1983-01-24

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Thursday, January 20, 1983, consideration of Bill C-133, an Act to amend the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2), as reported (without amendment) from the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates; and the motion of Mr. Gray (p. 21886) and the motion of Mr. Baker (Nepean-Carleton) (p. 21889).
Mr. Jim Manly (Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands):: Mr. Speaker, 1 welcome this opportunity to take part with other Members of my Party in the debate on Bill C-133, which would have the very negative result of capping the indexation on Public Service pensions at 6 per cent for this year and 5 per cent for next year.
The amendment, which purports to increase this capping to 6.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent, is really no answer to the problem at all, proposing what would amount to a ten cents a day increase. However, it is the Liberal's approach by which they hope they can somehow save their electoral skins. 1 believe that the people and public servants of Canada are much smarter than to accept this miserable half per cent solution, because they recognize the basic principle involved here.
Basically, what the debate is all about is whether or not the Government should have the right to break contracts and promises, promises which were made several years ago, promises that the public workers entered into in good faith-


An Hon. Member:: Paid for.


James Douglas Manly: -and promises that they paid for, very definitely-
The Government sees pensions, I suppose, as being a privilege which it, in a paternalistic manner, can give out to public workers, rather than as being a right earned and paid for by these same workers down through the years. It is interesting to note that the Government has not always seen it this way. When it has suited its purposes, it has seen the virtue of indexing.
Perhaps the most eloquent statement of indexing was contained in a letter dated October 12, 1977, from the Prime
Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to the President of the Union of National Defence Employees. The Prime Minister stated:
In our society, pensions provide a means of sharing risk so that we can retire in reasonable security and dignity, without fear of the future. Protecting pensions from inflation by indexing them to increases in the cost of living should be an integral part of our pension schemes. Indexing does not give pensioners an increasingly larger claim on our economy's production, that is, more money to buy things they could not earlier afford. Rather, indexing merely enables pensioners to maintain, roughly, their same standard of living.
He goes on:
Even a modest rate of inflation destroys, at a devastating rate, the buying power of people on fixed incomes. Pensioners are out of the workforce and cannot bargain or strike for larger incomes. They are not the cause of inflation; they are its victim. We have an obligation to help protect them.
Like so many of the other Government obligations, this is one they are reneging on. It is true that pensioners cannot bargain. They cannot strike. They have very little leverage with this Government except when it comes time to vote. We can be pretty sure how they are going to be voting the next time around, and it is not going to be for a Government which has introduced this kind of action. The actions of the Government at this time do not match the eloquence of the Prime Minister six years earlier.
When we look at the record of the Tories, what do we find? We find, as I mentioned earlier, that they are doing the hesitation waltz with the Government, the six and five hesitation waltz. When this proposal was first introduced in the budget last year, the Tories welcomed it. It is a step in the right direction. They moved in with that step. Then when they saw the implications this had for the voters they changed their tune and moved back a little bit. It was interesting to note last week that when they had a real opportunity to oppose this measure, they were right back in there with the Government. When they had a real opportunity to delay this legislation, they missed it. It is interesting to note that the Tories held up the business of this House for 15 days to defend oil company profits, but they were not willing to do so for 15 minutes for the rights of pensioners.
1 have received a lot of correspondence from people in my constituency on this issue. As I mentioned earlier, the part of the world in which I live is a very attractive place for people to live and also to retire. The people who have retired in my area are not rich or well off but most of them do hope that they can retire in a modest degree of dignity and comfort. They find the

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present actions of the Government seriously erode and undermine these hopes. One of my constituents on one of the Gulf islands wrote to me as follows:
It is simply to remind those whom it may concern that as a civil servant I paid for an indexed pension out of my salary at the rate set by the Government and I had no choice. I did my part and feel I should be able to expect the Government, as my employer at that time, to come through with the pension as promised.
Furthermore, I retired six years before I reached compulsory age for retirement, thus providing a job for another individual. I did not have to do this-if the Government renege on their promise, do I get compensated for this, I wonder?
Of course he does not need to wonder, because there is no compensation. Another writer says:
If the trust and confidence which have protected the pensions of federal superannuates for a century are broken down on this occasion, what will stop the present Government or any future Government attacking pensions whenever they are short of funds? Don't change the rules of the game in the middle of the game.
I think that this writer, like others who have written to me and to other Members of this House, is right. He understands the basic situation. Here the Government is breaking promises, breaking contracts, and what guarantee do these people have that these contracts will not be broken again and again in the future?
The Chairman of the Victoria Organization for Indexed Pensions raised some interesting questions in a letter he wrote to me. He writes:
If our pensioners were paid from the pockets of the taxpayer, the legislation might have some validity. This, however, is not the case. Since 1924 the sums deducted from the pay of employees and the interest on their contributions have been greater than the total payout in pensions and indexing combined. Federal public servants have always paid for their pensions through a TVi per cent deduction on their salaries. Even without the matching employer contribution, the plan is self-sufficient and multiplying at a phenomenal rate.
We public servants have willingly paid our high premiums over the years because we honestly felt we would receive a worth-while pension on retirement.
I say in conclusion, Mr. Speaker, that we oppose this Bill. The amendment is inadequate. The one-half per cent solution does not solve the basic problem. I urge the Government to withdraw this Bill from the Order Paper and, as our House Leader urged, get the committee out across the country to hear what the people have to say about it. Then the whole issue will be dropped altogether.


Mr. Terry Sargeant (Selkirk-Interlake):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome again the opportunity to speak on this piece of legislation, Bill C-133. There is no doubt that this Bill is unjust. In fact, the Government's whole six and five program is unjust and that fact will not be changed by the Government's amendment to Bill C-133, such that the limits on pension increases become six and a half per cent and five and a half per cent for the next two years. The Government's whole six and five program is a snow job.
It has been shown time and time again that inflation is not the result of the incomes of working Canadians or the incomes of pensioners. In fact, incomes have fallen behind the rate of inflation for the last four years, so what is the purpose of the six and five program? It is to save the Government's political hide by creating the impression that something is being done
about inflation. At the same time it is to lead the way in attacking the incomes of working Canadians and of our old age pensioners, to free up more capital for the corporate brethren of the Liberals and Tories.
The Tories, those masters of political gamesmanship, have made a great show of opposing the six and five cap on pensions and Family Allowances. They know that to support what, in effect, amounts to pension cuts and cuts in Family Allowances is no way out of the political wilderness. How genuine is that opposition, Mr. Speaker? When the Government brought in the six and five program with its June budget last year, it was made all too clear that the six and five program would be more than just wage controls for Public Service employees. We knew then that the whole scope of this illusory anti-inflationary program would include a reduction in real pension incomes and Family Allowances over the next two years.
The Tories, anxious to gain the favour of their corporate bosses, eager to capitalize on the right-wing penchant for attacking Government employees, stood four square behind the Government's wage control program, and I suppose they reaped some good political mileage for doing that. When it comes time, though, to pay the price for that mileage, all of a sudden they have discovered a social conscience. The six and five program will mean a reduction, in real terms, for pensioners and for mothers. Now these Tories have found something they might be able to squeeze more mileage from. They decided to make a great show of their newly found opposition to the six and five program.
Last Thursday we saw just how far the Tories were willing to go in their opposition to capping Public Service pensions at 6 and 5 per cent. Our House Leader rose last Thursday to introduce an adjournment motion because he knew there was a chance to delay this Bill long enough to see at least one pension cheque go out with an increase which reflects the cost of living. But the Tories, who were only too eager to keep the bells ringing for 15 days last spring in order to come to the aid of their friends in the oil companies to ensure their profits, could not find their way to do something similar for old age pensioners. Fifteen days for oil company profits, Mr. Speaker. Fifteen minutes for old age pensioners. That is Tory priority for you. If they had stayed out for even a half an hour the pension cheques which will go out tomorrow would have been at the level negotiated by the Public Service employees and the Government. Half an hour, is that too much to ask? Instead, the Tories discovered a new desire to see Parliament respond quickly to the Government's desire to push through its legislation. I can only hope, Mr. Speaker, that the Public Service employees and pensioners, who were counting on strong opposition to this Bill which violates their agreement with the federal Government, have been able to see through the Tory posturing on Bill C-133.
The Government, with this Bill, is unilaterally breaking an agreement with its employees, the Public Service. More than
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that, it has decided that it is appropriate, perhaps even desirable, to fight inflation on the backs of the weak and the poor. This, of course, is the thrust not only of Bill C-133 but of the Government's entire six and five program. This Bill will have the effect of driving retired public servants, if not into poverty as measured by Statistics Canada, then into near poverty, which amounts to basically the same thing for pensioners.
The average annual pension paid from the public servants' superannuation account is a paltry $6,900. True, some of those people will also qualify for Canada Pension benefits and the old age pension, but even taking all of that together because we are dealing with averages here-we can be sure that there are some Public Service pensioners who will be receiving less than that $6,900 average. At least some of them will be living so close to the poverty line that it is unconscionable. The poverty line, Mr. Speaker, for a city like Winnipeg in my home Province is somewhere around $8,970.
Is there a contract being violated here? Of course, the Government denies this. It says pensions were not a negotiable item between it and its employees for collective bargaining. But what the Government is not telling us is that when it was preparing to enter into collective bargaining with public servants in the mid-1960s, it approached its employees to exclude superannuation from negotiations in exchange for an agreement that there would be no unilateral changes made to the superannuation plan. Well, this smells suspiciously like a unilateral change to that plan.
What does this unilateral reduction in the pensions of public servants say about this Government? It says more than just that the Government does not honour its agreements with its employees; it says that the Government of this country, regardless of all the pretty and fine statements it may make about pensions reform, believes, just like the worst, most backward employers, that pensions are a privilege and not a right.
Of course, the Tories have been attacking the Government for introducing this Bill because they, perhaps wishing to see the Government operate on a sound business practice basis, do not like to see contracts broken. But why did they not speak out against breaking the contracts of thousands of public servants when the Government introduced Public Service wage restraint? They did not speak out, not one bit. In fact, they could not contain themselves as they rushed to support Public Service wage control.
What about unilateral changes to private pension plans? Well, the Superintendent of Insurance in any of the Provinces of this country would normally reject amendments to private pension plans which, similar to the changes advanced in this Bill, had the effect of reducing pension benefits. But the Government, in hopes of saving its political hide, is not interested in the niceties of business practice. What is most important with this whole six and five program is that it appears to be doing something about inflation. So with this Bill it is Public Service pensioners who are expected to take it in the neck.
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If we accept only for a moment that there is validity to the foundation of this Bill-the need to cut Government spending-I think it becomes clear that this is a particularly unjust way of doing that. If a similar move were put forward as a change to tax policy, if taxes were increased in order to reduce deficit financing, it would never be acceptable to increase the taxes of pensioners. The move would be attacked from all quarters, probably even by the Tories, as being grossly unfair, but by rationalizing what amounts to the same thing, by calling this an anti-inflationary measure, the Government hopes to lend some credibility to its plans. Reducing these pensions is the same thing as retroactive wage control.
Government employees agreed to put a portion of their wage package away in a pension plan. They could have decided, instead, to put some of their money in Canada Savings Bonds and perhaps that would have been safer. I do not think many Canadians would support a Government move to dip into money invested by employees in Canada Savings Bonds, even on the grounds of mounting an anti-inflation program.
The effect of this Bill on labour/management relations and on the Government will be devastating. For the last time, I call on the Government to remove this Bill and the rest of the six and five program from its proposals. It is just too hard on the people of Canada.


Mr. Leonard Hopkins (Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke):: Mr. Speaker, as I start out to take part in the debate on Bill C-133,
I want to say that the main issue in this Bill is one that looks very simple on the surface; but when one gets into the details and the subject matter behind the whole issue, one realizes it is very complex and virtually steeped in potential and real controversy. I did not speak on second reading because I did not wish to prejudice in any way my remarks on third reading of the Bill, or on any negotiations and discussions in the interim.
On July 6, 1982 I delivered a speech in the House on the great need for pension reform generally in Canada. It astounds one to think about all the billions of dollars that are in pension funds in this country today. At book value, at the end of 1980 there was $52 billion in trustee pension funds. There will be very little feeling of security, Mr. Speaker, in public and private areas of employment in our nation unless we, and other jurisdictions of Government, revamp and reform the diversity and the plethora of private and public pension plans across the country.
The reason Bill C-133 is before Parliament now is simply that we have failed to tackle the job of bringing in reform legislation to place the public sector pension plans beyond the reach of public criticism. This could be done by making some financial rearrangements within the system itself after employer-employee discussions and agreements.
There seems to be a large measure of agreement to unite the Public Service Supplementary Retirement Benefits Fund with the Public Service Superannuation Fund, the Canadian Forces Superannuation Fund and the RCMP Superannuation Fund;

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but all this, of course, will have to be part of future discussions and agreed upon arrangements.
The Public Service Pension Fund should be placed on a solid financial administrative base and then taken out of the realm of politics and managed by a board of trustees representing not only the employer and the employees but also the pensioners. There would have to be very definite guidelines for them to follow, but if something happened to the viability of the fund, the trustees would be accountable and would have to take measures to correct the deficiency and not fall back on the taxpayers of Canada for funding. In this way, it would be removed from the realm of public issues. Any deficiency would likely only happen in times of extreme inflationary rates, but with changed, or amended, internal financial arrangements of the fund, it would in all likelihood not happen at all because the new guidelines would hopefully be very specific.
It is important to point out here that presently the Public Service Supplementary Retirement Fund is structured in such a way that every contributor and pensioner has his or her individual account. Now, some say, there is over a billion dollars in the Supplementary Retirement Fund. Why then, they ask, do you not take more money out of the fund instead of making up any shortfall out of the public treasury? One can readily realize why. You cannot take from Peter's account, who is still working, for example, to pay Paul, who is retired, because some day Peter is going to retire and he will want his supplementary pension.
On the other hand, the Public Service Superannuation Fund is not based on individual accounts, and it is also very wealthy. One can readily understand why some agreed upon reform measures for these plans can correct this straightjacket situation, which is the very basis of the problem. At the present time the Government picks up the difference between what the individual pensioners' accounts of the supplementary fund yield and the amount required for full indexation. It must also be recorded that the federal treasury picks up 100 per cent of the indexing costs for those who retired before 1970, because as we know, prior to that date no supplementary pension fund existed. I must reiterate that all these difficulties can be settled by constructive pension reform.
The Tomlinson-Alexander report, 1978, indicated that the Public Service Superannuation Plan could carry itself but that with proper investment the plan could be viable as well. I should point out that some Government agencies have their own pension plans, and CMHC is one of them. In Issue No. 109 of the Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates, page 34, for Monday, December 20, 1982, one of the witnesses gave a synopsis of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation pension plan, and I will quote part of that evidence:
We look at a pension plan such as the Central Morgage and Housing Corporation plan where the employer contributes his share to a fund along with the employees, and we see in ten years, from 1971 to 1981, a growth from $47 million to $170 million; an increase in pensioners of up to and about 980 pensioners. 1 think that sure as heck would cover their pensions and include the indexing. Perhaps if the Government feels, or the people responsible feel, they are unable to handle or control the pension plan, they should consider turning it back
to a joint employer/employee committee who would, under restrictions such as Central Mortgage, be allowed to operate their own pension plan. Perhaps then, if something goes wrong with the indexing or the loss in interest accrued from it, we would have no one to blame but ourselves.
Later in the meeting the same witness said:
Based on the very quick look 1 have had and from talking with neighbours and people who have worked at Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, I gather they are extremely pleased with their pension plan. And on looking into the facts and figures, I find that the employer which is the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, contributes a certain percentage along with that from the employees. It is then under control by a board of directors and employer representatives, and they have restrictions as to how much they can invest in particular areas. For instance, they invest money in mortgages, provincial and dominion, or federal bond issues. Then they are allowed to speculate on the other 50 per cent in real estate and, I guess, chip stocks or whatever.
The reason I am talking so strongly in favour of reform of the Public Service Superannuation Act and the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act, putting them on a firm financial base to pay indexing by changing the rules of financial administration therein and taking them out of public controversy, is that the federal Government can lead the way by promoting better pension plans for rank and file citizens in both public and private sectors across Canada. Indeed, this is in the Liberal tradition.
In his speech on second reading of Bill C-133, the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) said:
The debate has also produced a great deal of confusion and factual error over the nature of the present indexation arrangements and 1 would like to deal briefly with some of the more common misconceptions at this time. Many of those who oppose the limitation on Public Service pension indexation argue that public servants have fully paid for their indexation through the contribution of 1 per cent of salary together with the matching direct Government contribution towards the cost of this benefit. This is not the case. Approximately 90 per cent of the indexation benefits paid to retirees are currently charged directly to the Consolidated Revenue Fund of the federal Government. The Consolidated Revenue Fund is in fact made up of moneys raised from the taxpayers of Canada generally. The balance of the benefit, that is approximately 10 per cent of those payments, come directly from the Supplementary Retirement Benefits account. This is the separate account set up to receive employee and employer contributions to provide for pension indexation.
That is the problem within about which I am talking. Surely this must lead someone to question the way the supplementary fund was set up in the first place.
I emphasize pension reforms in the public sector because they are the only answer to our dilemma, to the problem before us. As long as public funds are used in large amounts as an additional financial contribution, there will be controversy. The money should not be administered in such a way that embarrassing amounts are left sitting in the Public Service Superannuation Fund or the Public Service Supplementary Pension Fund. The administration of such funds should be flexible enough to permit the dollars to be used for what they were meant in the first place, namely, to pay the pensions and indexation of retirees. This is why there must be more flexibility and possible amalgamation of the two funds.
This is the alternative to the contentious issue of Bill C-133.
It is important to note that all countries in the industrialized world are in financial straits because their financial base or taxation bases have been eroded temporarily. How does a
January 24, 1983

country like Holland handle its crisis? There is an interesting comparison here. Let me read a brief article from The Globe and Mail dated November 23, 1982.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. I regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but the time allotted to him has expired. He may continue with unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There appears to be unanimous consent.


Leonard Donald Hopkins: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The article is headlined "The Hague" and reads:
The new Dutch Government formally announced tough spending cuts and a public sector wage freeze. The centre-right Government said it was aiming to reduce the official spending deficit and from a projected 11.9 per cent of national income next year to 7.4 per cent by 1986. To do this, it will push ahead with plans for about $5.64 billion in cuts next year, including a freeze on public sector wages and social security programs.
This is why I support the six and five program. Mr. Speaker, can you imagine what would happen in this country or in this House if there were a complete freeze? Last summer when the six and five program was introduced, all Members of Parliament accepted a 5 per cent pay cut and media stopped talking about it immediately thereafter. Then we went on the six and five program. This was done to set an example for others to accept only six and five in their pay. As far as the Simon Reismans of the world are concerned, I could vote early and often for this Bill, but I have a major concern for average and low-income pensioners who are lumped together with all others.
Let me cite some humanitarian examples of how the Bill will affect them. For example, I know of several cases where Armed Forces personnel retired several years ago and passed on much earlier than their life expectancy. When the husband dies the wife receives one half his pension. We know for those who retired from the Armed Forces eight, ten or more years ago, that the pension of a private, corporal or sergeant major was not very big. Even though his pension had been indexed over the years, the fact that the wife receives only half his pension following his death simply means she could well be cut back to the amount of pension income her husband received when he first retired. She may be 60 to 64 years of age or younger and, therefore, does not qualify for old age pension or for the Guaranteed Income Supplement. There are many cases where others, for example couples, are trying to get along on one pension and because of the economic downturn cannot find employment.
Throughout the hearings of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates, we constantly heard remarks about reneging on an agreement and not keeping faith with pensioners who have paid into a pension fund during the course of their lives. On the other hand, Treasury Board continues to indicate that there is no agreement, that there is no contract, and that such charges are not accurate.
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The two conflicting parties in this kind of dispute will continue to debate that issue, but my difficulty with this Bill is simply the fact that pensioners from the public sector, some Crown corporations, Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP perceived, if not understood, that there was a commitment. They retired with the expectation that they would, in fact, receive full indexation on the basis that they had contributed to the Supplementary Pension Fund. Treasury Board has become very concerned because the Supplementary Plan does not carry full indexing and they have to pay a large amount out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund of Canada to make up the difference. Based on the figures that they have provided, this is the case. But my major concern about all this is that this problem has been well known for a long time and no reform measures have been concluded to correct it.
The Hon. Robert Andras, who was a very fine Minister in the House, made a very sincere attempt to do so when he was President of the Treasury Board and introduced Bill C-12 on March 23, 1979. That Bill was a result of many meetings of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates and there was virtual agreement by all three Parties in the House. If this Bill had been passed, we would not be discussing Bill C-133 today nor would it have seen the light of day. However, Parliament was dissolved shortly thereafter and the Bill died with no chance of consideration. The Progressive Conservatives came into power after the ensuing election and they did nothing more about it. In fact, what we heard about most was the plan to lay off 60,000 civil servants.
Nothing further has been concluded since the election of the present Government in 1980, and I therefore do not feel that retired public servants, some retired Crown employees, retired members of the Armed Forces and the RCMP should lose out simply because successive Governments have failed to act on pension reform.
That is past history, unfortunately. I would urge the Government to proceed immediately to correct this situation so it will not arise again. There is no way that matters of this nature should be thrown into the public arena where bad relations with employees can be created.
The misconception is always thrown around in the media and among the public to the effect that all such pensioners are wealthy. There is a large percentage, about 68 per cent, of retirees of 70 years of age or more who receive less than $7,000 per year, and this is what bothers me tremendously about this Bill. There is a large number of these people in my constituency up and down the Ottawa Valley. I know many of them personally and 1 am aware of their situation. The major part of this group is here in the Ottawa Valley; the remainder are scattered across the country.


Mr. McKinnon:: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I hate to rise on this unusual point of order but we did give unanimous consent to the Hon. Member, we thought, to conclude his speech, not to go on to read the distorted and

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tiresome view of history that he seems to have. I believe there are limits to these extensions, generally a couple of minutes.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: With all due respect to the Hon. Member, when the House gives unanimous consent for the extension of an Hon. Member's remarks, the Chair is not aware of any procedure in the rule book by which a limit can be placed on the time.


Leonard Donald Hopkins: 1 appreciate the remarks fully, Mr. Speaker.
After several meetings of the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates, this Bill was returned to the House without amendment. This simply means that with the exception of the 6.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent change, the Government wants the Bill to remain in its original state.
I realize that the Minister in charge of the Treasury Board has a tough row to hoe in piloting this legislation through the House, but as he knows, I have talked with him on several occasions because I am one of those Members who has many people in my constituency who are affected by this Bill and they do not fall in the upper income brackets. For this reason,
I still have great reservations about this Bill and I have had considerable discussions with my colleagues on this matter.
Therefore, it is with regret that I state now that I cannot support Bill C-l 33.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Leonard Donald Hopkins: I have arrived at this decision without malice, without any ill feelings, but certainly in all seriousness and sincerity. I want to thank Hon. Members for their patience.


Hon. Steven E. Paproski (Edmonton North):: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to say a few words with regard to the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act, particularly after listening to some of my pinko friends to my far left who keep making these disparaging remarks about the Conservative Party. If they keep saying things like that, they will not be at five points in the Gallup polls, but they will be lucky if they have one point in the Gallup polls.


Mr. Deans:: The Gallup poll is not necessarily a measure of the truth.


