.


GOVERNMENT POLICY ON TAX CHANGES
Donald Alex Blenkarn: Madam Speaker, would the Minister clarify whether he is going to allow a major change in the Income Tax Act to be put into effect on October 1 without even introducing the legislation in this House of Commons? Is it the pattern of the Government to continue the policy of making mammoth changes in the Income Tax Act, and the treatment of capital gains in particular, without even bringing the legislation to the House of Commons? Is that the way the House of Commons will be treated and the way we are going to have tax legislation treated, and is that his idea of parliamentary accountability?


Roy MacLaren: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member knows full well that such are not the practices of this Government. We would not engage in such procedures. We shall follow the usual practices of the House and, the good form of parliamentary procedure in that regard. I would add, however, that it is our intention to bring forward the legislation as rapidly as possible as one of many stimuli to encourage the private sector to invest more in productive capacity so as to help ensure that long-term jobs
Ora! Questions
are created in our economy, a goal which I am sure both myself and the Hon. Member opposite share.


TRADE MARKS AND PATENTS
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, and I congratulate her on assuming her important new portfolio.
The Minister's predecessor recently proposed changes to Canada's Patent Act which would result in a very dramatic rise in the cost of pharmaceutical drugs to all Canadians as well as massive increases in the cost of provincial pharma-care programs. For example, a drug commonly used by diabetics which costs $280 in the United States costs $14 in Canada as a result of compulsory licensing.
Will the Minister reassure the House and the consumers of Canada that she has no intention whatsoever of responding to the blackmail, effectively, of multinational drug companies and caving into their demands, and immediately scrap the plans of her predecessor which amount to nothing less than an attack on the elderly the poor and sick of this country?
Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate
Affairs): Madam Speaker, 1 would like to reassure the Hon. Member that his concern is mine as well, and that raising the cost of these drugs would indeed have a very real effect on provincial budgets and on those people in Canada who can least afford to pay the bill. These concerns were expressed to me last week very, very vividly by my various provincial counterparts with whom I met in Whitehorse at our annual federal-provincial conference. I would like to reassure the Hon. Member that these are considerations that we are weighing in our deliberations.


Svend Johannes Robinson: Madam Speaker, I would hope that the Minister would in fact scrap these proposals.


FORMER MINISTER EMPLOYED BY DEPARTMENT
Svend Johannes Robinson: I have in fact learned this morning, Madam Speaker, that former Liberal Cabinet Minister, Martin O'Connell, is still, today, on the payroll of the Minister's Department, advising the Minister and her Department on these proposed changes when the Minister, himself, was in fact a paid lobbyist for the pharmaceutical companies in question. I now call upon the Minister to explain to the House how she can possibly justify this blatant conflict of interest continuing under her portfolio. Will the Minister not fire Martin O'Connell immediately and bring some sense to the Department-


Erik Nielsen: Standard practice for the Government.

September 19, 1983
Oral Questions


Svend Johannes Robinson: -and put an end, once and for all, to this attack on compulsory licensing in Canada?


Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: On the contrary, Madam Speaker, Mr. O'Connell has provided a very valuable service to this Department because we must have a very balanced view of what is required in the field of research and development in pharmaceuticals in this country, and, conversely, what the effect would be on the consumers. 1 think that that balanced view is being provided to my Department at the moment.


WESTERN GRAIN TRANSPORTATION ACT
Mr. F. Oberle (Prince George-Peace River):: Madam Speaker, my question, which is directed to the Minister of Transport, relates to his Crow legislation. As he knows, the Crow Bill which is before Parliament specifically excludes, from the receipt of any benefits the British Columbia Railway, which, in turn, would deprive farmers in the Peace River country of British Columbia from receiving any benefits in getting their grain to market. Indeed, it would deprive farmers in the Peace River region of Alberta from using the interchange with the BCR to get their grain to the closest point on the West Coast.
Notwithstanding the deliberations and discussions of the committee on the Crow Bill, has the Minister undertaken thus far to speak with the Government of British Columbia, specifically, and with the railway, as to the kind of arrangement that can be made to embrace the British Columbia Railway in the national system; in other words, to remove from it the stigma which it now has of being a foreign railway?


Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, let me first say that never will I stand aside the functioning of any committee of this Commons. I think it is very important to ensure that the Commons committee, which travelled across the country and heard a wide variety of representations, be heard and that we carefully listen to its proposals and advice. So, unlike the Hon. Member, 1 do not put it aside. In fact, in front of the committee I clearly indicated that I would be both willing to listen to its views on the issue, and responsive, as to how we might proceed. I look forward to the recommendations or amendments that the committee would like to put forth.
As far as the British Columbia Railway being a foreign railway is concerned, that is not the case. However, the British Columbia Railway does not recognize the jurisdiction of the federal Government in transportation, particularly the obligation to be under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Canadian Transport Commission. If the BCR wanted to undertake that kind of commitment it would then be much easier for the Government of Canada to reciprocate and therefore deal with
it in a way similar to other railways. Therefore, if the Hon. Member wants to indicate to the British Columbia Railway its responsibility, then he can be assured that we are certainly willing to undertake those kinds of discussions.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER MEET WITH RAILWAY AND PROVINCIAL REPRESENTATIVES
Frank Oberle: Madam Speaker, like the Minister, I am very much interested and hope that the Minister will eventually listen to the recommendations which will come from the committee meeting on this particular question. However, I am concerned about the indecent haste with which the Government wishes to push the legislation through the House and through the country. Therefore, I would repeat the question: Does the Minister presently intend to sit down with the British Columbia Government and the BCR within the next two to three weeks to discuss what possible role they would be playing in co-ordinating the kind of transfer of benefits that will flow through the Bill?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I am aware that, according to the Hon. Member's philosophy, change must come slowly, if not at all. However, I would remind him that the matter has in fact been before the country for over two years. Furthermore, the committee of Commons has been undertaking hearings, beginning last spring, going through the entire summer, and has now been meeting for virtually ten hours or 12 hours a day for the last two or three weeks. I would hardly describe that as proceeding with undue haste. In fact, I think what is really at stake is the necessity to reach a decision on the Crow legislation so that we can go ahead and create the jobs that the Hon. Members of the Opposition say they want to create. It is that forestalling of the legislation which is the major detraction of job creation in the country at the present moment.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


PENITENTIARIES
Hon. Allan Lawrence (Durham-Northumberland):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Justice. I have now been reliably informed that there are other prison inmates who will require unwanted medical services, or die. What action is the Government taking to protect medical doctors from criminal, civil, and internal professional disciplinary actions if they act in accordance with the Government's wishes to save these inmates' lives?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice):: Madam Speaker, the result in a case of this kind obviously involves a combination of law and medical practice. I have given my
September 19, 1983

Oral Questions SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
advice to the Solicitor General in this case, and I can say that it is our advice that it is our responsibility, as a Government, to try to keep these prisoners alive as long as possible. However, that depends on the ethics of the medical profession. That is one of the factors which the Solicitor General must take into account. The Hon. Member may want to raise this matter with him in dealing with this problem. Therefore, it is not something that can be resolved by law alone. It is something that must be resolved by law in keeping with the ethics of the medical profession.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: 1 will then direct my supplementary question to the Solicitor General. The Minister of Justice said that one of the major factors could be the question of the law, and 1 thought I was addressing my question to the chief law officer of the Crown.


FUTURE TREATMENT OF INMATES
Allan Frederick Lawrence: Madam Speaker, because 1 gather the one medical practitioner who did act on the one occasion will not do so again, has the Solicitor General been able to find any other medical practitioner who is willing to treat these other seriously ill inmates, against their wishes? What guarantees has he been able to give to any such doctor who is willing to come forward to provide life-saving services?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, I am not certain if the Hon. Member is speaking of cases other than the one involving the Dukhobor inmates in British Columbia who have engaged in a fast. The advice I have received from the Department of Justice, from my colleague, the Minister, is that it is our responsibility to try to keep them alive. The Hon. Member is right. We have been having difficulties finding doctors who are prepared to do this, although the law, according to my colleague, is very clear. Therefore we have appealed to the Canadian Medical Association to assist us in locating doctors who are prepared to help us keep people alive, those who are fasting within the correctional service of Canada. So far as I know there are medical practitioners who are now available in British Columbia and who are prepared to assist us in keeping inmates alive. That is very much my own preference.
As we are custodians of these individuals during a relatively short period of their lives, that duty is one that I have accepted gladly. 1 have made every effort through the correctional service and on my own to locate medical practitioners willing to do this.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: What guarantee is there?


GRANT MADE TO VANCOUVER UNEMPLOYMENT ACTION CENTRES
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock-North Delta):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Manpower. He will know that about ten days ago the Minister of State for Social Development in the other place gave a cheque of some $600,000 to the Unemployment Action Centres in the Vancouver region which, as far as I know, have listed no telephone numbers or addresses, which would then mean that those who need it the most, the hard-core unemployed, would find no relief at all, which the $600,000 was supposed to provide to them. What demands were made on the people receiving the grant in order to make certain that those who need the help the most will receive it?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Madam Speaker, while the Hon. Member addresses his question to the Minister of Manpower. I take it that he means the Minister of Employment and Immigration. I take it, also, that he is making an allegation that the information which is necessary for people to fully use the services for which the grant was given has not been made available. I have only his representation to that effect. I will check to verify if that is indeed the case and, if so, will correct it.


LABOUR RELATIONS
Mr. Lyle S. Kristiansen (Kootenay West):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Labour. Since August 22, some 16,800 person-hours of employment have been lost by 105 striking employees of Austin Airlines of Timmins, Ontario. They and their union, the Canadian Airline Employees' Association, have been forced on strike to retain their basic union security clause because the Minister of Labour failed for two months to answer the union's legitimate request for the ministerial consent required to proceed with charges of bargaining in bad faith against their employer under the provisions of the Canada Labour Code.
Why did the Minister wait so long, for two entire months, until last Thursday, to give his consent to proceed with these charges, thus causing the strike, and only then after the union threatened to demonstrate as they did today on Parliament Hill?


Hon. Andre Ouellet (Minister of Labour):: Madam Speaker, I can inform the Hon. Member that I acted as quickly as possible, as soon as I was told about this case. I can also inform the Hon. Member that hearings are to be held during the first week of October, and I hope these will be satisfactory,

September 19, 1983
Oral Questions
not only to the people who are lodging a complaint but also to the Hon. Member.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Madam Speaker, that is from July 26 when the intervention was requested until September 15, last Thursday. Is that as fast as the Government can move when the livelihood of that many people are at stake?


CANADA LABOUR CODE
Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Will the Minister give us his assurance that the proposed legislation, namely, the amendments to Parts III, IV and V of the Canada Labour Code, as promised by two previous Liberal Cabinet Ministers in this Parliament, will be introduced immediately? More particularly, will he guarantee the establishment of the Rand formula as a minimal union security provision in the Canada Labour Code, thus preventing countless other costly disputes of this kind? Will he bring it in now, or immediately after the commencement of the new session which we all expect very soon?


André Ouellet: Madam Speaker, I intend to table amendments to the Canada Labour Code during the next parliamentary session, and I hope the Hon. Member, and indeed all Members of this House, will support these amendments which have been eagerly awaited by the labour world.


CANADIAN HERITAGE
Mr. John McDermid (Brampton-Georgetown):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Is the Minister as concerned as I over the theft of Canada's archeological treasures, specifically, the Indian artifacts stolen from the petroglyph site of the Hartley Bay Indian Band in B.C.? Has he asked the Solicitor General and, through him, the RCMP, to investigate these thefts fully?


Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Yes, Madam Speaker. I appreciate the Hon. Member's concern because it is a truly tragic occurrence when artifacts of this tremendous significance to the history of the Indian people, which have the appreciation of Canadians generally, have apparently been stolen.
I have made note of it. Because of the press reports last week and the Hon. Member's comments on it last week, I have
made inquiries in my Department. There is correspondence being directed to my colleague, the Solicitor General, to see if the RCMP might stimulate their efforts to find what can be done about it, in terms of discovering the people who appropriated these valuable artifacts.


REQUEST FOR ACTION TO PREVENT FURTHER THEFTS
John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, will the Minister tell us what measures he has taken to assure us that the desecration of Canada's heritage will not recur?


John Carr Munro: Madam Speaker, he is away this week, but I intend to raise this fundamental question with Dr. David Ahenakew, head of the Assembly of First Nations, as soon as he returns. I intend to find from him, after he has had a chance to consult with some of the chiefs in whose territory many of these artifacts are, recommendations as to what further can be done to protect these artifacts. As soon as we have those recommendations I will be pleased to let the Hon. Member know.


EMPLOYMENT
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. I was somewhat shocked to discover the other day that the Government of Canada keeps absolutely no statistics on the number of Canadians who are currently being replaced by machines. Could the Minister tell us whether he has plans to keep such statistics in the year ahead? If so, could he give us some of the details of those plans?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, I do not think that the Hon. Member is quite accurately remembering the questions which he put to me last week. He asked for the estimates of the impact of technological change on employment within the economy. I told him quite frankly that, in my view, there was no consensus on the degree to which either jobs would be created or replaced by the implementation of new technological processes. He now seems to be redefining his question in simply a rather narrower form to that of machines and putting it in terms of statistics which he claims we are not collecting. 1 do not know exactly what he means by that question.


Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, for a political Minister from Ontario, a bad memory is probably a good attribute.


REQUEST FOR ESTIMATE OF JOBS LOST THROUGH TECHNOLOGY
Frederick James (Jim) Hawkes: Madam Speaker, in modern Canada workers are being replaced by new technolo-
September 19, 1983

gy. Can the Minister of Employment and Immigration tell the House how many Canadians will have their jobs replaced by new technology this year? Can he tell us how many were replaced last year, and can he give us an estimate of how many people will be replaced by machines in the year ahead? That is the question I had asked and the one to which I would like an answer. I understand that new jobs are also created, but I simply want to know how many people will be replaced by new technology. Will the Minister give us an answer to that?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, 1 cannot very easily lead the Hon. Member out of the Alice in Wonderland world in which he lives. The mere fact that he has repeated his assertions three times that the introduction of new technology indeed causes unemployment or loses jobs does not make it true. In fact a very large number of critics in the employment scene deny the accuracy of the statement he has just made. He can believe it if he wishes, but he should not expect me to respond to a question which I do not believe is sustained in verifiable fact.


AIR SAFETY
William Henry (Bill) Domm: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Transport. This past summer there were two very serious air traffic disasters, one involving a DC-9 which came down on American soil, and the other involving ad Boeing 767 which came down in western Canada at Gimli, Manitoba. As the lone Government voice from the West, as Minister in the House, would he advise us if he believes it is necessary that there be a public inquiry into the Gimli air accident?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, I certainly agree with the sentiments of the Hon. Member that those two accidents caused a good deal of concern on the part of Canadians. I believe that we are reacting in a way which will develop the examination for which he is asking.
As he may know, Air Canada itself has commissioned a group of experts to look into its safety procedures. As a major shareholder of Air Canada, 1 expect to have that report in my possession within a matter of days and that the results of that report and whatever corrections it will request would be immediately undertaken by Air Canada. I would also like to report to the House that I have asked the departmental officials to undertake a major audit of the operating activities of Air Canada. That will commence at the end of this month, and we will have a full report. That would obviously be a matter of public disclosure at that time.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that when it comes to the issue of examining and having public inquiries on air safety matters, there is a bill to establish a new air safety
Oral Questions
board presently before the Transport committee. If the Opposition were to co-operate we could get that legislation through very quickly and into the House so that we could have a proper mechanism under which public inquiries could be undertaken.


