1983-09-20

GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, September 19, consideration of Bill C-l 10, to amend the Export Development Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motions Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
Hon. Ron Huntington (Capilano):: Mr. Speaker, I take part in the report stage of Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act. I am probably close to being the seventieth speaker at this stage of the Bill. I have now been informed that I am the eighty-eighth speaker, which indicates to us, we who are quiet, rational, deep-thinking people on this side of the House, that there is something very wrong with the whole trend, nature and drift of what the Liberal Party is leading Canada into. The Bill could have been through the whole process away back had the Government not been so intransigent on matters that are essential not only to the thinking people in Parliament, but also to those who are now becoming deeply concerned over the behavioural pattern of the Government and the effect it will have on future generations.
In effect, the amendment concerning the Export Development Corporation is the continuation of a massive interventionist mindset that is destroying the country. We will have to dismantle and restructure something that will once again pump life, creativity and that magic of the soul and mind back into the Canadian people.
I can remember a Deputy Minister coming to me after our Government failed, saying: "Ron. you are very vocal and outspoken on the national energy policy; please lighten down your rhetoric, because we have computer models that tell us exactly what we are doing." The trouble with computer models designed by these academicians is that they are all based on assumptions, the assumptions never being exposed to a wide enough body of thought to ensure that they are accurate. The corporate sector knows that computer models involve a high-risk situation. If we spread the activity, the thinking, the mindset and the innovative power of the nation more broadly into well disciplined sectors, then we would have a chance.
However, these computer models are designed by academics who have never worked in the workplace, who have never been responsible for balancing the accounts and for meeting payrolls or protecting working capital in a wealth-creating organization. These are the people who are planning our lives and planning these corporations in all of this massive intervention in the Canadian mind.
One can understand interventionism on the part of the federal Government or on the part of a provincial Government if it is for the purpose of redistributing wealth. But this academic machine which is supported and nurtured by the Liberal Government is intervening in the creation of wealth. Everything it has done in this field proves that it is not working and is destroying the vital sector that produces the tax revenues that can support the very enviable social structure of which we are so proud.
What is at risk is the social structure we have built over the decades. We are not creating the tax revenues to pay the bills. We know as individuals that if we spend more than we receive we face the poorhouse. This nation is spending more than it has created and more than it has generated. We are listening to these academics and putting them in control of these Crown corporations where they believe they have all the answers. Let me tell you, Mr. Speaker, that they do not have all the answers.
The behaviour and performance of Canada and of Crown corporations in the last decade surely has warned us that we must stop this nonsense. Through this Bill the Minister is asking for the control of some $50 billion in spending powers outside the purview and accountability of the elected representatives of the people. These Crown corporations are creating a subgovernment of control for key bureaucrats and friends of the Liberal machine outside the purview and behavioural patterns laid down by the central agencies. Many of these things are avoidance practices just to get around central agency of Treasury Board rules and regulations.
A small example of this is that the Bank of Canada, which has a very special position in the structure of Canada has a magnificent exercise room in its basement for its employees. It can find $210,000 to spend on equipment in that basement room for 700 people. It can find $14,000 here and $10,000 there to subsidize the superintendent in that work room. If this happened in the private sector it would have to go through a board. It would have to come out of the working capital and be accountable to the tax auditors and the chartered accountants association who work to standard accounting principles and practices. It would have to be accountable to the taxpayer and

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would be depreciated and justified. However, because this is a Crown corporation those actions can take place in the confines of a room and that type of expenditure can take place and does take place all over the country.
We have tabled report No. 7 from the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure in the House asking for a new committee structure and new strengths so that we can examine more effectively this whole level of subgovernment that is being built. This Bill is simply adding to that along with Canagrex and CDIC.
CDIC will probably be the noose that hangs this nation. We are delivering massive powers and massive resources to an enclave of people outside the accountability parameters of the House and this country. The behavioural patterns that will take place will shock the people of this nation within five years, if they have not already done so. One only has to look at the pattern of the players and how they have behaved in and out of the private sector and in and out of Government, Cabinet and the bureaucracy. They seem to have a refusal or an insane desire to beat the game, to play outside the rules of behaviour.
With this type of legislation we in this country are dealing with this whole matter of the struggle between the interventionists and the behaviouralists. I stand before you and my colleagues in the House, Mr. Speaker, to say proudly that 1 am a behaviouralist. I believe that if we do our job in this country and in the House and define the standards of behaviour, equity and fairness that we want and set rules that punish those who do not deliver to those standards of behaviour, that is all we can do in a free society.
We are not doing that job. We are yielding to those and that mindset that exists with the bureaucracy and socialistic ranks in the country. The academics and people who have never balanced accounts, met payrolls and payables, all of these people who have come from the land of academia and the universities, think they know how to do it better than the rough and tumble world of trial and error. You can see the mood of Thatcherism that is taking hold in Great Britain. That country went through this whole exercise and even the rank and file in Great Britain now recognize that there was something seriously wrong. You cannot have anything for nothing. It will take blood, sweat, tears, work, toil, mindset, attitudes, innovation, savings, thrift and frugality if we are going to lift ourselves up and afford the standard of living and social welfare we expect our system to maintain.
The interventionism in this type of legislation and in this Bill is the hangman's noose for equality of life in Canada. What the Government is doing is delivering us farther and farther down the road. The Government will not even allow a proper balance of directors from the private sector in this corporation. There is a memo that lists the directors. There are six senior public servants, very able men, men of high academic ability, of far higher intellect probably than 1 but they are certainly short on the rough and tumble experience of life that I have. I
think the type of rough and tumble experience that is available from the private sector would be a very good balance to have in these Crown corporations.
Let us take a look at B.C. coal development. I had a senior civil servant come to me and say: "Ron, have you looked at the list of directors of that corporation that is spending $1 billion?" Right at the top of the list it shows four senior civil servants. This is not a 50-50 public-private mix, Sir. When you get these Crown corporations, such as the EDC, entrenched and given special powers outside of the laws and rules that apply to the rest of the country, you are dead because the nature of man, the acquisitive, power-seeking nature of man, is such that man will abuse everything that he touches and forget why he was put there.
We are no longer creating Crown corporations as instruments of public policy. We are creating environments of power and acquisition for individuals that have risen up through the ranks of the Liberal Party and the Government of Canada. I stand here and say that unless this House accepts its responsibilities, gets back to a standard of accountability in this area and allows proper examination of this whole Crown corporation structure, we are not going to be able to pay our bills. We will lose face internationally. That fact is already in evidence. It is time some of those people on the Government benches heard this plea. If not they should go to the people to get it changed so we can save what we have.


Mr. Tom McMillan (Hillsborough):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-110, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, at the report stage.
We are dealing with two amendments in particular. But I think those amendments must be viewed in the context of the total Bill. Essentially, the Act seeks first to expand the operational capacity of the Export Development Corporation by increasing the borrowing authority of the Government through the relevant corporation without reference to Parliament, and, also, by increasing the amount of high risk or bad business transactions the Cabinet can approve-from S3.5 billion to $10 billion in the case of insurance, and from $2.5 billion to $10 billion in the case of loans and guarantees.
Second, the Bill seeks to alter the current structure and powers of the board of directors of the relevant corporation. 1 submit to you that those changes are minor, certainly in terms of increasing the accountability of the corporation to Parliament and through Parliament to the Canadian people.
Before I get into the particular amendments, I want to stress for my own part that we on this side of the House are not against Crown corporations per se as an instrument of public policy. They can be an effective vehicle for promoting a given public policy of the Government, indeed of the country, if that vehicle is used wisely and within limitations. It is necessary from time to time for Government to create a structure or bureaucracy which can operate on a day-to-day basis at arm's length from control by politicians and bureaucrats alike. Government needs to minimize such interference so that the people concerned can get on with the job. That is why I for one
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take particular pride in the fact that it was the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada that created Canadian National Railways under Prime Ministers Borden and Meighen, the CBC under Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, and later the National Film Board and many other Crown corporations which could be mentioned.
The particular Crown corporation we are debating is a classic case of what I was talking about concerning the Government's abuse of Crown corporations as an instrument of public policy. The real enemy of Crown corporations is not the Opposition, is not even the Crown corporations themselves, but rather the Government. Through mismanagement and incompetence it has been debasing the credibility of Crown corporations. It has been disgracing them in the eyes of Parliament and in the eyes of the public through waste and undemocratic practices.
The Government, most especially in the last three years, has been using Crown corporations-and again the EDC is a case in point-to hide massive deficits. It funnels much of its public debt through Crown corporations to make the books look better than they otherwise would. It has used Crown corporations to circumvent Parliament and to aggrandize the bureaucracy. The federal deficit this year is in the neighbourhood of $30 billion according to the Government's own figures, but if Crown corporations were not abused in the way they are, I submit that that figure would be a lot worse.
The Auditor General has said that the use of Crown corporations by the Government has, in effect, created a whole layer of subgovernment largely out of control and beyond the reach of Parliament. There has been little accountability. Crown corporations have assumed a life unto themselves. They have been sheltered from parliamentary scrutiny, from media scrutiny and from public scrutiny.
The case which I know best because it relates to my region, the Atlantic Provinces, is that of Canadian National. Canadian National has been hiding its books from the Auditor General, from the Government and from Parliament. The Auditor General expressed outrage about the way in which the Abegweit, the CN Marine vessel that crosses between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick on the Northumberland Strait, was financed by the Government through CN Marine, a division of Canadian National. He demanded of CN to see its books. The Chairman of Canadian National, however, told the Auditor General where to go.
This typifies the extent to which Crown corporations have assumed a life unto themselves-beyond the control of Parliament and beyond the control of the public. At least corporations in the private sector are responsible to something or someone, be it a board of directors, market realities or, for that matter, the boundaries imposed by profit and loss factors. Now, more and more because of government incompetence, not because of the nature of Crown corporations themselves, Crown corporations are becoming the new political despots in Canada, responsible to no master.
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I think there is a legitimate role for an entity like the Export Development Corporation because trade is crucial to Canada. We were once, and could still be, one of the great trading nations of the world. Thirty per cent of our Gross National Product is earned through trade as it is, despite the record of the current Government since 1968.
In 1968 when the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) took office, Canada's share of world trade was 5.74 per cent. By 1981 the percentage had slumped to 3.8 per cent. That slump represents hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in trade lost to this country-lost to our Gross National Product, lost to the people of Canada. It also represents a loss of thousands of jobs in every part of the country dependent on trade.
Why have we lost ground? Why are we taking a back seat to Japan, Germany, the United States, France and even Britain and Italy? The situation is directly attributable to a lack of strategy, a lack of over-all planning by the Government in concert with the private sector. It is related to our paltry research and development effort. It is related to a lack of appreciation by the Government, working with the private sector, of the importance of research and development, that is, the creation of new goods and services so as to help Canada break into world markets. The problem is attributable also to the lack of a real trade promotional campaign.
The Hon. Member for Northumberland (Mr. Hees) was Minister of Trade in the Diefenbaker Government. As Minister of Trade, he was a superb salesman, a salesman par excellence. He realized the importance of the private sector in breaking into new markets, cultivating those markets and helping Canada to compete on an equal footing with the best of them throughout the world. He helped the private sector through Government buraucracy, by working hand in hand with the private sector to unleash the entrepreneurial creativity in the country. He had imagination, creativity, drive and verve. He, his Department and the Government of the day had with the private sector just plain get-up-and-go.
1 want to conclude by stressing that in my own little Province of Prince Edward Island trade represents 9.6 per cent of the gross domestic product. It is expected that the corresponding 1982 figure will have zoomed to 10.8 per cent. The strong showing is not due to the bureaucracy of either the provincial or federal Government. It is due to the creativity, imagination and verve of the entrepreneur who is encouraged by Government to unleash his creative capacity.
In tiny Prince Edward Island, trade generated $102.8 million in revenue for the Province in 1982. So the trade potential is there. But the potential will not be realized through this Act, nor will it be realized through the Export Development Corporation but, rather, through the creative juices of the private sector encouraged, not prevented, by Government.


Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):: Mr. Speaker, I feel compelled to rise having listened to the Hon. Member who just

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completed his speech to say that there is a large element of truth in what he said. However, we have to take a serious look at the dilemma which confronts any nation that has historically relied on its ability to trade. From my experience in promoting and working toward getting a trading corporation, I believe it is necessary to present a much stronger Canadian face in world affairs. That Canadian face has to be a coordinated effort. In a most sophisticated world, I do not believe that it is possible for each individual small entrepreneur somehow or other to luck his or her way into the world markets.
I believe there is the need for a great deal more co-ordination and co-operation between Government efforts on the one hand, as exemplified in this instance by the Export Development Corporation, and business that has the capacity to seek, find and exploit-using the word "exploit" in its broadest possible term-available world markets. In doing that we also have to recognize the nature of a changing world.
In addition to our attempts to secure world markets, we have devoted a considerable amount of time, effort and money to try and improve the self-reliance of many of the nations with which we previously traded. 1 use the term "trade"; it may not be the proper term because trading leaves the impression that it is a two-way street. What I am talking about are countries to which we sold in one way to another products or materials that were originally Canadian, manufactured or indigenous Canadian raw materials, and we bought very little back. There was very little to purchase from them. We consistently stress with them, and they with us, that we should be seeking ways to make them more self-sufficient, to improve their indigenous capacity in order to make it possible for them to provide not only for themselves, but in the case of many smaller countries to provide a sufficient amount of excess capacity within their country so that they too may enter the world of trade.
If, as I put it is the case, it seems reasonable to draw the conclusion that our trading partners-in actual fact countries to which we have sold-should develop a capacity to manufacture and produce for themselves, those markets will become somewhat less available to us. You cannot have it both ways. You cannot on one hand strive to make the world a more equitable place, helping countries which previous to now had very little in the way of manufactured capacity and indigenous food-growing capacity achieve that aim, and then bemoan the fact that you can no longer sell to them those things you have encouraged them to make for themselves. We have to begin to take a much different approach to this. Our biggest complaint at the moment is not that we do not sell sufficient offshore. Surely our biggest complaint at the moment is that our economy has stagnated. The economy is not operating in such a way as to guarantee that here in Canada there will be jobs for Canadians who need them. That is our primary problem.
As we look at the question of the Export Development Corporation, we have to look at it within the context of an ever-changing world. Those countries that historically relied on their ability to manufacture and to sell to others are today facing difficulties, every single one of them. Therefore, it is not
unusual that we should also face difficulties. We have to balance our desire to develop a much more sophisticated manufacturing capacity with making that capacity sufficient to meet both our own domestice requirements and some of the existing world requirements. We will not meet all of them, only some. Therefore, we must be selective in choosing the areas upon which we place our emphasis. We will have to be very careful when choosing in which areas of expertise and competence we intend to work most assiduously in an effort to try to make those areas and their products attractive in terms of world purchasing.
I find it mind boggling to note that we would be running something in the order of a $900 million deficit in food sales over and against our purchases; this in a country like ours which no doubt has the capacity to meet all of its own requirements if we so desired.


An Hon. Member:: What about citrus fruits?


Ian Deans: No, generally speaking, all of our own products. I admit that we cannot grow everything, but we can meet all of our own basic requirements if we were to set our minds to it. I admit that we cannot grow everything that is grown in the world, but I do not admit that we need to be exporting or importing much of what we are capable of growing if we are not now growing it in sufficient quantities, whether it be beef or any other product we are currently producing.
I believe that rather than bemoaning our loss of markets we must look at how we can achieve self-sufficiency in our own economy. We must take a look, for example, at how we can bring about a much more rapid advancement toward the goal of energy self-sufficiency so that we do not have to import into the East Coast literally millions of barrels of oil on a regular annual basis when in fact we have within our own country the ability to meet that demand.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: Under the National Energy Program?


Ian Deans: I am not arguing whether or not that should be done under the National Energy Program. 1 am simply saying that we must set our minds to those questions. There is no point our pretending that somehow there is an over-growing market some place outside of Canada that will simply absorb all of our capacity and that somehow we are entitled to a larger share of that market. We are only entitled to get what we reasonably can achieve.
It is quite clear to me-and I say this to my colleague, the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington)-that the biggest stumbling blocks in the way of increasing our ability to sell abroad are the multinational corporations located in Canada whose head offices consistently have refused to allow their Canadian subsidiaries to seek and service those markets. They have created the single largest stumbling blocks to our drive to increase our ability to sell abroad.
Hon. Members need only look around themselves to determine to their own satisfaction that, in the overwhelming
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majority of cases where a subsidiary has been established in Canada, that subsidiary was established simply and solely for the purpose of meeting the need of the Canadian domestic market and, more specifically, has been excluded from seeking markets anywhere else. That is the case with the U.S. subsidiaries and is equally true in the case of the subsidiaries from Europe and, I suspect, will also be true in the case of the subsidiaries established from Japan as they become more prevalent. Canada will be treated as a sales territory and nothing more. The mandate given to the corporations established here will be a mandate to satisfy the domestic requirement and no other. 1 believe we are failing to speak to the serious problems that that will create in our country.
1 believe the truncated nature of our industry is clear, and so I am suggesting that we stop bemoaning our inability to match the statistical information that previously flowed over the years; that we stop bemoaning our loss of markets and start addressing the fundamental problems that face us. One of those fundamental problems is that we do not take advantage of our ability to be self-sufficient in the areas where we are able to be so; and another is that we are being denied, as a result of the multinational nature of major corporations, any opportunity to seek those markets even if they were available.