Steve Eugene Paproski: While I am speaking I wish they were not talking about polls. There are a few Members over there who feel that they know what they are talking about, but when I came here at 11 o'clock this morning and listened to some of the nonsense, I could not believe they would make some of those ridiculous remarks in this Chamber after seeing the Gallup poll over the weekend.
The Hon. Member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke (Mr. Hopkins) recalled history during his remarks when he said that the Conservative Party was going to fire 60,000 civil servants. That is a ridiculous remark. We have gone through that routine and we would never have taken such action. It is fine for the Minister of Justice (Mr. MacGuigan) to say that, but we did not even have the opportunity to look at it, much less listen to such trash as that the Conservative Party was going to
eliminate 60,000 top-notch civil servants in this country. 1 cannot believe anyone would even think of something like that.
I am surprised at this heartless Government's proposal to implement its six and five program on the backs of pensioners in this country, particularly civil servants. I cannot believe it would stoop so low at this time and take away the pension that civil service pensioners in this country have contributed to over the last few years. The Government is now telling them that it does not have enough money and pensioners will have to settle for a six and five agreement. It is breaking an agreement which it made with the pensioners in the civil service of this country. I suggest that this heartless Government is scraping the bottom of the barrel. I find it ridiculous that I must rise on January 24, 1983 to debate such a Bill as C-l33.
I would like to repeat the remarks made by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Assiniboine (Mr. McKenzie), as they appear at page 22018 of Hansard on January 20, 1983. At that time he said:
The Conservative Party has steadfastly supported Public Service pensioners in their fight to defeat a Bill which takes $165 million away from pensioners, a segment which is often least able to defend its rights and protect its standard of living. The Conservative Party is well aware that public employees pay 7.5 per cent of their salary to support their pension plan. The private sector employee contributions seldom exceed 5 per cent and are frequently less.
Benefits paid from the plan to date have been more heavily financed by employees than by their employer. Of $1,360 million paid out between October, 1981, and September. 1982, employees contributed $735 million compared to the Government's 625 million.
The Conservative Government of 1979-80 was able to trim $500 million from the federal budget without any income penalties to retired civil servants or senior citizens in general. Approximately $445 million would be paid out of benefits this year, according to the Treasury Board, and $420 million will come out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund, with only $25 million covered by the contributions made by pensioners when they were employed. This is due to the fact that, while the plan was only implemented in 1979, the benefits are extended to all retired public servants whether or not they contributed to the fund.
As time goes on, the drain on the CRF will diminish and the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Account will pay a larger share of the benefits.
He went on to say:
The total cost of indexing the pension was approximately 4.5 per cent of the payroll from the regular public servants last year. Pensions for the Armed Forces and some other groups are administered separately.
There is a paper figure of $15.5 billion in the Public Service Superannuation Account. The present employees' contribution rate of I per cent salary to the SR BA provides for only a 1.5 per cent inflation rate in the future, according to the Treasury Board.
An actuarial analysis claims that the total surplus of $15.5 billion in the superannuation account is sufficient to meet future benefit payments and the accrued interest on this account, especially if it were invested at a high rate of interest, would be more than adequate to cover the cost of pension indexation. Records show that the public service employees have contributed more to the pension than their employer. I suggest that the Government-employer contributions through the PSSA and SRBA be investigated to determine if they have been adequate.
That was part of the speech of my friend, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg-Assiniboine, who plainly said it in four or five paragraphs.

January 24, 1983
I see no reason why I should carry on any further with regard to this matter. 1 think it is incredible that we should have to take up the time of the House on this particular Bill when it is such a ridiculous Bill. Naturally, 1 will be voting against it, I know that the whole Conservative Party will be voting against it. I hope some Hon. Members opposite-and I know that they will-will be voting against it. Maybe it will be an opportunity for us to defeat the Government, who knows? Maybe some great people like the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) will come up with some amendment so that we may be able to carry this matter on for another two or three months. If that is what the House wants, then maybe this is how we will carry on.
The Minister has taken away the full Family Allowance benefits by deindexation. Now the Government is affecting the senior citizens of this country. My, who will it be next? I cannot believe what I am seeing. The Government has even taken away lottery funds from the poor fitness and amateur sport people, the people in the sporting industry. The federal Government has taken $90 million from the Provinces' lotteries. Does Your Honour know where it put the money? It was put into the Consolidated Revenue Fund to look after other expenditures while the poor people in the sports organizations are looking for bucks. They cannot get their money. Moneys were promised for the University Games in Edmonton but have not been received. The Olympic Association is looking for money; it does not have any. If these events were being held in Quebec, let me tell you there would be a change and a different atmosphere over there. The moneys would be coming tout de suite.


Mr. Lapointe:: No.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Oh, yes. The Minister says "No". I know, because I see the way you guys operate-


Charles Lapointe: You just show your bias.


Steve Eugene Paproski: -over on that other side. Do not tell me it will not.


Miss Begin:: Racist!


Steve Eugene Paproski: Do not call me a racist, either. Do not dare call me a racist.


Monique Bégin: Racism.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Remarks should be addressed to the Chair.


Steve Eugene Paproski: Through you, Mr. Speaker, I will say that I do not want to get the Ministers, hot and heavy, but I have been around here long enough to know just exactly what happens. They who scream the loudest, and they who form the largest majority in the Party which governs, particularly my friends opposite from la belle province, do not hesitate to get their funds.
I will end my speech by saying that we intend to vote against the Government, and particularly against this Bill.
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)


Mr. Vic Althouse (Humboldt-Lake Centre):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to spend a few moments discussing the amendment to the Bill. As most people know, the Bill ignores the basic rights of civil service pensioners who have paid for the indexing of benefits and who thought they had a contract. Indeed, it was understood, in negotiations back as far as the 1960s, that a contract existed between the Government and civil servants with regard to pensions.
It has been pointed out by various unions for the civil service that in the 1960s it was suggested that superannuation be excluded from collective bargaining by the Government. In return, they were promised that there would be no unilateral changes to the program. An advisory committee was established and, up until the present time, the Government, under two different parties, has been keeping up those promises. However, we are now seeing a change in policy, a breaking of a contract, if you like, so that even though pensioners had paid for it, indexing to keep up with the cost of living would no longer be there.
Simply so that we can study the matter in its proper perspective, we should remind ourselves that indexing was always "after the fact" indexing. We waited until the end of the year to find out how much inflation had run amuck in the previous year and then, in the coming year, the pension would be increased by that amount. That basic tenet is being ignored in this Bill and an amendment which would not only break a social contract, but would also amount to a tax on senior citizens.
The Government of Canada should maintain the contract with pensioners of all types that there will be no excessive taxation of their benefits, because in the main they comprise a fairly low income group. In recent times of high inflation, it has been very difficult for pensioners to keep up with the cost of living. This kind of procedure would have the effect of adding what would amount to a tax on senior citizens, in this case pensioners who have previously worked for the civil service. It would amount to a tax because it would reduce the amount of money to which they were entitled, a tax deducted before they even received their pensions. The deduction would amount to the difference between the real inflation rate and the 6 per cent proposed in the Bill or the 6.5 per cent in the amendment.
The only place where the case of pensioners can be heard is in this House of Commons. That is why this Party has been holding up proceedings on the Bill. We say that this is the pensioners' last chance. Retirees do not have organizations or unions which can speak for them. They rely on their elected representatives to look after thir needs, and not all of them are paying attention.
I want to point out that we probably would not have found ourselves in this mess had we in the Opposition collectively, both Parties together, stood up more strongly against Bill C-124 which introduced the six and five set of guidelines in the beginning. There were enough votes in Opposition-


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Nonsense.

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: -when one adds the Liberal Members who decided to vote against the six and five proposal, to defeat Bill C-124; but our friends to the right chose, instead of standing up for a principle, to go on holidays. Therefore, instead of defeating the Government or at least defeating that particular Bill brought in by the Government, the Bill was passed, and we now have the imposition of six and five because of a lack of interest on the part of Tory Members.
Just this past week we have also noted an attempt, with regard to holding up the legislation, to raise the ire of most people across the country on the side of the pensioners, because while civil service pensioners, old age pensioners, baby bonus benefits and child allowance credits may be affected in a series of Bills coming before the House, we do not know what other low income group will be the next to suffer from the six and five imposition.
We have seen the way the Tories reacted last week when the motion to adjourn the House was offered by our party. They had an excellent opportunity to hold up this Bill and to carry on the delaying tactics so that this dreadful imposition would not be placed on our civil servants who are retired. Instead of giving it the good support that they gave oil company profits last March, when they stayed out for 15 days to protect oil companies, they would not stay out for 15 minutes to protect old age pensioners and civil servants.
The Liberal position has been varied. Mostly Government members support the Government, with a few notable exceptions. I was pleased to hear the Hon. Member for Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke (Mr. Hopkins), who spoke a few moments ago, say that he will be opposing this amendment and the Bill itself. I think more Ottawa Members on the Government side and, indeed, any Government Member who has a conscience and realizes the need for maintaining trust in contracts, should be voting against this Bill. I cannot understand why a Party that professes to be in favour of justice and a just society, in favour of maintaining incomes for low-income people, in favour of assisting people who are on pensions, could introduce such a Bill in the first place, but they have.
We have been watching, and so have civil service pensioners, the gyrations of some of the Members. I note the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans) is in the House today. He is reported to have been at a meeting of civil service pensioners in Ottawa in which he said he would not allow such an inequitable Bill to go through the House. I have heard him make speeches in this House since that time saying that adding one half of 1 per cent to the six and five, as this amendment proposes to do, to make it 6.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent as it applies to civil service pensions, will bring about the kind of equity he can support, and I understand he is going to support it.
When you look at the kind of pensions that Public Service pensioners are receiving, he is being bought out for a fairly
paltry sum. There are approximately 90,000 former contributors to the civil service pension fund that are taking home approximately $8,100 on average annually. In addition to those 90,000 there are 32,500 on survivor benefits who are receiving approximately $3,200 per year, making the average for all pensions paid in the order of $6,900 per pensioner. Just look at what that means. It means that for the average pensioner receiving the $6,900 per year, the extra one half of 1 per cent provides them with $34.50 per year more. This is a princely sum for the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre to have-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. The Chair regrets to interrupt the Hon. Member but the time allotted to him has expired. He may continue with the unanimous consent of the House.


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There appears to be unanimous consent.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will finish rather quickly. I was pointing out that the average pensioner receives $6,900 per year, so the extra one half of 1 per cent means they will receive $34.50 per annum extra, which works out to about 66 cents per week. With that princely amount of money, the average retired civil servant who has retired in Ottawa has almost enough money to make a one-way bus trip downtown. It will not be enough to get him home, but if he adds a few cents he can get downtown. The knowledgeable economist from Ottawa Centre is willing to call this equity.
I think the case has been well made in this House. 1 will not speak any longer on the Bill. We in this Party will be opposing the amendment and the Bill itself, and we hope that more of the Members on the Government side will see fit to support this stance as well.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt motion No. 2?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


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


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to section (11) of Standing Order 79, the recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.

January 24, 1983
Earlier in the proceedings the Chair ruled that an affirmative vote for the motion which has been deferred would deal with the motion standing in the name of the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker). Therefore, at this stage the Chair will proceed to the motion in the name of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier).


Mr. Jean-Robert Gauthier (Ottawa-Vanier) moved:: Motion No. 4.
That Bill C-133, An Act to amend the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2), be amended by adding immediately after Clause 2 at page 2, the following new Clause:
"3. This Act expires on December 31,1984."
He said: Mr. Speaker, Motion No. 4 which you have just read proposes the following, and 1 quote:
"3. This Act expires on December 31, 1984."
The purpose of this motion is to establish without a doubt that Bill C-133 will expire on December 31, 1984.
In English this is call a sunset clause, an expression that is rather difficult to render in French, but I suppose it could be called an expiry clause or perhaps a twilight clause or a limited duration clause. I have been seeking advice on this matter, but there is no real agreement on the best translation. In any case, the purpose of my motion, Mr. Speaker, is to have this legislation repealed as of December 31, 1984, and since the bill itself does not contain any clauses limiting its duration, I think putting this motion does not raise more problems than it solves. Furthermore, other Members in this House have often put similar motions for other bills. I would have preferred to see Bill C-133 withdrawn, but since it will be passed, we must try and make the best of a bad thing.
We do not know what the future holds in store, Mr. Speaker. In politics as in so many other areas, the saying: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, is very apt. Adding to Bill C-133 a clause that it will expire on December 31, 1984 will show the legislator is acting in good faith by putting a two-year limit on this government policy. It also provides the assurance that neither politics nor the results of a possible election will prolong the effects of Bill C-133. Who knows, Mr. Speaker, who will be in power on December 31, 1984? I certainly do not.
Public servants have been told that there was nothing in writing on the indexation of their pensions. That is true. Because of exceptional circumstances, they have had to rely on the Government to manage the Superannuation Fund in the interest of present and future public service pensioners. It is also true that fifteen years ago, there was no public service union powerful enough to demand a more active role in the management of the Public Service Superannuation Fund.
If Bill C-133 is passed without amendment, public servants may be expected to demand an active role in the administration of their superannuation fund to protect themselves against their employer.
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act [No. 2)
Legally, the Crown can impose the 6.5 and 5.5 per cent ceiling on public service pensions, there is no doubt about that. However, Mr. Speaker, it is another thing altogether, and not much can be said in its defence, when we realize that the employer, Treasury Board, can restrict and even defend such measures without breaking its word or infringing existing agreements. I find all this compromising, to say the least, and very damaging to employer-employee relations. It will probably take some time before a minimum of trust has been restored between present and future retired public servants and the employer, that is, Treasury Board.
That is why I am suggesting this modest step towards a reconciliation. Let us restrict the effect of this bill to two years and immediately start genuine consultations with the unions, and let everyone know that the legislator will keep his word. Let us amend Bill C-133, Mr. Speaker, to have it expire on December 31, 1984.
On the subject of consultation, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read to you a passage from Hansard of December 6, 1982, page 21301, and I am quoting the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray):
Let me assure everyone that there will be full opportunity for consultation before any changes are decided upon and any proposals made to Parliament concerning the superannuation plans of federal Public Service employees.
By adopting motion No. 4, the Government will restore its credibility vis-a-vis federal public servants and particularly the retired members of the Public Service of Canada. In addition, Mr. Speaker, this amendment would reaffirm the Government's confidence in a 6 and 5 program aimed at bringing down inflation and promoting economic recovery. The motion would also confirm statements by certain ministers, especially the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) who indicated in his budget speech that the 6 and 5 program would be restricted to the next twenty-four months.
As a result of what has been said over the past weeks and months about indexing of public servants' pensions, I think it is quite clear that the tide of mistrust and suspicion that 1 see making its way across the Public Service cannot be stemmed by words promising a different tomorrow.
I find that pensioners are extremely skeptical over Government claims that the restrictions contained in Bill C-133 are temporary when the Bill provides that the restrictions to be implemented in 1983 and 1984 are also to apply after 1984. I repeat, the restrictions are to apply after 1984. Some pensioners also liken Bill C-133 to the camel in the proverb about the camel and the tent.
There is concern among some pensioners that C-133 is the first stage of a program that will lead to an ad hoc dismantling

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
of the indexing program, to be followed by its eventual elimination. The only chance I see of checking this tide is through positive action. One action that I believe would be particularly helpful would be to adopt motion No. 4, inserting a sunset clause in the Bill providing for the demise of the Bill on December 31, 1984.
Two conditions must exist if one expects compliance and trust. The rules must be reasonable and, second, those who set the rules must abide by them. The effect of amendment No. 4 will allow the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) to substantiate his claim that Bill C-133 is really a temporary measure. A sunset clause in Bill C-133 would also restore some credibility to the Government and to Parliament. It would show that the Government has confidence in its six and five program. In my view, it would re-establish a certain amount of trust which should lead to further consideration of pensioners with a view to restoring mutual confidence and understanding.
My colleagues can help restore some trust and improve somewhat the credibility which the public expects from its legislators. I invite my colleagues to vote for amendment No. 4 which will limit in time the unfortunate effects of Bill C-133.


Hon. Walter Baker (Nepean-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that you looked at this side of the Chamber when it came to seconding the motion standing in the name of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier). I was very pleased to second it because I, too, read the budget speech. I, too, have heard the protestations that this is a two-year program. I think there is that wave of skepticism.
This skepticism is tinged with a great deal of apprehension and anger about a system that has been in force, supported unanimously within the country and within the Public Service, for many, many years. It is a system upon which thousands and thousands of public servants made their retirement plans and are making their retirement plans which, in a decent civilized society, also benefits the widows of public servants, who are included in the broad sector when we talk about public servants.
This very broad sector includes those who come under the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray), members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Armed Services and some Crown corporations. It is interesting to note that it does not include employees of the Bank of Canada, which recently announced that they will index at 111/2 per cent, the going rate. The Act does not apply there. This is an indication of the ad hoc approach which raises the skepticism that my friend talked about. He is absolutely right.
We are approaching a watershed in Canadian pension history. If this Bill passes, it will be the first time that any federal Government had decided to diminish pensions, pensions which were bought and paid for. I want my friends opposite to remember this when they go to their constituents.
It is true that the Right Hon. Richard Bedford Bennett froze the salaries of public servants when he was Prime Minister. Although there was not a pension system in place for public servants of the kind we have today, there was a pension system in place during the regime of the Right Hon. Richard Bedford Bennett which was likely then described as generous.
It probably was for its time. And yet in the depths of the Depression, with the prospects and position of its senior citizens, of its young people, the Government of the country of that day did not touch pensions. It dealt with salaries, and people will say dealt iniquitously with salaries. If I were living in that day I would likely say the same thing. But they did not touch pensions.
Therefore, anyone who votes for this legislation is participating in the first of what we all suspect is a restructuring which will have very serious effects. It is a precedent and anyone who proposes to vote had better remember that. This is the first time that the pensions of senior citizens, especially those who have bought and paid for them, will be affected.
I want everyone to know what is the effect of the amendment brought by the Hon. Member. He says, and I agree, that he wants to underscore that the Bill will cease to have any effect after the two years. He is saying to the President of the Treasury Board, to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde), to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), who made a representation some time ago: "Put your money where your mouth is. You have backed off from that letter in 1977 when you said indexing was meant to protect against inflation. All those sweet protestations in that letter which was circulated to the public servants by the Prime Minister meant nothing. You have broken your word on that. The latest word you have is it would only be two years. Put your money where your mouth is."
I want to know where Government Members stand on that. I think this is quite a reasonable amendment to support and 1 hope that the first speaker on the Government side will suggest that it be supported. It is not only of importance in that it underpins the pronouncements which have been made by Ministers, but it is equally important in another way. I believe that it is at least open to argument that when the amendment says this legislation expires on December 31, 1984, it goes beyond just the expiry of a Bill. In other words, I believe it is more than a sunset clause. In my judgment, it is at least open to argument that when it says this Act expires on December 31, 1984, it could mean, and will likely be argued that it means, that its effects expire on December 31, 1984. The House should know that at some time that case will likely be argued.
The Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier and I, in two amendments which were declared inappropriate for this House, put forward the proposition that the base should be restored at the end of the program. I think the argument will be made somewhere that that will be the effect of this amendment, that the base will be restored, that there will not be a permanent loss of pension base for the two years, which without expression otherwise would in fact occur.
One of the great injustices of this Bill, Mr. Speaker, is that the Public Service pensioner bought and paid for something for him or herself, widow or widower, or children, as the case may
January 24, 1983

be, which is not only denied for two years, but the base upon which all other future pensions are calculated has been diminished. And the figures are really quite significant. 1 believe it is open to argument , and I hope some day someone will argue- which is why I want this Clause supported-that when it expires, not only does it expire, but the status quo ante is restored. That is simple justice.
It is one thing to say that a person who is employed suffers a two-year diminution in his economic prospects, but that person knows through reclassifications and promotions, and a whole host of things which can be bargained for, that that person has at least a chance of recovery. But if this Act goes through as it stands, the persons to whom this Act will apply have no chance of recovering at all. And it is very important that we remember the effect of it.
Of course, the program should not go on any longer than two years. Is there anyone on the other side who will call the Minister of Finance a liar? I would not call him a liar. Is there anyone on the other side who would vote and, by implication, call the President of the Treasury Board a liar? I would not want that to happen. I want them to support the statements made by the President of the Treasury Board and the Minister of Finance and the blandishments which we have heard on other things and say, "Yes, Mr. Minister, we support this amendment. This will 'sunset' the Bill and the burden will not be further extended."
I say to those people in the Public Service who are interested that they ought to ply their books to see whether or not, if this amendment did in fact carry, there would be the opportunity to get rid of the injustice which is there if the Act stays unamended. I am proud to support the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier with respect to this amendment, we will vote in favour of it, and I invite my hon. friends to join us.


Mr. Sid Parker (Kootenay East-Revelstoke):: Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak on the amendment presented by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) that this Act should expire December 31, 1984. I would have much preferred to have seen the date "December 31, 1982".
I would like to point for a moment to some of the remarks made by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier, where he suggested that some confidence would come back by having this amendment adopted. I want to know how he can possibly expect any confidence to come back from these people who are affected by this legislation. We will support the amendment, but we believe that this Bill must be killed. It must be written out in no uncertain terms.
I would like for a moment to speak especially about some of the comments which have been coming from the Conservative Party whose Hon. Members have been getting up in this House day after day and commenting that this Bill is a breach of contract, a violation of rights, a violation of contracts. I want the Conservatives to know that in my riding every railroader knows that the Conservative Party voted in favour of Bill C-124, and that was a breach of contract. Every public
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
servant in my riding knows that the Conservatives supported Bill C-124, and that was a breach of their contract.
Every one of my senior citizens, pensioners, are going to know that on Thursday the Conservatives had an opportunity to save their indexing, that those cheques would have been mailed out fully indexed. I would defy the Government, in that case, to roll it back and take it away. But what did the Conservative Party do? They could not wait 15 minutes longer so that the closure Bill would have had to go over to the next day, and then there was no way those cheques could ever be mailed out in time and therefore would have had to go out fully indexed. But no, the Conservatives tripped over themselves to get into this House to accommodate the Government, to ensure that that legislation is now able to be put forward. That is what the Conservatives have done. They have the audacity to stand up in this House and talk about the Gallup poll. I want to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that public servants and retirees are not worried about the Gallup poll, they are worried about what is happening to this legislation in this House. Nor are we worried about the Gallup poll.
The social services of this country are being eroded, Mr. Speaker. They are being eroded in the fields of Old Age Security pensions, Family Allowances and Public Service pensions, by the Government opposite, accommodated and assisted by the Conservatives. The only credible opposition in this House is coming from the New Democratic Party.


Mr. Taylor:: They said so themselves.


Sidney James Parker: I would like to comment on some of the things which were reported by various groups at the committee stage of this Bill. Under Bill C-133, the Government of Canada is allowing itself to shirk its obligation to its retired employees. It is doing so in a manner which would not be allowed for the sponsors of private pension plans. The private firms could not do it but the Government of Canada is taking away what they have an obligation to fulfil. Retirees from the federal Public Service will suffer a decrease in their standard of living in 1983 and 1984 as the result of Bill C-133. They will not be permitted to make up the reduction.
One of the great promoters of this Bill, Ian Sinclair, Chairman of CP Rail, championed the Government's cause across the country. A constituent of mine from Field, British Columbia, wrote me a letter which I in turn wrote to Ian Sinclair about. I thought the House would like to know how Mr. Sinclair applies such dedication to his own business. Marathon Realty, the Canadian Pacific real estate arm, is increasing the lease cost of one of my constituents by 90 per cent and has announced that it will increase it by a further 12 per cent a year. The Chairman of Marathon Realty has written to me to say that the increases are fair and reasonable and they do not propose to make any changes. This is what is happening, Mr. Speaker. There is no control on prices or profits, but the Government is asking our senior citizens, old age pensioners and Public Service pensioners to try to live on a

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
6 per cent increase when the cost of living is anywhere between 11 per cent and 12 per cent.
The Conservatives, Mr. Speaker, have assisted this Government in a very hypocritical way. Those Members who have large numbers of public servants in their ridings, such as the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker), are standing up in this House and saying in a calm way how serious it is and how they feel for those pensioners. What I am trying to say, Mr. Speaker, is that their Party believes it is time to roll back social programs. Their Party is following the line of the Reagan administration. Make no mistake about it, every Canadian is watching what is taking place here because they know their social programs are under attack, not only by the Government but also by the Conservative Party of Canada.