COMPOSITION OF INVESTIGATING TEAM
William Henry (Bill) Domm: Does the Minister believe that the appointment of a seven-member commission, five of whom are employees on salary with the Boeing aircraft company, is an upfront, honest attempt to look into the 767 air disaster in Gimli, Manitoba? Does that sound like an honest, upfront and open investigation into the safety of the Boeing 767, when five of the seven are from the Boeing aircraft company?


Lloyd Axworthy: Madam Speaker, as 1 pointed out, the Aviation Safety Bureau, which is an operating division of the Department of Transport, is presently investigating the incident in Gimli itself. That, however, is a sub part of a larger audit that we will be doing of the entire Air Canada procedures. As I have already said, we will be making that whole report available to Members of this House if they so request.
There can be absolutely no compromise when it comes to air safety. We have already introduced measures based on the Dubin Report which have dealt with some 75 of its recommendations. I certainly recognize the tremendous importance of that issue, but I do ask for the co-operation of the Opposition, who have a responsibility as well. If the Opposition will co-operate with us, we will bring that air safety board Bill to this House as quickly as possible and have it passed on a Friday afternoon. Then there will be a proper mechanism in place.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. On Saturday last, of the 20 people I saw in my constituency office, seven were unemployed. Every single one was about to run out of UIC benefits. For me, this is a pattern that has been followed over the last 18 months on almost every single Saturday. These people will not be able to find a job in Hamilton. No one is hiring. Welfare will not provide them with sufficient money to meet their commitments. What can I tell them?


John (Moody) Roberts: Madam Speaker, we all know that unemployment levels are much, much higher than we would like them to be. We all know the difficulties and the personal trauma that causes to a whole range of our population. What we have been doing in

September 19, 1983
Motions
this Government is trying to create jobs in the Canadian economy essentially in two ways-through tax changes which encourage the private sector to create jobs, and through direct action. There is direct action in government programs, both through the Special Recovery Projects and also direct programs in my Department aimed at creating jobs.
I wish very much that at the moment we could provide a job for every single Canadian who wishes to have one. We have succeeded in those programs, not as far as we would like, but we have succeeded with them. We pointed out to the Hon. Member, 1 think last week, that something like 320,000 seasonally adjusted new jobs have been created in the Canadian economy, largely, 1 believe, because of the kinds of programs we have adopted.
If the hon. gentleman, who stood up and with emotion and sincerity indicated the plight that unemployment is causing in his constituency, could suggest specific things to me which we are not doing, that we could do that will have an impact, 1 will be delighted to hear him.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: Don't cut back on Canada Works.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Hon. D. M. Collenette (Minister of State (Multiculturalism)):: Madam Speaker, there have been discussions among the Parties concerning Prime Minister Thatcher's visit next week. If it would be the disposition of the House, I would propose to go to Motions immediately, read the Motion and have it concurred in.


Madam Speaker:: Does the House agree to that disposition?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


David Michael Collenette: That the House shall adjourn at three o'clock p.m. September 26, 1983;
That the address of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, to be delivered in the House of Commons on September 26, 1983, at four o'clock p.m. before the Members of the Senate and the House of Commons, together with all introductory and related speeches, be printed as an Appendix to the House of Commons Debates of that day and form part of the records of this House; and That Prime Minister Thatcher's speech, attendant and related remarks be made available to the media for transmission in the usual way by the House of Commons broadcast system.


Madam Speaker:: Does the House agree to the proposal of the Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Collenette)?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.

Mr. Hal Herbert (Vaudreuil):: Madam Speaker, I wish to submit a petition from 1,000 constituents, most of whom are from Riviere Beaudette, a petition that was initiated by the mayors of the area, the town councillors and the parish priest.
They are asking, on humanitarian grounds, to have the status of Miss Ciie Mervil in Canada made legal so that she can remain in this country lawfully and without fear, with the possibility of becoming a Canadian citizen.
[English |


John Horton McDermid: Madam Speaker, I have the honour and privilege to present to the House of Commons a petition which has been signed by members of the federal riding of Brampton-Georgetown and other concerned Canadians. These people are concerned with the discrimination and abuse being experienced by the Tamil population who live in Sri Lanka and are asking that aid be suspended from the Canadian Government until such time as an independent body has investigated the situation in Sri Lanka and feels that human rights have been restored.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. John Evans (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,751, 4,876 and 4,994.


Mr. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich): 1.	Was a full page, or nearly full page, advertisement placed in mid-March in a number of Canadian newspapers by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources entitled "Petro-Canada Is Growing To Serve You Better" and with a centrepiece "BP Now, Petro-Canada" and, if so (a) what was the total cost (b) in which newspapers was it placed and how often in each (c) by newspaper, what amount did each placement cost?
2.	(a) Who designed the advertisement (b) what was the design cost (c) what was the advertising agency's fee?


Mr. Dave Dingwall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Petro-Canada reports as follows:
1.	No. However, in March of 1983, Petro-Canada Products Ltd. commissioned a series of advertisements designed to inform the public of the BP reidentification program, (a) $377,213.17
September 19, 1983

(b)	and (c) Ontario
	No. of	Cost per
Newspaper	Insertions	InsertionBarrie Examiner	4	S 350The Belleville Intelligencer	4	360Brampton Daily Times	4	330Brantford Expositor	4	380Brockville Recorder and Times	4	290Cambridge Daily Reporter	4	350Chatham Daily News	4	355Cornwall Standard-Freeholder	4	395Lc Droit	4	1,993.17Guelph Mercury	4	365Kingston Whig-Standard	4	379Kirkland Lake Northern Daily	4	370News	Kilchener-Waterloo Record	4	534London Free Press	4	930Niagara Falls Review	4	360North Bay Nugget	4	300Orillia Packet and Times	4	350The Oshawa Times	4	375Owen Sound Sun-Times	4	410Pembroke Observer	4	370Peterborough Examiner	4	360Port Colborne News	2	4,930.36St. Catharines Standard	4	500St. Thomas Times-Journal	4	345Sarnia Observer	4	380Sault Ste. Marie Star	4	413The Stratford Beacon-Herald	4	355Sudbury Star	4	385The Toronto Globe & Mail	3	13,077.53The Toronto Star	3	15,997.84The Toronto Sun	3	5,215Walkerton Herald-Times	2	467.79Welland-Port Colborne Tribune	4	355The Windsor Star	4	715Woodstock-Ingersoll Daily Sentinel	4	340Review	Burlington Post	2)	7,825.14Smiths Falls Record News	2)	(combinedStrathroy Age-Dispatch	2)	total cost)Hamilton Spectator	4)	30,728.65The Ottawa Citizen	4)	(combined total cost)The Lindsay Post	4)	7,849.36Simcoe Reformer	4)	(combined total cost)Quebec	Beauce, Nouvelle	2	$ 450Chicoutimi, Progres-Dimanche	2	1,460Courrier Frontenac	2	510Le Devoir	3	1,799L'Echo de la Tuque	2	450Les Echos Abitibien	2	450L'Eclaireur Progres	2	450La Frontiere	2	450La Gatineau	2	450
Order Paper Questions
Le Guide	2	190Hull, Le Regional	2	600Le Journal de Montreal	3	7,320Lac Saint-Jean	2	450The Montreal Gazette	3	8,621.90Le Peuple Courrier	2	450Le Pharillon	2	450La Presse	3	7,422.13Le Radar	2	450Sherbrooke Record	4	1,071.61Le Soleil	4	4,735.48Le Touladi	2	450La Voix de 1'Est	4	1,012.49La Voix Gaspesienne	2	450Dimanche-Matin	2)	7,704Dimanche Derniere Heure	2)	(combined total cost)Le Quotidien	4)	16,608Le Journal de Quebec	4)	(combined total cost)Sherbrooke, La Tribune	4)	18,966.52Le Nouvelliste	4)	(combined total cost)2.	(a) Baker Lovick, Calgary, Alberta; (b) approximately $30,000; (c) the Advertising agency's fee was a standard agency commission.


Mr. Mazankowski: 1.	Is there a Great Lakes Science Advisory Board under the International Joint Commission and, if so (a) who are the members (b) what is the (i) background or expertise (ii) term of appointment of each member (c) what remuneration, such as salary or travel expenses, do the members receive and, for the length of each appointment to date, what amount did each member receive (d) what other funding, if any, is provided by the Government?
2.	(a) What are the terms of reference of the Board (b) what matters did it consider in the fiscal year 1982-83 (c) how often did it meet and how often is it required to meet (d) what reports and/or recommendations did the Board publish in the fiscal year 1982-83?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: 1. Yes. The Great Lakes Science Advisory Board (known as the Research Advisory Board until November, 1978) is made up of an equal number of American and Canadian members. Presently there are two vacancies on the U.S. side, (a) (b) (i) (ii) See list below, (c) Salaries of Board members are not paid by the Board but are the responsibility of their respective employers.
Travel expenses of those members of the Board who are employees of federal, provincial or state governments are paid by their respective employers. Travel expenses for other members of the Board are paid by the Board.

September 19, 1983
Order Paper Questions
1978-79	1979-80
Canadian Members:
P. Foley	-	-G.	Francis	443.80	929.65H.	Harvey	-	-G. La Roche	-	-W. Neff	-	-R. L. Thomas	-	-G.	Vaillancourt	-	-U.	S. Members:D. Bacon	-	-V.	Bacon	-	-W.	Cooper	-	-D. Frey	-	-H.	Humphrey	-	-R. Loehr	1,255.57	1,483.17
(d) No other direct funding is provided; however, certain secretariat costs, such as office supplies, stationery, ect., are covered by the regional office of the 1JC.
2. (a) The Great Lakes Science Advisory Board (SAB) was established pursuant to the provisions of the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement of 1978 (Agreement). The primary role of the SAB is to assist the International Joint Commission (1JC) in the exercise of the powers and responsibilities assigned to the IJC under the Agreement.
The stated purpose of the Parties (The Governments of the United States and Canada) is to restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the waters of the Great Lakes basin ecosystem. In accordance with this general purpose, and the provisions of the Agreement and the terms of reference of the SAB, the SAB shall be the scientific advisor to the IJC and the Water Quality Board (WQB).
The SAB, on behalf of the Commission, is responsible for developing recommendations on matters related to research
1980-81	1981-82	1982-83	Total1,775.14	701.00	732.65	4,582.24-	-	1,235.70	1,235.70-	=	2,754.57	2,754.57-	z	2,593.63	2,593.63_	614.04	614.04457.63	650.94	947.35	2,055.92-	-	1,515.48	1,515.48-	-	1,785.97	4,524.71
and the development of scientific knowledge pertinent to the identification, evaluation and resolution of current and anticipated problems related to water quality in the Great Lakes Basin Ecosystem.
(b)	Matters considered by the Great Lakes Science Advisory Board: Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons, polychlorinated styrenes and dibenzofurans, diazinon, toxaphene and linoane, asbestos and silver, fish community data bases, sediments as a source of toxic chemicals, metal speciation, epidemiological models, environmental mapping, air sampling methodology, and several issues related to objectives development.
(c)	There are no set number of times that the Board Must meet in a given year however the Board meets an average six times yearly.
(d)	In the fiscal year 1982-83 the Board published two reports: the Annual Report, special report on aquatic systems objectives in the Great Lakes.
Great Lakes Science Advisory Board
Canadian Members	Expertise	TermDr. Paul Foley (Acting Canadian Chairman) Research Coordinator Pollution Control Branch Ontario Ministry of Environment Toronto	Chemical Engineering Drinking Water Wastewater Treatment	September 1982- January 1985Dr. George Francis Department of Environmental Studies University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario	Conservation and Resource Environmental Impacts Socioeconomic Implication Policies	September 15, 1980- December 31, 1983Mr. William Neff Assistant Technical Director The Canadian Chemical Producers' Assoc. Ottawa	Chemical Engineering Industrial Waste Treatment and Design	October 15, 1980- December 31, 1983Dr. Guy Vaillancourt Department of Chemistry & Biology University of Quebec at Trois-Rivieres Trois-Rivieres, Quebec	Aquatic Ecology Thermal Pollution Temperature Effects Biota	February 17, 1982- February 17, 1985Dr. Richard Thomas Director Great Lakes Fisheries Research Branch Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada Centre for Inland Waters Burlington, Ontario	Geochemistry Sediments	February 17, 1982- February 17, 1985Dr. Harold Harvey University of Toronto Toronto	Ecology Acid Rain Fish Biology	January 1,1983- January 1,1986
September 19, 1983

Export Development Act
Dr. Gilles Laroche Vice President Vit-Vitaille-Viron Inc. Montreal P.Q.	Environmental Physiology Aquatic Toxicology	January 1,1983- January 1,1986United States Members	Expertise	TermProfessor Vinton Bacon 3M Company St. Paul, Minnesota	Civil Engineering Water Resources and Sanitary Engineering	February 25, 1983- December 31, 1985Dr. Harold Humphrey Michigan Department of Public Health Lansing, Michigan	Epidemiology	January i,1981- December 31, 1983Dr. Raymond Loehr Professor of Engineering Cornell University Ithaca, New York	Engineering Nonpoint Source Application on Land	February 17, 1982- February 17, 1985Dr. William Cooper Department of Zoology Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan	Biologist Aquatic Ecologist	January 1,1981- December 31, 1983Mr. Dale Bacon 3M Company St. Paul, Minnesota	Chemical Engineering	January 1,1981 - December 31, 1983Dr. David Frey Department of Biology Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana	Linnology Micropaleontology Systematics	November 1, 1982- December 31, 1985Vacant Position	Vacant Position


Mr. Beatty: How many customers of BP Canada have asked that their accounts be closed as a result of the purchase of BP by Petro-Canada?


David Charles Dingwall: Petro-Canada reports as follows: Between November 1, 1982 and June 30, 1983, 186 holders of BP Canada credit cards requested cancellation of their accounts. No record has been kept of the reason for these cancellations.


John Leslie Evans: I ask, Madam Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.
[ Translation]


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-110, to amend the Export Development Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motions Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, at one o'clock I was discussing Bill C-110 and some of the very pertinent recommendations that have been made to Government and to Canadians in general with respect to the efficiency, if you will, and the expenditure of public funds. The difficulty faced by Members on this side, as I was indicating, is the question of accountability; the efficiency and the degree of efficiency with which the Government spends our tax dollars; the degree of efficiency it attaches to the credits that we extend and the degree to which the EDC conducts its operations with respect to insurance.
The Economic Council of Canada has had a number of things to say to us and I was in the process of dealing with some of those recommendations, and in the few minutes I have left I would like to continue. I had started to deal with the role the EDC plays with respect to other countries, the need for the Export Development Corporation to be the last resort, if you will, for lending, for insuring and so on, and the need for the EDC to get out of the private sector. We were talking about meetings of the OEDC, for example, concerning other nations and the absolute necessity for our Government to obtain some agreement from our trading partners to limit further subsidization of exports. In the absence of such an agreement, which is the case and continues to be the case today, the Council strongly recommended the following, and I commend its remarks to Members opposite:
-that Canada use subsidized credit only-
I emphasize the word "only".
-in cases where there is a sufficiently strong presumption that it will facilitate the opening of new markets ... for Canadian products.
Or, it recommended that Canada use subsidized credit in cases where it could be demonstrated that the present share of these markets for Canadian products would be increased substantially. These points are directed toward the role of the

September 19, 1983
Export Development Act
Export Development Corporation. It is that concern which prompts the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blen-karn) to bring forward his amendments with respect to the legislation.
It is not and should not be the role of Government to continue these high level subsidies. It should be the role of Government to assist where assistance is needed. It is a matter of some regret that the distinguished Minister would not in fact accede to one or two of these points in principle and effect that acceptance by way of further changes in his approach to this piece of legislation.