Mr. Marcel Roy (Laval);: Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak at the report stage of the Bill to amend the Export Development Act, especially after listening to the words spoken by the Member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans). I was already familiar with his philosophy on the importance of international trade, because I sat with the Hon. Member when a special committee of the House was formed to examine the international trade situation and to consider how trade structures could be made more effective, with a view to establishing a rapport with owners of small and medium-sized businesses and making them aware of the importance of our world markets.
If we consider that over 26 per cent of our Gross National Product depends on our export markets, it is clear that no one in this House can afford to ignore the importance of international trade and our substantial trade potential. Furthermore, I believe that the Government has also been made aware of the need to develop our export markets in a number of different areas. I am thinking, for example, of transportation and communications. Canada ranks among the most advanced countries in the world in these extremely specialized fields. I must say 1 deplore the attitude of the Progressive Conservatives who insist on taking an ultra-conservative approach and on providing criticism that is always on the negative side.
When the Committee tabled its report on the feasibility of forming a national trading corporation, we felt at the time that this country had the potential for exporting roughly $10-14 billion worth of manufactured goods and capital projects, a figure that could mean increasing our exports by 15 per cent over present levels. If existing factories and small and medium-
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sized businesses were better informed about the possibilities of international trade, there was, in fact, a potential for $8-12 billion. That was one of the conclusions reached by the Committee, which heard an impressive amount of testimony, considering the fact that 450 witnesses testified before it in the course of 270 meetings. We examined the entire organizational structure at the Department of Industry, Trade and Commerce and made recommendations. Regarding the Export Development Corporation we are discussing today, which provides financing and insurance services to Canadian exporters and foreign buyers of goods and services, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce made a survey to determine to what extent the Corporation, which is a tool at the disposal of small and medium-sized businesses, was known in Canada. The Chamber of Commerce informed us that 63 per cent of the business people surveyed were familiar with the Export Development Corporation and 29 per cent made use of its services. Some of the respondents mentioned that certain interest rates were too high, and there were all kinds of other considerations, but I am mentioning this one, because I think it is particularly important. I made enquiries at the departmental level to find out whether it was true that the Corporation made or guaranteed loans only in the case of large companies. In fact, according to the transactions for which assistance from the Export Development Corporation was received, 80 per cent of a total of 1,300 firms were classified as small and medium-sized businesses.
1 think this clearly confirms the Corporation's concern for helping small and medium-sized businesses. Furthermore, in 1982, 44 transactions out of 110, that is, 40 per cent of the businesses involved, were for amounts of less than $1 million. I think that is a very important point.
Mr. Speaker, I could go on for some time about the role of the National Trading Corporation that was being considered at the time by the Government, an agency that would help small and medium-sized businesses. Its structure was to be that of a shared enterprise, that is, its equity base would be provided by the Canadian Government and the private sector. The report I have here refers to the financing and start-up operations for this Corporation, and I must say it is rather disheartening to hear the Conservatives complaining again today about international trade, when the same Members refused to approve this report when it was tabled here in the House.
As for the Corporation's financing, I would like to mention here that the federal Government was to assume a 40 to 50 per cent equity position in the Corporation, with private corporate investors providing the other 50 to 60 per cent. It was to be a tool, a pipeline as it were from small and medium-sized businesses to international markets. It would identify countries and prospect markets for specific products. It was a tool for

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small and medium-sized businesses, but the Progressive Conservative Party was opposed to the report's recommendations.
1 would just like to take a few minutes to mention something. Yesterday I was listening to the Member for Timiska-ming (Mr. MacDougall) who was criticizing the Government for its approval of financing for Bombardier. I think he should be delighted, because if Canada is to continue to expand its high technology markets and maintain its position in the transportation industry, it is absolutely vital that the Canadian Government should intervene in the case of transactions worth nearly $1 billion, involving the manufacture of special trains for the New York subway. We are talking about the production of 825 subway cars over the next five years, and I think that instead of criticizing the Government, the Hon. Member should bear in mind that this is a $1 billion contract, and that one billion dollars' worth of manufactured products exported abroad means 43,000 jobs. This particular contract means jobs for Canadians. Are we supposed to let the competition, French or German interests, win the contract for producing those goods? 1 think the Government acted wisely in protecting jobs, expanding the Canadian technology industry and awarding the contract to Bombardier, a Canadian company. Maybe if the company had been in another province, the Conservatives would not have been as upset, but I challenge the Conservatives to come to Quebec and say what they said about Bombardier, a company that happens to be in the Province of Quebec and that is going to create jobs.
Mr. Speaker, 1 could go on about our Crown corporations. I am not blind to their defects, and 1 am convinced that administratively speaking, there should be more control, but I would challenge those people who criticize Canadair. When the federal Government acquired Canadair, it provided 700 jobs. Today, that number is 7,000, people who are working on the development of our high technology industry, and as a result, today, the Province of Quebec has almost 50 per cent of Canada's aerospace industry, and that is because the Canadian Government invested in Canadair.


Hon. Janies A. McGrath (St. John's East):: Mr. Speaker, 1 listened with great care to the hon. gentleman who just took his seat, and 1 am amazed that he seems to have missed the whole point and thrust of this debate. No one, Sir, questions the need for, or indeed the good work of, the Export Development Corporation. That is not at issue here. It has done good work. The hon. gentleman mentioned the Bombardier sale, and that is only one example of many which could be cited in this House to justify the continued existence of this very important corporation.
However, what we are talking about here, Mr. Speaker, is parliamentary accountability. That is what this debate is all about. That is what Motions Nos. 3 and 5, put forward by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), are all about. They would have the means of introducing some degree of control and accountability into the operations of this corporation. Surely we as parliamentarians have a responsibility to ensure that these Crown corporations are not allowed to operate out of control, but that they will in fact be accountable to the taxpayers of this country through their representatives in this House.
The Government, by this Bill, seeks to expand the borrowing capacity of this corporation without the need for further reference to Parliament. That is what the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington) was talking about, and that is the issue before the House. That is what we, as the Official Opposition, are putting forward as argument, and a very valid and important argument it is. It goes to the very guts, the very heart and soul of Parliament.
Last year, Sir, the Auditor General in his report for the fiscal year ending March 31, 1982, said something which deserves to be repeated because it sums up the whole rationale of this debate. It sums up the whole rationale of the arguments which have been put forward by the Official Opposition. I quote from that report:
Parliament is becoming further isolated from an increasing portion of government activities. The growing practice of using Crown-owned corporations to conduct a widening range of government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
As my colleague the Hon. Member for Capilano has said, that, Sir, is the issue. That is what this debate is all about.
We recall that a few years ago the late Auditor General of Canada, in one of his reports, expressed his concern that Parliament was in danger of losing control over the purse strings of public expenditure. I believe, Sir, that we have in fact lost control. I believe we have arrived at a point in time where we have lost control. That loss of control is exemplified very dramatically by this Bill which is before the House, which would render this Crown corporation virtually unaccountable in terms of the substantial increase in borrowing authority which it has been given.
This House is currently operating under provisional rules which were brought in by the Special Committee on Standing Orders and Procedure. That committee has been sitting for 18 months now and no subject has taken more of the time of that Committee than the subject of accountability, control over Government expenditures and how Parliament can regain the control it had over public spending. 1 do not have to recite the growth of the national debt, the growth of the deficit, the hidden deficit. That has all been put on the record. But the deficit will still grow, the hidden deficit will still grow and the national debt will still grow unless and until Parliament regains control over public spending.
The Special Committee has submitted nine reports to this House. We are currently operating under the recommendations of the third report in the form of provisional rules. The House will have to make a decision on those recommendations and provisional rules by the end of the current parliamentary year. The Hon. Member for Capilano co-chaired a subcommit-
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tee of that Special Committee together with the Elon. Member for Rosemont (Mr. Lachance), and they brought in a report which would in a very comprehensive and meaningful way go a long way toward restoring parliamentary control and Government accountability. That report is before the House and it makes very important recommendations which complement the work the Committee did and submitted to the House in its fifth and sixth reports.
That report, Sir, recommended among other things the establishment of a Government corporation and agencies committee. 1 listened to the Hon. Member for Capilano and obviously modesty prevented him from quoting his own recommendations in his own subcommittee report, but I think they are worth putting on the record:
Your committee believes that the proposed financial accountability structure would not be complete without a committee devoted to scrutinizing the activities of agencies which are Crown-owned or Crown-controlled or in which the Government has an interest. Collectively these represent one of the most important, expanding and least understood sectors of Government operations. It is essential that there be improved parliamentary oversight of the complex machinery governing such bodies, the number and variety of which is bewildering even to exports in public finance.
They go on to say this if further evidence of the serious gap in accountability to Parliament which must be addressed.
In 1962, Mr. Speaker, there were 28 Crown corporations in Canada controlling $8.4 billion in assets. Today in 1983 there are over 300 Crown corporations employing 263,000 people with assets at the end of the last fiscal period of $74 billion and liabilities of $63 billion.


Arthur Ronald Huntington: We do not know the contingent liabilities.


James Aloysius McGrath: As my hon. friend suggests, we do not know the contingent liabilities and we will not know them until these Crown corporations are made accountable and answerable to Parliament through a special parliamentary committee.
The Auditor General of Canada has referred to this as a subgovernment. 1 say it is a parallel government and it is being used as the device to circumvent Parliament because of Parliament's preoccupation, and rightly so, with the expanding deficit and the expanding debt. For hon. gentlemen to suggest that in some way by presenting arguments to support a return of accountability to this House we are in fact criticizing the work of the Export Development Corporation is to read something into the speeches from this side of the House which in fact is not fair. Member after Member who has stood in his place in this House has talked about accountability and the need to hold this Government, of all Governments in our history, accountable. Because if there was ever a Government which is out of control, if there was ever a Government which has brought Parliament to a point where it is virtually on its knees and helpless to control spending, it is this Government and it stands indicted for what it has done to this Parliament.