Mr. Ralph Ferguson (Lambton-Middlesex):: Mr. Speaker, 1 want to speak very briefly on this particular amendment today because the motion proposes that a sunset Clause be applied to this Bill. I should point out that, in effect, there is such a provision in the Bill and indexing is restored as of January 1, 1985. If we were, however, to allow a catch-up provision it would perhaps destroy other aspects of the six and five guidelines which appear to be working at the present time. In fact, over the last five months the rate of inflation in Canada has decreased dramatically.


Walter David Baker: Even before you passed the Bill. Marvellous.


Ralph Ferguson: It is down to a rate of 0.5 per cent on a monthly basis. In the U.S., of course, it is calculated on a monthly basis, but in Canada it is on an annual basis. However, if we look at it on a monthly basis in Canada we have been within the guidelines for the last several months, and if the present trend continues, those pensioners may even have a net gain in the upcoming year, although they would have had a loss in their pensions for the previous period which ended last September.
I would like to address very briefly some of the arguments advanced by critics of Bill C-133, namely the capping of the pension indexing amount and the confiscation of moneys already paid by public servants. The point is made that because the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Account requires a 1 per cent of salary contribution by the employees, it is matched by Government. Sufficient money has already been set aside to pay for full indexation. I would like to expand on the point already made in that regard.
I think it is most helpful to note that plan members only began paying extra contributions for indexing in 1970, consequently moving from 0.5 per cent of salary to 1 per cent in 1977. No pensioner who retired prior to 1970 made any additional contribution in the way of catch-up and the pensioners who retired since that time only made special contributions during the smaller portion of a 25-year career. Contributions by pensioners to date currently pay less than 10 per cent of the indexing payment being made, with over 90 per cent, that is
$420 million in 1981-82, being charged against Government expenditures.
There seems as well to be a mistaken impression that there is more than enough money in the pension accounts to pay for full indexing because the accounts are growing each year and the amount of interest earnings exceeds benefit pay-outs. In response to this I would like to point out that the basic pension plan is designed to operate on a fully funded basis, so that the basic pension accounts are credited with amounts which are sufficient, taking into consideration future interest earnings, to meet the benefit payments earned by plan members to date, assuming that all actuarial and economic projections prove to be accurate. Certainly this has been very difficult to do having come through a period like the last few years.
The indexing account is, by legislation, operated on a partial pay-as-you-go basis, so there is currently not enough money in the account to meet all the future indexing benefits that will become payable in respect of benefits already accrued. For example, in the 1981-82 Public Accounts, an actuarial deficit of $5.5 billion was reported in respect of Public Service indexing benefits which become payable up to March 31, 1982. That deficit would exist if those benefits had to be fully funded. This amount did not include any liabilities for the future indexing of pensions being paid at that time, nor for the indexing of accrued pensions of current employees.
While I would suppose that the estimate of the actuarial deficit may be argued since it is very much dependent upon the actuarial assumptions used to calculate it, there is an actuarial deficit in the indexation account. Even if both accounts were combined, full indexation could not be provided without substantial Government contributions over and above its matching of employee contributions. Therefore, it cannot be said that the Government, by capping indexing, is cutting back on benefits for which sufficient funds have already been set aside.
Some people argue that the additional contributions paid by employees can be likened to insurance premiums where, in exchange for the premiums, employees are protected against the risk of inflation. I do not agree with the idea that the Public Service superannuation system is comparable to an insurance scheme where premiums are paid and benefits are received, no matter what the cost to the insurer, in this case the Government. As everyone knows, insurance rates are adjusted up or down depending on the experience with claims and no adjustment is applied to the payment of claims already made. If the same concept were applied to the Public Service pension plan in current economic circumstances, the contributions or premium rates for current employees could go up in relation to accruing benefits that could very well become payable in better economic times. It is seen, then, that the relationship between contributions and benefits would become somewhat fortuitous. In a sense, groups of pension winners and losers could be created.
January 24, 1983

I think the Minister put it very well when he said that he prefers to regard pensions as a long-term and flexible arrangement involving the employer and generations of employees, where changes can be made to reflect varying economic circumstances. This was the case in the early seventies when the Government adopted a policy of full indexing of Public Service pensions and applied that policy retroactively to persons who had paid little or no extra contributions.
The proposed modification of Bill C-133, as has been indicated, does recognize the contributory nature of the Public Service pension programs and specifically the indexing portion. The modification is designed to take into account the 90 per cent and 10 per cent ratio I previously referred to with respect to indexing payments charged against Government expenditures, and payments charged against pensioner credits in the indexing account. With this in mind, it is proposed that the indexing of Public Service pensions be increased to 6.5 per cent in 1983 and 5.5 per cent in 1984 from the cap of 6 per cent and 5 per cent currently set out in the Bill. In other words, moneys that have already been set aside by or on behalf of pensioners for indexing will not be confiscated but will instead be used, in effect, to increase the average pension increase that all Public Service pensioners will receive over the next two years.
In summary, then, I find that the argument that Bill C-133 amounts to a confiscation of moneys already set aside for Public Service pension indexing is not supportable. As 1 indicated earlier, with the current trend in inflation I should like to suggest that, even though pensioners would have incurred a loss for the year ended last September, in effect they could be winners in the year ahead.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Mr. Speaker, 1 should first of all like to deal with that ridiculous final sentence in the speech of the Hon. Member for Lambton-Middlesex (Mr. Ferguson). Of course pensioners could gain, but only if the inflation rate this year is 1.5 per cent or less. The likelihood of the inflation rate in 1983 being 1.5 per cent or less is about the same likelihood as the Liberals being returned to office if they called an election. It is zero; there is no hope whatsoever. The Hon. Member should be ashamed of himself for making a statement like that.
1 might mention to those who are paying attention to the debate that we are once more operating under closure. The Liberals have found it necessary to salve their consciences by trying to move the debate out of the House to a place where people will not hear about it. For that reason they have brought in closure.
I am astonished that the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin), who feigns a sincere interest in the welfare of pensioners, has taken no stand against this arbitrary legislation. If this Bill and its companion, Bill C-131, are passed, we will find that next year more and more old age pensioners and senior citizens retired from the Public Service will be living below the poverty level, because their pensions this year will not keep up with the cost of living. That is what this Bill and and Bill C-131 will do to the old age pensioners. They ensure that their pensions will not keep up with the cost of living and, therefore, their standard of living will go down.
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
The fact that the Minister of National Health and Welfare, who feigns interest, has done nothing about this is shocking.
I do not know whether I should bother mentioning the NDP.
I read in this morning's newspaper that 5 per cent of the people of Canada believe the NDP will form the next Government. They continue to make these silly remarks about bell ringing. They forget that they form a very small rump, a Party in one corner of this House. Major decisions are not made by little rumps in the corners of Houses, except on those very rare occasions when the people of Canada, probably with some other aim in mind, elect them as the controlling Party, in the case of a minority Government, between the major Parties. That has happened twice in my experience in this House. In 1972-74 they supported the Liberals. There used to be a daily caucus between David Lewis, the then Leader of the NDP, and the Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. MacEachen) of today. When the Liberals found themselves far enough ahead in the poll, they pulled the rug out from under the NDP without even a "thank you" for 18 months of support. In the next election the number of NDP Members in the House was reduced by about 65 per cent.
In 1979 the NDP again held the balance of power and wanted to show everyone how powerful they were so they voted the Liberals in and the Conservatives out. To that degree they are responsible for the situation we find ourselves in now. They are responsible for things like Bill C-131 and Bill C-133 because they put in the kind of Government that produces such outrageous legislation. Yet they pretend to be unhappy about these Bills, and they keep fussing about Bill C-124. We voted for that Bill, which reduced MPs' pensions. The NDP was opposed to that Bill which also cut our pay by 5 per cent. They spoke out against that Bill months after it was passed and they are still speaking against it, hoping it will be changed and the 5 per cent pay cut reinstated. Five per cent is an exact balance with their standing in the Gallup poll.
Bill C-124 dealt with people in the workforce who have some control over their lives, sometimes through the strength of their unions. The unions are strong. Anyone who has ever tangled with the postal union will realize that. The people affected by Bill C-124 have a bargaining position and that is the big difference between that legislation and Bills C-131 and C-133. These people affected by these Bills C-131 and C-133 have no bargaining position at all. Old age pensioners and senior citizens cannot withhold their services, nor can they enter into contract negotiations. There is a tremendous difference in the cases, although it is not obvious to the little rump on my left.
There is one place where the NDP shines, Mr. Speaker. Members of that Party make more noise per pound than Members of any other Party in the House. When this place is turned into a shambles, nine times out of ten it is because of that little group.
I should like to speak about the amount of money in the pension fund which the Hon. Member opposite mentioned. I

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
should like to quote from the Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Standing Committee of Miscellaneous Estimates of December 15. The witness was Mr. Walter Riese, Chief Actuary, Actuarial Branch. This was the evidence of a senior Government adviser on actuarial matters dealing with pension funds. I should like to quote a few lines from these minutes:


Allan Bruce McKinnon: When you say unfunded liability, you really mean it is a debt that the Government owes. Is that correct?


Mr.   Riese@: That is correct.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: Who does it owe it to?


Mr.   Riese@: Well, it is, I suppose, really an accounting matter, because the liability of the Government does not really change, whether the liability is funded or unfunded.


Allan Bruce McKinnon: To whom is the liability?


Mr.   Riese@: It is to the beneficiaries; to the members and the beneficiaries of the plan.
The Government owes a debt to the beneficiaries of the plan. The Government has been collecting money for many years. It now owes the Armed Forces fund something just over $10 billion and the Public Service fund something over $15 billion. One does not have to be a great mathematician to realize-and I will discuss the military one first-that if that $10 billion were invested at a very low rate, which is what the Government usually pays, say 6 per cent, one would get $600 million on an annual basis. If it were funded and invested as badly as that, that it only paid 6 per cent, $600 million would be coming into the pension fund. They paid out of that pension fund $281 million, the last year for which I am able to get any records. Therefore, where is the need for this clamping down on Canadian Forces' pensions or, for that matter, on the Public Service pension? I cannot see any need for it.
If the Government has any intention in its heart of ever paying any real recognition to the donations of both the employer and employee in this case, considering the funds which have built up in the superannuation fund it must realize that it is short-changing these people. The fund will continue growing indefinitely if the Government does not come up with any plan as to how to reach some kind of a plateau. When it gets up to $100 billion and its own actuary says that it is owed, perhaps that will be sufficient to stop people from worrying that there is too much money tied up there. In reality there is no money, but they think of it as money; they compute the interest on it and put out annual reports which, as was the case this particular year, indicate that for the Armed Forces it is now over $10 billion for a payout of $281 million. It just does not make sense. I wish the Government could explain it, but not in the convoluted, tortured and meaningless way as did the Parliamentary Secretary.
How is it, with $25 billion tucked away in these two funds, that the Government turns first to clamp the lid on the payout? I suspect Mr. Goldfarb took a poll which came up with the idea, accepted by the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray), that people were not vitally concerned about indexed pensions for public servants and Armed Forces personnel. I suspect Mr. Goldfarb said: "Here is a good issue for you
people to jump on. You can cut it. It will not affect too many voters, and you will look as if you are doing something real and determined." It seems to be ridiculous.
In the minute remaining I should like to suggest that there has to be a future for the fund. A bona fide pension fund should be considered. The present arrangement provides no guarantee of future financial soundness. It is too open to meddling from a Government which cannot keep its accounts straight.


Hon. Marcel Lambert (Edmonton West):: Mr. Speaker, I participated in the Committee which dealt with Bill C-124, and it was clearly indicated at that time that somewhere along the line those things that appeared in Bills C-131, C-132, and C-133 would appear.
At the outset I say that I will support wholeheartedly the amendment of my next door neighbour. I urge my colleagues and all Hon. Members to do so. His and my political views are widely divergent, but on this occasion the amendment is second best. The first would be to vote against the Bill. The second would be to eliminate as much as possible some of the negative and nefarious effects of this Bill.
The Hon. Member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon) adequately dealt with the bleats which came from his co-provincial member who, I must confess, uses logic which leaves one totally in dismay, especially the convolutions in his thinking. It is as though New Democratic Party Members took the aura or halo and planted it so firmly over their heads that it went down over their ears and blocked them so that they all got fat between the ears.
There is a need for restraint; there was a great need for restraint. United States labour unions volunteered to participate in restraint, but here in Canada they decided that they would do otherwise-damn the torpedoes and full steam ahead! As far as they were concerned, they wanted to benefit from inflation in every way possible. On the other hand, this is one of the inherent problems the Government built into its entire fiscal planning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I recall the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) boasting to the country that we had wrestled inflation to the ground. The only thing was that he had taken hold of a shadow; he had not touched inflation.
I was financial critic at the time. Time and time again we spoke about the Government's unwillingness to deal with inflation. I recall saying that this was a pis aller, that it was merely supplying a cushion or mattress against some of the effects of inflation. We must remember that it was not much to start with. There were only low, partial percentages. Nothing was done to deal with inflation. That was the problem. The Prime Minister said that we had wrestled it to the ground, but following the 1972 election the then Minister of Finance, when full indexing came in, the so-called Prince Charming-a nice fellow, personally we could not ask for a nicer man-inflicted on the country something we all remember. The budgets of 1973 and 1974 were inflationary. Government Members
January 24, 1983

said-and the NDP was with them for the 1973 budget-that it was for the good of the country. But by 1975 did we not have real inflation? Then, without even consulting his Cabinet Members, the Prime Minister announced the policy of wage and price controls, partly applied and badly applied.
May I 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 House took recess.


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.

Miss Aideen Nicholson (Trinity):: Madam Speaker, as a trading nation Canada must necessarily take an interest in all international trade opportunities and markets.
Each year the World Bank and other international financial institutions sponsor capital project contracts to the value of some $10 billion. Canadians have the technology, the goods and the services to be successful in this lucrative market, and winning contracts for international development institution projects would, of course, bring valuable new business to Canadian companies and create jobs for Canadians. But to be successful in international bidding we must be competitive, and look toward raising our currently low profile in this arena of world trade.
International financial institution projects are new and attractive territory for much of the Canadian business community. The involvement of small and medium sized Canadian exporters could surely be facilitated by increased availability of information on forthcoming projects and Third World trade practices and procedures.
1 would therefore urge the Government to take action promoting the participation of interested Canadian exporters in international financial institution project bidding.


INDUSTRY AND LABOUR ADJUSTMENT PROGRAM
Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Madam Speaker, one of the Government's job creation measures with the greatest unused potential is the Industry and Labour Adjustment Program,
ILAP, which can help to attract industries and permanent jobs to depressed areas of the country. Only 12 communities have been designated under the Program so far.
The people of Oxford feel that if the funds originally allocated to ILAP have been exhausted then the Program should be expanded to help other communities, including the County of Oxford. The Government knows that Oxford has suffered severely from the recession over the past year, experiencing record unemployment and, as a result, an unprecedented welfare case load. In the Woodstock area alone the increase in the number of registered unemployed from December, 1981, to December, 1982, equals the total number of registered unemployed in December, 1980. The local economy has worsened with the recent closure of La France Textiles and the impending closure of Gardner Denver.
Since Oxford County is an ideal candidate for ILAP assistance, given its economic distress and its tremendous potential for industrial development, thanks to its location, skilled labour force, transportation networks, and the great amount of land which is zoned for industrial development, I earnestly beseech the Government to respond to the repeated requests that the Ministers responsible for ILAP meet with the elected mayors and the warden of Oxford.

[ Translation]


MARINE TRANSPORT
Mr. Pierre Deniger (La Prairie):: Madam Speaker, in 1982, the Port of Montreal registered a drop in traffic of 18 per cent but still made a net profit of $16 million, which is certainly something for Port administrators and employees to be proud of. However, 1 am extremely worried about Transport Canada's inaction with respect to navigational aids on the St. Lawrence ship channel between Quebec City and Montreal, and even more so between Montreal and Sorel. In fact, the bends in the channel are becoming more and more pronounced, thereby increasing the risk of accidents and possibly limiting the size of ship that can reach Montreal.
I think the Minister of Transport (Mr. Pepin) should immediately make sure that the channel is cleaned up and dredged between Montreal and Sorel, and that turning basins are dug to improve navigability and make the channel a safer place for all our seamen.
I may remind the Minister that even if he has the best facilities and the best managerial resources, ships will not be

January 24, 1983
able to get to the Port of Montreal unless the channel is dredged.


METRIC CONVERSION
Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Madam Speaker, the Progressive Conservative fight against mandatory metric is winning despite Liberal Orders in Council trying to make imperial measurement illegal. One, wieners may be packaged in one-pound packages; two, the fresh fruit and vegetable sector retains 40-pound basket-size, and potatoes in 10, 20 and 50-pound bags; three, the canning industry retain six, eight and 12-ounce sizes; four, CP and CN Railway cars will retain dual metric and imperial markings; five, the Canadian industrial sector is free to choose its preferred units of measurement, as is the construction industry; six, gasoline at the Canadian Forces bases and Canada Post is being pumped to consumers in gallons; seven, post offices in Ontario are using imperial weigh scales; eight, Consumer and Corporate officials have removed the wire from gas pumps delivering gas by the gallon in Alberta and have dropped charges against retailers selling carpet by the square yard; nine, the cattlemen have won their fight to keep the stockyards imperial across Canada; ten, major department stores retain the use of imperial measure in advertising floor covering; and finally, all media can now use either metric or imperial in all their material content. Remember, our freedom to measure is a measure of our freedom.


IMMIGRATION
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, during the latter part of 1981 Canadian Westinghouse advertised in Britain for skilled tradesmen. It used the facilities of Ontario House and Canada House in order to have those people come to Canada. They arrived in early 1982 and, by the end of 1982, 40 such families were among the ranks of the unemployed in this country.
I want to suggest to the Government that it should seriously consider companies which are advertising for people to emigrate to Canada to take jobs for which there are untold number of Canadians available who, if not already skilled to do the work, could be trained to do so.
I want to suggest as well that when government officials in either Ontario House or Canada House make commitments to people that there will be employment opportunities in this country, the Government must then assume responsibility to make sure that there are those opportunities and that those people do not become a burden to the unemployment insurance system or, in many instances, be forced to return home at their own expense.
In closing, I want to suggest to the Government that it is time that it reviewed the apprenticeship programs that should be in place in this country but do not exist, and that it make a special effort to deal with companies such as this by making it mandatory that, if they must employ people from outside the country, it should be on a temporary basis.


AEROSPACE INDUSTRY
Mr. Louis R. Desmarais (Dollard):: Madam Speaker, international co-operation on major telecommunications contracts is a dramatic spin-off of the widely shared technology and instant communication which are features of the world in which we live.
Canada's participation in the international team approach in the space industry is evidence of the health and competitiveness of our own aerospace industry. Canada is working with the United States and France in the establishment of SAR-SAT, a global search and rescue network, which eventually will provide 24-hour international coverage of emergency signals from downed aircraft and vessels in distress.
Recently a Canadian firm won a satellite contract with EMBRATEL, the Brazilian telecommunications agency, which will be undertaken with the co-operation of France.
Such co-operation with other nations is indeed a hallmark of the space age and we look forward to seeing Canadian firms continuing and increasing their participation in international co-operative ventures in the aerospace industry.


AGRICULTURE
Mr. Doug Neil (Moose Jaw):: Madam Speaker, almost two years ago, on February 3, 1981, Bill C-245, an Act to repeal the Prairie Farm Assistance Act, a Private Member's Bill, sponsored by myself, was debated in the House. That Bill would have set up a trust for the purpose of research into cereal grains and oil seeds fit for cultivation in the Prairie Provinces.
Initial funding was to come from the Prairie Farm Emergency Fund, which is a non-interest-bearing account of $9,060,000 made up of farmers' contributions under the PFAA. The account has been dormant since August, 1972.
In the debate two years ago the Minister of Agriculture stated that his own Bill on the matter was in the preparation stage, and he moved that the subject matter of Bill C-245 be referred to committee. Shortly after, the Minister indicated that he was prepared to turn the $9 million over to a foundation made up of representatives of farm organizations from western Canada.
January 24, 1983

Two years have passed and the money is still in the Prairie Farm Emergency Fund, used by the Government interest-free. In the meantime the Minister has announced cut-backs in research personnel in western Canada and an increase in research personnel in Quebec.
Research is vital if western Canada is to maintain its competitive position in grain and oil seeds exports. Unfortunately the Minister of Agriculture and his Cabinet do not understand this and refuse even to support a producers' selfhelp program at no cost to the Government.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


HUMAN RIGHTS
Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Hamilton West):: Madam Speaker, part of the policy which Canada should pursue in order to promote human rights, not only in Latin America and the Caribbean but in other nations world-wide, is to adopt the House of Commons Sub-Committee on Latin American and Carribbean Nations' recommendation that a Canadian Parliamentary Human Rights Association be established to serve as a forum for discussion and promotion of international human rights. This concept is fully supported by Amnesty International, the respected human rights monitoring organization.
I urge the House and the Government to consider seriously the formation of such an Association by way of a sub-committee of the House of Commons Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence. Sub-committees such as this would allow parliamentarians to monitor periodically the human rights records of foreign countries as a means of focusing attention upon Governments which abuse the human rights of their citizens, and as a forum for making recommendations to the Government of Canada on policies toward these Governments.
I would also urge that the Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence be given additional researchers and funding to assist in this important task.


CANADA POST CORPORATION
Mr. Stan Darling (Parry Sound-Muskoka):: Madam Speaker, once again I want to try to make the point which I was addressing the other day when the egg-timer ran out on me. The point is that, while the new postal rates make volume discounts possible which will most benefit big business, and
exemptions from the proposed surcharges for individual mailers, it is once again the small enterprises, the perennial bag-holders in the Government's airy-fairy schemes, which end up carrying the can.
The new rates, we are told, are to permit the greater use of automatic letter-sorting machinery and to encourage large mailers to pre-sort their mail, thus cutting down on the labour requirements of the Post Office. This is all very logical, except for the fact that, according to the figures given to me, in the period since March of 1981, the cost of first class postage looking ahead a month, has risen by 88 per cent, from 17 cents to 32 cents. The volume of mail handled has dropped from 6.5 billion to 6.1 billion, or over 6 per cent; and the number of permanent employees of the Corporation has risen from 53,465 to 66,121, which is almost 24 per cent. With statistics like these it is easier to understand why the Corporation seeks to limit its competition.


INDIAN AFFAIRS
Mr. Simon de Jong (Regina East):: Madam Speaker, there are more people of native ancestry per capita in my home city of Regina than in any other city in Canada. It is true that many live in an environment of alcoholism, welfare dependency, violence and despair. It is also true that they do not like it.
The Saskatchewan Federated Indian College at the University of Regina stands as eloquent evidence of that dislike. The College has helped to break down stereotypes. The young Indians who go there are taking advantage of the seldom offered chance to acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to obtain new opportunities. Now everything which has been so carefully developed over six years of hard work stands threatened. It stands threatened because of a directive from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development which would deny continuing financial support to one half of the students at the College. Is this any way to recognize and support the efforts of Indian people to break their dependency on welfare and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development? No, it is not. The Minister should immediately commit the Government to supporting those students.
The Saskatchewan Federated Indian College and its students must be allowed to plan for their future. We must stop speaking with forked tongues. We must not only talk about equal opportunities for native people; we must also provide them.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!