Mr. G. M. Gurbin (Bruce-Grey):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add my comments in support of Motions Nos. 3 and 5 which were brought forward by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) and to those just made by the Hon. Member for Dartmouth-Halifax East (Mr. Forrestall).
The question that should be addressed immediately as we look at Bill C-110 is whether or not we are for or against international trade. It should be made perfectly clear that no one on either side of the House is against increasing Canadian trade as far as possible and reasonable in an economic sense. A previous speaker indicated that at present we have around 3 per cent of the international trade market, whereas a short time ago we had nearly 6 per cent. Obviously there has been a decline relative to other countries, despite the fact that all countries face the same serious economic recession.
I have three main points which I would like to make. In contrast to questioning whether or not we are in support of or against trade, 1 think the essence of the entire Bill and in fact the motions is the question of accountability. In their own ways many speakers have addressed this specific point. Technically the motion limits the amount of money the Export Development Act would allow to be spent without Parliament having to be consulted again.
In the Bill before us the agency is required to have a one in twenty capital case. We are suggesting that that is too high, that it should be one in ten. In addition, we are suggesting that the capital base should in fact be a real one, not one that is just promised by Government. In other words, the Government would have to put its money where its mouth is and infuse those funds directly into the agency. Those are two valuable recommendations in an effort to try to make the agency more accountable, although I would have to admit much less accountable than it should be to Parliament and to the people who, in the end, are responsible for the disbursed funds.
The total amount represented by the Bill would be $62 billion of additional financial ability on the part of the agency. It will take several different forms, but I think the total amount is staggering. We are discussing $62 billion and will probably be finished with the Bill in several days. Then, as elected Members of Parliament, we will never have an opportunity to address it again and Canadian taxpayers will be responsible for those funds in one way or another.
One of the most pungent comments on the accountability factor was made by the Auditor General in his report of 1982.
Many references have been made to it in this debate, but I would like to quote one particular comment:
In the majority of Crown corporations audited by the Auditor General, financial management and control is weak and ineffective. Moreover, co-ordination and guidance by central government agencies of financial management and control practices in these Crown corporations are virtually non-existent.
According to the Auditor General of Canada, control and direct responsibility are non-existent. He made several recommendations in general about Crown corporations and their impact on the Canadian economy. It is indeed difficult to deal with something we are expected to understand and manage at arm's length without becoming directly involved in the day to day operations, losing control once we appropriate funds and give the initial legislative authority.
Also according to his report, the Auditor General suggested:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
Also he suggested:
Parliament should give attention to issues surrounding control and accountability of those mixed enterprises and other entities and associates in which the Crown is a shareholder.
He suggested a number of other things which expand on the basic principle that we should make every effort to involve Parliament in the activities of Crown corporations.
There are numerous specific examples which could be quoted when we are trying to make the case for accountability. Over the past year we have probably had more than our share of these examples. All of us can relate personally to the things that have happened. One of the most interesting examples occurred at the end of 1981. There was an awareness of the activities involved in supporting Consolidated Computer and of the fact that the firm sold its assets for $100,000 when in fact the Government had loan guarantees of $125 million. That was a significant loss. Another example which has received high public profile lately is the Government's involvement in Canadair. To date we have a financial commitment of $1,836 billion. This figure is composed of a $46 million purchase price and loan guarantees of $1.35 billion, with an equity infusion not too long ago of $440 million. The Canadair story is well known so I will not expand on it.
Another example is the involvement of CIDA when it spent $1.4 million on a fisheries vessel which was supposed to cost only $308,000 to purchase and to refit. The Government of Columbia refused to accept the vessel after it had been refitted at the cost of $1.4 million because it was found unsuitable for its purposes.
In February, 1981 CNR, another Crown corporation, spent $66,000 to purchase advertising space to wish CPR, its chief competitor, a happy birthday. That is a small figure compared with the Canadair figure, but these specific examples give us a sense of the kind of management that exists in Crown corporations and the way public funds appropriated to them are being disbursed. While it may not be a large sum in the total
September 19, 1983

problem, $66,000 could go a long way toward making individual Canadians who are experiencing difficulties more comfortable. I say that with particular reference to some farm and other business enterprises that 1 know from personal experience are having a great deal of difficulty at the present time.
It is difficult to deal with a business operation at arm's length. That is what we, as the elected representatives, are doing. We are dealing at arm's length with over 400 Crown corporations at the federal level and many more at the provincial level. In dealing with those organizations at arm's length, we have lost a degree of direct involvement and an understanding of that business operation.
When public funds are being used by these corporations, we in Parliament ought at least to have the financial accountability that should come with good management. We have lost that. All we ask in these amendments is that we not give the carte blanche which the Government has been giving to these Crown corporations over the past number of years. We are asking that they back up a little. We say that half of what the Government is asking for is plenty to last the corporation for at least the next decade, particularly in view of the number of cases it is involved with presently. There are not that many; 62 last year. We want an opportunity to look at this again before this Government agency spends that additional amount of public funds.


Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to add my voice in support of the two motions presently being debated concerning the Export Development Corporation, specifically Bill C-110. As elected representatives of the people of Canada, we are accountable to the electorate. We are responsible, at least we are supposed to be, for the vast sums of money that flow through the hands of this Government.
As my colleagues who have already spoken on this issue have indicated, we are not against the fundamental purpose of the Export Development Corporation. Nothing could be further from the truth. What we are concerned with is the total lack of accountability that we as elected representatives have over the actions of the Export Development Corporation in particular and over Crown corporations in general. This is a matter of fiscal responsibility pure and simple.
Bill C-110 appears to be something we see all too often around this place. It is a carefully crafted piece of legislation, designed by bureaucrats hired by the Liberal Government, legislation that neatly does an end run around Parliament.
Parliament has become a terrible nuisance to this Government and to the ruling mandarins. It is something to be handled and manipulated, all the while giving the impression that it, Parliament, is still the voice of the people and that the best interests of the citizens are being looked after. Nothing could be further from the truth. The way in which this Bill is
Export Development Act
drafted is typical of legislation we continually see which pretends to "control" Crown corporations.
Last week, during the debate on Motion No. 1, we saw how this Bill proposes to edge out the private sector and can place a preponderance of bureaucrats on the board of directors. This establishes the power. Bureaucrats have almost as much disdain for self-made, successful private sector businessmen as they do for Members of Parliament.
It is interesting to speculate upon the expertise that could be called upon by the bureaucracy and appointed to the board. For example, 1 wonder if someone will find their way on to the board who previously worked for the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. This is a Department I have some familiarity with, and it is not uncommon to find capital projects completed with up to 500 per cent overruns. We do not have that problem in Indian Affairs any longer because we cannot get the computer print-outs. That is how they solved it. The bureaucrats responsible for these overruns are still on the job. If they had been civil engineers working for a city or town, I dare say they would have been fired.
Will they call upon the experts who presented us with Canadair? Will they second to EDC the civil service geniuses who masterminded the PetroCan takeover of Petrofina? Will they draw upon the wisdom of those who allowed the Canadian taxpayers to lose $125 million on Consolidated Computer? Will they appoint to the board the now fluently bilingual Ed Clark because of his gift to Canada of the National Energy Program?
The track record of bureaucrats handling finances both in Government departments and Crown corporations is lamentable. It is difficult to feel any confidence in this type of management. It is no wonder that we rise in this place day after day and scream for some vestige, some shred, some tidbit of accountability. It is no wonder that 64 per cent of Canadians feel that Parliament is irrelevant. I am willing to bet that 64 per cent of Members of Parliament feel that Parliament is irrelevant.
In Motions Nos. 3 and 5 we see how it is proposed to open the purse strings so that billions of dollars in borrowing authority will be available for the board of directors to dispose of as it sees fit. We have heard from other speakers today that this amount of borrowing authority will last at least until the end of this decade. It is far more authority than is needed.
It is interesting to note how the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) has so easily fallen prey to his own bureaucracy. In June he stated to the committee that he had complete confidence in his officials. He admitted that he does not keep a watching brief on outstanding loans. He trusts that his officials will alert him well in advance of any loan default. It sounds very similar to the Canadair fiasco. I would be willing to bet that the Minister will wake up some morning and read about an EDC loan default in the newspaper; that would be the first inkling he would have of the problem.
27254

September 19, 1983
Export Development Act
In June the president of the corporation revealed that just in excess of $20 billion had been loaned out over the past 20 years by EDC. Of this sum, only $1 million has been written off and there is a provision for a further $4 million in write-offs.
I have great difficulty believing that we are in that good a position. What about the $202 million the EDC has loaned out to Poland or the $260 million to Czechoslovakia, just to mention two loans that I think will be difficult to collect? Should we not, realistically, have more than $4 million set aside for defaults? Our amendments attempt to set out some parameters of accountability and responsibility for EDC. In the light of past failures by Crown corporations in this regard, why would it not be reasonable to accept them? One would think that those presently responsible for EDC would be delighted to share this responsibility in light of present world economic conditions.
Presently developing and eastern European countries owe in excess of $700 billion to western banks and governments. Obviously great care must be exercised in lending further sums to these countries. Is it unreasonable to expect Parliamentarians, as the taxpayers' representatives, to want to scrutinize the finances of EDC from time to time? It is simply good sense. Therefore, I urge all Members to support these amendments which will, I am sure, make the EDC a much more careful and responsible public corporation.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: Mr. Speaker, some of us have just gone through the throes of research and attempting to pressure the Government, not with respect to this Bill but another Bill which is before the House. One of the main grounds on which we were attacking the Government's proposed security legislation, inside and outside this House, was because there was a complete lack of ministerial responsibility and accountability to Parliament. I rise today to speak on the Bill relating to the Export Development Corporation because I think the same very high principles apply to it as are applicable to the security agency legislation.
I know comparisons are odious-and I do not care what anyone else in the House may say about the Minister; 1 think he is a good fellow and I like him-but I should like to point out to him the differences in attitude that we sometimes see. Does the Minister want to be outdone by the Solicitor General (Mr. Kaplan)? The Solicitor General has withdrawn, or is not going to proceed, with the security agency Bill in this session. It is not going to come before the House. The Solicitor General has seen the error of his ways in regard to ministerial accountability and accountability to the House and, quite sensibly, has indicated that there will be some very drastic changes in that Bill.
I beseech the popular and ever loving Minister in charge of this Bill to see the writing on the wall, and, levity and humour aside, to appreciate the very serious aspects of this. In respect of the importance of the House and the integrity and morality of the democratic parliamentary system itself, he should see
that there should be the fullest accountability not only to Parliament but to himself. In the past we have all seen the ways that Crown corporations can use to get the Minister and the Government into very hot water and into deep trouble.
The truth of the matter in regard to the Export Development Corporation is that it simply is not accountable to Parliament. That is wrong and the Bill should be changed to make the corporation fully accountable to Parliament. The Export Development Corporation spending is not adequately scrutinized by Parliament as a whole, and it should be. It is not required to table an operating budget; it is not required to table a capital budget; it is not required to give any public information or information to the House or any committee of the House on the size of its payroll. Those things are very definitely wrong, Mr. Speaker. It can borrow huge sums of money in the name of Canadian taxpayers, the taxpayers' children and the taxpayers' children's children without seeking parliamentary authority to do so.
I suggest to the Minister that if the Bill goes through in its present form, the Export Development Corporation will be able to increase the capital of the corporation from Government funds, and in order to do that, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) need only concur in a recommendation from the board. There will be no parliamentary control on contributions. The Government just puts up the taxpayers' money and the board of directors of the corporation can spend it almost any way it sees fit.
If this Bill is passed, the Minister of Finance will have the absolute right to subscribe to the capital of the Export Development Corporation. There would be no further voting- that is it, the end; fini, no reference to this House and, perhaps, no reference to the Minister. I say that that is wrong, Mr. Speaker.
Not only that, but the Export Development Corporation, whether or not it received the money from the Government, has the right to borrow on the credit of Canada to the extent of $20 billion. That is the amount of the authorized capital, not even the paid up capital of the corporation, and there is no accountability to this House, no accountability to Parliament and no accountability to the public. That is wrong and should be changed.
Another provision is that the Government can make loan advances that are deemed not to be of a commercial or proper risk nature by the board of directors itself. If these amendments are passed, the Government will be entitled to authorize up to $10 billion for what, in the ordinary, economic trading and commercial sense, would be unacceptable loans. Therefore, in effect, the Governor in Council, without any vote by Parliament ever again, can make $10 billion deals without an aye, yes or no on any vote by any Parliament at any time.
Can you tell me off hand, Mr. Speaker, how many zeros there are in $1 billion? You would have to think about that. Most of us will never see that kind of money in our lifetime. This Bill will increase to $62 billion the amount of money the Export Development Corporation can borrow, lend and insure without adequate parliamentary control. It will double the
September 19, 1983

authorized capital; that means that the Export Development Corporation can borrow up to $20 billion instead of $10 billion. It will double the authorized capital; that means that the Export Development Corporation can insure up to another $20 billion instead of $10 billion. The Government can make loans, not of a proper commercial nature, to a limit of $10 billion instead of the present $2.5 billion. The Government may now make insurance commitments, not of a proper commercial nature, to a ceiling of $10 billion if the Bill is passed, instead of the present $3.5 billion.


Gerald Augustine Regan: It makes jobs.


Allan Frederick Lawrence: The Minister interrupts to say that this makes jobs. It may well make jobs although I do not think it has made many jobs up to now. But surely, if that is the point the Minister wants to get across to the Canadian public and the House of Commons, what better attitude could he or should he take than to say, "We will make a complete revelation; we will make a commitment now that these matters have to be authorized by Parliament and the House of Commons." The question is not whether the Export Development Corporation is going to make jobs with this extra money; the question is whether the people's representatives have the right to decide whether it is going to have the money to make the jobs. That is the point.
According to one authority "the Export Development Corporation is rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient". That is not rhetoric from a politician; that is no argument even from a Conservative politician in this House; Those are the words of an academic expert who has studied the Export Development Corporation. That is the warning from Professor Andre Raynauld of the University of Montreal, and it is pretty strong language.
The point is that that empire building, that involvement of Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient, can be done with no further authorization, approval or even debate in the Parliament of Canada. I say to the Minister, fie on you! Shame on you! That should not happen.
Seven years ago an Auditor General noted that in the majority of Crown corporations audited by him, "financial management and control was weak and ineffective. Moreover, co-ordination and guidance by central Government agencies on financial management and control practices in these Crown corporations, is virtually nonexistent".
The Minister perseveres in this arrogant and unfortunate attitude. I appeal to him now to make the necessary changes in the Act or to agree to the Conservative Opposition amendments which would make the Export Development Corporation accountable to Parliament.