Mr. Pat Nowlan (Annapolis Valley-Hants):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in this debate on the amendments to Bill C-110. My colleague, the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), spoke passionately about what the function
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of Parliament is. I must say, Mr. Speaker, to try with the ten-minute rule we are confronted with at this stage of the debate to explain the implications of Bill C-110 is almost as Herculean a task as explaining Einstein's theory of relativity to a grade school student. It is really very, very difficult to do. But surely in the debate which has gone on there must be a couple of thoughts which have sunk into those on the Government side. There is a fundamental concern in the country, certainly in this House, over this question of accountability and amending the Act so that in the new structure of the Export Development Corporation there is no provision whatsoever for the private sector to participate.
We can get carried away, Mr. Speaker, here on the floor with rhetoric. Sometimes we get politically passionate and throw epithets across the floor. But as sure as the birds fly south in the winter and come back north in the summer, if my colleagues on the Government benches were sitting where we are, if they could muster their forces and/or get their rhetorical skills going which have laid mute and dormant so long as they have sat on Government benches, they would raise their voices against an amendment to this Act which, among other things, is going to increase the amount of high-risk transactions and bad business risks that the Cabinet, not Parliament, can approve from a $3.5 billion limit to a $10 billion limit. Or to have Cabinet approve loans and guarantees from a $2.5 billion limit, which is pretty high in anyone's language, to a $10 billion limit.
I point out, Mr. Speaker, that $10 billion is just about the figure in the present Prime Minister's first budget in 1968. I think the records will show that the total budget of the Government in 1968 was something like $10.5 billion. We know that inflation and the escalation of prices have devalued the dollar by over 50 per cent, so a dollar in 1968 is certainly less than 50 cents today, perhaps closer to 30 cents or 40 cents; those statistics are there somewhere.
As my friend the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) said earlier, no one is criticizing the sincere and good work, in large measure, of the EDC because Canada is a trading nation. What we are criticizing is giving an additional blank cheque to a Government which by its proven record, let alone the commentaries of experts, has lost control. We are complaining about the Government, not really the EDC.
The Government is floating this Bill and we are right to condemn it because it not only increases those limits I mentioned, but it will allow the EDC to double its borrowing capability from $10 billion to $20 billion, and in effect double its capability for insuring risks from $10 billion to again $20 billion. These are Gargantuan figures even in light of this Government's profligate spending. As I said, the Prime Minister's first budget in 1968 comprised a total of $10.5 billion.
Now, Mr. Speaker, you can hear the rhetoric about how figures confound and how can any of us appreciate billions of dollars? It is almost incomprehensible. But the interesting thing about this debate is that you do not have to take the word of the members of the Opposition, no matter how reasoned, rational and logical they are. You can ask the

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
professional commentators in the economic world who have assessed Government spending. 1 start with one of the leaders from Quebec, an ex-president of the Economic Council of Canada, Mr. Andre Raynauld, who also had a later vocation a Liberal MNA in Quebec before he resigned or did not re-offer, and then became a Professor of Economics at the University of Montreal. Not only is he a well respected Quebecer, but he is also a well respected Canadian in every capacity, except sometimes concerning his political coloration, but that is always open to proselytization. With a man of his intellect, his mind, I am sure he will join those hundreds of thousands of others in Quebec and come on board so that they can be there after the next election and enjoy a responsible Government doing responsible things.
Before getting carried away with rhetoric, 1 want to quote what Mr. Raynauld, the ex-president of the Economic Council from 1972 to 1976, said in commenting on the EDC. He said that it is "rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient". That was said before the Bill even came onto the floor of the House. What would he say today? Your Honour has heard other Hon. Members mentioning what the Auditor General, who is no great partisan of this Party and who, in effect, is a servant of the House of Commons, said seven years ago with respect to Crown corporations.
My friend the Hon. Member for St. John's East has spoken of the expansion of Crown corporations. My friend the Hon. Member for Capilano spoke of the subterranean government of Crown corporations and its massive expenditure. What my friends did not mention is that when one speaks of Crown corporations, and not just the amount of expansion from 1962 to today, one finds the ridiculous situation that there are now actually 263,000 employees in Crown corporations today as compared to only 239,000 in all federal departments excluding Defence. There are actually more people employed in the Crown corporations of the land than in the federal departments of the land. That is how they have expanded, yet seven years ago the Auditor General said that "in the majority of Crown corporations audited financial control and management is weak and ineffective".
Four years ago the Lambert Report, which was supposed to deal with fiscal responsibility, stated that "existing provisions for classifying Crown agencies and for accountability for each category have been rendered obsolete". Just last fall, the Auditor General said:
-the growing practice of using Crown owned corporations to conduct the widening range of Government activities has so strained the capability of the existing accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and expenditures of public funds.
In its report entitled "Intervention and Efficiency"-we have spoken of the massive intervention of the Government- the Economic Council stated:
Canada is perhaps the country with the least private sector participation in export financing decisions. In most of the 17 nations studied, the negotiations for granting export credit are left to the private sector. This is not the case in Canada.
Having just given those quotes from no one in this Parliament who may be partisan and wearing a political stripe, but rather from independent commentators, starting with Andre Raynauld, it is clear why we have expressed and will continue to express concern over the fact that Crown corporations and their fiscal accountability and responsibility to this Parliament are running rampant.
Surely the Members of the House, certainly we on this side, have received a message from the people out there. I hope, and I cannot hope too much, that Members on the Government side will also start to get the message from the people of Canada. They can call it what they will, they can call it anything in the Gallup Poll, but the one basic lesson I think the people of Canada are telling politicians, particularly federal politicians, is that they have had it up to here-and by "here" I mean up the neck, up to the gorge-with a Government that is spending taxpayers' money, thinking it can spend money better than people can spend it themselves.
We must redress that situation in the House of Commons. The original historic purpose of the House, indeed its only reason for existence, involved the battle of the purse, the power of the purse. The barons and lords came together on the common green and tried to check the authority of the King. That is the history of this place. Unless Hon. Members start to pay attention to history, then I can tell the House that in the future history after the next election there will be an awful lot of Hon. Members, good friends of mine, who will not be around to worry about division bells.


Mr. S. J. Korchinski (Mackenzie):: Mr. Speaker, in rising to participate in the debate on these particular amendments, I am reminded of a few comments by a new Member, one who has just taken his seat in the House of Commons in the last few days. The new Hon. Member for Mission-Port Moody (Mr. St. Germain), in reflecting on part of his life, said to the press: "The harder you work, the luckier you are".
I thought about those words because they are ones upon which we and perhaps the Government should dwell. I was struck by those words because throughout this country there are countless numbers of citizens, taxpayers, who have diligently applied themselves and attempted to make a success of their lives, only to be frustrated by a Government that zeros in on any initiative that they may have shown.
People often speak to me personally about the problems National Revenue raises with them, because the Government is constantly in need of raising money. They frequently tell me that some of the expense accounts that they present are rejected and decisions are rendered whereby it would appear that in order to gain some redress to their grievances appeals must be made. In many instances it is not sufficient to embark on a costly appeal. This is an annoying factor with so many citizens who must produce the revenue that the Government must have if it is to carry on.
September 20, 1983

1 comment in that vein because the Government has embarked on a course, on the one hand, to ensure that justice is done and that everyone pays his fair share of taxes, and that is fair enough; but on the other hand, what I detest and what many people in Canada reject is the wanton way in which the Government is quite prepared to spend that hard-earned money. This is the conclusion that so many people have reached. When one sees the result of a survey showing that 64 per cent of Canadians feel that Parliament is irrelevant, it is no wonder that they reach that kind of conclusion.
You and I, Mr. Speaker, and the rest of the Hon. Members who have had occasion to sit on committees or participate in debates realize that our contribution as Members toward the accountability of the expenditure is really insignificant. In many instances we come into the House and must rubber stamp the expenditure of billions of dollars inside of a few hours. Anyone who has sat in committee realizes that questioners have perhaps an allowance of five minutes each. Regardless of how diligent an Hon. Member might be or how much research was given to the subject, can Your Honour honestly tell me that anyone can cross-examine a witness within that time? That is the situation with Government expenditures.
Let us take the case of a Crown corporation, such as CNR, appearing before a parliamentary committee. In this case, of course, an official from the CNR would be there. We are supposed to examine, inquire and somehow justify what that corporation is doing within a couple of hours. What a mockery that is!
In this instance the Government comes to us to ask for more money so it can just hand it to another corporation which it says it can handle. After all, the Government says, these are senior officials.
I am reminded of what happened with the banks. The banks, which should be providing a lot of this financing, have pulled back in many instances. I think of some of the loans they have provided to other countries only to find that they are suffering losses. While many believe that we in Canada have to pay for the risks that they take, what happens in the case of a Crown corporation? When there are over 300 Crown corporations in this country, how can Members of Parliament, no matter how our membership is divided in the House, possibly examine those corporations? I remind Hon. Members that each questioner is allotted five minutes, and of course the following Member would not necessarily follow the same line of questioning since he may feel he has a problem that should be examined. What kind of an examination can we conduct on behalf of the taxpayers of this country?
The Government is asking for a blank cheque to hand over to this Crown corporation. In the process of governments becoming too big in the drive for socialism and expansion into every branch of our endeavours in this country, we have forgotten one ingredient. It is that someone has to pay for all of these activities somewhere along the line.
Export Development Act
It has become very convenient to hide these activities in a Crown corporation. People who have had occasion to attend a hearing for a rail line abandonment will know that one of the problems faced by the poeple who are affected is that they are confronted with a host of financial experts in the Crown corporation, whether it be CN or CP. These are trained people who have the books and can produce evidence to prove their case. What accountability do these individuals have who are hidden in the Crown corporation? Those people who are affected walked away knowing in their own minds that their situation is not right, yet they do not have the resources to prove the contrary. As Members of Parliament we have to stand here and say that we are also helpless.
How many times have we seen a $1 item introduced in the House? If that is not a cover-up by the Government, I do not know what is, but at least it is introduced in the House so that we have an opportunity to express our concerns on some of those items. What are we to do about the billions of dollars thrown out to the Crown corporations even though the Government may believe it can justify it as being the only way?
I heard the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce (Mr. Lumley) boasting about some expanded exports. The fact is that perhaps exports could or could not be expanded through research and development. It may just be a cover-up for a Government that does not really have a policy. Accountability of Crown corporations is a PC policy. The press, for once in its life, should say that we do have policies on different matters, and that is one of them.