January 24, 1983
22138____________________________
Oral Questions IMMIGRATION


ENTREPRENEURIAL SKILLS OF IMMIGRANTS-INFORMATION ON GOVERNMENT AID PROGRAMS
Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (York South-Weston):: Madam Speaker, it is often said, and it is no less true for the frequency with which it is said, that this country has been built by immigrants. At the leading edge are new Canadian entrepreneurs, many of whom I have seen arriving in my own riding with savings in hand and plans in mind to establish business operations in this country.
A recently published report testifies to the initiative and enterprising spirit of these ethnic business owners, most of whom employ fewer than 20 employees and generate growth revenues of $100,000 to $500,000 per year. These are individuals who clearly have a valuable contribution to make to the Canadian economy and have chosen to make it, yet the study to which I have referred would indicate, and I have found it to be true from my own experience, that new Canadian business owners might well benefit by more familiarity with Government programs in place to assist them.
I would therefore recommend that the Government consider ways by which information on its assistance to small businesses might be made more accessible to new Canadian entrepreneurs.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Flora MacDonald (Kingston and the Islands):: Madam Speaker, in the absence of the Minister of Employment and Immigration I will direct my question to the Minister responsible for the status of women. It concerns the increasing number of women who, because of the depressed state of the economy, are being laid off jobs in the clerical and sales areas, the very areas where jobs are being transformed by the microchip revolution. These women cannot get into retraining programs to upgrade themselves for the jobs of the future because all of the retraining programs are full. In fact there are long waiting lists.
I would like to ask the Minister why the Government did not anticipate this urgent need and provide for more retraining programs. There are 2,400 such women unemployed in the Kingston area, and only 150 retraining places.


Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of State (Mines)):: Madam Speaker, I hate to refute the figures brought forward by the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, but the fact is that the unemployment figures for women have not risen substantially. That does not, of course, answer the question concerning
the plight of women in the country. However, let us get the facts straight.
I really do welcome this opportunity to respond to the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands, because the kind of examination which I have suggested is the kind which I would have thought the Hon. Member would have endorsed and urged. The role of women in the economy is one which I think requires a very close examination. I am frankly very disappointed that she has not endorsed that kind of examination and really examined the plight of the poor in this country, the women and the children.


Mr. Jarvis:: They need jobs, and that is what they want.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: Since the Minister very casually denied the question or addressing herself to it, I can only consider that she is not concerned about the great number of women in clerical, stenographic and sales positions who are being laid off.


REDUCTION IN PROVISION OF RETRAINING PLACEMENTS
Flora Isabel MacDonald: Madam Speaker, unemployment is increasing. I would like to point out to the Minister that the bottom line is that the number of CEC retraining places in this country has gone down from last year. At this time last year there were 293,000 training places. This year there are 271,000, and yet unemployment has risen 50 per cent, in case she had not realized it. I would like to ask her why, when unemployment is approaching the two million mark, there should be fewer retraining places than there were at this time last year.


Judith A. Erola: Madam Speaker, the budget is $1 billion. 1 should like to point out to the Hon. Member, who has taken a very superficial approach to the problem concerning women in this country, that there is a fundamental problem which goes far deeper than retraining.


Mr. Nielsen:: The Government.


Judith A. Erola: It is the absence of training in science and mathematics at the earlier level which prevents women from entering the retraining program.
I would suggest to the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands that she take a much more fundamental and realistic approach to the problems of women in this country.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Clark:: You are a farce.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: 1 would hope that the Minister responsible for the Status of Women would only argue the case for women in Cabinet instead of ignoring it all the time.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Mr. Lewis:: She has lost her status.
January 24, 1983


PLIGHT OF WOMEN CUT OFF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE BENEFITS
Flora Isabel MacDonald: I would like the Minister to tell us what she is recommending with regard to a woman on unemployment insurance benefits who offers to pay for a retraining course on her own and is then cut off unemployment insurance benefits if she does. Such a woman cannot pay for the course and then be left with no income.
I would ask the Minister to consider a woman on unemployment insurance who-


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: -offers to work perhaps two days a week as a volunteer but is cut off unemployment insurance benefits when she does. What is happening to such women? Why must they be penalized, with their UI benefits taken away, because they either offer to pay for retraining courses on their own or do voluntary work in the community?


Judith A. Erola: I repeat, Madam Speaker, that the Hon. Member for Kingston and the Islands is taking a very piecemeal approach to the fundamental problem concerning women.
I spent an hour with women from the Outreach Program in London, Ontario, on Friday, and they pointed to the real problem of women in our society. The problem is much deeper than the one the Hon. Member has referred to; it is training at the very early level. I was talking to women, and I talk to women regularly. I suggest to the Hon. Member that she sit down and examine what is the true plight of women in our society, and I suggest to her that the women who are attending university cannot even deduct tuition fees from their income tax. These are very real problems which the Hon. Member refuses to address.


Flora Isabel MacDonald: You are the Government.


NATIONAL DEFENCE
Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Defence. On November 3 last year, in answer to a question I asked the Minister about the F-18 of course he gave me the assurance in this House that the Province of Quebec, a province he knows quite well, would without a doubt obtain 48 per cent of the economic spin-offs. Last Friday, according to a report which the Minister of Supply and Services had ordered, it seems that
Oral Questions
Quebec is getting only 24 per cent of the projected spin-offs. Could the Minister, to reassure those who are worried about this-and they are not on this side alone inform the House today-that he can confirm that 48 per cent of the economic spin-offs will go to the Province of Quebec?


Hon. J. Gilles Lamontagne (Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, I think the allegations made by the Member for Joliette may be somewhat confusing, where the Hon. Member mentions the figure of 48 per cent, for instance. First of all, I may say that my main responsibility in the matter of the F-18 was to select a plane that would give our pilots the best possible defence in case of an armed conflict. That was my main responsibility as Minister of Defence.


Roch La Salle: That is not the point.


Mr. Lamontagne:: My second-I know that is not the point here, but I felt it was proper to mention what our responsibilities were. Madam Speaker, as the Member for Langelier and being from Quebec, my responsibility was also to see to it that Quebec maintained its position in the aviation industry, which at the time meant 48 per cent of the industry's activity across Canada. The figures projected at the time by the Ministers of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Supply and Services were $1,573 billion worth of economic spin-offs for Quebec and $1,296 billion for Ontario. This is where we got the percentages that are in the news today, since the sum of $1,573 billion represented 48 per cent of the economic spin-offs, for Quebec, and $1,296 billion represented 41 or 42 per cent of the economic spin-offs, for Ontario. This is what lead to the conclusion that because historically, 48 per cent of Canada's aviation industry was concentrated in Quebec, it would be normal to expect the F-18 spin-offs to be apportioned in the same way.
Madam Speaker, I do not think the F-18 battle is lost. I think we can still win the war, that is, ensure that Quebec gets the percentage that reflects its position in Canada's aviation industry, and that is exactly what we intend to do.


REQUEST THAT REPORT BE TABLED
Roch La Salle: 1 have a supplementary, Madam Speaker. Today, the Minister seems to be unwilling to stand behind a minimum of 48 per cent. He keeps mentioning figures. There is a report that came out in one of the newspapers. First of all, is the Minister willing to make this report public? I think it would be of interest to all concerned. Second, is the Minister now refusing to consider this basic 48 per cent which is important to many Quebecers and many Liberal Members from Quebec? Is the Minister now refusing to give us as Quebecers the assurance that a 48 per cent portion of spin-offs is feasible? That is my question as a Member from Quebec, and I am speaking not only on behalf of many Quebecers but also on behalf of many Liberals on the other side of the House who are afraid to speak up themselves. I think the
22140

January 24, 1983
Oral Questions
answer is of some considerable importance to the Members of 50,000 additional units, and in addition create 100,000 new this House today.	jobs in Canada.


J. Gilles Lamontagne: Madam Speaker, I have never felt that I myself as a Minister from Quebec, nor the Quebec caucus, nor the Cabinet or other Quebec Ministers in the Cabinet, have ever wished to shirk our responsibility with respect to the F-18. I think that our past statements and projections are still valid. The figures are still there, and not only do I have the impression but I am certain that Quebec will maintain the position it held in Canada's aviation industry when the F-18 contract was signed, namely 48 per cent, and we shall do everything necessary to make it so.

[English)


HOUSING
Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister responsible for housing. The Minister will know that housing starts in 1982 were even lower than the pessimistic projections put forward by the previous Minister, and I am sure he will agree with the previous Minister when he identified one of the major problems facing the housing industry as the growing number of Canadians who pay more than 30 per cent of their incomes to provide shelter. One of ways to ease that situation, and one of the ways to ease the situation for the growing number of Canadians who are homeless, is to provide more money for social housing. Will the Minister explain to the House and to Canadians why at this time the Government has chosen to cut back social housing to the tune of 2,500 units?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: The
Hon. Member, Madam Speaker, should ask for information before he asks questions. In 1979 the level was set at 25,000 and almost every year since then it has exceeded 25,000, always with the provision that, when the situation improved, we would pay back to the Department of Finance the borrowing we had made. In the light of the present situation I have asked my colleague, the Minister of Finance, and have had discussions with him, to put off the date when these units will be restored and, in fact, to continue at a level of 25,000, if not more, for the current year, and that decision is pending.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, I do hope the Minister of Finance listens to that suggestion, and 1 would ask that he even consider what our party has proposed, namely, to add $500 million to that section of the budget, which would provide


PENALTIES CHARGED BY BANKS FOR RENEGOTIATION OF MORTGAGES
Nelson Andrew Riis: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is directed to the Minister of State for Finance, the previous Minister responsible for housing. Considering that some of the banks have been paying no income tax for 1982, in spite of profits in the $300 million and $400 million range, and that banks are still asking people to pay an incredible penalty, often to the tune of many thousands of dollars, in their efforts to renegotiate their mortgages to take advantage of the falling interest rates, is it not time for the Minister to stop this process that the banks are presently involved in, and ask them to reduce the penalties they are charging Canadians to allow Canadians access to these lower mortgage rates?


Hon. Paul J. Cosgrove (Minister of State (Finance)):: Madam Speaker, the representation made by the Hon. Member is one that has been made to the Minister of Finance. The Minister has indicated that, given the opportunity, he intends to raise this subject with representatives of the banking industry.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT MAKE REPRESENTATIONS TO BANKS
Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, my question is a further supplementary to the Minister of State for Finance. Given the fact that mortgage interest rates have come down by as much as 6 per cent in recent months, why should the Government not take immediate action to say to the banks and mortgage companies that when they were assessing a penalty of three months' interest for prepayment of mortgages they were already asking too much? Now that they are asking even more and increasing the penalty, they would be told that what they are doing is usury and that it is time they stopped it and gave a chance to the ordinary people of Canada who cannot make the kinds of profits which the banks have made, and who have to pay much higher income taxes than the banks pay.


Paul James Cosgrove: Madam Speaker, I have great difficulty with the premise of the Hon. Member's question, and that is the assertion of the untoward profits of the banks. The Hon. Member probably does not know because the Members of his party who started out with the Special Committee on Finance which studied that subject abandoned the other Members of this House of Commons on that Committee. The result of that study dated July 27, 1982, did not at all support the assertion of the Hon. Member that the profits of the banks had been untoward.
January 24, 1983


PIPELINES
Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. Bearing in mind that the Alaska gas pipeline, if completed, would be about an $80 billion project, would create between 150,000 and 200,000 jobs and those jobs would be effective in places like Sudbury, Hamilton, places where the iron ore could be mined and rolled, plus all of industrial central Canada, why is it that presently, with continuing rumours coming out of Alaska that there is a move toward shipping it the 800-mile route from Prudhoe Bay via the Port of Valdez into Japan as LNG Gas, we still do not have the Committee on Northern Pipelines meeting? Is there a disregard on behalf of the Government of Canada for protecting that enormous capacity for the production of jobs in Canada?


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Arnold John Malone: I wish the Members of the NDP-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. The question of the Hon. Member is unusually long.


Arnold John Malone: It is unusually good too.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Arnold John Malone: It deals with jobs for Canadians. Can the Minister report to the House of Commons whether he is going to call upon that Committee to meet, and what is it that Mitchell Sharp, his Liberal friend is doing? Do we have any-


Madam Speaker:: Order.


Hon. Jean Chretien (Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Madam Speaker, the question of committees of the House is not the responsibility of the Minister, it is the responsibility of the House. If the Hon. Member is a Member of that committee, he should talk to the chairman and request a meeting. I have no objection to a meeting. Nobody has asked me.
The problem with the pipeline is not that Canadians have not played their part. Hon. Members will recall that some years ago Parliament sat a full summer in order to pass the Bill. We authorized the pre-build of a large section of that. The problem is vested with the American section of the pipeline because they cannot find the financing or the market. As far as the project of former Governor Hickel is concerned, to have the gas delivered to Valdez, it is a project that was put forward exactly at the time of the discoveries in Prudhoe Bay. There is nothing new to it. When the Americans are willing to build their -section of the pipeline, they will just do what Canada has already done.


CANADA-UNITED STATES AGREEMENT
Arnold John Malone: Madam Speaker, I will direct my supplementary question to the Prime Minister. In
Oral Questions
view of the fact that Senator Bud Olson in the other place who is in charge of this very important job-building task, stated on July 17, 1980, that the risks were minimal, the project was going ahead, that the former Energy Minister gave an ironclad guarantee that the job was going ahead, and added on July 17 "is reasonable time"; and we have the assurance on July 21, 1980, of the Prime Minister, does the Prime Minister in fact have some kind of agreement with the United States that he can share with this House? Will he table that information? Will he give us whatever there is so that we in Parliament and the people of Canada might know that this enormous megaproject, with billions of dollars of job-creating capacity across the country, is in fact onstream and that we did not build the pre-build for naught? Will he give us that assurance?


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, the agreement I have is the one that was made publicly by President Reagan when he came to this country. He made it quite clear that his administration was committed to the building of that pipeline, and that remains the case.


FEDERAL-PROVINCIAL PRICING AGREEMENT
Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources. The National Energy Program of October, 1980, and the energy-pricing agreement of September, 1981, were predicated on the assumption of steadily rising world oil prices. Not only have world oil prices remained flat since then, but since yesterday, as a result of the collapse of the OPEC meetings in Geneva, it is widely believed that we in fact will see decreasing world oil prices. In view of these developments, is the Minister prepared to reopen discussions with the producing Provinces in order to find pricing and taxing regimes more appropriate to these changing circumstances, since obviously the circumstances are totally different from those which existed then, or those that were thought to exist now?


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, we have an agreement signed with the Provinces for five years. There have been no requests from the different Provinces asking me to reopen the agreement. Therefore it is a purely hypothetical question at this time.


Harvie Andre: My suggestion was that the federal Government, this Government, show some leadership.


REQUEST FOR RE-EXAMINATION OF PRICING STRUCTURE
Harvie Andre: Madam Speaker, 1 have a related question. Press stories over the weekend confirm

January 24, 1983
Oral Questions
that United States consumers now pay in the order of 15 cents a litre, or 60 to 70 cents a gallon Canadian currency, Canadian gallons, less for gasoline and heating oil than Canadians. Americans are not protected from the world price. They pay world price while we in Canada are supposedly protected from high world prices by this made-in-Canada creation of the Minister's predecessor. Obviously, either the pricing regime put in place by the Minister's predecessor is not working properly, or the Government is perpetrating a fraud on Canadians, because we are paying 60 to 70 cents a gallon more for gasoline in Canada today than are Americans who are paying the world price.
In view of this reality that the scheme is not working, or fraud is being perpetrated, does the Minister feel an obligation to re-examine that whole structure, and either admit that the Government was mistaken in what it promised and committed itself to, or else make changes to keep the promises that were made in the last election and since then?
[ Translation]


Joseph Jacques Jean Chrétien: Madam Speaker, I think the Hon. Member's statement was not quite accurate, because he forgot to mention that prices in Canada are sometimes higher because of provincial taxes which vary enormously from province to province, and considerably increase the national average. In some provinces there is no sales tax, while in other provinces, the tax on gas may be extremely high, thus raising the national average. As for the base price paid to Canadian producers, we pay the international price for imported oil, about 75 per cent of the international price for old oil and the international price for new oil. The problem is therefore not our basic policy but the sales tax which varies across Canada.


THE ADMINISTRATION
Hon. George Hees (Northumberland):: Madam Speaker, I would like to direct a question to the Prime Minister. As the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources advised a group of American Congressmen who were at a dinner here in this building on Friday, and was quoted as saying:
I don't know how long we'll be here, we're in terrible shape.
1 would like to ask the Prime Minister if he has any plans for improving the terrible shape which the Hon. Minister so correctly described the Government as being in. If so, when will those plans be made known to the Canadian people?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, knowing the hon. Member's political acumen I thought I would not have to explain to him, but the Minister of
Energy was really trying to ensure that the present Tory Leader would be confirmed at this week's convention.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


APPRAISAL OF POSSIBLE LEADERSHIP RACE
George Harris Hees: Madam Speaker, as the Right Hon. Prime Minister knows, also in that speech, a very eloquent speech by the way, the Minister is directly quoted as saying:
If I run hard, Trudeau will say: 'Chretien, out of the cabinet'.
Does the Prime Minister not think this is being hard on his colleague, a very good and old friend, in view of the fact that many of his colleagues are running very hard at the present time, both here in Ottawa and in Toronto?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the only conclusion that the Hon. Member should deduct from the alleged quote of the Minister of Energy is that he too has political acumen.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


PENITENTIARIES
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Solicitor General. Last week it was announced that the Minister intends to cancel post-secondary university education courses in the federal prison system. These important programs which are offered at four B.C. institutions by the University of Victoria, as well as at three other Canadian prisons in Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, have been by far the most successful rehabilitative programs within the federal prison system.
Will the Minister explain the incredible decision to axe this successful program, which is supported across the board by citizens, advisory boards, guards, prisoners, wardens and aftercare agencies, and which has been described by his own Director of Academic Education as the finest program of its type in North America?


Hon. Bob Kaplan (Solicitor General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, there were 232 inmates among the 10,000 in our system who were benefiting from those programs. I do not agree they have been proven to be particularly rehabilitative because post-secondary offenders tend to recidivate much less than the general population in any event. But they were good programs and I was very proud of them. I regretted very much having to do that. They were the best in North America. But we also have the most expensive correctional service system in North America and I am responsible for restraining expenditures within the Correctional Services of Canada, as elsewhere.
January 24, 1983

These programs cost $3,500 per inmate per year. That is a high amount. My hope is that post-secondary education can still be brought to them by self-help, by group sessions and by correspondence courses. 1 believe that, if those inmates really want to have the benefit of post-secondary education, they can develop it in some way that will cost the taxpayers less money.


Svend Johannes Robinson: Well, Madam Speaker, this is just an exercise in colossal correctional stupidity. It is going to reinforce the "warehousing" concept that this Government seems to support and which is an expensive failure in the present prison system.


REQUEST THAT DECISION BE DEFERRED
Svend Johannes Robinson: My supplementary is directed to the Solicitor General. The Warden of William Head Institution in British Columbia, as well as a number of other wardens across the country, has said that if the Minister persists in axing this successful program there are going to be very serious consequences within the federal prison community. In view of the widespread support for the program, will the Solicitor General at the very least agree to defer a final decision on the matter until he has met with university and prison officials who are directly affected by this fundamentally mistaken decision?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: No,
Madam Speaker, my decision is a final one, but I make it believing that the slightly over 200 inmates who have been benefiting from these programs can find other ways within our system of getting a higher education. It is totally wrong to characterize the Correctional Service of Canada as a warehousing" system, and the Hon. Member knows that. It is the best in North America, and he knows that also.


PROVISION OF FREE UNIVERSITY TUITION TO INMATES
Mr. Maurice A. Dionne (Northumberland-Miramichi):: Madam Speaker, perhaps the Minister would explain to the House why inmates of the correctional service, who are being paid for by the taxpayers of Canada, should receive free university tuition when the children of those taxpayers do not?


Robert Phillip Kaplan: Madam Speaker, I believe we do have a responsibility to rehabilitate offenders who are behind bars, and we will continue to exercise that responsibility, but when programs across the country are being cut back for people who are not in prison, I think inmates, and others who support inmates, have to understand that restraint has also to be applied within the Correctional Service as well.
Oral Questions ABORIGINAL RIGHTS


GOVERNMENT POLICY FOR CONSTITUTIONAL CONFERENCE
[Stage Direction]
Hon. Warren Allmand (Notre-Dame-de-Grace-Lachine
East): Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs. Last week the press published a leaked Government document written by a certain Denis Morantz of the Federal-Provincial Relations Office outlining a possible government policy for the Constitutional Conference on Aboriginal Rights scheduled for March 15 and March 16. Since the document suggested a policy and tactics which are manipulative, cynical and insincere, will the Minister say whether that document represents the policy of his Department and, if not would he assure this House that he will take an open and co-operative approach in planning for that conference?
Hon. John C. Munro (Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development):: Madam Speaker, I, for one, have not seen this alleged leaked document, but from what my hon. friend says it is some type of memo from one official to another and, as the Hon. Member knows, having been a Minister in the Government previously, officials' memos do not form government policy. The Cabinet certainly is not contemplating any approach which would be cynical or have any of the other attributes which the Hon. Member identifies; rather, we are approaching that conference with the best of intentions to do the very best we can for the native people of Canada.


AGRICULTURE
William Herbert Jarvis: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Agriculture who, I am sure, in common with all Hon. Members of this House, will have received various forms of communication arising from the statement made by the minister responsible for the status of women regarding spousal exemptions under the Income Tax Act. The Minister will know that many farm wives have not had the option to enter the work force because, to preserve and enhance the integrity of the family farm, they, of necessity, have had to stay on the farm, where they are, in my view, true partners and true contributors to the preservation of the family farm. I wonder, because of the Minister's responsibility for the family farm and its operators, would he indicate to us what his position is with regard to any changes to the spousal exemption under the Income Tax Act.


Hon. E. F. Whelan (Minister of Agriculture):: Madam Speaker, I have received no letters from any farm organization or any farmers' wives, to my knowledge. Once we have received representations I will have discussions with the Minister concerned, dealing also with our concern about joint ownership, joint partnership in farming. We know, and the

January 24, 1983
Oral Questions
Hon. Member knows, fairly well, the contribution which farmers' wives have made. We have passed special laws and regulations for the Farm Credit Corporation giving them equal rights.


REPORTED RESPONSE BY MINISTER
William Herbert Jarvis: I am sorry, the Minister did not choose to answer, because my information, and I hope he will correct me if I am wrong, is that he has communicated to his colleagues saying he was unable to support these changes at the time, and went on to say, "I did not say anything in Cabinet or Caucus but this is one of the roughest issues yet. They are mad." This is on his ministerial letterhead. I ask seriously, was this simply an expression as a private Member of Parliament concerned about his constituents, as I am concerned about mine, or is that the official position of the Minister of Agriculture of this Government?


Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, 1 misunderstood what the Hon. Member said. I thought he said "from organized farmers, or farmers' organizations." We have received several letters from people concerned about what my colleague has stated, et cetera, and we have answered those letters.


NATIONAL SECURITY
Hon. Allan Lawrence (Durham-Northumberland):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Justice. Early in November, only as a result of prodding, the Solicitor General asked the Minister of Justice for an opinion on whether ex-RCMP Corporal James Morrison of the Security Service could be charged for betraying, for money, a potential Canadian agent to the Soviets. Twice since then the Minister of Justice has stonewalled my questions in the House. Now, two and a half months after the matter was put in his hands for an opinion, could he tell us whether Morrison is to be charged and, if not, why not?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada):: Madam Speaker, I have to admit that I have not yet received an opinion from the Department on that to forward to the Solicitor General. I appreciate the interest of the Hon. Member and I will press the Department again for action on this matter. Perhaps there may still be facts which are not available to them to enable them to complete their opinion.


FORGING OF FORMER SOLICITOR GENERAL'S SIGNATURE
Allan Frederick Lawrence: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question is about a clear case of forgery of a former Solicitor General's signature to documents
of which the Minister, I understand, has full knowledge because of briefings which have occurred. Can he also tell us if any consideration is being given to a prosecution in relation to the forging on documentation, purportedly official Canadian Government documentation, of a signature of a previous Solicitor General?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, I have myself recently asked the question whether this is covered by decisions which have already been made, or whether this is a matter which we still have to decide. I still do not have an answer to that question.