Mr. John Gamble (York North):: Mr. Speaker, according to the Minister responsible for Bill C-110, it deals with the
Export Development Act
creation of employment. Since everyone wants desperately to create in Canada additional jobs of a permanent nature, this Bill therefore allegedly becomes sacrosanct. This Bill, of course, deals with the export of products from Canada, and since everyone is clearly desirous of endorsing, improving and extending the exports from this nation, everyone should clearly favour this Bill. So the story goes. This Bill, Mr. Speaker, symbolizes, probably more so than anything we have seen recently, an attack upon the principles of Parliament. The roots of this place lie in the fact that we here demand that the Government account for what it does and that we control the purse strings. Without that financial control, this place would not exist. If it did not exist, democracy would not exist in Canada. It is because this piece of proposed legislation, by way of amendment to the Export Development Act, attacks those basic principles, that I am opposed to the Bill itself.
We have heard from some of my colleagues who have detailed the problems which the Bill presents in terms of quantum, in terms of money. So often in this place we become accustomed to hearing about very substantial sums of money. Even the authorized capital in itself, as altered by this Bill, should be enough to make the ordinary Hon. Member of Parliament-certainly, the ordinary citizen-sit up and take notice, since we are talking about two thousand million dollars. We have shortened this figure to $2 billion. If we use the expression "trillion", we could probably deal with but fractions rather than full dollar amounts. However, in essence we are talking about an authorized capital of two thousand million dollars, to promote, we are told most assiduously and diligently, the export of Canadian products.
The $2 billion is not, however, the end. The corporation itself, made up of and controlled by public servants, may borrow ten times the $2 billion, or twenty thousand million dollars. The corporation may, in addition, guarantee and insure for an additional twenty thousand million dollars and, under circumstances where even the public servants determine that it would be inappropriate for this corporation to guarantee or to provide insurance, the Government may, by Order in Council, direct that that guarantee and that insurance be provided to the extent of $10 billion, or ten thousand million dollars. That is the difficulty, Mr. Speaker. We are now talking about gigantic amounts of money which are beyond the control of this House.
I can recall so vividly questions being asked and answers being given with respect to the Farm Credit Corporation here in this place, where $300 million is considered to be a very substantial injection into the backbone of this nation, into its agricultural area, the farming community. All Hon. Members and the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) deal with that rather large amount of money with great care and attention. It is, after all, to be used by the farming community. Yet when we deal with exports, we are dealing with $52 billion, and we do so with the greatest of ease, without concern. Somehow our regard for values has been damaged and shifted by an immunity which we have developed to the value of money. We come to

September 19, 1983
Export Development Act
think of it as the Government's money, and everyone knows that everyone should have a piece of the Government's money. The sooner the Government spends it, the better off we all will be. But the Government has no money. The value of this nation is mortgaged in order to provide these funds for the purposes outlined in this Bill and, Mr. Speaker, neither you nor I nor any Hon. Member who is now alive and in this House will be living at the time that these obligations are paid.
1 know that one might enter into a fanciful argument and say that this Crown corporation is distinct from Government, and, indeed, while it might go out and borrow $20 billion, as it is authorized to do, it could default and never pay off those obligations. Therefore, what we are really looking at is just the capital which is ultimately injected into it. You know, Mr. Speaker, and I know, that whatever this Crown corporation incurs in terms of liability will be paid, not with government money, because there is none, but with the money of the people of this nation. It disturbs me to think that in such a cavalier manner this House can take this piece of legislation and deal with it in the fashion which the Minister responsible for it would have us believe we should.
We know that not long ago this corporation provided the funds necessary for the development of a rather interesting architectural structure in Algeria, and it may well have provided, as it did, a lot of employment for a lot of Canadians who were there. It also provided an opportunity for the export of cement from Canada because a lot of it was made of concrete and reinforcing steel. The problem is, Mr. Speaker, that we have not been paid. We may never be paid. And we do not know what the interest on that loan is. The reason I mention that one incident is that it typifies the separation from this place of those who make the rules and authorize the loans, and the people in this place who were elected by the people of Canada have no authority to demand and to obtain the vital information we should have with respect to the operation of our Crown corporations, including this one.
I urge Hon. Members of the House, Mr. Speaker, to examine carefully the proposals which we have offered by way of amendment, and have some regard not to the desire of the bureaucrats to further extend their authority and dominance on the political and financial scene of this nation, but rather to display some concern for our children, our grandchildren and our great grandchildren and future generations of Canadians who will be bound to pay the debts which we permit this corporation to incur if we pass this Bill in its present form.


Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Mr. Speaker, I am rising late to speak in respect of the Export Development Corporation Bill, but I would like to mention briefly some experiences which I have had personally with a young, vibrant company bidding for world markets. Just last week I was invited to the first promotion of their deal abroad. This happened to be a company which is in the business of manufacturing paint. The company had sold 43,000 gallons of paint to the Barbados. Over two years ago it applied to the federal Government for some promotional assistance, not just to the Barbados but to other countries, and to further research its
product, which it was already doing with its own money. But it received no Government help whatsoever. Yet we find that of the 62 companies which received financial assistance last year from the Export Development Corporation, 3 received over half of the total funds allocated. This gives me a great deal of concern. Are we helping the right type of people, the people with initiative, the little guy? I think too many of our Government departments, not just the EDC, are looking for the giant who has made his way and is receiving today the lion's share.
I think the Minister is a pretty good fellow, Mr. Speaker. We talk about fishing and about growing potatoes in the Maritimes. While I come from Ontario, we get along very well with the Minister, and I think he really tries. But I honestly think some of his department officials bypass some of these very dedicated entrepreneurs who want to make their own way.
I cannot be critical of the EDC alone because these problems occur with the Department of Industry also. I had a chap come to me not too long ago who wanted to manufacture stick fertilizer for plants. He is struggling along and he was lucky enough to win several contracs here in Canada which had been filled by fertilizer sticks imported from the U.S. He secured a contract from Loblaws, IGA, National Grocers and Canadian Tire. Yet he was totally turned down by the Department. He had created 15 to 20 jobs and would have gone to 45 or 50 jobs, but the Department ignored him. He did not have this, he did not have that. Probably he did not have the right firm present his application. This chap was finally helped by the Government of Barbados in promoting his product abroad. It is a very viable product, so what are we doing wrong? What is the EDC doing for people such as I have described here? The Government of Barbados helped this chap promote this product, yet two years ago the EDC had turned him down.
That, Mr. Speaker, is where I can be very critical, not just of the EDC but of too many of our Government departments. We ignore the entrepreneur who wants to try and who has done a lot for himself. As speakers from this side of the House have pointed out, and apparently we are the only ones talking about this, we have to put some meaning in the Bill for the small businessman. I think it is self-explanatory when three companies received over half of the moneys allotted through the EDC. This is why we are trying to bring in some amendments to the Bill which will have some meaning for the community. We are not going to deny our big entrepreneurs, but we want to think of the smaller people who are striving and working against a market which has been captured by the big financial giants throughout the world. They are getting bigger and bigger all the time. We believe in the small Canadian entrepreneur and we want to promote him also.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I hope that before this Bill passes the House we will have something in it for the individual who wants to help himself, who is out there trying to help himself, fighting big business and big bureaucracy. I hope that when we finish with this Bill we can say we have accomplished
September 19, 1983

something for these people who are very, very important Canadians.


Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct my remarks today to the concerns of the public as I have witnessed them during the last few months, particularly during the period of time in which I was a candidate in the byelection in Brandon-Souris in the spring of this year. One of the things 1 found at that time, Mr. Speaker, that distressed me, and the explanation for which can be found to some degree in this Bill, was a growing amount of distrust of Government among the public at large, a considerable amount of distrust of the civil servants who work for the Government, and there is particularly a demand by the public for more accountability by Government and its employees, accountability, Mr. Speaker, first of all to this Parliament and, second, and perhaps even more important, to the people of Canada as a whole.
It seems to me, from my studies of Canadian history-and I have devoted a considerable part of my life to that-that there has never been a time in Canadian history where there has been such distrust of Government and, quite frankly, so much concern about the importance and relevance of Parliament. I think one of the reasons for this is the growth of Government, first of all, the growth of the Civil Service, second, and, perhaps more germane to this discussion, the growth of Crown corporations, which seem to a very large degree to be operating in a world of their own, independent of scrutiny from this Parliament. It seems to me that there is an inherent danger in this particular piece of legislation. This particular Crown corporation will have the opportunity to become even less responsive to the will of this Parliament and hence to the will of the people of Canada than certainly we would wish, and certainly less than the people of Canada would wish.
It is not, Mr. Speaker, that the people of Canada have any particular distaste for any one form of Government. They recognize the role of many forms of administration, but they hold very much as a bottom line the necessity that the arm of Government, in this case, a Crown corporation, must be accountable in every way feasible to the Parliament of this land and hence to the people of this land. Unfortunately, as 1 understand this Bill, the EDC is going to be permitted to a very large degree to act independently of the will of Parliament. There is only the most minor accountability required of it in the sense that it must present an annual report to this body. In addition, as I understand the legislation, there is a further provision within the Bill which means that the Cabinet, by Order in Council, can act, if it wishes, even independent of the will of the EDC. It seems to me that in doing so it separates the executive arm of Government even further from the legislative arm and the will of the public.
One of the results of this, Mr. Speaker, is that we have discovered, just on the eve of this Parliament reconvening, that a large percentage of the public, far too great a percentage in my estimation, some 67 per cent if I remember correctly, have come to the conclusion that the actions of this Parliament are not of particular importance to them. In fact, they have come
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to the conclusion that Parliament to a substantial degree is becoming irrelevant. I, and I am sure most other Members of this House, would of course quarrel with that conclusion, but it seems to me that as a result of the manner in which we have drafted our legislation in the past and the manner in which we have administered the country, particularly in the realm of Crown corporations, demonstrates that we ourselves have encouraged the public to reach that conclusion. By comparison, in 1962 there were only 28 Crown corporations operating in Canada, and at that time they were largely, and I think reasonably clearly, accountable to Parliament. Today we have more than 300 Crown corporations, and I daresay that there are many Hon. Members who are not exactly certain as to the number of Crown corporations.


John Horton McDermid: Not even the Government knows.


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: The amount of money being controlled by those Crown corporations has grown astronomically, and almost in direct proportion there has developed a gap between those Crown corporations and Parliament as a whole, and hence, the public. As a result, many people have come to the conclusion that the real authority within the land rests in a place other than here.
It seems to me that all Members of the House, those on the other side as well as those on this side, have a very pressing need to correct that concern. One of the ways we can do that is by ensuring that all Crown corporations be made more directly accountable to this Parliament and by amending this piece of legislation to ensure that the Export Development Corporation reports more directly and immediately to the House than is proposed. In particular, the provision by which the Cabinet, the executive arm, by Order in Council, could make loans which might well be contrary to the criteria established by the Export Development Corporation, permitting it to operate in an independent and perhaps irresponsible manner, must be amended.
If the public is to recover the faith it once had in Parliament and in the parliamentary process, then we as Parliamentarians and all those who are part of the governmental process must seize upon every opportunity which is given to us to seem to be answerable to the public. We must also be able to provide the public with as much information as it seeks so that people are able to evaluate the doings of Parliament and, of course, the actions of Crown corporations as well. It seems to me that the Government has strayed from that objective. Instead of making Crown corporations more accountable to the public, it has done the opposite. The end result is that we have had more Crown corporations than the public desires. We have had more Crown corporations operating independently of the public and of Parliament than the public desires. Therefore, the impression has been created that there is an arm of Government which is operating independent of the will of the public. In doing so, the Government has very much contributed to its own demise as far as the public perception is concerned. We have an opportunity to rectify that at this point. It seems to me

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that we will not make great strides in that direction until not only is there a change in philosophy, but a change in Government as well. However, in the meantime, we have an opportunity, in amending this particular piece of legislation, to ensure that those who spend the money raised by the taxpayers of Canada are accountable, first of all, to the Parliament of this land and then, second, to the electors who send us here.
We also have a very real responsibility and opportunity to ensure that those who spend the money of the taxpayers of this land are spending it in a way which is consistent with the objectives provided for EDC by Parliament. It is therefore imperative that there be a greater degree of accountability than there has been in the past and that the process providing the opportunity for Cabinet, by Order in Council, to spend money in a manner which may be contrary to the wishes of the Corporation, which we specifically requested and which was established for that purpose, be now amended.
In conclusion 1 say that it is of utmost importance that Parliament amend the legislation so that the Crown corporation becomes more accountable to this body and hence to the will of the public.


Mr. Fred McCain (Carleton-Charlotte):: Mr. Speaker, it is incredible to me that the public has not become more aware of the magnitude of this Bill. I have not seen a headline which states that "another Crown corporation is now enabled to borrow $50 billion". Why? I wonder why this has not become news to Canada from coast to coast, and it concerns me. 1 wonder why the public of Canada would not be interested in the fact that here we have a Bill which will put $50 billion out of reach, out of touch, with the elected representatives of this nation. Is that not news? Fifty billion dollars is a lot of money. Yes, I can understand that people are enthralled that there will be improved export opportunities and expanded export credit, and that principle is one with which I think few if any in the House quarrel. However, the principle of secrecy with regard to the administration of the money is one with which I think all Canadians should become familiar.
I am amazed at some of the approaches that have been taken concerning the Bill. Last week we heard the Hon. Member for The Battlefords-Meadow Lake (Mr. Anguish) saying that jobs and not ownership was the issue in the Maritimes. 1 think that his remoteness from the Maritimes, his complete lack of understanding of the Maritime problems, is perhaps the explanation why his Party now has the same number of Members as it had five, ten or 15 years ago, and one less than it had 25 years ago. Members of his Party just do not understand.


Mr. Lapierre:: How many more do you have?