Mr. Alex Patterson (Fraser Valley East):: Mr. Speaker, I rise today to take part in this debate not because it is a pleasant task but because of the importance of the issue that is currently before the House. I sometimes wonder just how much good it does to put up a sustained and vocal opposition to various measures that the Government brings before us. I believe that when issues are presented the decisions, generally speaking, have been made and are irrevocable. The Government and its supporters just sit by stoically, sometimes listening, wishing it was all over so they could get ahead with the business and do whatever they want to do.
I rise today to put on the record my support for Motions Nos. 3 and 5 that are currently before the House. I believe they have been adequately explained and argued by Members of this Party. If anything that is said would have an effect on the Government, it would already be obvious that the Government had listened and given some attention to what has been said.
However, I want to give my personal support to these motions that were moved by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). There are those who say that there is nothing more to be said. However, I rise to say that I support the motions wholeheartedly and without equivocation. I believe that in considering a bill such as this, the points that have been raised and emphasized so strenuously are not only necessary to place on the record in order to explain the adverse effects of what is being done, but they also

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
indicate that there is wide and determined opposition of the course which the Government is following.
This Bill concerns a Crown corporation. On many occasions in the House we have discussed the desirability or otherwise of adding more corporations to the list that already exists. Although 1 am aware that this corporation is already in operation, Crown corporations and their operation in our system of government have been criticized and challenged. Yet we find that there has been a multiplication of Crown corporations over the last few years. I am greatly concerned that there is a continuing attempt by the Government to broaden the powers of these Crown corporations and to remove from Parliament the opportunity and the right to challenge the activities of such corporations and the way in which the Government is governing this country. It has already been stated in the debate that this type of opposition has been registered not only by Members of the Opposition but also by successive Auditors General. Statements have been placed on the record pointing out that they are extremely concerned about the increasing powers being granted to Crown corporations, removing the responsibility of Parliament, taking them beyond the touch of Parliament, and therefore there is very little, if any, accountability to the elected representatives of the people of Canada.
Crown corporations have been referred to as a subgovernment. One of my colleagues this morning has referred to the situation as a supplementary type of government. It seems to me that it is not only improper but immoral for a government to move in the direction of removing from Parliament the means and opportunity of challenging those operations which we feel so strongly are not acting in the best interests of Canada or the Canadian people.
Let us look at the issues before us this morning. Motion No. 3 reads:
That Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 5 by striking out lines 23 to 26 at page 3 and substituting the following therefor:
II. (1) The authorized capital of the Corporation is one billion one hundred dollars divided into ten million and one shares with a par value of one hundred dollars each.
Motion No. 5 reads:
That Bill C-l 10, an Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 7 by striking out lines 39 to 41 at page 3 and lines 1 and 2 at page 4 and substituting the following therefor:
14. The aggregate amount of borrowings of the Corporation pursuant to Sections 12 and 13 shall not exceed the amount equal to ten times the aggregate of the paid in capital and earned surplus in the accounts of the Corporation.
These motions are placed on record because we are concerned that we are granting Crown corporations the right to spend additional funds and possibly increase the deficit beyond anything that is proper and realistic. Again I come back to the matter of accountability. There is, I am sure, abroad in the country a feeling among the general population that the Government itself is not acting in a responsible manner in the financing of its activities and is going it alone, seemingly with
the idea that no limit whatever should be imposed on the Government presently in power.
As I meet with people in my constituency one of their main objections is to the huge deficit facing not only the present generation but succeeding generations, a responsibility and burden that they will not in any way be able to bear. I keep hearing that we are mortgaging the future of our children and our children's children and that they will have to try and pick up the pieces, not only for what the Government is spending today but also for what it will be spending in the days ahead.
We are not objecting to the Export Development Corporation itself. We feel it is a Crown corporation that is worthwhile, and in many respects it is responsible. But the credibility of the EDC is very fragile. What we want to do is place this corporation in a position where there will be no questions raised at all, where it will be carrying on responsibly and in a way that can be accounted for. We are making these recommendations and advancing these arguments because we are interested in saving the reputation of an organization that is doing a good job, and we want it to keep on doing a good job in the interests of the Canadian people.


Mr. Bob Corbett (Fundy-Royal):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on Bill C-l 10 during report stage, this time on amendments put forward by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), namely Motions Nos. 3 and 5.
Today the Government is asking this Parliament, which is supposed to be the guardian of the country's purse strings for the dollars that are put into the treasury by the taxpayers, to allow the Export Development Corporation to have control over some $62 billion of taxpayers' funds. The taxpayers would ultimately be responsible for these funds. The Government is asking that the Export Development Corporation and the inner circle of those who make up the frontbenches of this Liberal Government be given effective control over some $62 billion. But the taxpayers of this nation have no way of knowing what happens to that money, how it is spent or how it is misspent. Parliament will have no authority to approve spending by the EDC. There will be no accountability whatsoever on the part of the Government to Parliament for this money. This is basically the issue we are dealing with.
The Government is asking Parliament to increase the authorized capital of the EDC from $1 billion to $2 billion. It is asking this House to increase the high-risk lending insurance cost from $3.5 billion to $10 billion. It is asking this House to increase loans and loan guarantees on the part of the Export Development Corporation from $2.5 billion to $10 billion.
We have heard on occasion in this House a number of Members on this side saying how effective they feel Crown corporations can be. 1 would have to concur basically in what they have said. There is no doubt that there are some very effective Crown corporations and civil servants who have served the people of Canada very well over the years. But there are misuses and abuses of the power vested in a good number of Crown corporations.
September 20, 1983

Indeed, this Government would be hard pressed to tell the people of Canada how many Crown corporations there are in existence. It has been reported by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Fraser Valley East (Mr. Patterson), that there are something in the neighbourhood of 300 Crown corporations in existence. 1 have heard it reported that there are over 400 Crown corporations. A few tales of horror are well known to us and 1 intend to deal with those momentarily.
My colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South, would leave the authorized capital of the EDC at $1 billion. He would have the borrowing restricted to ten times the amount of capital actually on hand. 1 think the Hon. Member for Mississauga South is being extremely generous to this Crown corporation which has great control over the purse. If I were in his position, I would take a somewhat harder look at how he is proposing the dollars might be controlled and spent.
Certainly the amount of accountability to Parliament and to the people of the nation cannot be overemphasized. The Government has a responsibility which it has been very reluctant to exhibit over the last number of years. It does not account for how money is spent. Over the months and years the Government has been in power, we have seen a constant drain on the taxpayers' pockets. We have seen the deficit rise to a projected $31.3 billion this year alone. The figures are astounding. The current cost of interest on public debt in 1983 will amount to $700 per capita, or $1,800 per taxpayer. The gross debt will be $6,400 per capita or $16,200 per taxpayer. The interest alone on our debt for 1983 will amount to a whopping, staggering $17.6 billion. In any other forum, whether it be the private or the public sector, that would be scandalous. The House has been treated to this spectacle, and the country has been treated to the mismanagement of Government for such a period of time that today we almost offhandedly accept a debt which will require interest payments in 1983 of $17.6 billion.
The Government spends $274 million every day, 365 days of the year, with no time off for Sundays; that is $11 million per hour or $190,000 per minute. During the time it took the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) to deliver his budget speech last April, the Government spent $19 million. Fathom it: $19 million was spent by the Government while the Minister of Finance delivered that catastrophic budget speech of last April.
The Hon. Member for Annapolis Valley-Hants (Mr. Nowlan) said that Canadian taxpayers have had it up to the gorge. I will add to that. Canadian taxpayers have not only been gorged; they have been gouged consistently by the Government, and it continues to do it in a haphazard, willy-nilly, unabashed, unashamed way. This Government has gout of the public purse. We as taxpayers and as Canadians will be paying for years to come. It is time Canadians had the opportunity to treat themselves to a government which can gain control of the public purse, gain control of the deficit, and indeed start to reduce it, with the final goal in mind of eliminating it.
Export Development Act
As history will show anyone who cares to look at it-and obviously that is not the case opposite-there is no better vehicle available to us than the free enterprise system which built the nation and provided the greatness of today, although Hon. Members across the way have continuously tried to erode those foundations. If I were in a position to provide any sort of advice to which the Government might listen, it would be the same advice that hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of Canadians would deliver to the Government if they were given the opportunity to do so-and that day is soon coming- namely, that free enterprise does work. Free enterprise so that it can work!