RAILWAYS
Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister and is with regard to Government policy on changes to the Crow rate. The much touted ministerial announcement on the Crow rate which was slated for last Friday in Winnipeg, was cancelled with no real explanation.
Since the Canadian Wheat Board Advisory Committee voted an overwhelming seven to two to reject the Gilson proposal, which I submit accurately reflects producer opinion since they were just elected last month by grain producers all across the Wheat Board Region, would the Prime Minister tell the House if the Government has now decided to interpret correctly the overwhelming opposition to the Crow change proposals, and does the Government now recognize that the consensus among farmers, which the Prime Minister has always claimed would be a first condition to any Crow change, does not in fact exist?


Hon. Jean-Luc Pepin (Minister of Transport):: Madam Speaker, the situation in the West is rather special. We have the Saskatchewan Federation of Agriculture which could not make up its mind and decided to go back to a previous version of its policy. We have the Manitoba Farm Bureau which is in favour of the Gilson approach. Then we have Unifarm which is in favour of the Argue approach. They all met the other day at the Western Agricultural Conference and their first vote was 17 in favour of the Argue approach, 11 for the Gilson approach, and five abstained. Then the next day they had another vote and decided to leave it to the Government to make the decision.


Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, I think that answers the allegation that there is no consensus, but it does not answer the question about what is the Government's policy.
January 24, 1983


REASONS FOR GOVERNMENT POSITION
Victor Fredrich (Vic) Althouse: Madam Speaker, the second reason raised by press observers for the cancellation says that it was done to avoid conflict with the media coverage of the Tory Convention in Winnipeg. Does this mean that the Government's consensus-forming strategy on the Crow has veered away from its focus on farmers toward concentration instead on reinforcing the more natural alliance between the Government and its allies, those Tory Governments and railways which have a vested interest in breaking the old contract at the expense of the farmers of the country?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member just realized, even the Tories find the question preposterous.


HUMAN RIGHTS
Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Prime Minister. In the United States the Congressional Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians will be reporting and will recommend that President Reagan establish a federally financed education foundation for Japanese Americans, and that the Government should compensate each camp survivor or immediate heir. Is the Canadian Government considering similar assistance to our citizens of Japanese extraction who were interned during World War II?


Mark R. MacGuigan: Madam Speaker, there was, of course a commission in Canada under which compensation was paid to Japanese Canadians involved in that very unfortunate experience. Naturally we will look at the situation in light of the kind of recommendations my hon. friend refers to as being likely to be made in the United States.


REQUEST FOR COMMITTEE REFERRAL
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Madam Speaker, I think the actions of our Government during World War II are a serious blot on the country's record of respect for minority rights and human rights, as the Minister will understand.
Would the Minister be agreeable to this subject matter, including the U.S. experience, being referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Legal Affairs so that a representative group from the House will have an opportunity to examine the possibilities in Canada with respect to this initiative?
Oral Questions
Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice and Attorney
General of Canada): I am certainly prepared to consider that, Madam Speaker, to the extent that it is possible in accordance with the other responsibilities of that committee.


AIRPORTS
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Minister of Public Works regarding the six properties at Mirabel which were sold by the Government's Crown Corporation to employees of that Crown Corporation. Can the Minister tell us whether the original owners of those properties were, in any case, offered the first right to purchase those properties?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, I am not familiar with that detail and I will inquire. I doubt very much, as the Right Hon. Member knows, that those who were occupying farms or residences at one point were offered the possibility of purchase. What the Right Hon. Member suggests would, in fact, be a second expropriation. For example, a farmer who has consolidated into a large and successful enterprise would suddenly find that, out of his 400 acres or 300 acres, a good part of his land would be excised like a doughnut. If the Right Hon. Member defends that thesis, I would like to hear how he would apply it.


Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, I find it curious that the Minister should have such a ready defence of a position he does not know whether or not has been taken. I also find it rather surprising that the Minister, having been under questioning in this House for four days on this matter, and having said this particular question had been studied with particular care, would not know whether the original owners were offered the first right to purchase.


REQUEST THAT COMMITTEE STUDY SALE OF PROPERTIES
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, let us bring the matter into the public domain. Will the Minister agree to have all details of the disposition of those six properties sold to employees of the federal Crown Corporation, including copies of any representations given by any Liberal Member of Parliament, or anyone else-will he allow that to be studied without limitation by a Standing Committee of this House?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, the Estimates of the Crown Corporation involved will be up for review in the natural course of events and it is open to the Right Hon. Member to have his representations heard then.

January 24, 1983

Oral Questions


REQUEST FOR PRODUCTION OF DOCUMENTS
Charles Joseph Clark: Madam Speaker, in light of the unusual circumstances here where the Government took away land from the original owners, some of whom had it in their families for generations, set up a Crown Corporation, and then had the Crown Corporation sell that land to the Government's own employees without giving the original owners an opportunity to bid, a reckless abuse of Government power, will the Minister not agree to make a special reference of all the information available respecting the sale by a Crown Corporation to six employees of that Crown Corporation of those lands? Will he make that information available now, immediately, so that the House of Commons can study each detail, including any representations or any record of representations made by Liberal Members of Parliament? Will he not do that now, immediately, so that the matter can be cleared up?


Roméo LeBlanc: Madam Speaker, the Right Hon. Member, having found that his legal position was not a position-


Charles Joseph Clark: That is not true.


Roméo LeBlanc: -now goes into a supposed conspiracy of secrecy. The Crown Corporation in question is open to be examined in any committee, and I am quite willing and quite happy to recommend that this avenue be explored.


AGRICULTURE
Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Agriculture who is probably aware of the problems encountered by farmers as a result of metric labelling of farm chemicals. He has probably received representations from individuals, and I imagine recently he has received representations from the Ontario Farmers' Union. I would like to know the Minister's position with respect to metric labelling of farm chemicals.
translate metric into imperial and imperial into metric, whichever their machine is manufactured for.


Douglas Charles Neil: Obviously the Minister does not credit the farmers with much intelligence when he says they might be confused about dual labelling.


REQUEST THAT REGULATIONS PERMIT DUAL LABELLING
Douglas Charles Neil: Madam Speaker, would the Minister be prepared to talk to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs and ask him to change the regulations in order to ensure that there is dual labelling? This is what the farmers are asking.


Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member says I am challenging the farmers' intelligence. Already 67 per cent of farmers have changed to metric. They lead the nation in the change. For years they have used metric when doctoring their animals. At the present time 85 or 87 per cent of all agriculture has changed to the metric system. Hon. Members opposite want us to take a retrograde step-to go backwards. Instead of stepping into the Twentieth Century they want us to go back to the Eighteenth Century. We do not intend to do that. Most of the farmers whom I know have the intelligence and know-how to use the metric system, and they are using it.
Hon. Members opposite point to mistakes in the metric system, but mistakes were made in the old imperial system which were just as bad as anything ever reported to me. In my career as Minister of Agriculture, in my career as a farm leader, and in my career as a farmer, I have used all these products on my own farm. If the Hon. Member opposite ever used any on his farm, I challenge him to show that they are not now used in a safer manner than they have ever been used in our lives.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS

['Agreed.']
Eugene Whelan: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member, I think, is referring again to representations made concerning dual labelling; they want it in both imperial and metric. We have written back to them stating our position, and 1 am sure that if my letters are available on other things I have written about, these also ought to be available.


Steve Eugene Paproski: What is it?


Eugene Whelan: It says that we are considering some of the ramifications of dual labelling, including the danger of doing that if it is misinterpreted. Our officials are telling me that the danger is very great, as their studies show. Also, there are available small calculators with which people can immediately
[English)



Mr. Lome Greenaway (Cariboo-Chilcotin):: Madam Speaker, it is my duty to present a petition signed by 256 citizens of the interior region of British Columbia protesting Bill C-85. In addition, I have a Telex from the Peace River Regional Cattlemen's Association, representing 350 cattlemen, also voicing their opposition to Canagrex. Previously I presented a petition signed by 293 of my constituents on this issue.
The purpose of this petition is to express the clear and strong opposition of the citizens of British Columbia to Bill C-85, the
January 24, 1983_____________________________COMMONS DEBATES
legislation to establish Canagrex. In particular, the petitioners protest the buy and sell provisions of Canagrex as well as its wide-ranging powers.
The nature of the petition is to halt passage of Bill C-85 and prevent approval of Canagrex at third reading, and thereby prevent the establishment of Canagrex.
The petitioners hope that in your examination of the petition you will find it in order, that the Government will take heed of opposition to Bill C-85 among those in the agricultural sector and will withdraw this ill-conceived legislation.


Mr. Donald W. Munro (Esquimalt-Saanich):: Madam Speaker, I have a duty to present a petition entitled "SOS- Save our Superannuation" on behalf of more than 60 residents of the constituencies of Esquimalt-Saanich, Victoria, and Cowichan-Malahat-The Islands, all members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Lodge No. 456, asking the Government to honour the commitment it gave almost a decade ago when it agreed with public servants that an additional 1 per cent and, later, 1.5 per cent be added to their pension deductions to take into account the excessive inflation in the country which the Government has done so much to create.
These petitioners do humbly pray that in your examination of the petition you will find it in order, will give full weight to the urgency and strong commitment of their plea and will use the discretionary powers vested in your office to allow discussion of it at the earliest opportunity.


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. Jack Burghardt (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,269, 4,584, 4,626 and 4,632.


Mr. Crosby: 1.	Does the Treasury Board have written rules or regulations governing the conduct or standards of behaviour for employees of the Secretariat and, if so, are they embodied in a Code of Conduct or other specific document and is the Code or document available to the public?
2.	In the five years preceding April 1, 1982, were any employees of the Secretariat disciplined by way of suspension, dismissal or otherwise for violations of any rules or regulations governing the conduct or standards of behaviour for departmental employees and, if so, in each case, what was the name of the employee and the date of the disciplinary action?


Hon. Herb Gray (President of Treasury Board):: 1. The
Treasury Board has written rules or regulations governing the conduct or standards of behaviour for employees of the Secretariat. These are the Conflict of Interest Guidelines that
Order Paper Questions
could be made available to the public upon request, as well as some other documents such as the Employee Information Booklet and the Manual of Internal Administration.
2. Based on records, the reply is as follows:
Written
reprimands	Suspensions	Discharges
1977-	1978
1978- 1979	-	, - .1979- 1980	-	1(5 days)1980- 1981	-	-1981- 1982	-
The period of suspension was from February 18 to 22, 1980 inclusive.
To be consistent with the provisions of the Canadian Human Rights Act, we are not providing names.


Mr. McCuish: 1.	Did the Government publish a pamphlet entitled "Keep them Safe" and, if so (a) what was the total cost for the design, production and distribution (b) how many copies were printed and distributed to date (c) who was responsible for the design and production?
2.	Was the contract awarded outside the Government and, if so, in what manner was it awarded?


Mr. Jesse P. Flis (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Transport):: Transport Canada advises as follows:
1.	The pamphlet entitled "Keep Them Safe" was developed and produced jointly by the Department of Health and Welfare and Transport Canada, (a) $57,843.72, (b) 3,852,540 inserts printed; approximately 3,777,000 inserts distributed to date, (c) the insert was designed by Ove Design, and printed by Interweb, Boucherville, Quebec.
2.	The design contract was established from a standing offer which was issued on the basis of a competitive tender. The printing was done under a one-year contract for cheque inserts which was based on a competitive tender.


Mrs. Cossitt: 1.	Did the Royal Canadian Mint recently purchase a 1978 $100 gold coin which it had minted and, if so (a) did they purchase it from Mr. Tom Swadrow of Ottawa (b) what was the purchase price (c) what was the price of the coin in 1978 (d) for what reason did the Mint purchase the coin at this price?
2.	Has the Mint bought any other Canadian minted coins in the past five years and, if so, what were all the details, including the cost of purchase, the original cost of the coin, the name of the seller, the date of purchase and the reason for the purchase?
3.	Does the Mint keep an inventory of every coin it has minted and, if not, for what reason?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: The
Royal Canadian Mint informs me as follows:
1. Yes, the Royal Canadian Mint purchased a 1978 numismatic $100 gold coin, (a) it was purchased from Coin Centre

January 24, 1983
Order Paper Questions
of Canada, (b) the purchase price was $300 plus provincial tax, (c) the price of the coin in 1978 was $150, (d) the coin will be used in an exhibit and paid at market price.
2. Numismatic coins years are as follows:	purchased by the Mint	in the past fiveDenomination	Year	IssuedIssued	Price$ 1 (silver)	1935	$ 1$ 1 (silver)	1939	$ 1$ 1 (silver)	1949	$ 1$ I (silver)	1958	$ 1$ 1 (silver)	1964	$ 1$100	1978	$ 150
The above coins will be used in an exhibit which is being prepared and which will tour Germany for the next three
years.
3. No, the Mint does not keep an inventory of every numismatic coin struck. One of each is transferred to the Bank of Canada National Currency Collection on a permanent loan basis. A small quantity of each numismatic coin struck is kept for a limited period following the issued year as potential replacement for coins returned by customers or coins lost or damaged in transit. Afterwards, the remaining numismatic coins are melted.


Mr. Fretz: 1.	Was non-confidential information from the Canadian General Standards Board recently sent out by registered mail at a cost of $3.85, when the logical choice for such material would have been first class rates of 60 cents, and, if so (a) for what reason (b) how many envelopes were mailed at these rates?
2.	Does the Minister feel these costs were justified, given the current economic climate?


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of Supply and Services: 1. (a)
The Canadian General Standards Board sends letters by registered mail when the nature of the contents indicates that this method is necessary. Most of the registered mail concerns the insulation contractors certification listing program. It involves information on applications for listing, examination information, certificates, notices of quality defects, legal documents and other notices. Since this mail affects a contractor's livelihood, it is important that CGSB knows whether or not the mail was received. It is particularly important at the early stages since some companies change addresses.
(b) The Canadian General Standards Board mails many thousands of letters per year, of which about 10 per cent are registered, for the reasons outlined in 1 (a). It is not possible to determine exactly how many letters are registered.
2. Yes, in view of the points noted in 1 (a).


John O. (Jack) Burghardt: Madam Speaker, I would ask that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Madam Speaker:: The questions enumerated by the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?
Purchased Price	Seller	Year Purchased$ 16	Silver Dollar Reg'd	1982$ 16	Silver Dollar Reg'd	1982$ 16	Silver Dollar Reg'd	1982$ 12	Silver Dollar Reg'd	1982$ 11	Silver Dollar Reg'd	1982$ 300	Coin Centre of Canada	1982


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-133, an Act to amend the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2), as reported (without amendment) from the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates; and the motion of Mr. Gauthier (p. 22129)
Marcel Joseph Aimé Lambert: Madam Speaker, before lunch 1 referred to the complications that had arisen when the Government of the day in 1972, 1973 and 1974 introduced budgetary measures inspired by the so-called Crown prince of the Liberal Party", John Turner. In my view and in the view of many people, he was responsible for the deep roots of inflation over those three years of heavy Government spending and for other measures that resulted in the partial wage and price controls of 1975.
The Bill before us is the Government's attempt to rectify some of those complications but it is directed at the wrong sector. With Family Allowances, social security and with the cap on the increase in the personal allowance in the Income Tax Act, nothing has been taken from the recipient, as is the case with this Bill. Under the Bill before us, the Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act, a contribution of 1 per cent and then 1.5 per cent of salary is called for. It does not matter whether it is .25 per cent, an annual contribution was set down. A contract was established in law between the Crown of Canada and those particular classes of pensioners for a full indexation of pensions. Now the Government, acting unilaterally, wants to wipe that arrangement out for two years, to start with. After that it may want to continue with the 5 per cent cap. I say that is a distinct breach in law as well as a moral breach.
When the proposal for indexation was introduced, Old Age Security was the first to be affected. In 1973 we had the
January 24, 1983

increase in the personal allowance under the Income Tax Act. With this, the Government gave a solemn promise to take care of the taxpayers of Canada and save them from the ravages of inflation. At that time inflation was only 6 or 7 per cent. In 1981 it was 12.8 per cent and last year it was somewhat less. The obligation remains, however. The Government could certainly find the few millions that would be saved by these methods in some other way. Some departments are moving to bigger and better and more prestigious buildings deemed better suited to the dignity of a local regional director, notwithstanding the fact that leases already exist on other buildings. Such cases can be documented.
1 see that you are quite anxious that I conclude my remarks, Mr. Speaker, and my time is up. I will vote in favour of the amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) and I will vote against the Bill.


Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to speak on the amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier). The New Democratic Party caucus will vote for the amendment, but of course we will vote against the Bill. We will vote for the amendment because it basically indicates that the Bill will not continue after its term. In itself that sounds rather obscure, but I should like to refer to what we have learned during the couple of months of debate in Committee and in the House.
We have learned that the Government cannot be trusted. We have learned that Ministers of the Crown promised that the pensions of retired Government workers would not be affected, touched or altered without consultation. We were told this by pensioners, by unions representing present Government workers and by the association which represents retired Government workers. We have learned that the Government broke its word. No matter what we do with regard to the amendment before us at this time, I have the feeling that if the Government feels like breaking its word in the future, it will do so again.
When the Government wanted something from its employees in the past, it went to them and said: "Please do not negotiate pensions; it would create a bit of an administrative headache for us because there are a number of unions involved". The Government gave its word to the various unions and its employees, including Armed Forces and RCMP personnel, that those plans would be protected and that the only way they would be touched would be if the Government consulted with them. That did not happen. To my way of thinking, if we pass this amendment today and the Bill later this week, retired and present Government workers will still not have any protection; the Government will still be in a position to change its mind if it thinks it has a reason to do so in the future.
We have learned through leaked Government documents that the whole six and five program was a public relations effort. It was recognized that it would do nothing for the economy. Also it was recognized by certain Liberals in Cabinet and certain Liberal Senators that it would have a public
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act {No. 2)
relations value for the Government by making it look like the Government was doing something about inflation, but if two or three years down the road the Government decides again- whether it is Liberal, Conservative or any other Government- to break its word with its employees, it could do so.
To support my contention, I refer to the first six and five legislation, Bill C-124, supported by the Conservative Party and by the majority of the Liberal Party in the House. In that Bill the Government not only broke a gentlemen's agreement, which is what it referred to when it talked about pensions, but it broke contracts and collective agreements that it had signed with hundreds of thousands of Canadians. It broke agreements which the Government itself had negotiated and signed. Not only does the Government break gentlemen's agreements, but it breaks signed, collective ones. There is no reason to believe that the Government would not also break laws passed by Parliament. While we support the amendment, we are very cynical about whether or not the Government would obey the amendment if indeed it were passed by the House.
We learned a lot in Committee as we studied the Bill. We wish that closure or time allocation had not been invoked by the Liberal majority in the House. If more Canadians found out the real effect of this Bill, I believe there would be an outcry which would result in not just another Liberal deciding to vote against the Bill in addition to the three Liberals who earlier indicated their opposition to it, but in a number of Government backbenchers, not only from Ottawa and Hull but from Cape Breton, Sydney, Halifax and various ridings in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, and perhaps the two who were elected from western Canada, doing so.
In Committee we discovered that we were not hurting people with pensions of $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 per year; we are hurting pensioners who receive on the average pensions of $8,000 per year from the Government and the surviving spouses of deceased Government workers who have average pensions of $3,100 per year. These are the people who are being affected by the Bill. Also we found out that the vast majority of people are at the bottom end of the pension fund and that those people will be hurt by this legislation. We discovered that there were over $15 billion in accounts attributable to the pension plans of Government. So there is money available.
Also we found out that the Government has benefited from these plans in the past because it did not have to go out on the bond market and borrow at prevailing rates. In effect, it is stealing blind the money of present and retired Government workers. The Government of Canada has saved money on pension plans in the past because it has not had to borrow at commercial rates. Now these people are suffering doubly because they cannot even get the money in the plan.
The former President of the Treasury Board, the Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Johnston), composed a song. He plays it on his piano, and with the good graces of Senator Keith Davey and certain unknown Liberal friends, a record is being distributed which praises six and five across the

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
land. I think this makes our point for us. If this were a Government program designed to fight inflation and to get the economy going again, we would not have stickers, posters, pamphlets, fancy books, or the song that Senator Keith Davey and others in the Liberal machine are pushing down the throats of Canadians. If this were a Government program for job creation, there would not be all this hoopla and election gimmickry at the present time. The Government would be taking the issue seriously and talking seriously rather than pushing its little jingle.
There is a story about a certain Roman emperor who fiddled while Rome burned. Now we have a Liberal Government which writes songs and plays pianos while Canadians are burning from their lack of economic planning. We need serious planning and a Government program which fights inflation and creates jobs, but we have another public relations gimmick by a Government, as the Hon. Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) said, which really does not deserve to be around any more. We need real programs. We need more than just the token support of the Conservative Party. We need the Conservative Party to rise in the House and fight this Bill. We do not need a 15-minute walk-out by the Tories; we need them to fight this Bill to the same degree they fought for their friends, the oil companies. That is what Canadians need.


Mr. Peter Lang (Parliamentary Secretary to President of Treasury Board):: Mr. Speaker, the amendment to Bill C-133 which is before us today is a sunset amendment. I want to address this point very briefly because the amendment is essentially unnecessary since the Bill itself is self-limiting. It will apply, in 1983 and 1984, a 6 per cent and 5 per cent restraint measure to the indexing of Public Service pensions. However, in the Bill's present form, we will revert to indexing in 1985 according to the full Consumer Price Index. Therefore, the amendment put forward by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) is considered by the Government to be redundant and unnecessary since it will not improve the present legislation in any way.
I would like to respond to a few of the remarks made by Hon. Members opposite with regard to the impression they may have left with people that there was a negotiated contract between the Government and the Public Service sector unions. This simply is not the case; there was no negotiated contract between the Government and the Public Service sector unions.


Rodney Edward Murphy: Did the Government give its word?


Peter Joseph Lang: I challenge those Hon. Members opposite who have referred to this contract-some of them stating that there was a written contract-to table the contract.
1 would like to refer to the argument made by some Hon. Members that this Bill represents confiscation. Those Members are alleging that the Government is capping funds that have been contributed by public servants to the indexation account. The Government has indicated with its amendment that it will not cap the contributions made by public servants
and matched by the employer to 6 per cent and 5 per cent. The Government has recognized the contributory nature of the indexation program with this amendment and I urge Hon. Members opposite to support the amendment.
As you are aware, Mr. Speaker, in supporting that amendment they will be negating an amendment moved by the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker). His amendment is very puzzling in view of the Official Opposition's supposed-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. I call to the attention of the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary that the amendment being debated is in the name of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier).


Peter Joseph Lang: Mr. Speaker, I just found it difficult to understand the Hon. Member's position on this Bill. In general, I find it difficult to understand the Opposition's position on the Bill as well as their position on the amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier, because all I have heard from the Opposition is the importance of restraint and bringing down the deficit, their support for controlling inflation, and their support for Reaganomics.
While they support restraint in general terms, they do not like to see restraint when the Government decides to exercise it in a particular area. We then see the fiddles come out. They support restraint as long as they can keep it general and do not have to put their money where their mouth is or support an unpopular restraint measure. The Government is not afraid to proceed with legislation that may not be popular to everyone when it is in the best national interest.
The legislation does two basic things. First, it is an important and integral part of the six and five program to reduce inflation. Even the official critic for the Opposition was quoted last weekend in the media as saying yes, the six and five program has contributed to reducing inflation in Canada.


Walter David Baker: No, he did not.