Fred Alward McCain: I said that his Party had one less. It will stand in that same position. In the ten minutes I have at my disposal I do not have time for the Hon. Member's frivolous interruptions.
I would like to say to Your Honour that ownership is not the issue in Atlantic Canada because the Canadian investors have
been inclined to put their money within sight of the tower in Calgary or the CN Tower in Toronto, and if they cannot see it or smell it from there, then it is not the place to put money. Fortunately, we do have some foreign investors who are interested in putting money into industry in Canada, and they have been quite successful. We need them in Atlantic Canada, and we welcome them. We resent the interference by FIRA, we resent the interference by Government, and we resent the slow procedures to which they must succumb in order to receive the assistance which is supposed to be public money for public investment in the nation of Canada. We have one, for instance, now in the process, which was supposed to have been approved. First it was approved by FIRA. I do not know why, because it is a foreign company, but I thank FIRA for its approval. Then it was to be approved for a DREE grant sometime in June. Now we are in mid-September, and the answer as to when it will be approved is not there. No, the Maritimes want jobs and do not care who invests the money as long as they get a fair opportunity to work at a reasonable wage.
I am concerned about this corporation and its historic way of functioning in Canada. This is because any information that we have been able to collect does not indicate that the Maritime industry has been favoured with any important amounts of this money. I am concerned about the way it functions. I am concerned, for instance, that we do not have a shipbuilding industry in Atlantic Canada because this organization exported ships to the much greater advantage of the purchaser than ships could be sold to Canadians, whether involving Canadian steamships or Kent line ltd. or whatever it may have been. The capital investment for a ship built and operated in Canada was not as attractive as that for the ship bought by offshore owners and operated in and out of Canadian ports. This is most unfortunate. I wonder how many credits were extended by this corporation or will be extended to such companies as Enamel and Heating or Enterprise Foundry. I am wondering how many credits will be extended by the corporation to the fish processing industry, to the agricultural processing industry, to the fresh fish industry or to the fresh agricultural products of Atlantic Canada. Will the money be made available to them and will it be on terms that they can accept? The initial terms of the corporation would not meet the needs of the buyer of food products as they were exported from Atlantic Canada.
I think it is time that we began to look toward Atlantic Canada. I would suggest that the expenditure of federal moneys in Atlantic Canada is under political control since there is a Minister appointed for each Province. He certainly has the authority to say how, where and when money will be spent by the federal Government in Atlantic Canada. Whether it is for roads or industry, the minister can exert pressure to spend the money as he sees fit. Will that pressure still be there? How will we be able to determine whether ministerial pressure has been exerted to serve the friends of the Government? This has occurred in other areas, and will it happen here? We will not know if this will happen in this corporation because of the secrecy involved in this deal.
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1 submit that if we cannot have public examination of this corporation we should at least have in camera meetings in committees of the House of Commons, with a free licence to roam, investigate and know what is going on. That is the least that should be extended to elected Members of Parliament. There will be six people hired on the board of directors who will be working for Canada, with another three appointed from outside the Public Service. 1 believe that the elected people should be able to know how the six hired members and three appointed members are working on behalf of all of Canada and whether they are paying proper attention to those industries which need it the most, including the fishing industry which 1 have mentioned.
Will this corporation emphasize food exports as a nation with a heart and with consideration not only for the hungry people abroad but also for those people at home who make their living from these industries? I question whether the lake group would be facing as many difficulties at this time if CIDA had picked up a reasonable portion of product and exported it abroad. Would any fish processor in Atlantic Canada be in circumstances as difficult as those in which they are at present if we had offered more fish as food, through CIDA, to help the starving millions of this world. I believe that is our role. Without a mechanism for reviewing this structure we will never know how much attention has been paid to the industries and countries which need help and whether the corporation is performing a job that is acceptable to Canadians.
For example, I wonder if there is any possibility for exports for Entreprise Foundry in Sackville, New Brunswick, which recently suffered the misfortune of an economic demise. Last Friday, the Province of New Brunswick assumed responsibility for the management and operation of that plant for a year on a trial basis. Will the Export Development Corporation look at that industry in order to determine if there is a market for its product which could be aided by export credit? Is the EDC prepared to extend the terms and conditions which would make it possible for this industry to thrive and prosper as it once did, or will it be treated with another freight raise, with the removal of the Maritime freight rate benefits as the western farmers are being punished with the change in the Crow rate?
I say to the Government that it is imperative that this organization direct its efforts toward those parts of Canada that need help the most, whether it be in shipbuilding, steel, fish or agriculture. I hope there will be a special effort made to seek export opportunities for our products.
Let me reiterate that the least the Government can offer this House is the opportunity to hold in camera meetings to discuss fully the details of the use of 50 billion tax dollars.
_______________________________27259
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PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for Victoria-Haliburton (Mr. Scott)-Energy-Fluctuations in Ontario gasoline prices, (b) Impact of tax on prices; the Hon. Member for Bow River (Mr. Taylor)- Veterans' Affairs-Request that a commemorative medal be struck to honour Dieppe veterans; the Hon. Member for Churchill (Mr. Murphy)-Canada Labour Code-Protection of workers' health-Introduction of amending legislation, (b) Timing of introduction of amending legislation.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-110, to amend the Export Development Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motion 2 Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
John Horton McDermid: Mr. Speaker, I rise to take part in this very important debate today. Before I begin, however, I think I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the work that was done on this particular Bill by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). He has spent a considerable amount of time on this Bill and has worked quite closely with our caucus and other interested groups from the public who have a great interest in this particular piece of legislation. I wanted to put it on the record that we in this Party are very pleased and wish to thank him publicly for the work he has done.
Let me quote what the Auditor General said last fall. He said:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of Government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
That is what we are debating today. In the four and one-half years that it has been my privilege to be here in the House of Commons representing the constituency of Brampton-Georgetown, I have seen Bill after Bill, Act after Act, come before the House which has slowly eroded the responsibility of a Member of Parliament. It is embarassing for a Member to return to his

September 19, 1983
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riding and be asked by a constituent about certain matters. We have to say that we do not know because it had never been discussed in Parliament and was something taken on by a Crown corporation which is not accountable to Parliament. Obviously we are here to represent those who have elected us, but we are unable to do so. This is another Bill which is slowly eroding that accountability that we all want.
This Bill will increase the amount of money that EDC can borrow, lend or insure without adequate parliamentary control to $62 billion. Each time I hear the figure of $62 billion mentioned I see those who are employed by EDC drooling in the galleries. They can hardly wait to get their hands on that money. This legislation is the Government's answer to accountability to the people. Jt wants to pass one Bill so that it can obtain $62 billion and never return here to account for the way it is being spent.
1 agree with the Minister that the issue is jobs. There is no doubt that in many instances money from EDC does provide jobs. I happen to have a company in my constituency, namely, Northern Telecom, which does take advantage of the Export Development Corporation from time to time. I am sure their latest contract signed with Turkey has preserved jobs and provided some extra jobs. No doubt the EDC will be somewhat involved in that particular venture. I want to make it very clear that we are not against the Export Development Corporation. We are not against its making wise loans, guarantees, insuring exports; not by any stretch of the imagination. Our concern is the accountability to the taxpayers of this country. That is the number one issue we are debating here today. 1 believe the amendments introduced by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South, will go a very long way in providing that much needed accountability in Parliament.
The Export Development Corporation has come under some criticism for its management, not without justification. It is hard to comprehend that a corporation with 613 employees had only has some 62 loan transactions. When you take a look at the recent past, loans of $2.5 billion went to only four companies, one getting a loan of $1 billion. Of the jobs created from that particular loan-and I am referring to the Bombardier loan for subway cars-40 per cent of the jobs are in the United States. Yet we are lending money for that project. Not all the jobs are created here in Canada, as the Government would lead us to believe.


Mr. Ferguson:: The subways are in the United States.


John Horton McDermid: I go into the bank from time to time to borrow money and to pay it back. But I do not know a bank that has ten employees for every loan it hands out. This is certainly not the case in the communities I represent, and I am sure that is not the case in the Hon. Member's community either. Yet that is a fact where the Export Development Corporation is concerned. It has ten employees for every loan processed.
The insurance end of the corporation issues insurance policies at an annual rate of 1.5 policies per employee. Let me emphasize that; one and one-half policies for each employee. Any insurance company that did that would go broke. Amazingly enough, the corporation makes money on its insurance policies. It does not get a great return. I believe it is a very small return. The entire profit of the Export Development Corporation is around $1 million on capital of $619 million, which is a return of some one-tenth of 1 per cent. We have to ask ourselves, while we are handing $62 billion, as outlined in this Bill, to the Export Development Corporation, will it handle those funds wisely and with proper business acumen? That is the question we are asking today. We, as elected Members, would like to have some responsibility in saying whether or not the EDC is doing that. Representatives of the EDC may or may not appear before a parliamentary committee to explain their actions, justify their expenditures, their borrowings, the loans that they have made for export financing or for insurance, transactions that in many instances are questionable at best.
I conclude by saying to the Minister and imploring the Minister to take a look at our motions and to accept them because we are as anxious as he is to get on with the job of creating more employment in this country, and of improving our export position in the world today. But for heaven's sake, do not take this responsibility out of the hands of the parliamentarians because we are elected to do the job of protecting the public purse.


Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate today, particularly as it relates to the amendments put forward by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). If one analyzes the two amendments, Motions Nos. 3 and 5, it becomes very clear immediately that all we on this side of the House are attempting to do is to point out the need and the responsibility that all Members in this House of Commons have regarding accountability for the taxpayers' money being spent in various enterprises and initiatives undertaken by the federal Government. We should always remember as Members of this House of Commons that the money is not the Government's money. Every dollar we deal with from Ottawa and spend somewhere belongs to the citizens we represent. It is their money. Our citizens have agreed, by our system and the system of government that has evolved, to pay taxes so that we as Members of Parliament can operate the Government for the public good.
Let us look at how this responsibility is being effected today in this Bill. All we are attempting to do with these two amendments is to make the Government more accountable. How can we accept Bill C-110 which will allow the federal Government never to come back to Parliament for authority to spend billions and billions of dollars in areas about which most Canadians have no idea?
Let us examine the Export Development Corporation for a moment. It is not required now to table an operating budget. It is not required to table a capital budget. It is not even required
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to table in this House of Commons the size of its payroll, the number of people working for it.
When loans, loan guarantees and projects by the Export Development Corporation are applied for, the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) has the absolute authority to say yes or no. In my opinion that opens the door to abuse immediately. We have to bring accountability back to this House of Commons.
A recent survey across Canada showed that people felt Parliament was irrelevant. I do not feel that Parliament is irrelevant. I do not feel that any Member on the government side or any Member on this side of the House wants to be looked upon as being irrelevant. The Export Development Corporation as it stands, if this Bill goes through, may borrow money in the name of the Canadian taxpayer and of his or her children without coming to Parliament and saying "Ladies and gentlemen, do you concur with the Export Development Corporation borrowing this kind of money for these kinds of projects?" I wonder what the people in my riding or, indeed, in any riding would say if they had a chance to review some of the projects and the money to be spent thereon by the Export Development Corporation?
This Bill could give the Export Development Corporation, whether or not it receives money from the Government, the right to borrow on the credit of Canada, on behalf of the taxpayers of Canada, to the extent of $20 billion. Even if the House of Commons does not agree, even if the Minister of Finance does not agree, the corporation is given authority in the Bill to borrow on its own initiative $20 billion. Indeed this will put Canadian taxpayers and their children further into debt. It sounds preposterous. It is like a man giving each of his sons a blank cheque and saying, "Go to it, boys." We are giving a blank cheque to the Export Development Corporation on the taxpayers' account. Not only that, the EDC, whether or not it receives money from the Government, has the right to borrow $20 billion.
Just as serious and perhaps even more so is the provision in Bill C-110 whereby the Government can make loan advances which are deemed not to be commercially viable by the board of directors. In other words, the board of directors of the EDC may turn down a loan as not being commercially viable or proper, and the Government can step in and say to that agency, "You will make this loan". We can let our imagination run riot on that one for a moment.
In total the Bill will increase to $62 billion the amount of money the EDC can borrow, lend or insure, without adequate parliamentary control. It doubles the authorized capital of the EDC. This means that the EDC can borrow up to $20 billion instead of $10 billion. There is a limit now of $10 billion, and the Government wants to double it to $20 billion. Doubling the authorized capital means that the EDC can insure up to $20 billion instead of $10 billion. Now the Government can make loans of an improper commercial nature, such as erecting another monument somewhere at the cost of $15 million or
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$20 million. It can do this to the limit of $10 billion instead of $2.5 billion. The way it was under the old Act, the Government could only waste $2.5 billion, not $10 billion. Now the Government may insure commitments which are of an improper commercial nature to a ceiling of $10 billion instead of $2.5 billion. It is ever escalating. Without coming to Parliament the Government will be able to increase its equity in the corporation to $2 billion rather than the current $1 billion.
What has been said over the years about accountability? Accountability is the bottom line. Each one of us in the House of Commons represents approximately 100,000 people. We are accountable to those 100,000 men, women and children in our constituencies for the way money is spent by the Government. What has been said over the past few years? Four years ago the Lambert Commission, in examining the bewildering array of Crown agencies, found that existing provisions for classifying them and for accountability for each category had been rendered obsolete. Also it indicated that if the resulting state of confusion was left unattended, it would seriously impair the value of these agencies as instruments of public purpose.
What did the Auditor General of Canada have to say? According to his report he said:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair hesitates to interrupt the Hon. Member but his allotted time has expired.


Mr. Malone:: Perhaps we could seek unanimous consent.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: He may continue with unanimous consent. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Jack Wendele Shields: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the House for its generosity in allowing me to continue. I will try to wrap up in a few short minutes.
Let me return to the question of accountability and the quotation of the Auditor General, " .. . Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds." In civic elections such as the ones that will be held in my Province next October, in school board and hospital board elections, the primary concern of the electorate in small and large communities is accountability-"Where is my tax dollar going, how is it being spent, how much have you received in taxes, or are you spending it wisely on my behalf?" We in the House of Commons represent people from coast to coast. The people out there do not understand or fathom $20 billion. They understand $500,000 or $1 million, but when it gets to billions of dollars, it is just numbers. In fact, many of us sitting in the House of Commons do not understand what is a billion dollars. We are

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putting our children into hock every time we allow unrestrained and unaccountable spending in Crown corporations.
Also the Auditor General indicated in his report for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1982 that the time for reports and discussions had passed and that the time had come for meaningful action to be taken to increase the accountability and control of Crown corporations. We have continually seen reports tabled in the House of Commons over the past ten years, urging all Members to get accountability of Crown corporations into the House. We are not doing it. We are derelict in our duty. The Government brings in Bill C-110 which further erodes accountability. Our two amendments, if accepted, would move toward accountability. They are small steps in that direction because it cannot be done overnight. Is it too much for the Government to accept?
I will close with a brief summary of the management of the corporation. On the surface, the EDC appears to be doing something right. After all, it is one of a few Crown corporations that actually declared a profit last year. It earned a profit in spite of being a highly inefficient organization.
In 1982, the EDC had 613 employees, loan transactions with 62 companies and slightly in excess of 900 insurance policies. Can any Member of this House who is familiar with business name a bank which has ten employees for every loan that it makes? Of course not.


T.A. Bud Bradley: The Small Business Development Bank.


Jack Wendele Shields: That may be. I have not looked at that one. Can anyone on the Government benches name an insurance company in the private sector that issues insurance policies at an annual rate of 1.5 policies per employee? Can anyone on the Government benches name a bank or insurance company with so few customers and so many offices across this country?
The Government makes money on its export insurance coverage, but fails to market that insurance adequately. Only a small handful of corporations receive the benefit of an EDC subsidy. Little is being done to expand this circle. Let us look at the actual profit of EDC. It has unlimited financing. With every debt that it incurs, it delves into the pocket of the taxpayer. Last year the actual profit was $1 million on capital of $961 million, a rate of return of 1 per cent.
1 hope that I have made my case to the Members of this House. We must get accountability back where it belongs, with the voters of this country. The closest link to the voters is the House of Commons, the Members here. We must listen to and take heed of the warnings of Auditors General and reports commissioned by this Government on accountability. We must get accountability back in Parliament. The two amendments that we proposed are a small step toward reaching that goal. I urge Members on all sides of the House, regardless of Party affiliation, to move toward getting accountability back into the House of Commons where it belongs.


Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the theme which has been discussed by the Hon. Member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields). The Hon. Member has really zeroed on the most important aspect of the Bill. We are not just debating Motions Nos. 3 and 5 which the Progressive Conservative Party has put forward at report stage and which would control the borrowing of Crown corporations, but, more important, the whole question of accountability of Crown corporations. This was focused on by the Hon. Member for Athabasca. 1 want to pick up that theme because it comes close to hitting at the base of why we are here in Parliament to represent our constituents. When Members of Parliament return to their ridings, they find that their constituents are frustrated and unhappy with the system and also quite often with our performance here in the House of Commons. Our constituents feel removed from what is taking place here, the spending that goes on.
When Parliament was set up, a major role envisaged for it by the drafters of the Constitution must surely have been that of a sounding board where problems could be discussed by those elected to this place, people from different occupations and backgrounds, and where they could have some say with regard to Government spending. That has not happened. That is why there is so much frustration. The people have no input. As a Member of Parliament, I am frustrated because I do not have the input which I believe I should have.
This Bill highlights the fact that a Crown corporation can increase the amount of money it can borrow, spend, lend or guarantee without coming to Parliament. The Auditor General is the only real safeguard which the taxpayers have over Government spending. He has the authority to take a good look at Government spending, regardless of which Party is in power. Last fall he indicated the depth of the concern that is being expressed in my riding. He said, and I quote:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of Government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
That really hits at what we are discussing today. Unfortunately, little has been done. When a Crown corporation like EDC asks Parliament for greater authority, we must certainly look closely at the request. That is not the right direction. It is making things worse. It will only increase the sense of alienation and frustration in this country. The Export Development Corporation is certainly not all bad. It has a place. It does do some very positive things in the context of the guidelines set down for it. We all know that. The spending of the Export Development Corporation is not adequately scrutinized by Parliament, and it never has been. It is not required to table an operating budget, a capital budget for information on the size of its payroll. Who, including yourself, Mr. Speaker, could go to the bank and borrow a substantial amount of money without telling the bank manager what it was for? Who could ask the bank for what is, in effect, a blank cheque and receive money to use as he wanted, without showing any cash flow or
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without telling the bank when and how the money would be paid back? Of course no one could do that but this is the kind of thing that we are seeking for the Export Development Corporation.
The corporation may borrow money in the name of the Canadian taxpayer, his children and his grandchildren, without seeking parliamentary approval. That just is not right, Mr. Speaker. Because we have allowed this to happen, we find ourselves in a very serious financial situation.
Bill C-110 would increase to $62 billion the amount of money that the Export Development Corporation can borrow and lend and insure without adequate parliamentary control. Doubling the authorized capital means that the Export Development Corporation can borrow up to $20 billion instead of $10 billion. Doubling the authorized capital means that the Export Development Corporation can insure up to $20 billion instead of $10 billion. The Government may now make loans that are not of a proper commercial nature to a limit of $10 billion instead of $2.5 billion. The Government may now make insurance commitments that are not of a proper commercial nature to a ceiling of $10 billion instead of $3.5 billion. Without coming to Parliament, the Government will be able to increase its equity in the corporation to $2 billion in place of the current $1 billion equity.
We are talking in terms of billions of dollars, Mr. Speaker, and I think the Hon. Member for Athabasca indicated quite eloquently that his constituents just do not understand those figures. I suspect that no one in this House understands those figures, except to appreciate that they are very large and that someone has to pay the money back at some time. We are concerned that our children and grandchildren will have to do that and that they will blame us-and rightly so-for not having had adequate control.
The way the Export Development Corporation is going it will rapidly become a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, expanding its empire and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient. That is always a problem when dealing with the amounts of money that we are talking about.
While the Export Development Corporation has done a number of good things, it has not always spent money in a way that is in the best interests of taxpayers. For example, it financed the International Nickel Company of Canada developments in Indonesia and Guatemala thus jeopardizing jobs and potential jobs in Sudbury and in Thompson, Manitoba.


Judith A. Erola: It is protecting those jobs.


Jack Burnett Murta: It has also financed forest development projects in Mexico, Poland and Peru, and these developments will compete with Canadian forest products. Of course, this always happens with industries that are competing on a world basis. It demonstrates that while we in Parliament can indicate how we
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feel about the situation, we have no direct control over the company or how it spends this money.
The Export Development Corporation helped finance the construction of a monument to the Algerian revolution. I point this out just to show the kind of situation that a Crown corporation as large as this one can become involved in.
Before I close, Mr. Speaker, I should like to say that the Official Opposition is adamantly opposed to any Crown corporation being given substantial amounts of money or the potential to use substantial amounts of money without adequate supervision by Parliament. This place must be supreme; Parliament must be the last resort, the debating Chamber where concerns such as those which I have just mentioned can be discussed with the people who are spending the taxpayers' money. We must be sure that we are getting the value for that money that the Canadian taxpayer expects.


Mr. Peter Elzinga (Pembina):: Mr. Speaker, in speaking to the amendments proposed by this Party to Bill C-110, let me do as my colleagues have done and pay tribute to the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). He has made an outstanding contribution in proposing these amendments in order to make sure that we will have better legislation when the debate concludes.
This afternoon we are attempting to present to Members of the Government what we believe to be improvements to the legislation. We can assure the Government that we will continue to speak until a good number of the amendments are accepted for the betterment of this legislation and so that the Government and this Crown corporation will be held more accountable.
In itself, this legislation illustrates the vast difference in approach to governing between the Liberals and this Party. A vast difference exists between the Progressive Conservative Party and the Liberal Party of Canada in regard to accountability. That is proved by the amendments that we have proposed.
We believe that every tax dollar spent on behalf of the Canadian population must be accounted for in this Chamber, rather than through Order in Council where the taxpayer has no input.
We are continually told that Canada is a trading nation; that we must export more; that 30 per cent of our GNP is derived from exports and that this is important for employment. Of course, we agree with that and I assume all Hon. Members do. But the Export Development Corporation attempts to take the approval of Canadians for export activity as approval for itself. We do not believe that the corporation has the right to that glory as there are many players who are involved in developing an export market for Canadian products.
Referring to the Export Development Corporation, Professor Andre Raynauld of the University of Montreal said:
-rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire, and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient.

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Simply from that aspect alone, we believe in the amendments which have been proposed in Motions 3 and 5. Parliament itself must have more say in the direction of this funding. He compared our Export Development Corporation with like corporations and agencies in other exporting countries, and the conclusions which he drew were not favourable.
An extensive study was also done by the Economic Council of Canada, which examined the role of government in business and export financing, under the directorship of Andre Ryba, the director of the financial marketing group. There have been numerous studies, and the majority of them have been very critical of the activities of the Export Development Corporation. When we analyze why the corporation was originally organized, we find it was organized to insure export transactions, in other words, to sell credit insurance on Canadian products, insuring the creditworthiness of their foreign purchasers, together with insuring Canadians against problems with payments from foreign countries. The corporation presently carries on with this business, and in my view that is the most important aspect of the corporation itself. This portion of the business seems to be highly profitable. Indeed, the gross return on the insurance business in the year 1982 was $10,535,000. When you consider that the gross profit before administrative expenses for the entire corporation was only $26.5 million, the insurance business, with very little money involved, represented an excessively large portion of the gross profits of the corporation.
The corporation has been exceptionally hard to deal with for some exporters. First of all, it requires blanket coverage on all of the exporters of foreign business unless a particular country is excluded. Second, the corporation does little to give credit information and it is exceptionally slow in ratifying that information for the new customer of the exporter.
It would appear from the corporation's statement that the number of insurance policies outstanding for global comprehensive insurance was some 853. Presumably this global comprehensive coverage often involves other matters where there are specific insurance transactions, guarantees and the like. But if the total number of transactions or guaranteed arrangements for insurance are added together, there are only 963 policies at year-end. The people buying these policies paid about $14 million in premiums to the corporation. Under no stretch of the imagination can this be deemed to be an extensive export guarantee insurance program. EDC is a small insurance company involved with a relatively small number of clients.
Let us deal next with the loan business. The loan business, financing capital equipment, is handled on two sides. It is handled, first, on EDC's own account and, second, in EDC's special account for the Government of Canada. Let us deal first with its transactions on its own account. Effectively, what happens is that an exporter sells a product like a Twin Otter to a purchaser. The purchaser wants to buy the aircraft on time. The Export Development Corporation gives favourable financing. This financing is concessionary financing, financing that is
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certainly not available in Canada to any domestic purchaser. The money for the financing is organized by the Export Development Corporation, borrowing on the credit of Canada on the international markets to finance the sale of Canadian goods. With the Government as the guarantor, the corporation is able to borrow on the international market where money is cheaper than that which is available to any ordinary commercial borrower. Everyone knows that when you are selling a product, you not only sell the product but you also sell the financing. Financing and pricing are interchangeable. You may pay more for a product if you can finance it at a lower rate of interest. It is clear that the concessionary financing acts as a subsidy to the vendor of products and/or as an inducement to the purchaser of products, and if the concessionary financing in fact costs the exporting country or its citizens money, then the financing acts as a system of foreign aid. On the corporation's own account, the corporation has a total of 596 outstanding loan accounts on its own.
The second item of business which could be charged to the corporation is business which the corporation does on behalf of the Government of Canada. In this respect, the Government of Canada, under the provisions of the Export Development Act, can authorize activity up to $2.5 billion by Order in Council. The consequence is that if the corporation does not like a transaction, then the Governor in Council can provide money by Order in Council up to that total of $2.5 billion, and make the deal directly.
As other Hon. Members have pointed out, Mr. Speaker, the Export Development Corporation maintains classy office facilities in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal and Halifax, together with its head office here in Ottawa. The corporation has some 613 employees, almost ten employees for each separate loan customer, or one and a half employees for each insurance account. Is this not a fine example of productivity? We should be ashamed of that. Again, with this legislation the present Government of Canada is not asking it to be more accountable to Parliament so that, hopefully, we could change that productivity cycle.
In many senses, Mr. Speaker, this corporation is a bureaucracy gone wild, and from that point of view alone we should make sure the activities of that Crown corporation are analyzed and scrutinized more closely by Parliament.


Mr. John A. MacDougall (Timiskaming):: Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour to be able to speak today on such a very important Bill as Bill C-110. As most Hon. Members in the House have done, last week I returned from spending some time in my riding. We have had the opportunity of travelling to all parts of our ridings to listen to the concerns of our constituents.
1 would like to say to you at this time, Mr. Speaker, that one of the questions which was asked of me was, "What power does a Member of Parliament have?" That is one of the concerns that was voiced, whether I was talking to people in the Moosonee area, or down in the Verner area, or in the central part of my riding. What can a Member of Parliament do? I must say to you, Mr. Speaker, at this time, with Bill
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C-l 10 in front of us, it is certainly an opportune time for an Hon. Member from northern Ontario to be able to speak on behalf of his constituents.
When we are looking at a Bill, a Bill which will increase to $62 billion, the amount of money which the EDC can borrow,
I must say to you, Mr. Speaker, that that is a concern. Like most Hon. Members here in the House, today and on Friday 1 received Canada Works Program approval for local employment assistance. On the one hand, the Government is willing to borrow $62 billion and on the other hand it is giving to ridings such as Timiskaming only $229,000 in order to create jobs. Unemployment in northern Ontario, where I come from, is now at 13 per cent. It is the same for my colleagues from the west and my colleagues from the east. How can we tell our people that this Government is going to borrow $62 billion and yet is doing very little for the unemployment situation in this country?
I would like to continue on, Mr. Speaker, and refer again to my riding, the riding of Timiskaming in northern Ontario. Once again we can see that this Government, through the EDC, has financed Inco developments in Indonesia and Guatemala, jeopardizing jobs not only in Sudbury and northern Ontario in general but also in the central part of Canada, the industrial base. I say to you, Sir, that this Government has shown it has no thought for Canadians.
The doubling of the authorized capital of the EDC means it can borrow up to $20 billion. The unemployed people of Canada would certainly enjoy having some of this money put into job creation in this country rather than seeing it leave Canada. In the words of Professor Andre Raynauld of the University of Montreal, the EDC is:
*-rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire and involving Canada in transactions ands negotiations that are both costly ands inefficient.
I would like to refer to a few of those transactions at this time, Mr. Speaker. The EDC has financed forest development projects in Mexico, Poland and Peru, which will compete with the Canadian forest industry. Does everyone here realize the problems we are faced with in the forest industry of Canada? Why is this money not put into our own industry? The EDC helped finance the construction of a monument to the Algerian revolution. Once again, what about Canadians in the forest and mining industry who have been laid off and whose unemployment insurance has run out? Would this money not have been better spent on helping Canadians who are in trouble?
At a time when Government borrowing costs were in the range of 16 per cent, EDC arranged a 9.7 per cent loan for $563 million U.S., or about $700 million Canadian to assist Bombardier in the sale of subway cars to New York city. Forty per cent of the jobs created by this deal are in the United States. Can you imagine, a loan at 9.7 per cent? What about the individuals across this country who have lost their homes, businesses and farms? Would they not have loved to have had money at 9.7 per cent interest? They would still be in
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business today. I can go on and on, Mr. Speaker. Last fall the Auditor General noted that Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of Government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds. Not only are the constituents in my riding and across Canada concerned, but the Auditor General has expressed his concern in his report.
I might say to the Hon. Members on the other side that the concern we have for Canadians is not a laughing matter, Sir.
The private sector role is too weak. The mandate of EDC is to help Canadian exporters. Most Canadian exporters are private sector concerns, while the EDC board is top heavy with bureaucrats. The present Act calls for 12 directors, six of whom are to be public servants. In a letter of May 30 to the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans) the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs wrote that the Government has long held the view that the key ministries which have a direct interest in EDC activities should be members of the board, that is, Mr. Speaker, External Affairs, Finance, the Bank of Canada, CIDA, 1T&C, and DREE. The Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) on June 9, in a letter to the Minister, outlined the Progressive Conservative view on this. He said:
There seems to be, in our view, many Members from the Public Service on the Board. We would concede, perhaps, that there should be someone from Industry, Trade and Commerce; there should be, perhaps, someone from External Affairs; there should be, perhaps, someone from the Department of Finance. Other than that, in our view, the rest of the members of the Board of Directors should be from the private sector.
That is what we believe in, Mr. Speaker. The private sector is the people who will make this country grow. It would certainly do for this Government to take a second look at the concerns in this country.


T.A. Bud Bradley: Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity given to me today to take part in this debate. In initiating my remarks I would like to point out how pleased we are on this side and how thankful we are for the work done by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) on this Bill. He has done a tremendous job in marshalling this Bill through the House and in ensuring that the responsibility is taken by the Government.
I come from a predominantly rural riding, Mr. Speaker, and we are very concerned about the operation of the Economic Development Corporation and about this Bill C-l 10. We have concerns in my riding about the fish industry and what the EDC has done in the past and what it will do in the future. That is a major concern. We are concerned about agriculture, dairy products, tobacco, grain, and even peanuts.
I have a very large industry in my area, Mr. Speaker, the largest steel plant in Canada, Stelco. The last speaker pointed out very ably what the EDC is not doing for organizations such as that. We ask why EDC needs to be expanded and why

September 19, 1983
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it needs this money. What has it done for rural Canada? We are told we have Canagrex to help the agricultural people sell their products abroad. Now we are told that EDC supposedly is working on agricultural sales as well as other export sales. If so, why Canagrex? If Canagrex, why expand EDC? Where do the two come together? We see the need in rural Ontario for assistance in selling our export products, our agricultural and industrial goods, but we would like the Government to get its act together and come with one vehicle to do the job. One doing the job effectively is better than some 300 doing it ineffectively.
We note from page 6 of the nineteenth annual report that the purpose of the EDC is to facilitate and develop Canada's export trade through the provison of insurance guarantees and financing services. The report states, "It exists to help Canadians compete effectively for economically sound exports". I am sure that the Chairman of the flue-cured Tobacco Marketing Board would have liked to have seen that quotation put into effect long ago.
Bill C-110 has two major thrusts. The first is to develop the operational capacity of the Export Development Corporation and, in so doing, the Government seeks to expand the borrowing capacity of the corporation without need for further reference to Parliament and without need for further paid-in capital. The second major thrust of the Bill is to alter the current structure and powers of the board of directors, the number of directors being increased from 12 to 15, and the requirement that six directors be public servants being dropped. However, the Export Development Corporation is not accountable to Parliament now, without the expanded provisions that would make it less accountable. The EDC does not have its spending adequately scrutinized by Parliament. It is not required to table an operating budget, a capital budget or even information on the size of its payroll. It may borrow money in the name of all Canadian taxpayers without seeking parliamentary authority to do so. We wonder why we are elected by our people in our constituencies to come here to ensure accountability in this place, only to find a Government that is expanding corporations and taking away that accountability from individual Members of Parliament. This type of accountability, the Liberal accountability, cannot be allowed to continue. Seven years ago, the Auditor General noted:
In the majority of Crown corporations audited by the Auditor General, financial management and control is weak and ineffective.
Four years ago, the Lambert report noted:
In examining the bewildering array of Crown agencies we have found that existing provisions for classifying them and for accountability for each category have been rendered obsolete.
Last fall, the Auditor General noted:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of Government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
The time has come for meaningful action to be taken to increase the accountability and control of Crown corporations, not to expand willy-nilly as we see being done by the Government. The amendments proposed by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South are a step in that direction, and hopefully not a step that is too big for the Government to take.
Productivity is in question when we consider the expansion of the EDC. In 1982, the 613 employees of the EDC had loan transactions with 62 companies and placed slightly in excess of 900 separate insurance policies. We heard about this earlier today, but it is an unbelievable statement that 613 employees were required to make loan transactions with 62 companies. Last year, the EDC made loans or facilitated bank financing in the amount of $2.5 billion. Of that amount, $1 billion went to Bombardier, $200,000 went to de Havilland, and $100,000 went to Spar Aerospace. Thus, three of the 62 companies that received EDC financing last year received more than half the total money.