Hon. John Wise (Elgin):: Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to participate very briefly in the debate on Bill C-110, which deals with amendments to the Export Development Act. I am sure the House appreciates that because of the nature of the Bill it permits and indeed invites wide-ranging interjections and debate on the subject.
1 want to take this opportunity to compliment the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) for the manner in which he led the debate. Also I want to compliment other speakers on this side of the House who have participated thus far.
1 am sure many others will have comments to make. Hon. Members on this side of the House and I am certain Hon. Members on the Government side, if they want to be honest with themselves and with their constituents, will agree that the Canadian public is extremely concerned about the manner in which Canadian Crown corporations have been operating.
At the outset I want to make it perfectly clear that I have no personal axe to grind with the Export Development Corporation. During the past ten years or so since coming to this place to speak and work on behalf of the constituents of Elgin, I recall a number of occasions on which I have had the opportunity to negotiate on behalf of constituents, companies, businesses and so on, with the Export Development Corporation, out of which a number of successful conclusions were reached. I do not want to leave a false impression. There have been other occasions when representations were made on very reasonable and worth-while ventures that would have resulted in economic activity within the community, throughout southwestern Ontario and indeed beyond, and had these ventures been brought to a successful conclusion, economic activity would have been enhanced in the general area and we would have been able to create additional jobs.
The operation of the EDC is before the House-and I suppose in some respects it has unfortunately become the whipping boy for all Crown corporations in the country- because we have Bill C-110 before us which deals with the EDC and provides us with an opportunity to make comments. The Export Development Corporation is the export trade arm of the federal Government.
It is extremely important to have a look at the general performance of Canadian business and industry in the export field. We recognize that Canada is a trading nation. Canada
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has to be a trading nation because of its vast resources. I notice in a StatsCan release yesterday that there are now 25 million Canadians in this country. Consequently our domestic population is not such to sustain an active, economic, sound business and industrial sector. Because of our nature, it is extremely important that we be very aggressive and successful in the export field.
Thirty per cent of our Gross National Product is earned through trade. That figure would be much higher if Canada was getting its former share of world trade. For example, in 1968, the year that this Government really took office under the present leadership, Canada's share of world trade was 5.74 per cent. By 1981 this figure had fallen to 3.8 per cent. In 1968 Canadians exported more than the Japanese, yet today Japan's share of world trade is twice that of Canada.
In the ten-year period between 1970 and 1980, the average annual growth rate of Canadian exports was 4.4 per cent, the lowest of any major industrialized nation, and less than half the 10 per cent growth rate that prevailed between 1960 and 1970. In contrast, during the same 1970-1980 period exports grew by an annual average rate of increase of 6.7 per cent in Italy, 7.5 per cent in the United Kingdom, 8.9 per cent in Japan, 6.9 per cent in the United States, 6.8 per cent in France and 5.8 per cent in West Germany.
Publicly the Government likes to point to the rosy and rather successful performance of the last two years. However, Mr. Speaker, if you look at the internal documents which are very much available from the Department of Regional Industrial Expansion, you see that it takes a rather less optimistic view, but certainly more realistic. 1 want to place on the record a paragraph from the document 1 referred to, and I quote:
Over the medium term, export growth may not match advances in imports. Recent record surpluses in Canada's merchandise account owe more to the depressing effects of the relatively more severe recession in Canada on imports than to superior export performance.
The Government as well fails to point out that Canada had a $13 billion deficit in fully manufactured goods last year. It is estimated that eliminating that deficit could create in the vicinity of 250,000 jobs. At a time when we have more than
1.5	million people unemployed, certainly any move by Government to create additional jobs would be a move to be taken very seriously.
It is interesting to note that the Canadian Manufacturers' Association estimates that 2.7 million jobs could be created by regaining our 1970 share of world trade. That is a very significant figure. A major reason for the decline in our share of world trade and our deficit in manufactured goods is our productivity performance.
Over the past few years, our industrial productivity has been rising at the slowest rate of any major industrialized nation. Between 1977 and 1982, our industrial productivity rose by only 0.3 per cent compared to 27.6 per cent in Japan, 22.6 per cent in Italy, 17.9 per cent in Sweden, 22.3 per cent in France,
19.5	per cent in Denmark, 14.7 per cent in Germany, 18.2 per
September 20, 1983
cent in the United Kingdom and 3.6 per cent in the United States. In 1982 productivity in Canada actually declined by 2.8 per cent.
A major cause of Canada's poor productivity performance is our poor research and development performance. Expenditures on research and development in Canada are only equal to 1.2 per cent of the Gross National Product, compared to 2.4 per cent in the United States, 2 per cent in Japan, 2.3 per cent in West Germany, 2.2 per cent in the United Kingdom and 1.8 per cent in France. Among the major industrialized nations only Italy, at 0.9 per cent, spends proportionately less on research and development than Canada.
I am only just commencing my remarks, but I see, Mr. Speaker, you are indicating to me that my time has expired. Because of the nature of this debate, I am quite certain that as other amendments come along I will have the opportunity to make a few more comments.


Mr. Charles Mayer (Portage-Marquette):: Mr. Speaker, this is an important Bill because it deals with the Government's main responsibility, namely the accountability of the Government to the taxpayers with regard to the spending of money. It is important, not in the sense that we are talking about taxes collected, but about the ability of the Government to borrow.
I find it strange that we are discussing a Bill like this which talks about tens of billions of dollars, a tremendous amount of money, when a sector in the country involved in exports, the agricultural sector, is not being addressed by the Government. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, a major portion of the economy which exports is not able to remain competitive and maintain its level of exports.
I have been in the Transport Committee, Mr. Speaker, for what seems like forever. If I refer to you as "Mr. Chairman", it is because I am used to looking at the chairman of that committee. As an aside, I must say that he has done a very good job. He certainly has the respect and admiration of the members of the committee in dealing with a very tough Bill, the Crow legislation. That is an aside but I thought I should bring it in.


John Wise: Which clause are you on?


Charles James Mayer: My distinguished colleague asks what clause we are on. For the information of the House, and I am sure Members are waiting breathlessly to get on with this Bill next week, we are on Clause 56, I believe. There are 14 more clauses. Therefore, we are making tremendous progress. I again pay tribute to the chairman and the other members of the committee.
To get back to the Bill, I find it strange that the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) is afraid to ask the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) for some financing assistance if we have a Bill in front of the House which authorizes the Government to borrow billions of dollars. Where does the Government intend to get this money? I assume it intends to get it from the marketplace.
September 20, 1983

This Bill would permit the Government to borrow a large amount of money in the marketplace. If that is fair, I suggest the Government should look at some of the farm financing that is needed. There are certain priorities and that should be one of them.
Many suggestions have been made in terms of how we can substantially assist farmers with regard to financing. One is the agribond process which would allow farmers to finance at a favoured rate of interest. It would keep farmers in business. Farmers are major users of capital. That is one reason they have become so efficient. Farmers have increased their efficiency over the last number of years and have done so largely with the use of capital. This Bill talks about capital. If this Bill is going to allow the Government to go to the marketplace and borrow large amounts of money, it will put pressure on other sectors of the economy, namely agriculture. These sectors will be in jeopardy in terms of their ability to compete and maintain exports. That is important.
There are many considerations in this Bill, with overshoots and spin-offs as far as other parts of the economy are concerned. I find it difficult to understand why developing methods of financing, concessional financing and other fancy things should be a priority, when we have a major sector of the economy that is in dire need of new innovations as far as financing is concerned. I refer to farm financing.
1 see it is fast approaching one o'clock. May I call it one o'clock?


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.


Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Madam Speaker, our national carrier, Air Canada, has been neglecting the Quebec City region with respect to its links with Ottawa. Indeed, we now have only one direct flight between the two cities. It leaves Quebec City at 2.15 p.m. and the return flight leaves Ottawa at 4 p.m.-not very appropriate hours for businessmen. And what is more, this direct flight was cancelled last summer, from June to September. They argue that the flight operates at
a loss. Yet, Quebec Aviation Ltee has been using a small aircraft for three daily return flights between Quebec City and Gatineau and it is considering using a bigger aircraft. On that route, Quebec Aviation Ltee has replaced Quebecair-better known as Air Tricofil in Quebec-which was operating at a loss because that company had lofty visions which prevented it from using smaller aircraft. Air Canada seems to have the same problem as well. Obviously, operating such a direct flight with an aircraft designed to carry over 100 passengers is a challenge to reason. Air Canada's responsibility is to link Canada's capital with other Canadian capitals and large cities. At this time, Air Canada flies directly from Ottawa to Vancouver three times a day, to Winnipeg five times a day, to Montreal eight times a day, to Toronto 14 times a day, but only once a day to Quebec City and only ten months of the year. Travelling time between Ottawa and Quebec City, with one stopover, is four hours and twenty minutes.


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



INDUSTRY


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Madam Speaker, yesterday the Minister of Industry (Mr. Lumley) justified the non-acceptance of a $9 billion offer for White Farm Equipment by White U.S.A. by saying that Canadian technology would have to be protected and that a "very important player" was being encouraged to make an offer. Is this player Massey-Ferguson or another such company? If so, and if such a deal were made, it would be a back door method of eliminating White Farm Equipment and betraying the dealers and farmers who handle and own White equipment.
As for protecting Canadian technology, I wonder why the Government is not equally concerned or even more concerned with protecting Canadian farmers and Canadian dealers. Dealers are small businessmen, many of whom will be forced into bankruptcy if White Farm Equipment goes under, leaving more employees without jobs. Canadian farmers are just hanging in there now without having the federal Government nullify their investments in White Farm equipment which range all the way from $29,000 to $100,000 or more. Such action would be the last straw for hundreds of farmers who would go into bankruptcy.
If the Government does not withdraw its orders to the receiver not to accept the offer of White U.S.A., and White Farm Equipment Limited does go under, the responsibility will rest squarely on the Government and the Minister. Foreign investment in Canada is good when it helps the people by keeping an important company liquid, enabling farmers, dealers and workers to prosper. Will the Government recognize for

once that Canadian people are more important than technology?



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Gilbert Parent (Welland):: Madam Speaker, over the weekend I had the occasion to have discussions with Canadians of Ukrainian origin. After hearing the facts they put before me, I believe that between seven million and ten million Ukrainians were starved to death on the orders of the Government of the U.S.S.R. during the deliberately organized famine of 1932-1933. The Government of the U.S.S.R. directed a special annihilation policy aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian nation, thereby committing genocide as defined by the U.N. Genocide Convention.
Canadians of Ukrainian and other origins from behind the Iron Curtain commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Soviet-induced famine in the Ukraine. I ask the Department of External Affairs to make representations to the United Nations requesting official recognition of the 1933 famine in order to provide future generations with permanent documentation of this premeditated genocide. Further, on this sorrowful anniversary of the Ukrainian holocaust, 1 ask that the Government of Canada increase its assistance to hunger-stricken countries anywhere in the world, regardless of political or economic affiliation, in order to avoid repetition of a fate similar to that suffered by millions of Ukrainians in the peaceful years of 1932 and 1933.