Peter Joseph Lang: Yes. How has it done this? This has been accomplished in two ways: by restraint and by reducing inflationary expectations. We are in an inflationary recession. Clearly, inflation is not being caused by an increase in total aggregate demand, as some Milton Friedman disciples might try to argue, because total aggregate demand is clearly down in a recession. Therefore, we know that the inflation forces that are acting at this point are cost-push inflation forces and inflationary expectations. The six and five program deals with both of these aspects of inflation, cost-push and inflationary expectations. The program is working. In the last month, the month-to-month change between November and December saw zero inflation.
The second result of this legislation is the saving of money which the Government can put toward job creation. Therefore, the two basic results of this program are a reduction in inflation and a savings being put toward job creation. This is the kind of legislation that I believe most Canadians have asked for and support, as indicated by the polls.
January 24, 1983

The last point I would like to make concerns the argument presented by the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton, as the official critic for the Opposition, with regard to the amendment moved by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier. He indicated that this amendment was a catch-up amendment or could be argued as such. This would defeat the purpose of the legislation in a major way. A catch-up amendment would eliminate a reduction in inflationary expectations which, in turn, would defeat the purpose of the legislation.
In conclusion, I would ask Hon. Members to support Bill C-133, which fights inflation and produces funds for job creation.


Donald W. Munro: Mr. Speaker,
I listened with a good deal of attention to the extraordinary logical path followed by the speaker who just resumed his seat.
1 do not see how he can live with his conscience, let alone his logic, in coming out with such tripe.
There have been a number of references today and earlier to a letter which was written by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) to the Chairman of the Union of National Defence Employees, which is a member of the Public Service Alliance. There has been the odd reference to it throughout Hansard, but 1 think it would be helpful to Members on both sides of the House as well as to those in the general public and the pensioners who are being hit by this particular legislation to have in total, without interruption, the depth of the commitment made by the Prime Minister to Joe Power, President of the Union of National Defence Employees on October 12, 1977. For that reason, with your permission, 1 would like to read this letter from beginning to end. It states:
Dear Mr. Power:
Thank you for your telegram of September 27. I have noted your concern that the indexation of government pensions be maintained.
In our society, pensions provide a means of sharing risk so that we can retire in reasonable security and dignity, without fear of the future. Protecting pensions from inflation by indexing them to increases in the cost of living should be an integral part of our pension schemes. Indexing does not give pensioners an increasingly larger claim on our economy's production, that is, more money to buy things they could not earlier afford. Rather, indexing merely enables pensioners to maintain, roughly, their same standard of living.
Even a modest rate of inflation destroys, at a devastating rate, the buying power of people on fixed incomes. Pensioners are out of the workforce and cannot bargain or strike for larger incomes. They are not the cause of inflation; they are its victim. We have an obligation to help protect them.
I have asked my staff to send a copy of our correspondence to the President of the Treasury Board, the Honourable Robert Andras.
Yours sincerely,
Pierre E. Trudeau
That is the integral text of a firm commitment given by a Prime Minister in 1977 to one branch of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Union of National Defence Employees, which was worried at that time that there would be an attack on pensions through some modification of the indexation formula.
It has been mentioned by the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Lang), who last spoke,
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
and I take the point, that no one has yet managed to come up with an agreement between the Treasury Board and the Public Service Alliance of Canada or other negotiating sections of the Public Service that, without fail, the pensions of retired public servants would be indexed in accordance with changes in the cost of living. 1 do not have a copy of that agreement available at my fingertips. For my purposes, 1 consider an undertaking by the Prime Minister to be just as binding a commitment. I am glad that we, at long last, have an integral text of it on the record for all to see what this same Prime Minister's Government is now doing to Public Service pensioners by reneging on an undertaking, given in 1977, in the so-called interests of the six and five formula.
I wonder if anyone has ever delved into the mathematics of this situation. There are two aspects which 1 think deserve commentary at this stage. One is that something in the order of 150,000 Canadians are at present drawing pensions from the Public Service and Armed Forces which they assumed would be indexed by the CPI. In addition to those 150,000, there are 40,000 widows of public servants and members of the Armed Forces. 1 am sure that Your Honour is aware that widows of serving officers and members of the Public Service do not draw full pensions. This is one of the most iniquitous aspects of this particular measure. The six and fixe formula, despite the commitment given by the Prime Minister five years ago, will hit more than 40,000 widows of those who served in those two services alone. Their pensions are to be reduced this year and next year in accordance with the 6.5 and 5.5 formula which has been devised. The .5 concession, the concession to something more than just 6 per cent and 5 per cent, is a cosmestic operation by the Government, as far as I can see. 1 think many of the widows of these public servants, whether they served in uniform or in civilian dress, should be maintained so that they can keep pace as best they can with changes in the cost of living.
I just heard the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board suggest that the six and five program is working. If it is working, I do not see any point in imposing this iniquitous legislation on 150,000 Canadian pensioners and widows of another 40,000 Canadians who served the Government faithfully throughout their working lives, who were given this undertaking by the Prime Minister and who understood that the cost of living index would be applied to their pensions. If, as the Parliamentary Secretary so confidently predicts, the 6 per cent this year and the 5 per cent in 1984 will be the end of it, then they will readily accept those shifts in the cost of living index applied to their pensions. However, it is totally unfair, a breach of faith, to take away from them that which was offered to them in a solemn undertaking and accepted in trust.
One further matter must be considered. I have not been able to attend all the debates nor have I read all the transcripts concerning this particular matter. However, there is one aspect which worries me. After the six and five guidelines are lifted, if

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
they ever are lifted, if there is a change in 1985 or 1986 under the provisions of this law, on what base will the new cost of living be set? Will it work on the base of the reduced 5 per cent? I suggest that there is room for another amendment. Unfortunately, I will not be able to move it, but 1 do suggest to the Government that it carefully consider the matter. I want the Canadian people, particularly public servants and serving officers of the Armed Forces, to bear in mind that their pension base is being eroded. 1 would suggest that a suitable amendment would be that if the six and five formula is applied, and the Government is all too likely to impose its will, the real cost of living index, whatever it is, should be applied to their pensions as of today for the next two years and should be a base for the application of the cost of living after that time. This would at least preserve the base.


Miss Pauline Jewett (New Westminster-Coquitlam):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Lang) that he, in his speech a few moments ago, as much as admitted that the base would be permanently reduced by the amendment which is before the House.


Walter David Baker: That is what I heard. You are right, Pauline.


Pauline Jewett: The only recourse for the Government now, surely, is to say, "We have made a mistake. We did not really wish to fight this battle on the backs of retired public servants and retired Armed Forces personnel and we will gain very few dollars from this battle". However, those very few dollars which will be gained by the Government are, to the people concerned, extremely important dollars. This has been emphasized many times by members of all Parties, including some on the Government side. Indeed, if only about three or four additional Members on the Government side would act really in accordance with their own, I am sure, deeply held convictions, there would be no way this Bill would pass the House. I think it would only take perhaps four or five additional Members from the Government side to join us on this side and we would be able to dispense with the present amendment, and then defeat the Bill.
I find it particularly sad that those who suffer the most, and of course all the superannuates will suffer, are the surviving spouses of superannuates, of whom I believe there are 32,500, practically all of whom are women. Their average pension benefit now amounts to about $3,200, based on normal indexation with inflation, $3,200 which in many cases is the totality of the pension received, or is almost the totality, that is to say, the Old Age Security when added to it makes the totality of the pension received. This is what a great number of superannuates' spouses are trying to live on, yet the Government, by reducing the 11.5 per cent indexation that would normally be given this month to 6.5 per cent, has caused a loss to these superannuates' spouses of $160. With the 11.5 per cent indexation, they would have got an increase from $3,200 to
$3,568. They are now going to get an increase to only $3,408. That goes into the base, that $160 loss. In 1984, the second year of this program, whereas the normal indexing base would have been $3,568, with 10.5 per cent indexing, which would have been the normal indexation, that would have been raised to $3,943. Now, with the 5.5 per cent indexation, the raise is only to $3,595. That makes a loss of $348 to the surviving spouse in 1984.
The combined loss to a surviving spouse who gets an average pension now of $3,200, over the two-year period, will be $508. That is a very large amount of money when the base is only $3,200. There is nothing in the Government's proposal that will ensure that the base will ever be restored to where it is now and, as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Board (Mr. Lang) himself said a moment ago, the amendment we are discussing at the moment will not ensure that the original base will ever be restored to the present base.
The numbers of people 1 am talking about now is not large. As I say, surviving spouses of superannuates number about 32,500. The total amount of moneys from the Government's point of view, or anyone's point of view, that would be going to the surviving spouses had the 6.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent not been introduced are not large amounts of money. However, a loss this year of $160 and a loss next year of $348 for a combined loss of $508 is, as I have said, a very significant amount of money to the surviving spouse when one is already living, as many are, below the poverty line.
It would not take very much, it seems to me, for Members on the opposite side, to say to their consciences and eventually to the House as a whole, that a mistake has indeed been made, and that it is not only a breach of moral contract to be reducing the indexing, because everyone must agree that it is that, but it is not in any way necessary for the so-called fight against inflation.
As has been pointed out many times, for reasons that have nothing to do with six and five, the cost of living is coming down. It is coming down because of the deepening recession, and there is no need therefore, even if they put it forward not on the grounds of morality but on the grounds of need, to index at six and five or at 6.5 and 5.5, the pensions of the retired public servants of this country and their surviving spouses. Neither on grounds of morality nor of need is this legislation necessary. It may be, in the case of the Conservatives who originally voted for six and five in Bill C-124, that they have now realized there is no need. They are late coming to this realization, but it may be that they have realized it, and all that is left now is for the Government to realize it.
The superannuates associations across this country have been trying in recent months, as hard as any group of people could, to impress upon the Government both the lack of morality and the absence of need for this legislation. I want to put on record at least one of the messages I have received. Like others, I have received hundreds of messages from individual pensioners and groups of pensioners. In my area there is quite
January 24, 1983

a large group named the Fraser Valley Branch of the Federal Superannuates Association which, of course, is a branch of the national association, which has sent a telegram to me saying:
The Executive of the Fraser Valley Branch Federal Superannuates National Association and our four hundred members are counting on your vigorous support of our demands that Bill C-133 restriction of indexing of public service pensions be withdrawn or defeated in the House. We shall be watching with interest your efforts on our behalf and hoping that they will be successful.
What 1 am suggesting, and many are suggesting, begging the Government is that in all good common sense it withdraw this Bill and if it does not withdraw it, begging at least a half dozen Members on the Government side to join us in defeating this Bill.


Mr. Blaine A. Thacker (Lethbridge-Foothills):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise again on this infamous Bill C-133. We have another amendment which has come from the Government side. To my surprise, Government Members are speaking against it. It is an amendment by a caring Member on the Government side which says, let us by statute end this Bill on the date that the Government, when bringing in the Bill, said it would end. Now the Government is speaking against it. It will be interesting to see how they vote on it when it gets right down to the push and shove.
This Bill clearly cuts the pensions of retired civil servants. We are not talking about those presently in the system. They are subject to the six and five restraint program, Bill C-124, that those in this Party, at least, voted for. The whole country is in favour of restraint. This Bill does not have anything to do with restraint. This Bill has to do with the treatment of retired civil servants and the spouses of former civil servants who have now died.
The sole issue on which we are going to stand in this House and vote is to break a contract. Most Government Members will stand and vote against the interests of their constituents. It clearly is in the best long-term interest of all of us as citizens that Government should honour contracts. When Government Members vote to break a contract, that is a very serious matter, not only in the short term but in the long term. They will stand to break a contract for one year.
There is no doubt that because inflation is dropping for 1983, the natural formula will drop the indexing of pensions of retired civil servants to the rate of inflation. There is no doubt that pursuant to the contract, in the year 1983 retired civil servants are entitled to over 11 per cent. They will only get 5.5 per cent or 6.5 per cent, depending on where they are.
That is wrong. It clearly is a situation where the Government is going to break a contract. That really does not surprise me. I will go on later to explain why the grassroots supporters of the Liberal Party have lost control. It has been a progressive loss of control since 1968.
The Cabinet now running the Liberal Party and the strategists behind it are not the Liberal Party that you, Mr. Speaker, fell in love with and joined. It is not the Liberal Party that a lot of young people in the fifties and sixties decided to support because of what it stood for, the concept of liberalism, the individual versus the state. That is totally switched around.
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
Now the controlling mechanism in the Liberal Party clearly are statists. They believe the state is more important than the Canadian citizen. They are centralists. They like to bring power into Ottawa rather than leave it.
For example, in taxation the philosophy of this Party is to leave money with Canadians, let them decide how to spend it. They are the people getting black lung diseases in the mines and emphysema on the farms. Let us leave the money with them and let them decide. However, the new Liberal philosophy is no, Canadian citizens are not wise as to how to spend their money, therefore we had better tax it away from them. Those in the Cabinet and the bureaucracy will decide how to spend the money because they believe they know better.
Throughout the seventies, they took us into a huge deficit situation. A deficit is really a form of taxation, as is inflation. It means that questions on redistribution are not decided by individual Canadians in the sense of which charity to support or which product to buy. It is done by a central bureaucracy which taxes it away and decides who will get it by way of grants, not tax deductions which leave the onus on the citizen. They decide that if you do this, they will give you a grant.
Essentially, that is socialism. In terms of economic philosophy it is socialism. We see other people suffering under that same type of Government. Every citizen in Quebec now knows in full measure what it is to live under a socialist government where a bureaucracy and a Cabinet decide what is best for the citizens. In that Province, the Government is taking away 20 per cent from its on-line civil servants. It gave them an enormous raise trying to buy a "yes" vote in the referendum. Now they are having to eat crow and are taking it back.
From the citizens' perspective, what did they do wrong? The Government offered them money and they, of course, took it. Now it is being extracted from them. In the meantime they bought houses, have mortgage commitments, and they bought cars. The 20 per cent cutback is truly a serious matter for the individual citizen in Quebec. That flows back. It is a logical result of a Government saying it knows better what the citizens should do than the citizen himself.
The United Kingdom is a classic example. Since the Second World War, they have nationalized coal and the shipbuilding industry. All of the major industries were nationalized under Labour Governments. Again it was increased taxation with the bureaucracy deciding how to spend it. We know where Britain is as a result. They have lost their standard of living.
We know what has happened in Canada. In 1968, comparing ourselves with the 24 western industrialized nations, we were second. On an individual basis, we had the second highest standard of living. Now that has slipped to thirteenth. Under some measurements in comparison, we have dropped to the absolute bottom of the list. We are essentially prisoners in our own land. That is what inflation does. Compared to citizens in other countries, we are thirteenth rather than second.
Why is it the Government would bring in a Bill to break a contract? We know the reason. It is because the national debt

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is probably in the area of $150 billion gross. The yearly deficit is something like $30 billion. That is in spite of all the enormous tax increases since 1980. When you look at those tax increases, they are almost all on the direct taxes which affect the poor far more than the rich.
Take the gas tax and all of the sales taxes that have been imposed as compared to the so-called progressive tax system where the rich are supposed to pay more. In spite of all those tax increases, we are still in the position where the deficit is going up enormously. Revenues are plummeting, yet the costs, the so-called safety nets, are bringing it up. The amount for interest alone just to service that debt is something like 30 per cent of every dollar of revenue coming in.
In past years we would go to Canadians every year and say that the deficit is rising, that it will hurt us. In every election campaign those in this Party at least would say, "Look, friends, the deficit is getting so high that we believe Government has to be cut back". The Liberal Party with all of its strategy would have all of its Members go out and say, "No problems, folks, the amount to service the debt is only 5 per cent". Then it went to 10 per cent, 15 and 20, and now it is over 30 per cent of tax revenues just to service the debt. That does not pay it back. It just services it. That money concentrates into the hands of our fellow Canadians who already have wealth. Therefore, the rich become very rich and the poor very poor. That will turn us into a Third World country. It is not the fault of the citizens, except that they fell for the election platforms. It is the fault of Governments which think they can do things they really cannot do. I see my time has expired, therefore I will resume my seat.


Mr. Dave Nickerson (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, it is also my intention to be fairly brief. I do not want to become repetitive. There have been a number of speakers on this amendment. I will be very pleased to support the amendment put forward by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), a gentleman who obviously has the best interests of his constituents at heart.
The amendment before us would put a definite cap on the legislation, Bill C-133, that has been proposed by the Government. Some Members opposite have argued that a cap is contained within the Bill. I am not so sure whether that is true in the strict legal sense, but if this amendment were to carry, the Act would expire on December 31, 1984.
I, like my colleague, have difficulty with the way in which the Government has reneged on its contractual obligations. This Government has developed the habit of ripping up, when it suits it, any contract which is outstanding. We witnesse this, for instance, with Bill C-48, the Oil and Gas Act, when existing leases which had been entered into in good faith by the lessees were ripped up by way of Bill C-48 by the lessor, who was the Government of Canada. I notice on this occasion the New Democratic Party, because it suits its political purposes, has been critical of the Government for doing just that, but I ask, where were they on other occasions when the Government
did precisely the same thing with contracts of a different nature?
We, on this side, Mr. Speaker, do not at all like the idea of legal contracts being ripped up, reneged on by the Government by virtue of Bills introduced into this House, and we have said so on occasions such as in Bill C-48, when one set of Canadian citizens were involved-on that occasion lessees of oil and gas rights-and we have said so again today and on previous occasions with respect to the pensions of public servants. In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, contracts of this nature should have the sanctity of the law apply to them. They should be allowed to expire if the Government wants to change them. They should not be changed in the middle, so to speak.
There is a difference between promises of a general nature and contractual obligations. When the Liberal Party in the 1980 election promised "Vote for us and we will keep the price of oil and gas low", I suppose you could call them morally responsible for the way they have not kept that promise. But I do not think the majority of Canadian citizens thought it any more than just another Liberal promise, and when the Government broke the promise, of course it mattered, but not in the same way as if it had been a contract negotiated and entered into by two sides.
I believe, rather than using a great amount of parliamentary time just to address this one specific issue, the question of pulling back Public Service pension rights, we should rather be using the time of the House to address the whole question of pensions, Canadian pensions. Any pension scheme, whether it be public or private, should be governed by the principle of actuarial soundness. If we talk to the actuaries today we will find that many pension schemes, especially public schemes, are no longer actuarially sound. If we study the population forecast for Canada, if we address ourselves to the aging population, the number of people over 65 who will be in this country some 20 years from now, and the number of people of working years, we find that we will very shortly come up to a real bind.
There has been some preliminary thought put into this by Government Departments, by Members of this House, members of the Senate and a lot of other people, and we find that there will be some hard decisions to make in the future. We want a system of pensions in Canada which will allow people, once they have retired, to live in a manner to which they have been accustomed during their working lives, to enjoy the benefits of those later years. It then becomes necessary to have a radical change in the amount of national income or personal income which is put into the pension scheme during the lifetime of the people who will eventually become pensioners. I believe the figures are something like three times what we presently put into pension schemes. I would hope that when that is done there will be a system of pensions compensated for inflation.
I do not think the Government's six and five per cent solution is going to work. We have heard that it is very much of a public relations gimmick, and I am inclined toward that way of thinking. If a pension is not indexed, it very rapidly
January 24, 1983

erodes away. I know a number of pensioners in my constituency and across Canada who throughout their working lives have done everything they should to look after themselves in their declining years, for want of a better word, and they now find themselves almost destitute because they paid in good money for bad pensions, or what turned out to be a bad pension because of inflation.
Inflation has not been wrestled to the ground, and what has been going on at the present time will result in another great bout of inflation once the economy recovers. We are guaranteeing that by the continued high deficits and by the Government's financial policies. I believe the action of the Government in putting before us Bill C-131 is despicable. It should not be done this way at all. We should have a public debate on all pensions. We should not single out the public servants to be harassed in the way which has been done by the present Liberal Government. We should try to ensure, Mr. Speaker, that all Canadians can avail themselves of pensions which will enable them to live in dignity once they pass through their working years. They should have the best pensions we are able to afford.


David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, when some years ago Liberal Governments of the day brought forth legislation which provided for the indexing of the old age pension, Family Allowances, Public Service pensions and the Canada Pension Plan, and when the Parliaments of that time approved those proposals, what they were establishing was not the principle that people receiving the benefits under those programs would get increasingly generous assistance from those plans, but rather what they were adopting was the principle that even if the cost of living went up, as it has every year since that legislation was passed, those people would be secure. The real benefits, the real standard of living of the people receiving the old age pension or the Public Service pensions, or Canada Pension or the Family Allowances, would continue at the level and the rate they obtained when they became eligible for the programs.
Therefore, Mr. Speaker, when the Government now proposes to change the rules, to put a cap of 6 per cent and 5 per cent on old age pensions, Family Allowances and Public Service pensions, what they are saying in effect is that the real standard of living of these people will be reduced because the cost of living is still rising at substantially more than the six and five figures the Government talked about. There is no indication that it will be much less than 9 per cent in the coming year. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that in fact the cost of living may rise rather than drop.
In his speech a little while ago, Mr. Speaker, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance (Mr. Fisher) tried to argue that there was no contract with respect to Public Service pensions between the Government of Canada and the organization representing public servants, and therefore the Government was quite proper in bringing forward this legislation. I am not going to repeat the arguments or quotations from letters written by the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) which
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indicate there certainly was the implication by him that the Government would maintain the indexing of Public Service pensions. However, I suggest the Parliamentary Secretary does not have to look very far to see that the Government does not mind at all breaking contracts negotiated with its employees. After all, it was a Liberal Government of Canada which gave the public servants the right to collective bargaining on wages and salaries and other questions. It was the Government of Canada which reached agreement with all public servants on the wage and salary increases they would be entitled to this year and next, by free collective bargaining. Nearly all those agreements called for increases of more than 6 per cent and 5 per cent, yet the Government has unilaterally brought in legislation which limits pay increases, as it limits pension increases, to six and five.
Members of the Opposition have been accused by Government Members of opposing these proposals for partisan political reasons. Nothing could be further from the truth, Mr. Speaker. It is not that we are not partisan; the essence of a democratic system is that there should be differences of opinion between various groups and parties. However, in opposing the legislation we are dealing with today, we are not alone. I am sure Liberal Members of Parliament have had hundreds of communications from retired public servants or their widows telling of the difficulties they will have. We know there may be a few retired public servants, like the former Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr. Reisman, whose pension is quite generous. But thousands of pensioners, particularly the widows of former Public Servants are drawing pensions of $1,000 or $2,000 or $3,000 and they are living in real poverty.
I have spoken on this Bill before and I do not want to repeat what I have said on other occasions. In any case, I could not say anything about this Bill nearly as eloquently as were the comments made about this kind of legislation and other Government policies in the statement released a few weeks ago by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops. Speaking about the Government's policies dealing with the real economic and social crisis in which we are living at the present time they say this, amongst other things:
In developing strategies for economic recovery, we firmly believe that first priority must be given to the real victims of the current recession, namely-the unemployed, the welfare poor, the working poor-pensioners, native peoples, women, young people-and small farmers, fishermen, some factory workers and some small businessmen and women. This option calls for economic policies which realize that the needs of the poor have priority over the wants of the rich; that the rights of workers are more important than the maximization of profits; that the participation of marginalized groups takes precedence over the preservation of a system which excludes them.
If there ever was a marginalized group, Mr. Speaker, it is the kind of people I have been talking about, those who are living in real poverty by any standard which any Member of this Parliament wants to establish. They go on to say:
-greater emphasis should be given to the goal of social responsibility in the current recession. This means that every effort must be made to curtail cut-backs in social services, maintain adequate health care and social security benefits, and above all, guarantee special assistance for the unemployed, welfare recipients, the working poor and one-industry towns suffering from plant shut-downs.