Gerald Augustine Regan: How many subcontractors did they have?


T.A. Bud Bradley: As well, the EDC has not always conducted transactions that are in the best interests of Canadian taxpayers and their children. One of the things we heard today concerned EDC's financing of Inco developments in Indonesia, jeapardizing the jobs in Sudbury and Manitoba. As well, we heard that the EDC has financed forest development projects in Mexico, Poland and Peru, developments that will compete with Canadian forest products. We heard about EDC financing of the construction of a monument to the Algerian revolution. At a time when Government borrowing costs were in the range of 16 per cent, the EDC arranged a 9.7 per cent loan of $653 million U.S., which is about $700 million in Canadian funds, to assist Bombardier in the sale of subway cars to New York City. Forty per cent of the jobs created by this deal were in the United States.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame.


T.A. Bud Bradley: The farmers of my country and my riding would have loved the Farm Credit Corporation to come down and offer us money at 7 per cent, under the going rate. Those jobs would have been in Canada, by Canadians.
The recent Economic Council report entitled "Intervention and Efficiency" devotes a whole chapter to the subject of export financing and the EDC. The thrust of the report is to scale down and reorientate the EDC, not to augment it. Seven of the report's 31 recommendations pertained to the EDC. The Economic Council found that few credit and insurance gaps exist in Canada. It questioned whether or not EDC needs to be involved in insurance and in financing when the private sector is able to meet the need. The Economic Council recommended that the EDC do less direct financing and that the private sector do more.
A major question in the minds of many of us is whether the EDC is effective in its role. Canada is a trading nation. We have heard that 30 per cent of our Gross National Product is
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earned through trade, and that figure would be much higher if we had our fair share of world trade.
In 1968, the year that the Trudeau Government took office, Canada's share of world trade was 5.74 per cent. By 1981, this figure had fallen to 3.8 per cent. I see that Your Honour is signalling that my allotted time is about to expire. I have just a couple more points that I would like to put across if I could have unanimous support of the House.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Patterson):: The Hon. Member seeks unanimous consent. Is the House agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


T.A. Bud Bradley: Thank you so very much, Mr. Speaker. I would like to thank my colleagues on the other side for offering me this opportunity to carry on to make a couple of small points. I will try to bring it to a point-


David Charles Dingwall: Be nice.


T.A. Bud Bradley: -and be nice to the Government, as I am being requested.
As I was saying, in 1968 Canada's share of world trade was 5.74 per cent. In 1981, the figure had fallen to 3.8 per cent. In 1968, Canadians exported more than the Japanese, yet today Japan's share of world trade is now twice that of Canada's.
The PC Party is dedicated to improving Canada's trade performance. It is not, however, dedicated to perpetuating the existing lack of accountability and control that characterizes the EDC and other Crown corporations. We will support the EDC if it becomes more accountable. We will support any corporation that assists us in export trade if it is more accountable. However, the track record is not that good. Including loan guarantees and other aid, Ottawa lost $125 million as a consequence of its attempt to prop up Consolidated Computer during the 1970s. The Government's financial commitment to de Havilland to date totals $751 million. The Government's financial commitment to Canadair to date totals $1,836 million. In 1982, Canadair lost $1.4 billion, the largest corporate loss in Canadian history. It even went down to a level where an Alaskan State Senator was sentenced to three years in jail for accepting and purchasing a bribe in relation to the potential purchase of a Canadair water bomber. However, the salesman was finally dismissed by Canadair, not for his alleged involvement in the bribe but, rather, because after four years as an employee of Canadair, he had not made a single sale.
We find that in February, 1981, CNR spent $64,244 to purchase advertising space wishing the CPR, its chief competitor, a happy birthday. In 1977, the CBC spent $2 million for radio and television stations valued at only $800,000. In February of 1981, Petro-Canada purchased Petrofina for about $1.46 billion, or $120 a share. At the time of the purchase the shares were trading for $90, or $30 less per share then paid by Petro-Canada. In November, 1982, as revealed by the Globe and Mail, Petro-Canada paid rent for eight
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months on a vacant 24-storey office building in Calgary. On the day that the Post Office became a Crown corporation, the Government helped employees celebrate by providing $300,000 worth of free coffee, doughnuts and souvenir envelopes.
That is why we on this side are concerned about the accountability of Crown corporations. That is why we are moving these amendments to make the Export Development Corporation more responsible. We hope that our colleagues on the other side of the House and to our left will agree with us when we say that we must become more responsible in the House and that we must do it by starting now with Bill C-110.


Mr. Otto Jelinek (Halton):: Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying that I personally very much support the Export Development Corporation per se. It is obvious that Canadian businesses, particularly the small business sector, need assistance to export their products. Our market in Canada is sufficiently competitive to be able to compete in the world market. The Export Development Corporation, through Bill C-110 amending the Export Development Act, does not address itself to assisting the export of Canadian goods abroad. In fact, there are a number of examples which show how these amendments are detrimental to the Canadian business climate and Canada as a whole.
While my colleagues have been talking about the lack of accountability, which is probably the most important issue in this regard and which I will return to in a few moments, there are other issues as well. For example, the role of the private sector is too weak. As well, EDC is poorly managed.
Let me give a few examples of what the EDC has done in past years. For examples, the EDC has financed lnco developments in Indonesia and Guatemala, thus jeopardizing jobs in Sudbury and Manitoba. It has financed forest development projects in Mexico, Poland and Peru, developments that will compete with Canadian forest products. The EDC helped finance the construction of a monument to the Algerian revolution. Imagine that! At a time when Government borrowing costs were in the range of 16 per cent, the EDC arranged a 9.7 per cent loan of $563 million U.S., which is approximately $700 million Canadian, to assist Bombardier in the sales of subway cars to New York city. Forty per cent of jobs created by this deal are in the United States and not in Canada. The list of bad deals by the EDC goes on. It is unbelievable that there will not be a decrease of the bureaucratic involvement in running the EDC.
By now all Canadians must surely know that the more bureaucrats involved in a business venture, Crown corporation or any form of agency or business, the worse that organization will operate. One need look no further than Canada Post to see that it is not very profitable, being an organization run by bureaucrats and the Government. While the list goes on, I have only ten minutes and I must move on to other areas.
One difficulty is the fact that the private sector is not involved. Let me quote the following passage from the Economic Council of Canada from its report entitled "Intervention and Efficency":

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Canada is perhaps the country with the least private sector participation in export financing decisions.
It went on to say:
In most of the 17 countries studied, the negotiations for granting export credit are also left to the private sector.
The private sector must participate more in the decisionmaking process of the EDC. The Liberals, however, believe that the bureaucrats who govern most govern best.
Surely Canadians have found out by now that this is not the case. Canada was built on the free enterprise system, on the initiative of the private sector and on the risk-taking of the small and medium-sized businesses, not organizations such as EDC being run by bureaucrats.
I return to my original statement to say that 1 support the EDC in itself, but instead of increasing the percentage of bureaucrats it is time to increase it with private sector participation. The main shortcoming of this Bill is the lack of accountability to Parliament and to the taxpayers. Let us not forget that it is the tax dollars that are being used, and therefore the taxpayer should have the absolute right to know exactly what is going on. The Export Development Corporation is not accountable to Parliament. It is not required to table an operating budget, a capital budget and information on the size of its payroll. It can borrow money in the name of Canadian taxpayers and their children without seeking parliamentary authority to do so.
Let us examine the track record of a Crown corporation which the Government trusts so implicitly with Canadian taxpayers' hard earned money as a glaring example of a bureaucracy going wild. The EDC has 10 employees for every loan customer. It issues insurance policies at an annual rate of 1.5 policies per employee. While the actual profit of EDC last year of $1 million sounds very large, that $1 million profit was on a capital of $691 million, which is a rate of return of less than one-tenth of one per cent. No private sector business could exist on less than one-tenth of one per cent profit.
As well as making numerous unsound loans to foreign countries, some of which I have pointed out, many export orders have been lost because of the corporation's inability to match financing from other sources. An example of this is the loss of a $17 million export order to build an iron foundry in Saudi Arabia because of EDC's stiff requirements for financial guarantees from the buyer and more attractive financing terms from a West German company. Other examples are available to Members and to the public at large.
The PC amendment to the Export Development Act calls for a reduction of authorized capital for the corporation from $2 billion to $1 billion. Even after the amendment, this is still 50 per cent more than the paid-in capital of its American counterpart, the Export-Import Bank of the United States. If the Export-Import Bank can carry out its responsibilities without the amount of money this Government is asking for, then it is imperative that we, as elected representatives of the Canadian people who are being asked to finance this venture, demand of the Government why this additional funding is
needed and, more important, where it is going and how it is getting there.
Who will reap the benefits of this money grab? According to the Economic Council of Canada:
Large corporations are the big winners in the export subsidy game. It's a myth that loan subsidies from the EDC are mostly aimed at giving exports that initial push or assisting small and medium-sized companies.
That is a myth. Unfortunately, it is always the same large corporations that benefit from EDC assistance. I can prove that very quickly by simply stating that last year the EDC loaned the sum of $2.5 billion. Out of that $2.5 billion, $1 billion went to Bombardier, $200,000 went to de Havilland and $100,000 went to Spar Aerospace. This means that three out of the 62 companies that received EDC financing last year received more than half ot the total money. What is happening to the part of the private sector which needs assistance most, namely the small and medium-sized business sector? Once again it has been ignored by this legislation and the amendments to it. Not only is it being ignored but it is being damaged and hampered by the fact that this Government continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars upon hundreds of millions of dollars in attempting to assist the so-called very large often multi-national conglomerates by letting small and medium-sized businesses drop dead right and left.
A recent survey about jobs concluded that between 350,000 and 400,000 jobs a year in the past two years, have been lost in the small and medium-sized business sector. Does the Government come up with any employment tax incentives for small and medium-sized business? No, Sir, It is busily bailing out Canadair, Massey-Ferguson, Chrysler, multinationals-some of them not even Canadian-owned-Maislin and Dome Petroleum. Hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars are being spent, and the Liberal Government has the audacity to say that it is creating temporary make-work projects in Canada at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the taxpayer. What kind of temporary make-work projects are they? They are unproductive, costly and temporary. That is just what they are, temporary rather than permanent. It is in the small and medium-sized business sector that full-time jobs can and should be created. Small and medium-sized companies are the ones that create the most jobs by far, yet we are seeing a dramatic decrease of employment in that sector. Small and medium-sized companies can export just as easily as large companies if only there were some form of assistance by the Government.
Let me quote from the Auditor General's report of last fall on accountability. It reads:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framwork that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
Broad legislation for the accountability of Crown-owned corporations should be developed that will include provisions relating to each of the elements of authorizing and mandate financing, directing, controlling and reporting. Such
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legislation should provide that these corporations be subject to comprehensive audits.
Parliament should give attention to issues surrounding control and accountability of those mixed enterprises and other entities and associates in which the Crown is a shareholder.
The time for reports and discussion has passed. The time has come for meaningful action to be taken to increase the accountability and control of Crown corporations. The PC amendments to Bill C-l 10 are a step in this direction.


Frank Oberle: Mr. Speaker, I would like to add a few words to this debate to show my concern over what the Government has proposed in terms of the rearrangement of the Export Development Corporation.
I do not have to reiterate what many of my colleagues have said about the lack of control exercised over this particular monster of a bureaucracy. The EDC does not have to come to Parliament for prior approval of its spending. It does not come to Parliament with a statement of its activities. That is understandable in a sense because many of the negotiations carried out by this corporation have to be kept confidential as a result of the potential commercial interest involved.
As we know from the amendments we have tabled to this Bill, Mr. Speaker, we feel there could be much better accountability to Parliament of this corporation's activities. Having said that, like my colleague the Hon. Member for Halton (Mr. Jelinek), I am equally concerned over the track record of the EDC, particularly since it appears to be that only large, usually multinational, corporations benefit from the loan guarantees or the high-risk loans being made. In other words, it would appear that those companies mostly held together by the strings attached to the regulations and the wisdom of the Government-those companies which have an open door to powerful offices in Ottawa-are the ones considered for these kinds of guarantees.
No one would argue that this kind of lending facility is necessary. No one would argue that because of the importance of international trade to our economy we must have some kind of an institution to facilitate this trade, particularly in a world where our private institutions are not very effective in accepting their responsibility. They should be making it possible for domestic industries to have the necessary financial instruments to pursue aggressively market opportunities offshore. In fact, when it comes to the small and medium-sized businesses, I would also venture to say that our financial institutions, the banks are not acting very responsibly in fulfilling their mandate to make sure our small and medium-sized businesses have the necessary venture and risk capital available so as to maintain a healthy domestic economy. Nor will the money available from our banks provide our small and medium-sized businesses with the means to venture and seek out export opportunities.
Canada is a trading nation, as my colleagues have said. Thirty per cent of our Gross National Product is earned through trade. It can be said that we no longer live in a perfect world. It is becoming increasingly difficult for any nation, particularly a highly industrialized nation such as Canada, to
Export Development Act
compete in world markets. Many things have happened since 1968 when Canada had 5.74 per cent of world trade. Canada now has only about 3.8 per cent of world trade.
We have seen the evolution of trading blocks, not just among industrial countries, the EEC probably being the most important. We have also seen trading blocks emerging in the developing world. There is the South American trading block, and trading arrangements in the Asian countries are factors that now have to be put into the equation and that inhibit the trade of a country that likes to consider itself a free trader, economically, politically and culturally independent. That is why we have often said we should not be afraid to look at the potential of joining in a North American economic trading arrangement. It could include Mexico and Canada, together with the United States. It would give us access to a trading bloc which is about the right size in terms of economy of scale in comparison with some of the other trading blocs with whom we have to compete.
Also we see a great drive toward state to state trading. Some industrial countries, which do not enjoy our particular political system but have integrated and centrally controlled economies, prefer state to state trading. They use this arrangement as an effective tool to blackmail western countries. I use that word advisedly; that is exactly what is happening. In other words, communist and socialist countries like to tell our traders that if they could change their political system and the state could show a greater degree of ownership in the economy so that there could be state to state trading, they would open the doors and make themselves accessible. We ought to be very careful not to fall for that trap. We know that during the energy crisis certain arrangements were made. It was the excuse for Petro-Canada to be incorporated. We needed access to supplies from some countries which used that political tool very effectively. That is why we had to have a state oil company to deal with other states in terms of international trade.
We are on a very slippery slope. When we look at this particular Bill and the role of the Export Development Corporation in terms of facilitating international trade on behalf of Canadian industries, we ought to keep that in mind. For example, EEC purchased about 5 per cent of its nickel requirements from the Soviet Union. In one year, last year, that percentage went from 5 per cent to 20 per cent. The state to state relationship, particularly in the European economic sense, had something to do with this. At least it was partially the result of having a nickel industry in Canada, which at one point literally dominated the world market, reduced to roughly a 15 per cent or 20 per cent share. Some of the nickel we are not selling has been stockpiled and has caused disruptions in the production of nickel, such as the shutting down of mines and unrest. The policies of the Government through the EDC have developed new production facilities in other parts of the world at the expense of Canadian workers and the Canadian industry.