VIA RAIL


Mr. Bill Domm (Peterborough):: Madam Speaker, the Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy) has justifiably questioned the wisdom of the 1981 Via Rail service cuts. This comes as no surprise to members of the Opposition since the Canadian Transport Commission recommended that Via Rail service be continued until the completion of a full hearing. This recommendation echoed the advice of the Railway Transport Committee which concluded: "Accordingly, it is the decision of the Committee that, pending the outcome of this further review, the Toronto-Havelock service shall not be discontinued."
What is surprising, however, is the Minister's plan to reestablish Via Rail service on the Winnipeg to Edmonton line, a line which just happens to be in his riding. This represents an act of political appeasement contrived in an attempt to retain the Minister's seat in western Canada.
It should be noted that the Minister said he is restoring the Winnipeg to Edmonton line because, and I quote the Minister, "1 don't believe Via can just be a corridor railway," adding that, "it has to service transportation needs." I remind the
September 20, 1983
Minister that Peterborough once had the use of the six daily passenger trains which serviced the Havelock-Toronto route and, with the stroke of a pen, his predecessor abolished the last train on that route by an Order in Council, against the wishes of the Canadian Transport Commission and without any public inquiry. It is blatantly obvious that, should the Minister refuse to open hearings on the Toronto-Havelock Via service, crass politics are at work in his mind.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. The time allotted to the Hon. Member has expired.



INDUSTRY


Mr. Derek Blackburn (Brant):: Madam Speaker, after several years of financial difficulty, White Farm Equipment Limited appears to be close to liquidation in one form or another. It is a tragedy that this historic company, once known as Cockshutt Plough Company, will in all likelihood cease to exist as a company.
In human terms it is an even greater tragedy that 900 employees, many of whom have worked for the company for many years, will find their jobs terminated. This will be yet another severe blow to the economic wellbeing of the City of Brantford.
I fully appreciate that the Government is not to blame for the chaotic financial condition in which the company finds itself, but in view of the fact that the Government of Canada guaranteed bank loans to the company in the amount of about $6 million, and in the interest of common decency, 1 prevail upon the Government to honour the company's financial commitments to its employees, namely, to guarantee the $3 million in severance pay to White Farm Equipment employees, to guarantee that all vacation pay and all other outstanding benefits owed to the employees will be paid to them, and to make every effort to find other meaningful employment for the 900 White Farm Equipment employees in Brantford.
1 would also ask the Government to form a task force comprised of labour, management, and farmers to look into the future viability of the Canadian farm implement industry. If the Government can help the banks, then surely the Government can help those employees. I ask for nothing more and nothing less than simple justice.



EDUCATION


Mr. Stanley Hudecki (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of National Defence):: Madam Speaker, the fees charged to foreign students studying at Canadian universities is a matter
September 20, 1983

of growing concern. Since education falls within the jurisdiction of the Provinces, it becomes the responsibility of institutions within provincial Governments to set fees for foreign students.
At the federal level there is a growing sensitivity to the hardships suffered by non-scholarship foreign students. The federal Government does provide support to some developing countries through the Canadian International Development Agency. The CIDA plan sponsors between 700 and 800 students per year for studies related to ongoing development projects. Through the Commonwealth Scholarship Program, CIDA also sponsors another 300 students per year, 70 per cent of whom are from developing countries. These students are exempt from the foreign student fee differential in all Provinces but Alberta and Quebec.
The benefits to Canadians from such a practice is the establishment of good will with developing countries. It also exposes Canadian students to citizens from around the world, providing cultural and idea enrichment. Since Canada's official development assistance program is constrained by limited resources to support only those students whose studies are related to their country's developmental priorities, it is requested that the Government continue in its effort to negotiate lower fees for foreign students applying to Canadian universities.



INCOME TAX


Mr. Jack Shields (Athabasca):: Madam Speaker, after analyzing over 800 inquiries from my constituents regarding long delays in receiving their income tax refunds, it has become clear that those refunds which are in excess of $1,000 have been deliberately recycled a number of times for no apparent reason but to delay the refunds. This has contributed to a delay in the processing of these same income tax returns of anywhere from five to seven months. These refunds belong to individuals who formerly were working in high paying jobs in construction and mining operations, who have since been laid off. The delay in issuing these refund cheques has in many cases caused people who are unemployed and have exhausted their unemployment insurance benefits to borrow, or seek welfare.
It appears that this cash starved Government was and still is deliberately delaying the processing of the larger tax refunds to assist in its cash flow problems. This sleazy practice must stop immediately and must be severely condemned by this House of Commons.
5.0. 21



SOCIAL SERVICES


Mr. David Orlikow (Winnipeg North):: Madam Speaker, hunger in Canada has become a major problem. In major urban areas across the country, from Halifax to Vancouver, volunteer agencies have set up soup kitchens to provide thousands of hungry and hard-pressed Canadians with the semblance of a meal. Facilities for meals and shelter have been overtaxed for the past two years and little relief is in sight. It is indicative that the people who use these services are not the alcoholics and derelicts of past years, they are the young unemployed, middle class men and women and their families, and the transients who criss-cross the country with their families in tow, looking for work and shelter.
The scale of the hunger we are seeing reflects a major breakdown in our social assistance network. It is a cause for national shame. It harks back to conditions which existed in the 1930s, conditions that most of us hoped we had left behind years ago. In the United States, where a similar problem of hunger exists, President Reagan has appointed a national task force to study the problem.
Here in Canada, I think it is time to ask what our Government is doing about this problem who is affected; what are the dimensions of the problem; and what is the situation in the rural and under-developed regions? The federal Government bears a major part of the blame for the present depression and must deal with its effects. Hunger and malnutrition are not necessary in such a rich and productive country as ours.



INCOME TAX


Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Madam Speaker, as a result of a one month delay in mailing blank returns and a two month delay for computer reprogramming, 1982 income tax refunds have been badly delayed. Last week 1 received a call from a constituent who filed her income tax return in January and still had not received her refund cheque. The bank was threatening to seize her car, and she was going to lose her job.
I have hard evidence to suggest that the delay in receiving an income tax refund may have been a major factor in the commission of a serious crime in my riding.
It is clearly Liberal Party policy to delay income tax refunds in order to solve the Government's cash flow problems.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I call on the Government, I call on the Liberal Party, to reverse that policy in order that the Canadian taxpayers, who are supporting this bunch, will receive their income tax refunds on time.

September 20, 1983
Oral Questions



CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION


Mr. Lee Clark (Brandon-Souris):: Madam Speaker, it has come to my attention that a CBC radio program with a 43-year tradition of serving rural residents in Saskatchewan and Manitoba has been terminated by the CBC in Winnipeg. The last broadcast of "Neighbourly News from the Prairies" will be heard this coming Sunday. This has happened despite the fact that the Agricultural and Food Advisory Committee to the CBC asked that the broadcast be continued; this despite the CBC's supposed commitment to its rural listeners, and this despite the fact that the decision is in direct opposition to the wishes of the thousands of rural listeners who have become accustomed to the uniquely country flavour of the weekly news broadcast.
The decision has promted about 200 phone calls of protest to the program's host, who resides in my constituency of Brandon-Souris. Numerous weekly newspapers, including those in Boissevain, Minnedosa, Steinbach and Altona, and dailies in Brandon and Winnipeg have criticized this callous decision. This decision shows a lack of understanding of the needs and attitudes of rural listeners in Manitoba and Saskatchewan.
Similar neighbourly news programs are carried by the CBC in British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, and the program should also be continued in the Manitoba/Saskat-chewan region.



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD

['I am in favour of anything that will help House proceedings.']
Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Annapolis Valley-Hants.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Transport who, I am informed, is to be in the House. I would therefore like to stand down and try to catch your eye later.



Hon. Michael Wilson (Etobicoke Centre):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, who is right behind the curtain there, if he would come into the House. I hate to bring the schoolboys back into the classroom.
My question relates to the Maislin bail-out of last summer. What is the current status of the $34 million guarantee which the Government extended to Maislin last year? Has the Government been called upon to honour this guarantee? And, if not, when does the Government expect this to occur, and by how much?


Hon. Ed Lumley (Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and Minister of Regional Economic Expansion):: Madam Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, the company applied for, I believe it is called a Section 11(1) under the United States bankruptcy laws, which puts the whole situation in limbo for about 90 days. There has been no call on the guarantee by the Government of Canada of $34 million at the present time.


Mr. Nielsen:: Not yet.


Michael Holcombe Wilson: That gives us no indication as to whether there will be any money called on. I would appreciate it if the Minister would make it clear in his answer to the next question.


GOVERNMENT POLICY
Michael Holcombe Wilson: Madam Speaker, it is clear that the Maislin bail-out has been a total disaster. The Conservative Party has opposed this right from the start, from before the bail-out was provided. It is abundantly clear that this has been a major policy mistake which was motivated by clear, partisan, political motivations. Since the Minister said shortly after his appointment to his ministry that there would be no more bail-outs of a similar nature, does this clearly imply that he believes now that the bail-out was a major policy error?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, first of all I reject totally the premise of the Hon. Member's question-


Michael Holcombe Wilson: The officials were against it.


Edward C. Lumley: -in terms of the political implications of Maislin. Maislin was Canada's largest international common carrier. There were 2,000 Canadian jobs at stake. I realize that is not important to Hon. Members in the Conservative Party-


Mr. McDermid:: Most of them in the United States.


Edward C. Lumley: -but we felt they were very important at the time. Second, if I recall the questions from the Hon. Member's colleagues in the Conservative Party yesterday, they were asking me to bail out the White Farm Equipment company. Make up your minds over there. Do you want us to help these companies out, or do you not?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
September 20, 1983


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Offence is the best form of defence, Madam Speaker. The Minister did not respond to the question which I asked him and there was a very clear reason why, because he feels awfully uncomfortable with the action which the Government took a year ago.