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They are talking about social security benefits, and they are so right, because this particular Bill and the others deal with pensions. That is part of our social security system. In a not too distant future this federal Government and provincial governments will be taking steps to cut back on the fundamental structure of health care and hospital insurance we have established over the years. Then, in dealing with the present strategies of Government, the Bishops say:
The means for curbing inflation are such austerity measures as the federal 6 and 5 wage restraint program and cut-backs in social spending (e.g. hospitals, medicare, public services, education and foreign aid) rather than controls on profits and prices. These measures, in turn, have been strengthened by a series of corporate tax reductions and direct investment incentives for such sectors as the petroleum industry. In effect, the survival of capital takes priority over labour in present strategies for economic recovery.
That is how they analyse the thrust of this Government's policies. They go on to say:
At the same time, working people, the unemployed, young people, and those on fixed incomes are increasingly called upon to make the most sacrifice for economic recovery.
That is precisely what the Government is doing, Mr. Speaker. People on fixed incomes are our pensioners and they are being asked to carry the can, to pay the price for the mistaken policies we have had in recent years from this federal Government. The Bishops talk about alternative approaches and they say:
An alternative approach calls for a re-ordering of values and priorities in our economic life. What is required first is a basic shift in values: the goal of serving the human needs of all people in our society must take precedence over the maximization of profits and growth ... alternative strategies are required which place primary emphasis on the goals of combatting unemployment by stimulating production and permanent job creation in basic industries; developing a more balanced and equitable program for curbing inflation; and maintaining health care, social security and special assistance programs.
1 am not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, Mr. Speaker, but I say that the ideas expressed in this statement are principles which could be adopted with great benefit to Canadians regardless of their religion. I urge the Government to reconsider what it is doing, and to realize it is shifting the burden of the difficulties we are in to precisely those people who can least afford to live with the kind of decisions this Government is making.


Mr. Lyle S. Kristiansen (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to speak to this latest amendment on Bill C-133; the matter of trust, which was raised continuously in succeeding submissions in committee, once again comes to mind. It strikes me as somewhat odd that the Liberal Member concerned should show such obvious lack of faith and trust in the word of the Party and the Government to which he belongs, as to deem it advisable for him to introduce an expiry amendment which sets out clearly what the Government says is already the case. If a Member of the Liberal Party acts independently to bring forward an amendment which says he does not believe that bunch over there, so he wants to nail it down to make sure there is no mistaking it-what are those in the Opposition to think? What are the people of Canada, who have been given so many reasons to dispute the good faith of that Liberal Government, to think? A lot of questions need answers, Mr. Speaker,
but we have not received them from the Government in this debate.
It was with a great deal of regret that last Thursday, my colleagues and I in the NDP watched the Official Opposition Torries rush in with undue haste in an effort to help rush this legislation through. Their opposition has been token. It made us question the motivation of that Party once again. They did not understand the Government's game plan of compulsion and compulsory restraint that was presented in the budget of June 1982, and again, they dealt with Bill C-124, the parent of the six and five legislation, in isolation. They supported it although they put on a public display of opposition to the companion Bills, Bill C-131, Bill C-132 and Bill C-133 which grew from Bill C-124. Their protest today lacks credibility.
The antics of that Party make me think of a young man who gets a girl in trouble and then takes off when he sees the progeny. That is the kind of game the Conservative Party has been playing. They were all in favour of Bill C-124, all in favour of compulsory restraint, all in favour of breaking written contracts, but now they have the unmitigated gall to pretend opposition to the legitimate offspring-perhaps the illegitimate offspring-of the parent Bill.
I do not believe that many people in the country think kindly of a young man who gets a girl in trouble and then takes off, out of town, and does not live up to his responsibility. But that is the kind of contempt that the Conservative Party deserves for their behaviour regarding this matter. If the people of the country decide on a shotgun ceremony and insist that the other two Parties in the House get together, then no one should be surprised.


Mr. McKenzie:: Leave that to Svend Robinson!


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: Another analogy came to light in Committee.


Mr. Reid (St. Catharines):: I hope it has more substance than the last.


Lyle Stuart Kristiansen: It has more substance than some of my PC colleagues on my right appear to have. Their lack of consistency suggests that they have very little.
I can visualize an avalanche, Mr. Speaker, where the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Clark) stand at the top of a hill and roll a stone down, which is Bill C-124. They work together, cheering on the wolves of compulsory restraint against pensioners and public servants, but as the stone rolls down the hill it gathers momentum. Under it are not only the Public Service employees who are being crushed by C-124 but the mothers and children suffering from Family Allowance restraints, the old age pensioners suffering from restraints on Old Age Security and now the public servant retirees who are being crushed by the onslaught. The Leader of the Opposition claims that he only rolled the first stone. But that is how an avalanche starts, Mr. Speaker. Anyone in public life ought to know that.
January 24, 1983

The Conservatives have attempted to deny their part in this fiasco, and that is contemptible, Mr. Speaker. I do not think any other word can appropriately describe their actions.
At the Standing Committee on Miscellaneous Estimates which studied Bill C-133, I put some questions to a Mr. Potter who represented the Economists, Sociologists and Statisticians Association, regarding remarks he had made in earlier testimony. I wanted to know the difference in what was accruing to the indexation fund at the present time and what would accrue if a properly managed plan was in existence. The committee report for December 14 shows Mr. Potter answering as follows:
The idea is that the pension account and the indexing account collectively earn less interest than a fair return on a well-managed private pension plan by about one percentage point, according to Tomenson-Alexander. In addition, the basic pension plan is in 20-year bonds which are particularly unresponsive to inflation in the sense that very few of them come up new, get a new money interest rate credited to them. There is a great lag in the response to inflation in the weighted rate, and this is not a prudent way to manage a pension account in an inflationary environment.
He then referred to a question that had been asked of the Treasury Board on April 21, 1982, and commented on it as follows, and the question was:
-how much the indexing account would be if the PSSA, the Canadian Forces account and the RCMP account were all credited with the five-year bond rate the indexing account gets, in the same way it is done there, and in addition got monthly interest credited and a 0.125 per cent representing the saved transaction costs of not having actual investments. The answer was that the indexing account as of January 1, 1981, would be $6,305 billion.
This is the answer of the Treasury Board. The actual amount of the indexing account was $807 million. If the extra interest were credited on account of the term of the bonds and the way it has worked, if the excess interest resulting from such a crediting was on the excess interest principal, transferred for indexing, there would be $6.3 billion for indexing on that date compared to $800 million. Because of recent high interest rates and the way five-year bond yields move, it is probably much higher now. They did not give us a figure on what would happen if you credited 1 per cent extra, a la the Tomenson-Alexander Report, and also transfer that on an excess interest basis, then one would guess the updating and the extra 1 per cent Tomenson-Alexander identified, would bring the figure well over $10 billion.
The Government has been misallocating this money by its misuse and mismanagement of those pension funds and indexing funds for its own purposes. Certainly those are also the purposes of the people of Canada, but it is a misallocation and misplacement of trust. The Government has no moral or ethical right to deny the public servants of this country what they have paid for and what their payments would more than cover.
In certain joint pension funds in the private sector, conditions are imposed. In the IWA Forest Industry Plan there is a provision that funds from that plan cannot be invested in the industry so that there will be no conflict of interest. Perhaps we need something like that to ensure that neither this Government nor any future Government may misspend, misallocate, misadminister and mismanage the pension funds of the people of this country or its own employees.


Mr. Fred King (Okanagan-Similkameen):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to add some words of wisdom to this debate after the statement made by my colleague on my left.
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In the real world which exists outside the confines of this city, I find that Canadians in general do not feel great resentment against the Government for the six and five program. There is broad resentment for the Government which produced the economic circumstances in the country by its neglect of basic principles for many years. There is broad resentment because the Government has simply resorted to rhetoric and attacks against one segment of the population and because it carries on as if all things were normal. It has shown no spending restraint in its efforts to advertise its self-perpetuation and glorification.
It is the breaking of faith with the people of Canada to which I should like to speak briefly today. Also I should like to compare the record over the years with what might be accomplished by the Government if it had good faith and accepted its responsibility to the people.
I should like to refer to an article written by George Bain which outlined the history of rhetoric by successive Ministers of Finance in this particular regime. It indicated that they have been mouthing restraint but have produced nothing but the opposite in the final result. According to the article, Edgar Benson, the first Minister of Finance of the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), said on October 22, 1968:
We should not delude ourselves into thinking the choice is between either policies of fiscal ease to counter unemployment or policies of fiscal restraint to fight inflation. In our present circumstances, unchecked inflation would precipitate the kind of economic disruption in which unemployment would surely increase and we would end up with more of both evils.
How often have we heard this lately? Also, according to the article, the Prime Minister said in February 1982:
Experience both here and elsewhere has shown us that you cannot have real, long-term economic development and generate lasting employment unless you are first prepared to deal with the problems, like inflation, which stand in their way. There is no way of avoiding the requirements of self-discipline ... We ... have chosen our course: It is one of restraint in our own finances.
This statement by the Prime Minister of Canada stands in stark contrast to what is going on in the country. It is no wonder that resentment has built up because the Government of Canada chooses to attack one particular group of people. Also, according to the article, John Turner, when he was finance minister, said:
The Government proposes to set an example of restraint.
Then it indicated that Donald Macdonald said:
Restraint has been an integral part of our anti-inflation policies.
The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien), when he was Minister of Finance said the following, according to the same article:
Expenditures by all levels of Government have been brought under tight control.
I should like to read more from the article. It continued:
-Liberal Governments over all that time have said that restraint of Government spending is the specific for inflation, that reducing inflation is prerequisite to "lasting employment," and that restraint has been, is being, and will be applied.
Against all that, there must be put the fact that Government spending has gone only up.

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Also it read:
-a 356 per cent increase in the size of the economy, a 545 per cent increase in Government spending.
As recently as 1980, the present Prime Minister said, while speaking in Windsor during the election campaign:
-the Liberal Party puts people first, and it's on that basis that we will worry about the deficit after we finish worrying about the unemployed.
This is the type of rhetoric which the Government, the Prime Minister and Members opposite use in an election campaign. This rhetoric is demonstrated in such acts as the introduction of Bill C-133. The Bill was simply designed as an example to which the Government could point to show that the depression it produced in fact wrestles inflation to the ground.
We now pay as much in interest on public debt in a year as we used to set aside for total budgetary expenditures in the late 1960s. Its record of non-achievement is very pertinent to this debate.
In my allotted ten minutes last Tuesday 1 was able to begin the basis of the argument which I believe goes to the heart of the issue and accurately describes the sentiment of a vast majority of Canadians. If we look at the Gallup poll results today, we will see that statement carried out in statistics. Canadians believe in restraint. Canadians believe that the Government should show responsibility in its spending habits. Canadians have experienced that and they know that when there is no recognition of the gross results produced by overspending in deficits, catastrophic tragedies await the citizens of Canada. In this situation the vast majority of Canadians are prepared to bite the bullet and to share in the sacrifices which must be made by all to right the madness which has happened within the nation under the direction of the Liberal Government.
I am fully convinced that as a whole Canadians are begging the Government to show leadership and an honest effort to reform its ways. Were honest and generous leadership shown in restraint, I am sure the outcry against Bill C-133 would be much less intense. Even though it is a breaking of faith, if all people were contributing equally to the attack on inflation, the outcry would be less.
One reaction against the Bill is that the Government of Canada has singled out one group of Canadians, namely, superannuates, from its employe, to bear the burden of carrying the Government's facade of restraint. As a legitimate result, the cry is going out against this unworthy action. In light of this record, considering the total lack of evidence that the Government has any intention to mend its ways, and considering the documented undertakings of the Government to its employees on many occasions-that is from the Prime Minister to the former President of the Treasury Board-to maintain indexation and not to change the provisions without consultation, the only honourable step for the Government to take is to withdraw totally Bill C-133.
In conclusion, failing this, surely the Government has an obligation to accept the amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) so that the Act will expire on
December 31, 1984. Surely former servants of the Crown deserve at least that consideration and more.


Mr. Lome Nystrom (Yorkton-Melville):: Mr. Speaker, 1 want to say a few words in support of the proposed amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier), that the Act terminate on December 31, 1984. I suppose that the only difference I would like to see is that it terminate on December 31, 1982 instead of 1984. I say that because I believe that this Bill, like the other two capping Bills, is a very regressive piece of legislation. It is unfair. It is not equal. It hits the ordinary and low income Canadian much harder than those who are more highly paid in society.
For example, people who make $10,000 a year and receive an increase of 6 per cent will have their wages increased by $600 this year and $500 next year, with a 5 per cent increase. Those who receive $50,000 and receive an increase of 6 per cent and 5 per cent will have an increase of $3,000 this year and $2,500 next year. I say that is unfair and economically immoral and simply not just in the twentieth century.
We saw a report from the Bishops which was issued on January 5. In their report on economy they said that our economic moral standards are lacking, and they called upon the Parliament of Canada and Canadians to think more about equality and justice in this country's economy.
I want to call upon the Government to implement some of the ideas and ideals of the Bishops of this land. I think we all know of the problems this nation is facing. We are all aware of the tremendous unemployment rate in Canada which stands at about 1.5 million. We know about the high inflation rate and the high bank rates which we have had for the last several months.
I suggest that the piece of legislation before the House today, along with the other capping Bills, will do nothing to bring down inflation or help the Canadian economy. They do not form part of an economic strategy but, indeed, form part of a political strategy for the Liberal Party as a result of the troubles in which they find themselves in this country.
At a time when we have economic difficulties in Canada and need to create jobs for Canadians, I have never been able to understand why the wealthy who have investment funds need to be stimulated by incentives and various tax write-offs in order to invest their money and contribute to our society while the ordinary worker, in order to make his contribution, has to tighten his belt. I do not understand why the poor have to tighten their belts while the rich need incentives in order to make a contribution in this country.


Mr. Benjamin:: They have the power.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: My friend is absolutely right. They have the power.
If one reads the Bishop's report, they refer to the fact that the upper 20 per cent of Canadian income earners are making some 42 per cent of the country's national income while the
January 24, 1983

bottom 20 per cent are making only 4 per cent of the Canadian income. What inequality! Yet the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), when he was elected in 1968, crusaded this land talking about a just society and a more compassionate society. He talked about a society in which those who have would help those who have not. Instead, the gap has widened, and we now see legislation in the House today that will widen the gap even further by putting a 6 per cent and 5 per cent ceiling on the increase in pensions for retired public servants. The Government will do the same thing very soon to other pensioners in Canada and to Family Allowances. I say that it is unfair.
I believe the Government should rather be devising methods to stimulate the Canadian economy. We should realize that the current recession in Canada is very serious and world-wide in its consequence and nature. We are not simply experiencing a slowdown in demand, a crisis created by OPEC or a crisis created by armament expenditures, although these are all important factors, especially the spending on armament in the world. More important, however, we are experiencing a tremendous technological shift in our world where many of the older and more stable industries, such as automobile, steel, rubber and construction industries are going down. Even with a recovery in the world's economy these industries will still leave tens of thousands of people permanently out of work as a result of technological change revolutionizing the work force.
Unless we devise an economic strategy and alternative direction for this country when recovery is achieved, Canada will be left far behind. There will not be enough jobs to go around.
If we look at the world today, we find that the Japanese in particular, but the French, Germans, Dutch and other Europeans as well, are putting more of their funds and investment into productive industries. These are the new advanced technologies for which they are modernizing their plants and factories. Those countries will have the jobs. I suggest that the Government has not prepared for this technological change. This is why it has been condemned by Stuart Smith, Chairman of the Science Council of Canada. He is a former Liberal leader from Ontario who recently said in his Science Council report that our country is falling far behind in the field of advanced technology and that we will not have the jobs or control in this country to keep our people working in the years ahead. I suggest that we have already seen the ramifications of that.
For example, I have a portion of a study which was conducted by an economist in Montreal recently which tracks the average income in several industrialized countries over the last 20 years. We find from this study that the average income in Canada has fallen drastically in the last 20 years, as it has in the United States and in Great Britain.
In the 1960s, the United States was the wealthiest country in the world in terms of average per capita income. Canada was number two, Sweden was third, Switzerland was fourth, Britain was sixth, Germany was seventh, the French were ninth and the Danes were tenth. In the last 20 years, between 1960 and 1979, Canada, the United States and Great Britain
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have fallen far behind the western European countries. We find, for example, that Switzerland has moved up from fourth to first place. Denmark has moved from number ten to number two in terms of their standard of living in the world. The Swedes have remained at number three, while Germany has moved from seventh to fourth place. Belgium has moved up to number five, the Netherlands have moved from number thirteen to number six. France moved from number nine to number seven. The average standard of living of the United States has dropped from number one down to number eight. Canada has dropped from second to tenth place between the years 1960 and 1979, in terms of the average standard of living among the industrialized nations.
According to an article written by economists in 1981, based on 1979 figures, Canada is no longer first, second, third or fourth. It is now number nineteen in the world in terms of the average standard of living.


Mr. Kelly:: That is not true.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: It is number nineteen according to the economists. We have Liberals saying that is not true. 1 would like to see anyone in the House tell us that Canada's standard of living is higher than that.


William M. Kelly: I am telling you right now.


Lorne Edmund Nystrom: I hope the Hon. Member gets up to put the figure on the record.
The average income in Canada in 1979 was $8,376. In the United States the average income was $9,637. Ahead of us are countries like Switzerland which ranks number four in relation to all the countries in the world, with an average income of $13,987. 1 suggest that this is a damning testimony of the bungling we have seen in this country during the last 20 years. In terms of our standard of living, we have fallen from being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, one with tremendous promise and hope, to a country whose average income has dropped to nineteenth in the world according to the economists, or number ten among the industrialized countries of the world. I believe that sums up the record of the Government across the way.
The Science Council of Canada, many economists around the world, the OECD and others are saying that Canada is having problems now. Unless we change our strategy and come up with an economic plan or vision concerning the future, we will be even poorer in the next five or six years than we are now. That will happen despite the fact that we have a country with tremendous people, all kinds of resources, training and technology and much potential to produce massive quantities of fuel. We have all kinds of resources, such as energy, oil and hydropower resources, which European countries and Japan do not have. We have so much, but we still lack the vision to put all of it together for the ordinary citizen. Instead, we get crazy programs like the six and five program, which will sacrifice more income of the poor and the workers, the ordinary people, so that a few fat cats at the top can jet around the world and have a good time at their expense.

January 24, 1983
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Mr. Denis Ethier (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment):: Mr. Speaker, it was not my intention to participate in the debate, but I thought it was my duty to put on record my opposition to the amendment of my friend and colleague, the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) and to register my support for Bill C-133.
Your Honour will recall that at the second reading stage of this Bill, the media had reported the actions of all Hon. Members from the capital area and who, it was claimed, were most concerned because of the proximity of their ridings. I was absent during that vote and I justified my absence very well. I very seldom miss votes in the House, so I do not think the media needed to put my name in the paper and state that I did not bother to vote. It will be noticed how I vote on the Bill.
I totally discard the idea that we should be only concerned for the regions. I would hope that the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker), as well as my colleague, the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier, would rise above regional concerns when discussing or debating a matter as important and vital to all Canadians. I submit that Bill C-133 is just that. It is legislation which would permit us to reduce the inflation rate and, by the same token, would create an economic climate which investors will favour, and will result in the creation of more jobs for the unacceptable number of Canadians who want to work in the country.
Regrettably, the critics of the Bill never refer to the positive effects of the six and five program but, rather, only to the inflation rate in such a short period. On the contrary, the critics continue to refer to high unemployment rates and, of course, they never add the declining rate of inflation. They continue to amplify the problems of unemployment, and never do they dare refer to the much more serious problem of still higher unemployment that there might have been had we not taken the serious and courageous corrective measures such as those found in Bill C-133.
Our critics say that we are fighting inflation at the risk of increasing unemployment.


Walter David Baker: You are beginning to understand that.


Denis Éthier: They justify their argument by flashing the current unemployment figures. 1 say that this is wrong and grossly unfair.


Nelson Andrew Riis: What evidence?


Denis Éthier: It was not so long ago that the same critics were united in requesting that we introduce measures to reduce inflation. This is what the critics were saying then: investors will not be attracted or inclined to invest and create jobs in an economy where inflation is 10 per cent, 12 per cent or 13 per cent. The same critics were even questioning how long Governments could guarantee the jobs of their civil servants in such an inflationary economy. They were seriously questioning how
long Governments could pay the pensions of their retired employees, not to mention indexation.
It was precisely in answer to those many critics from different groups in our society that our program of six and five was introduced. Indeed, it is difficult and requires courage from those of us who have the responsibility to govern during these difficult economic times the world is going through.
[ Translation]
The situation is a difficult one, and we must be brave in these times which are difficult for the economies of Canada, the United States, Europe and the entire world. I said the situation was a difficult one, because we needed the support of the private sector and municipal and provincial governments to introduce this particular piece of 6 and 5 legislation, Bill C-133. Up to now, we can say that our problems have become fewer, since a number of provinces have shown that they agreed with our programs. The private sector has also indicated that it is in agreement with these austerity measures. Above all else, we must not be afraid, even if we are not always going to be very popular with our employees if we ask them to accept pay increases below the rate of inflation, and even less so with all retired public servants if we ask them to accept indexing below the inflation rate. Even the most inexperienced politician realizes that supporting such measures is not going to be very popular. However, we cannot afford to dwell on that now. We must now show that we have the courage of our convictions.
That is the message I want to bring to my colleagues here in Ottawa and to all Canadians. We must be brave. We must ask Canadians to support our efforts. If I did not have the conviction that these measures will have a positive effect on our economy, that they will attract investors and will eventually lead to creating more jobs, I would not be supporting this bill, and we would not be considering the motion put by my colleague who is worried about the measure being effective for longer than two years. I really wonder what my colleague from Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) had in mind when he proposed this amendment. Does he support Bill C-133, but does he not want it to be in effect for more than two years? If that is the case, I can assure both him and other Members on the Government side that it will not last for more than two years. Personally, I shall vote against the motion and 1 shall support Bill C-133.


Nelson Andrew Riis: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise a point or two in today's debate on the amendment put forward by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) to Bill C-133. There is certainly some merit in the suggestion that it would be appropriate to set forth an expiry date for the Bill, the expiry date being December 31, 1984, so that there would at least be some certainty as to when this rather simplistic program would end. It is a rather light-hearted gesture but a positive one, despite its lightness.
January 24, 1983

One must consider it a sad day when one hears an Hon. Member from the Government side doing his best to bail out the Government from one more ill-conceived scheme to rescue us from this economic dilemma. I listened with interest to the Hon. Member opposite and I know that he was serious when he said that it was because of the nation's concern about the level of inflation that the Government introduced the six and five program. However, I want to challenge a couple of points he raised. He said that the dropping of the inflation rate will give investors the needed incentive and encouragement to start to invest. I have also heard that when the interest rates come down to their present level, or maybe even a bit lower, that that too will give the automatic signal to Canada's investment community that the good life is ahead and it should start investing hard-earned money, and to the savers of Canada that they should start investing their savings.
I will venture a guess that there are very few investors today who are motivated enough to risk any of their hard earned savings in the present political and economic climate in Canada. However, if the interest rates come down another two or three percentage points, that confidence will still not be there. If inflation comes down two or three percentage points, for whatever reason, likely because we are in a depression, but regardless of the cause or reason, I do not think that will make a difference.
Recently, just in the last few weeks, I had occasion to speak to virtually every chamber of commerce in my constituency, every board of trade, every municipal council, large or small, and to informal gatherings of businessmen, again representing large corporations and small corner stores, virtually. I did not speak with one single individual who said that he or she was prepared to invest anything in this climate of uncertainty. Canadians have totally lost faith in the Government.
On the weekend the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien) was reported as saying that, yes, indeed, the Liberals are in a hopeless situation as a political Party and that the people of Canada are now prepared to turf them out. Of course they are. It does not take any genius to figure that out. One could walk down the street and ask any five people, and four of those five people will say that this political Party providing so-called leadership in Canada today has to go.
[DOT] <1700)
Until there is a dramatic change in policy on behalf of that Government, or the Government disappears, there will never be any investor confidence or consumer confidence occurring in our country, which is needed to get a real recovery under way.
Today we are dealing with Bill C-133. No matter how you describe this Bill, it is a Bill which breaks the contract that the public servants of Canada have had with the Government of Canada. Of these retired individuals there are 120,000 in the Public Service, 32,000 in the Canadian Armed Forces, 2,000 in the RCMP, and when you include those people who will be retiring in 1983 and 1984 and the surviving spouses who would
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
receive benefits, we are identifying about 200,000 people in Canada. They have made their retirement plans, knowing what their incomes will be, based on their pension programs, and they have made personal plans, investment plans and so on, assisting their sons and daughters, their grandchildren in education, and planning holidays that are well deserved. They have made plans for their futures. All of a sudden, to have those future plans curtailed because the Government of Canada broke a contract-broke the clear understanding they had with the RCMP personnel and Armed Forces personnel- how can the people of Canada have any faith in a Government which is, by a motion in this House of Commons, going to break a contract?
Member after Member has stood up to say that they support the breaking of this contract, that they think this motion is in the best interests of Canadians. Do you know what that is doing to do to the confidence people had in this Government, that handful of people who are still hanging on by the skin of their teeth hoping for something positive so that they can believe in this Government? Some Members say they are happy to support Bill C-133, yet they know this breaks a contract. How can they still be happy? That assumes, then, that people let their eyes drift across the room and say, "We like to go with the people who believe in keeping their contracts."
I do not like to cast aspersions at my Progressive Conservative friends-on the weekend I was even called a Conservative by a certain editorialist. They are the people I remember distinctly voting on Bill C-124, under which they were prepared to break contracts with people who work in the CNR, knowing the people who work in the CPR, because of the similarities, in the Public Service, in the Armed Forces in the RCMP would be similarly affected. With a couple of exceptions, they voted for it. They said, "We, too, as the Official Opposition, want to break contracts with those hundreds of thousands of people who work for the federal Government". And we wonder why the people of Canada have lost faith in the Government, and have lost faith in the people in the Official Opposition.
I agree that when you carry out a popularity poll and when they ask, "Will the Conservatives win in the next election?" people in their rather meagre response say, "Well, they are presumably the Opposition, they probably will. We will support this in some respect". But when they think about it carefully and when it is presented to them that that Party, too, is prepared to break those contracts, how can Hon. Members continue to stand and say they support this Bill but did not support the other one?
I know that Members will be standing up when I sit down and they will be saying how they are prepared to support this Bill, but were prepared to break all those other contracts. I ask those Members, as a serious question, to explain to the people of Canada why they will break contracts with hundreds of thousands of federal employees but will not break this one- that they feel very strongly about this one. The point is, we

January 24, 1983
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have a majority of Members of this House on record as favouring taking a contract which was duly signed by both parties with the clear understanding of both groups, tossing it out of the window and just saying, "That is fine; we don't care about a contract we have with thousands of Canadians".
May I suggest, in my humble way, that perhaps that is some small reason why people in Canada are losing faith in their elected representatives when they hear that incredible hypocrisy.