September 19, 1983
Export Development Act
These are some of the distortions in the marketplace to which we have to react. The Export Development Corporation is a tool that could be used intelligently and innovatively to help our industries compete. Unfortunately, according to the record, large corporations are helped by the EDC. Usually such corporations are totally integrated. As my colleague indicated earlier, they are of a size which literally prevents them from going broke because the failure of any of these large corporations impacts on the total economy and because of the heavy exposure of the banks to them. Quite often throughout the debate we have expressed our concern about corporate takeovers or corporate cannibalism, as I like to call it. As a result of the bail-out business in which the Government has been involved over the last couple of years, large corporate entities are literally dictating and controlling the economic fortunes of the country. If they get into difficulty, they simply come to Government and say, "You cannot afford politically to let us go down because of the impact on the total economy". In some cases banks are coming to the Government together with their clients and saying, "One of us might have to go down with this company, so we have no choice but to bail it out".
We do not wish the EDC to be a lender of last resort instead of companies being bailed out in the normal fashion where Ministers have to come before the House to bare their souls. We do not want behind the scenes dealings involving the Export Development Corporation which, as I said earlier, does not report to Parliament; we would never know of the bail-out.
I am concerned with the incredible contingent liability which the corporation is permitted to chalk up on behalf of Canadian taxpayers. I am concerned for my children because they may have to pay back some of these liabilities some day. That should be of concern to us all. The average listener to today's debate should know that the measures in the Bill increase the high risk transactions of the corporation from $3.5 billion to $10 billion and loan guarantees from $2.5 billion to $10 billion. I want the Government to understand that this must be a concern to us. We would prefer to have these measures properly studied and discussed with the private industry, which deserves a larger role in deciding the activities of the EDC. This is not built into the Bill. We do not think the private sector has a large enough say in what the corporation does. Quite frankly, average Canadian citizens would prefer a measure such as this being brought in by a government in which they have more trust and confidence than the present Government.


Mr. Huntington:: Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that there is only one minute remaining, I wonder if I might call it six o'clock.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: It is understood that the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) has been recognized for debate and therefore will be automatically recognized tomorrow at eleven o'clock. Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

William C. Scott: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to address the House again on the subject of the negative impact of federal taxation on Canadian oil prices.
When I first raised this matter before the summer recess I was told by the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) that the federal Government does not control the price of gasoline at the pumps. I would suggest that it has much more control over the retail price of gasoline than it has over the many Crown corporations it has established over the past few years. I was also told that gasoline pricing agreements are not negotiated with a view to what taxes provincial Governments place on gasoline. In other words, the decisions on pricing and federal taxation are made without consideration of the end cost to Canadian consumers.
Recently it was revealed by a combines branch lawyer that Imperial Oil took complete control over the retail prices charged by Suny's Limited, one of its agents, last Spring to end the gasoline wars in Ontario. In August of this year, another price hike took place. The industry maintained that a shortage of gasoline was behind this increase.
The director of the combines branch investigated this increase and found no evidence of price fixing or of the industry's claim of a shortage. Both instances were investigated by officials of the federal Government. Obviously the Government felt it had the authority to investigate. If it has no ability to control prices, then why is it trying to do so?
It is obvious the producers and retailers are not making undue profits from gas wars and general price fluctuations. On September 15, the Toronto Star quoted Rick Hallisey of First Manhattan Securities Limited as saying, and I quote:
It s so bad that I think by the end of the year, Canada's chartered banks will collectively become the largest owners of drilling rigs in the country, directly through foreclosures or indirectly by becoming shareholders in troubled companies.
With only a few cents per gallon profit, the retailer is doing little better. The largest share of the price of a gallon is still going to Government taxes. This being the case, the federal Government must acknowledge its share of the blame for unduly high prices and price discrepancies across the country.
A look at the immense damage done to our tourist industry this summer alone by the high cost of gasoline should be enough to cause a review of the oil taxing policies. I understand that in eastern Ontario the number of tourists was down
September 19, 1983

this summer by somewhere over 7 per cent. This was the best summer we have had weatherwise for years. It is time for the Government to show by example that it wants to keep energy prices down.


David Charles Dingwall: Mr. Speaker, I want to take issue with some of the comments made by the Hon. Member. He is forgetting a number of factual points. For example, when the Minister indicated to him in Question Period that the Government of Canada does not control the price at the pumps he was quite correct. However, the Hon. Member refuses on all occasions to accept the fact that the provincial Governments in this country have a very prominent role to play in the pricing of gasoline. Through their various treasuries they have the opportunity to place excise taxes on gasoline. In my own Province of Nova Scotia, that is very excessive. However, it has been a tactic in this House for Members of the Opposition, particularly the Conservative Opposition, to lay the blame for prices which may be inflated from time to time at the door of the Government of Canada.
I would like to point out an inconsistency in the Hon. Member's statement of May 27 relative to the Government role. On the one hand he complained that the Government has too much control over the price of gasoline. On the other hand, he used selected low and high prices to imply that the Government was not sufficiently involved in the marketplace. The point to be emphasized in relation to his confusion is that there is no direct Government involvement in the retail gasoline marketing process in either Canada or the United States.
The total of federal taxes on a litre of gasoline sold in the Province of Ontario is 8.63 cents, not 60 cents a gallon as claimed by the Hon. Member. In the Province of Ontario, the federal Government receives about 18.8 per cent while the "big blue machine" of Bill Davis in the Province of Ontario receives 28.6 per cent. Of course, industry receives 52.6 per cent. There is quite a difference between what is received by the federal Government, the provincial Government and the industry.
1 have to repeat, however, that the Hon. Member and other Tory Members from Ontario are using this argument in such a way that all the facts are not being put before the Canadian people. Let us recognize, once and for all, that the provincial Governments-the so-called good guys, as the Hon. Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney) would designate them-have a responsibility as well. It is to them that the mass of Tory Members should look. They should try to have the provincial Premiers reduce their excise taxes to a level comparable to that imposed by the Government of Canada.


VETERANS AFFAIRS-REQUEST THAT COMMEMORATIVE MEDAL BE STRUCK TO HONOUR DIEPPE VETERANS
Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, June 23, 1 asked the Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Adjournment Debate
Campbell) why the Government did not strike a medal or at least provide a black ribbon for the courageous Canadians who served in the Battle of Dieppe. The Minister replied, as shown
at page 26720 of Hansard as follows:
Madam Speaker, traditionally medals are struck to commemorate participation in campaigns, not usually for participation in specific battles.
1 realize that medals are normally and usually struck to commemorate campaigns, but Dieppe was not a normal or usual battle; it was a very special battle insofar as Canada is concerned. The battle of Dieppe in 1942 involved 6,000 soldiers, 5,000 of whom were Canadian troops. In addition, eight RCAF squadrons participated by adding air support. There were 3,000 Canadian casualties, including 907 Canadians killed and 1,946 Canadians taken as prisoners of war. This unusual invasion of the continent by Canadian Forces should be sufficient reason for special consideration.
This sacrifice of so many Canadian lives was not without benefit; from the lessons learned at Dieppe thousands of human lives were saved in the D-Day invasion which took place two years later. This saving of human lives in the battle that took place some two years later is unusual too and, therefore, another valid reason for striking a medal.
Canada has a small population compared to those of many other countries in the world, and the fact that 5,000 Canadians and eight RCAF squadrons formed the core of the invading force at Dieppe in a world-wide war, with many giving their lives and many others suffering for the balance of their lives from wounds, is good reason to veer from the usual and to strike a medal or at least provide a black ribbon.
The rule is that medals are struck to commemorate campaigns. If there were no exceptions we would not require a rule, and certainly the battle at Dieppe, headed by Canadians, the casualties that Canadians suffered, and the thousands of lives of allied forces that were saved in the D-Day invasion, provide sound reasons for making this exception to the usual rule.
Dieppe-manned by courageous Canadians-stands out predominantly as a Canadian star shining for freedom for the peoples of the world. I urge the Minister of Veterans Affairs to strike a medal for the Canadians who participated so nobly in the battle of Dieppe. By doing so, no one will be hurt and these splendid Canadians will be properly recognized.


Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Mr. Speaker, first of all I want to reiterate the statement of the Minister of Veterans Affairs, namely, that traditionally in Canada medals are struck to commemorate participation in campaigns and not usually for participation in specific battles. It is true that in the last century, bars were added to campaign ribbons to commemorate certain battles. For instance, participants in that particularly disastrous battle for the British Empire at Inkerman, received a bar to the Crimean war ribbon with the name "Inkerman" engraved on it. I would like to make the point that when a medal is struck, a distinctive ribbon is designed with it, but traditionally ribbons are not struck independently.

September 19, 1983
Adjournment Debate
The point the Hon. Member is making about the significance of the Battle of Dieppe is certainly well taken. It is especially meaningful to a Hamiltonian who continues to grieve the loss of 197 fellow citizens and the wounding of 78 others from the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry Regiment. On the other hand, it must be remembered that Canadian servicemen contributed very significantly to other battles, such as the D-Day invasion in which at least three times as many Canadian servicemen participated and incured as many casualties as at Dieppe; the crossing of the Rhine, the Battle of the Falaise Gap, the battle for Caen, all in northwest Europe, and not to forget the Italian campaign in which many significant battles were fought.
When one looks at the wonderful record of Canadians in World War II, and also in World War I, such as the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where the Canadian Army suffered casualties in excess of 50,000 men, the whole question of what action should be given additional recognition becomes very complicated.
However, the matter was settled in 1951. Canada, Britain and all the other Commonwealth countries agreed that no further recognition would be made for action which had taken place during World War II.


CANADA LABOUR CODE-PROTECTION OF WORKERS' HEALTH- INTRODUCTION OF AMENDING LEGISLATION. (B) TIMING OF INTRODUCTION OF AMENDING LEGISLATION
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I rise at this time to again speak about an item which I have brought up in this House a number of times, most recently on June 16, 1983, three months ago. At that time I asked the former minister of labour when we would be getting legislation to protect the workers who come under federal jurisdiction. We were promised over three years ago that there would be changes to Part IV of the Canada Labour Code and that in those changes there would be more protection for workers who come under federal jurisdiction.
As one individual in this House of Commons, and I think I speak for many others, I am concerned that this Government has been in power for over three years now, that we have been told over and over again that we would be getting new legislation and yet we still have not had the legislation presented to this House. We have not even been given details by the Department as to what might be in the legislation.
In contrast to that, Mr. Speaker, I would like to tell the House what the New Democratic Party has done. After the 1980 election we set up a special task force which went to all parts of this country. We made a report over a year ago called "Graveyard Shifts, or Life and Death at the Workplace". We made recommendations which I think the federal Government should be following, first, that all workplace jurisdiction which is covered by the federal level should come under the auspices of one department, not the 17 different departments and agencies which are now responsible for various aspects of occupational health and safety.
We also suggested that workers should have the right to know what is in their workplace in terms of chemicals and pollutants. They must know the dangers which exist in their workplace. They should also have a right to participate in the changes and improvements which should take place at the various work sites. Finally, of course, they should have a right to refuse work which is dangerous and threatening to their health.
I recognize, Mr. Speaker, coming from the mining industry, that work is always dangerous. But in some instances, some work is more dangerous. When that is the case I think the worker must know what the dangers are and be in a position to try and change that where it is possible to do so. When the danger persists, the workers must have the right to refuse to work in that particular circumstance without losing income or losing their employment altogether.
One of the aspects of the legislation we think must be presented to this House, and must be presented quickly, is that the federal Government must provide adequate testing to make sure we know what substances contain; the chemicals and the pollutants which are coming into the workplace on a daily basis. Right now these workers do not know what they are dealing with. They do not know what is in the paint, the tar or the chemicals in the workplace. They do not know what the harmful effects of those chemical pollutants might be. That is an area in which the federal Government can do testing. If you leave it to each of the Provinces, a Province like P.E.I. which may only have 10 or 20 people working in a certain industry, obviously that testing cannot take place. However, in the country as a whole, where there may be 2,000 or 3,000 people in a particular industry, the federal Government is in a better position to do some basic testing to provide for increased knowledge on the part of workers.
Those are the concerns I have, Mr. Speaker. I ask again that the Government proceed with this legislation as soon as possible and that we not be told again by the Minister or his representatives that we should pass the legislation as soon as possible even though we have yet to see it. Rather, the Government should work with the Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party to provide legislation which will protect our workers' lives. I think that is a goal this House should set for itself, a non-partisan goal for Members of all three Parties.


Mr. Antonio Yanakis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Labour):: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for bringing this matter to the attention of the House. The Government hopes to introduce a Bill to amend the Canada Labour Code early in the next session of Parliament. Part IV of the Canada Labour Code addresses occupational safety in health and, in general, applies to employment and working conditions in industries, businesses and Crown agencies that are subject to the legislative authority of the Parliament of Canada.
September 19, 1983

The amendments to part IV of the Canada Labour Code are intended to continue the initiatives of 1978. At that time the federal Government was one of the first jurisdictional authorities to introduce the assured right to refuse dangerous work and joint participation in safety and health committees. These continued initiatives will include, we hope, a representative advisory council on occupational safety and health, mandatory provisions for joint safety and health committees or worker selected safety and health representatives in all workplaces, an increased emphasis on the rights and duties of employers and employees, and other requirements associated with modern day concepts and principles concerning occupational safety and health.
The Committees would permit a formal avenue of communication, Mr. Speaker, by which the worker and his employer could act co-operatively to ensure a safe and healthy workplace. The promotion of joint participation by labour and management on occupational safety and health issues supports the current concept of self compliance or regulation which will, to a certain extent, permit the third party safety officer to concentrate more fully on program support activities.
Part IV is currently subject to any other Act of the Parliament of Canada and this can create confusion for workers and employers. For example, in the federal jurisdiction there are nine federal departments or agencies administering 16 separate Acts that are concerned in varying degrees with safety and health. The significant departments and agencies include MOT, CTC, AECB, EMR and the Treasury Board.
Part IV currently extends to approximately 600,000 workers in the federal jurisdiction but does not apply to approximately 100,000 employees who are subject to other Acts.
Adjournment Debate
With respect to the Ocean Ranger, the subject of offshore jurisdiction is a complex one, and until the Hickman Royal Commission tables its report it would be premature to comment.
The 250,000 public servants are subject to the occupational safety and health policies and standards established by Treasury Board which are administered on the board's behalf by Labour Canada for occupational safety, and Health and Welfare Canada for occupational health. It is certainly the view of the Government and the Minister of Labour (Mr. Ouellet) in particular to ensure equal and adequate occupational safety health protection for all workers, be they protected by the Canada Labour Code or any other statute. The Hon. Member should know that those employees who are not subject to the protection of Part IV are generally protected by a variety of other statutes and regulations administered by other federal authorities.
It is the intention of the Government to develop the most effective and economical arrangements for ensuring occupational safety and health protection for all federal workers. The Minister of Labour, together with his colleagues and respective officials, are examining the existing arrangements to that end.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock.
At 6.20 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Tuesday, September 20, 1983