Mr. Doug Anguish (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, I, too, am pleased to be able to participate in this debate in which the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) has put forward an amendment to Bill C-133, the piece of legislation which is to put a cap on the amount of indexing for the retired public employees who have paid for the luxury of making sure that their pensions were indexed to the rate of the Consumer Price Index, so that their meagre pensions, in many instances, would not be eaten up by the ravages of inflation.
What the amendment by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier has done is to put forward that this Government will not extend this Bill C-133 past December 31, 1984. I admire the backbenchers and some Members of the Liberal caucus who have opposed Bill C-133, because I think it is a flagrant abuse of the Government's power in betraying the trust of the many public employees who depended on and in fact paid for their pensions that they expected to receive, because of the good faith they had in this Government.
Furthermore, I find it strange that a Member in the Liberal Party would need to put forward such an amendment. It shows to me a lack of trust, even from within the Liberal Party, that one of their Members would have to go as far as to say that he wants assurances in Bill C-133 that it will not go beyond the deadline of December 31, 1984. In fact, it was through some pressure by backbench Liberal Members that the six and five program was modified in Bill C-133 for the retired public employees. In fact, they have been given a concession. It is not really a concession at all, but is viewed as a concession by the Liberal Government in that their capping will not be six and five, as will be applied to the Family Allowance indexing and the old age pension indexing, but in Bill C-133 for the retired public employees it has been raised to 6.5 per cent for the first year and 5.5 per cent for the second year.
No matter how you look at it, I do not think we in this Party can support such a piece of legislation, and I would urge Members of the Conservative caucus and also Members of the Liberal Party to oppose this Bill when it is voted upon later today.
I support the amendment of the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier because I think this program should not only not be in existence but if it does pass, it certainly should terminate when the Government says it will terminate, and I feel it is important to have that set out in this piece of legislation.
We have seen how this Government has been abusive of people's rights in other areas, such as the capping of indexing on the Family Allowance payments before that legislation has actually gone through this Parliament. I was speaking to a
group last week and I thought it appropriate to state that our political system in Canada has participatory democracy on election day and maybe during election campaigns, but between election campaigns we have a system of almost totalitarianism or a dictatorship regime, because that Government over there is without the checks and balances of a Senate, because we have such a partisan, pork-barrel of a Senate in the other place that they do not put any checks and balances in there, and they are virtually useless. If that were a regionally elected Senate, I do not think we would see things like this happening within our system in Canada, and it would go a long way toward protecting democracy in this country if, in fact, we had checks and balances beyond this House of Commons. In the past I favoured abolition of the Senate, but I am changing my mind somewhat to support a regionally-elected Senate so that this Government cannot put through or abuse pieces of legislation, which it has no right to do. Seemingly no one in this country can do anything about that.


An Hon. Member:: Abolition of the Liberals.


Douglas Keith Anguish: My colleague says abolition of the Liberals would be one answer to the problem. We could then start on the road to recover economically and reform the political system in Canada, which over the years has become so archaic.
I would like to make a few more comments in the brief time that I have remaining. We only have ten minutes each in this debate. I would like to talk about the whole pension system in Canada, something we have fought for long and hard to bring into place and to preserve.
In a relatively short period of time, the Hon. Member for Winnipeg North Centre (Mr. Knowles) and other Members of this House have worked hard and tirelessly for the rights of Canadians to have a retirement pension in order that they could maintain a decent standard of living and have some respect in their retirement years. Whether or not they have had the fortune of contributing to a public or private pension program, many of them worked for years for small remuneration. Some women worked long and hard to raise families and take care of farms and family households and received no income. Recognizing that each and every Canadian has made a significant contribution to our society, they should have the privilege of receiving some kind of pension in their retirement years.
In Canada we have an evolving state. The pension program has progressed considerably over the years from the early thirties up until the present time. We now find an erosion or setback in our pension system in Canada. Certainly the Government, whether it is an NDP, Liberal or Conservative Government, has some responsibility as to whether a country has a high rate of inflation. Certainly the major control to influence that comes from the Government.
If we have to contend with inflation as a result of a Government which cannot deal with the problem, whether it is beyond
January 24, 1983

their control or ability, retired people should not have to live on a pension that is not indexed. If someone retires at age 65 without an indexed pension, imagine what would happen if that person lived to age 95. The pension would be virtually worthless. After having made a significant contribution to Canadian society, that person would be degraded to the point of having to accept public assistance which he does not feel he has earned. He should have an adequate pension to provide for retirement.
We have to address seriously the problems of the future in terms of pensions. Any more setbacks, halts or dismantling such as we now see because of this Liberal Government will not be advantageous to the future of our pension program. For example, there are those who have contributed to the Canada Pension Plan. 1 am concerned as to what will be the situation when I retire. My grandfather, who passed away before Christmas, retired in 1969 after having contributed to the plan for three years. That was through no fault of his own because the Canada Pension Plan was not in existence prior to that. As a result of his contributions, he received less than $30 a month from the Canada Pension Plan in his retirement years. Two generations later, I have contributed to the Canada Pension Plan off and on since I was 16 years of age. When I retire there may not even be a Canada Pension Plan. Even though 1 will have contributed substantially into the Plan, it may not be in existence at that time because of the bankrupt situation that may occur. In my mid-retirement years if, God willing, I reach that point, there will only be two people in Canada working for every one retired, as we now describe retirement. Today there are five or maybe seven people working for every retired individual. If we are going to continue with our pension plans and make them meaningful when people retire, we must do some real rethinking of what retirement means and what pension plans mean to every Canadian in this country.


Gordon Edward Taylor: Mr. Speaker, I want to say a few words on this amendment which I plan to support. It will not change the basic principles of the Bill except to indicate that the technique of the Bill will not continue year after year. The Liberal Member for Kitchener (Mr. Lang) said that the amendment really is not necessary. He attempted to explain that the Bill will expire automatically at that time.
If an amendment to a Bill is simply to exemplify or strengthen something in the Bill, it would be out of order. The Speaker in her wisdom, I suppose with the help of the Table Officers, came to the conclusion that the Bill would not expire automatically and declared that the amendment was in order. Otherwise, it would have been ruled out of order, because you cannot move an amendment to do something that the Bill already does. That type of amendment would not be acceptable, certainly not to the knowledgeable people around our Table and our Speaker. I say to the Hon. Member for Kitchener, who is trying to persuade the Members of his Party to vote against this because it is already in the Bill, that that is not so.
Anyone who takes a simple look at the Bill and the amendment and accepts the Speaker's ruling will see that is not so.
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The amendment is necessary. This would not be the first time the Government extended something like this over and over again.
A Liberal Member at the far end of the Chamber said this morning that he opposed the Bill. I can understand that. He cannot believe that the legislation will expire on December 31, 1984. It will if this amendment carries. Otherwise, it may go on for several years. It will be the pensioners who suffer.
When speaking on the Bill, another Liberal Member, the Hon. Member for Lambton-Middlesex (Mr. Ferguson), said something absolutely amazing. He said that retired pensioners "will have a gain even though they have had a loss". That is what he said. If that is not Irish, I do not know what Irish is. I do not want to reflect on the Irish.


Ralph Ferguson: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. If the Hon. Member had listened closely, he would realize that I said that in the first year there would be a loss and in the following year there could very well be a gain if the rate of inflation is lower than it is at the present time.


Gordon Edward Taylor: That is hardly a point of order, but I accept the correction if a correction is necessary. When he was speaking, I thought I wrote down exactly what he said. I will check the "blues". I thought he said, "Will have a gain even though they have had a loss". He will have a tough time explaining that to a soldier's widow who now receives little enough to live on. She now finds she is going to have part of that cut off in the next few years. What about the retired civil servant who is having a difficult time today getting by? They are not going to look upon this as a gain at all. I think we should be realistic and say there is definitely a loss. There is something being taken away. If it were a gain, we would not need the Bill. Something is being taken away from them and that is part of their indexing, and they need that indexing to meet the cost of living today.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The Hon. Parliamentary Secretary rises on a point of order.


Peter Joseph Lang: Mr. Speaker, I would not want the Hon. Member unintentionally to leave a misunderstanding in the House. Veterans' Pensions are fully indexed.


Gordon Edward Taylor: I am talking about the widows of retired pensioners. Widows of retired soldiers are not going to be fully indexed. You are cutting part of it off. Let us not try to fool the population of this country. This is cutting part of the indexing of the widows of retired soldiers, pensioners, civil servants and RCMP personnel who are retired. They are widows, you know. When a man dies there is a widow left, and she is going to have part of that indexing cut off. So do not try to kid the troops. The Hon. Member had time to speak, Mr. Speaker, and he did not mention anything worthwhile. Now he is simply talking, and talking about nothing. I am not going to have a red herring pulled across my path. The widow of a soldier who was retired will now have less coming into her pocketbook each month. If that is not so, then I stand to be

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
corrected, but that is so. And the widow of a retired RCMP officer who today is getting something from the work of her husband, will get less when this Bill is passed. Let us not kid ourselves. The pensioners themselves, the civil servants who are now retired, the superannuates, will receive less, not more. They will lose, they will not gain, when this Bill is passed. Again, let us not try to kid the troops because the people will know when they get their cheques.
The Hon. Members of the New Democratic Party have mentioned a number of times that if this vote had been delayed for another 30 minutes, the cheques would have gone out. But the Government, at least from information received from the civil service, would have had up to two more days, and the debate had to end tomorrow night under the closure rules. They would have had two more days and still get the cheques out. That is what the civil service tell me, and they probably know more about it than the Hon. Members of this House. But accepting the statement of the NDP, if that were so, then what would happen the following month? There would be an overpayment and the pensioners would have to pay it back. I can appreciate how pensioners today would feel if they received an over-payment and had to pay back something, because when they get the money, they have some place to spend it; then the money is gone. The following month they would suddenly receive a letter saying they have to pay so much back. We do no good to a pensioner or a superannuate by putting him or her in that position. 1 believe, therefore, we had better think pretty carefully about what we say there.
The Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis), a few moments ago, mentioned in a very nice way that we broke a contract when we voted for Bill C-124.


An Hon. Member:: Yes, you did.


Gordon Edward Taylor: I hear an Hon. Member saying, "Yes, you did". But, Mr. Speaker, everyone under Bill C-124 was receiving wages of some kind. Every one of us was on wages. When you hire a civil servant, do you break a contract if you give him an increase? Of course, you do not. If we had refused Bill C-124, we were not breaking a contract. We took a big raise a few months ago, and there is only a portion of it being given back now. So that is not breaking a contract. When you make a contract with the civil servants, then you give that contract credibility by putting it into legislation, and then you break it, you are breaking a contract. To compare that with Bill C-124 is completely nonsense. Bill C-124 had nothing to do with old age pensions or superannuates. It had nothing to do with children. We voted for it here because we were on wages and we took too big a raise in the first place. To give some of it back is only logical and sensible.
The people hurting today are those who do not have jobs, and those on fixed incomes; they are the people we are talking about. This Bill is going to hurt those people on fixed incomes badly. The amendment will soften the blow. In two years time that will be the end of it. But it will not change the principle that they are losing part of their indexing during the period in which that indexing is in effect. If the Government side refuses to support this amendment, it will show it is going to continue
this, and whenever they want they have another sword to be used against the pensioner, another blow against the pensioner.
Mr. Speaker is indicating my time has expired, but I have barely started. However, I want to say that this is an abominable Bill, the Progressive Conservative Party is opposing it and we have opposed it from the beginning, in spite of what the NDP have said.


Mr. Cyril Keeper (Winnipeg-St. James):: Madam Speaker, I am happy to have the opportunity to participate in this debate because it is a very important matter which touches on such important principles. I must start out by pointing out that we will be supporting the amendment that is before the House now. This amendment will assure Canadians that this Bill will in fact terminate at the end of 1984. It is surprising that the Government did not provide for that themselves in the legislation. The amendment is a good amendment, but what we want is not so much for this legislation to terminate at the end of a period of two years, but rather to have the Bill terminate right now. The Bill should be withdrawn rather than left in place for a couple of years.
The Government, of course, did amend this legislation which we are now dealing with so that the limiting of indexation would be at 6V2 per cent rather than 6 per cent. That one-half per cent solution certainly was not a real solution, and it makes one wonder why the Government would take such a mini step, such a half-step. Quite frankly, I believe everyone is aware, at least everyone who reads the newspapers these days, that the reason the Government chose to change the indexation, the limit of the indexation of Public Service pensions to 6V2 per cent is that they were threatened with a split in their own caucus. They had some very good political reasons for wanting to amend this Bill, but rather than accepting the real reason for the potential splitting up of the caucus, withdrawing the legislation and changing course, they put a bandaid on the situation and said, okay, we will take a half measure in order to give some of our backbenchers an opportunity to vote for this legislation.
Well, the legislation, Mr. Speaker, is still wrong. It is both morally and economically wrong. This legislation is of course the application of the Government's so-called anti-inflation six and five program to Public Service pensioners. Why did the Government pick on the pensions of public servants? Well, 1 suspect it is probably because Gallup and other public opinion polls are indicating that labour and labour leaders are pretty unpopular with the general public. That makes them an easy target for the Government. It is a politically easy thing to attack public servants these days because the general public do not have a great deal of sympathy for civil servants, at this time. So it is a political move.
The six and five program is the key to the Government's economic policies. The theory is that by limiting indexation of pensions and Family Allowances, that will contribute to the fight against inflation. There is very little evidence, Mr. January 24, 1983

Speaker, that these measures will have any impact whatsoever on inflation. In fact, it is well known that the rise in wages in this country was following the rise in inflation. In other words, wages were rising at a rate slower than inflation. So it is very difficult in those circumstances to argue that the rise in income is the cause of inflation. I would say we can question the notion that we should be putting the greatest priority in the fight against inflation.
Over the Christmas break the Catholic Bishops issued a statement which indicated that in their opinion the priority should be on jobs and human dignity, on the avoidance of human suffering, rather than the single-minded fight against inflation. The Government promises that if we put the priority on fighting inflation, it will come down, interest rates will come down and suddenly jobs will appear. Well, interest rates are much lower now than they were a number of months ago, certainly there is less inflation, but unemployment continues to rise. So the results of the Government's policy are just contrary to the promise.
To go back to what the Bishops said, Mr. Speaker, it was simply that the Government's policy was morally wrong. I know the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau), when he was overseas, said that the Bishops' economics were bad. Well, I have more faith in the Bishops' economics than in the morality of the policy the Government has put forward. I want to indicate that it is not only the Bishops or myself who are questioning the rightness, both economically or morally, of the six and five program. In fact, even the Government's own blue chip advisory committee questioned that as the priority for today.
I want to read from the Winnipeg Free Press, an article written by Dian Cohen, hardly a raving socialist. She says our problems today relate to the fact that consumer spending is down and somehow we have to get it up so that the plants and factories can get back into production and people can go back to work. She says:
The research economists looked at the relationship between personal consumer spending and employee compensation from 1965 to 1978 in 45 different countries, 19 of them industrialized. They found that, in every case, with very little variation, annual consumption ranged just slightly more or less than annual compensation.
What she is saying is that if we want to have greater consumer spending, workers have to have greater annual compensation. In other words, if you cut down on people's wages, you will cut down on consumer spending and aggravate present economic circumstances. That is exactly what this policy does; it cuts down on income, reduces spending and drives us further and deeper into the economic mess we are in today. So I think the Government should reflect on its policies, not only because of what the Bishops have said but because it is morally wrong to leave two million people unemployed. That amount of suffering is unacceptable.
I want to quote just briefly from an article in The Globe and Mail. It says:
-a pick-up of personal spending, was less evident because of the country's high jobless level and uncertainties.
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They are saying that if we want to get this economy moving, we have to get consumer spending moving, and to do that we have to have people at work. We have to stop robbing people of their incomes, and that includes members of the Public Service and those on pension. It is not good enough to attack public servants, the helpless and the powerless. We have to examine this Government's policies, which have been found lacking both by economists and moral leaders in this country, and we have to set a priority on job creation. We have to set about developing income policies which are going to give people greater compensation and therefore get consumer spending back up, get the economy moving, get back to work and have a little respect for the human person, rather than leaving them out on the street with no job and suffering. That is not adequate public policy; we have to turn it around and show some compassion.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Mr. Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to enter into the debate today to discuss the amendment by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier) who has come forward in response to the great public outcry which has arisen as a result of the Liberal Government's attempt to reduce the earned inflation-indexed pensions that public civil servants are entitled to. I would point out with some pride that the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker), my colleague, who has spoken out so often in this House on behalf of civil servants, has seconded this very astute motion by the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier. I say "astute" because the Hon. Member for Ottawa-Vanier spotted something we knew was there, but in the great wealth of debating material there is on this Bill we could not cover it all. The Hon. Member very astutely pointed out that there is a definite risk that the Liberal Government will carry on with its fight to-


Walter David Baker: Its chiseling.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Chiseling is a good word, Mr. Speaker, its chiseling of public civil servants beyond December 31, 1984. Now, you might think that there should be an election by then. I know most of the Canadian people do, Mr. Speaker, and I see you nodding, but there is a very real fear on this side that the Liberals will go to February 22, 1985, in their desperate grasp for power and in an effort to appoint as many Michael Pitfields of the world to the Senate as possible. Yes, there are many honourable people who should carry their talents to that honoured Chamber down the hall. A lot of them will be legitimate appointments, not like that of Mr. Pitfield. A lot will be legitimate politicians who have honourably gone out and proclaimed themselves as Party politicians on either side, rather than sneaking in the back door of the Privy Council and pretending they were not Liberal politicians.
I see many Members on the Government benches smiling at this, Mr. Speaker. I should point out that it has been suggested to me that Mr. Pitfield had to agree not to attend Liberal caucus meetings so that he could be appointed an independent

January 24, 1983
Supplementary Retirement Benefits Act (No. 2)
Senator. 1 can understand him not wanting to participate in Liberal caucus meetings. However, it has also been suggested to me that it was to protect his hide that he was advised not to attend. There is more laughter and nodding of heads on the other side, Mr. Speaker.
We note that through the force of Progressive Conservative arguments, assisted on occasion by my colleagues on my left, those Members who are receiving so much media attention, the Government, assisted by a cadre of scattered socialists, has been brought to the point of offering amendments to its own Bill.
My own Member of Parliament, the Hon. Member for Ottawa Centre (Mr. Evans), has not seen fit to offer an amendment to this legislation, however, and I know that he must be receiving as many calls from his constituents as 1 am.
This amendment seeks to stop the terrible chiseling of public servants by the Liberal Government. We will support the amendment as part of this Party's attack on the Government's position. We feel that a deal is a deal, Mr. Speaker. Whether an agreement be in writing or verbal, it is entered into with a sense of honour, which obviously the Government did not feel although the agreement is incorporated in a statute.
We regret that the Government has turned its back on public servants. This is not the first time it has done that and I am sure it will not be the last.
The Government built up inflation and it has built unemployment as high as two million. Of course, the Government persists in saying that 1.5 million Canadians are unemployed, forgetting about the 500,000 who have given up looking for work.
We object to the Liberal Government's ignoring the deal it made with Public Service pensioners and which it kept until now. We also object to its fighting inflation on the backs of the unemployed.
This amendment is key to our fight against Bill C-133. Even at the last hour we hope the Government will reconsider its position and play fair with civil servants. We would like to see that but we do not trust the Liberals. That is why the sunset provision has been suggested-just in case this Government lasts until January 1, 1985. We know that with the first cheques in 1985 it will want to grind out one last capping on indexing for public servants, and we are doing our best to stop that, supported by at least four Members of the Government.
Perhaps through the force of our arguments even more Liberals will display a sense of decency, vote for the amendment and against the Bill so that they can go back to their ridings and face civil service pensioners. These people made their pension payments faithfully and now believe that it should be indexed as was set out in the agreement.
I hope the Government will support this amendment made by one of its own Members and vote to defeat the bill, in essence.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: It being 5.45 p.m., pursuant to order made Thursday, January 20, 1983, it is my
duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith every question necessary to dispose of report stage of the Bill.
The House will now proceed to making the deferred divisions on the Bill. The question is on the motion of Mr. Gray.
Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the said motion?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Some Hon. Members:: No.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: All those in favour of the motion please say yea.


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: All those opposed to the motion please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: In my opinion the nays have it.
And more than five Members having risen:


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Call in the Members. [Translation]


Madam Speaker:: The first question is on Motion No. 2 in the name of the Hon. President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray).
An affirmative vote on this motion will dispose of the motion in the name of the Hon. Member for Nepean-Carleton (Mr. Baker).
A negative vote will require a division on the motion of the Hon. Member.


Madam Speaker:: I declare the motion carried.
Motion No. 2 (Mr. Gray) agreed to.


Madam Speaker:: The question is on Motion No. 4, in the name of the Member for Ottawa-Vanier (Mr. Gauthier).


Madam Speaker:: I declare the motion lost.
Motion negatived.


Madam Speaker:: The question is now on the motion of the President of Treasury Board (Mr. Gray).


Herbert Eser (Herb) Gray: that the Bill be concurred in.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Yea.


Madam Speaker:: All those opposed to the motion will please say nay.


Some Hon. Members:: Nay.


Madam Speaker:: In my opinion the yeas have it.


An Hon. Member:: On division.


Madam Speaker:: I declare the motion carried on division.


[Stage Direction]
Motion agreed to.
Madam Speaker:: It being 6.20 p.m. this House is adjourned until tomorrow at 11 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 2(1).
At 6.20 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Tuesday, January 25, 1983