FUTURE OF SERVICE INDUSTRY COMPANIES
Michael Holcombe Wilson: If the Minister will not admit that this was a major policy error, why did he move so quickly to turn his back on the decision which had been taken by his predecessor? And would he state under what circumstances would the Government now enter into a bail-out of a service industry company, that is, a company which is dependent on other companies for its business?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, first of all I feel no more uncomfortable with my answer than the Hon. Member does with the flip-flopping of policy with respect to the industrial restructuring which he and his colleagues have advocated over the last period of time.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Edward C. Lumley: I am surprised that the Hon. Member has not asked me any questions about the Chrysler Corporation. Without the help of the Government of Canada, the Chrysler Corporation, and the 11,000 direct jobs would not have been maintained. Why is he always focusing on one particular company?
With respect to his question on the industrial structuring of the service sector, Madam Speaker, there is already a great deal of assistance for the service sector, such as from my colleague, the Minister of State for Small Business, who is responsible for the Federal Business Development Bank. Industrial structuring takes place all the time, Madam Speaker, and we think that one of the major reasons why there has been a substantial number of job recalls and job creation in the private sector in the last year is because of these policies advocated by this Government over the last couple of years.


WHITE FARM EQUIPMENT LTD.-IMPLICATIONS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES
Mr. Otto Jelinek (Halton):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Small Business. Because of the uncertainty surrounding the possible liquidation of White Farm Equipment Ltd. which would adversely affect 100,000 farmers in Canada, not to mention the potential loss of hundreds of jobs within the dealership network, which is composed of small businesses, as the Minister responsible for that sector what is he doing to rectify this problem? More specifically, what recommendations has he made to Cabinet or his colleague, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, in this regard?
Oral Questions


Hon. David Smith (Minister of State (Small Businesses and Tourism)):: Madam Speaker, I think if the Hon. Member had paid attention to yesterday's Question Period he would have heard the answers given by my colleague, the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, with regard to White Farm.


An Hon. Member:: He was not here.


David P. Smith: He may or may not have been here. The Minister is monitoring the situation very closely to see what can be done to keep that company going.


Otto John Jelinek: Madam Speaker, that answer indicates just how little the Minister knows or cares about small business, so I will direct my supplementary to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce on the same subject.


GOVERNMENT'S RECOMMENDATION TO COMPANY RECEIVER
Otto John Jelinek: Madam Speaker, yesterday the Minister confirmed that he and the Government could not interfere in the decision made by the receiver for White Farm. Later in the same Question Period he went on to contradict himself by stating that he had in fact indicated to the receiver that his Government did not favour the proposed purchase of White Canada by White's TIC Division in the U.S., even though it had submitted the largest bid of $9 million.
Can the Minister clarify his obvious contradictions in yesterday's statements and, at the same time, tell us why he is opposed to approving this U.S. takeover which would not only save hundreds of jobs in Canada but would inject much needed capital into an ailing industry?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, we now have a second member of the Conservative Party up on his feet in Question Period today asking for a bail-out of a firm, when his lead critic just criticized me for bailing out another firm. Please get your positions straight.
Again, Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member did not read yesterday's record. What I said yesterday was that the responsibility for the recommendation to the bankruptcy court rests with the receiver, not with the Government of Canada. We are not a lender, we are a guarantor. I did not say that we did not make a recommendation to the receiver.
The recommendation we have made to the receiver, and I will repeat it because the Hon. Member was not listening yesterday, encompasses three things. First of all, find someone, an individual or a consortium, who will undertake to operate that company as a going concern, second, to protect the dealer network right across Canada, which is very important, as advocated by his colleagues; and third, to preserve the leading edge technology which the people of Canada, through this Government, have financed. Finally, Madam Speaker-and I think the Hon. Member should again read the record-we are very confident that we are going to find someone, because two years ago when this company was bankrupt it was this Govern-

Oral Questions
ment which brought 1,000 jobs onstream by resurrecting this company in the city of Brantford and protecting the existing dealer network. It was certainly not through following the policies the Hon. Member and his Party are advocating.


THE CHARTER OF RIGHTS
Hon. Edward Broadbent (Oshawa):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the Prime Minister concerning the Government's decision on the Cruise, and beyond that the much broader question about the applicability of the Charter of Rights to a range of Cabinet decisions. Yesterday the Minister of Justice, in a statement outside the House, implied that decisions by the Cabinet affecting the rights of citizens can be made independent of the Charter. Section 32(1 )(a) of the Charter says that. This Charter applies to the Parliament and Government of Canada in respect of all matters within the authority of Parliament.
Would the Prime Minister confirm that what this means is that decisions by the Cabinet affecting rights are exactly the opposite to what the Minister of Justice has said, and indeed they do come within the framework of the application of the Charter of Rights?


Hon. Mark MacGuigan (Minister of Justice):: Madam Speaker, as I am sure the hon. gentleman knows, there is a tradition which has been built up over generations in our society that there are certain kinds of questions which are not reviewed by the courts. If the Hon. Member wants to attach those to decisions which were traditionally made by the prerogative of the Crown, by the executive, in many cases that would be the situation. But the fact is that in light of the Charter that boundary line may need to be re-established. That is what the courts are about and that is why we are asking for an appeal in the case to which I am sure my hon. friend is referring, to try to clarify what this boundary line is.


John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, some Members in this Parliament, when they voted, including, I thought, the Prime Minister of Canada, believed that we needed a Charter of Rights in fact and in part to put checks on executive decision making. That is what the Charter was all about, I say to the Minister of Justice.


GROUNDS UPON WHICH CRUISE MISSILE DECISION WAS MADE
John Edward Broadbent: I ask the Prime Minister again, and I ask him not to shift responsibility to the Minister of Justice, if the Government wanted to ignore its own Charter of Rights when it dealt with the Cruise issue, why did it not act under the terms of Section 33 of the Charter, the "notwithstanding" Section, and bring a Bill before Parliament for debate on the Cruise, and by such action avoid the Charter
September 20, 1983
but by such action act correctly and legally, instead of what it is doing now.


Right Hon. P. E. Trudeau (Prime Minister):: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member is asking for an interpretation of the Charter. He knows perfectly well that, first of all, it is not within the rules for the Government to express legal opinions.


John Edward Broadbent: The Minister just did it. He did it outside the House yesterday.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the courts are the proper forum to determine the meaning of the Charter. The Charter has been tested in the courts several times already, by various parties. I think it is natural for the Government to test the limit of its authority and see how the courts will interpret it. I am not here to give an interpretation of the Charter. I want it to have the fullest authority possible, but surely that is not dependent on me; that will depend on the courts, and that is where it will be decided.


SECTION 33 OF CHARTER
John Edward Broadbent: Madam Speaker, 1 ask for a very straight answer from the Prime Minister on this question. Would he agree that in the interesting negotiating process that led up to the establishment of the present Charter one of the compromises reached was Section 33, the purpose of which was to give parliamentary bodies, this Parliament, or parliament at the provincial level, the right, if you like, to go around the Charter, but that executive action would still remain within the framework and be covered by the Charter, and that it was so written that way? If he agrees that was the process which led to the present writing, would he also agree that what the Government ought to have done if it wanted to remain clearly away from the claims of the Charter was to have brought a Bill before the Parliament of Canada?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member shows a grave misunderstanding of the intentions of the Government. It certainly did not want to go around the Charter. It did not propose Section 33, but it was compelled to accept Section 33. In fact Section 33 was put forward by the NDP Leader in Saskatchewan who felt that Governments should be able to extract themselves from the operation of the Charter. That was the origin of Section 33. We do not like it on this side. We hope that some consensus in Canada will eventually get rid of Section 33 which was put in the Charter by virtue of an NDP Government.


John Edward Broadbent: What about Sterling Lyon and a few others?


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: Well, we can talk about Sterling Lyon and a few others as the Hon. Member asks, if he wants to ask me questions about Sterling Lyon, but now he is talking about Section 33. I think it is a regressive Section but it was necessary to reach a compromise, as he knows, because some Premiers did not want the full Charter.
September 20, 1983

We want the full Charter to apply, we are not trying to go around it, we just want the courts to decide-


John Edward Broadbent: You are going around it now.


Pierre Elliott Trudeau: We want the courts to say publicly what the Charter means, and the Hon. Member would know that if I were to say the Charter means this, he would say, "Go to the courts". That is what we are doing, Madam Speaker.


PRESENCE IN GALLERY OF VISCOUNT THOMAS OF TONYPANDY, FORMER SPEAKER AT WESTMINSTER
Madam Speaker:: I would like to draw the attention of the House to the distinguished presence in our gallery of the Right Hon. Viscount Thomas of Tonypandy, whom Members will remember as George Thomas, the former Speaker of the House of Commons of Great Britain.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


HEALTH AND WELFARE
Gilbert Parent: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of National Health and Welfare. In a newspaper report over the weekend a term was quoted whereby, supposedly, the Minister is thinking of issuing a "health passport". I am wondering, as are many of my constituents, just how this passport will work, and will all Canadians be asked to carry this passport? Will the Minister please elaborate for us?


Hon. Monique Begin (Minister of National Health and Welfare):: Madam Speaker, I am very surprised to have a chance to answer immediately-


Erik Nielsen: Oh, surprise, surprise.


Monique Bégin: -and to explain that in a few weeks we will be issuing to the families of Canadian diplomats-and maybe that is why the press gave it the name of "health passport"-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Monique Bégin: -and to our Armed Forces, a little booklet for their children. It is called "Child Health Record", and it is to keep track of smallpox, chicken pox and measles shots, and what not, and it has nothing to do with anything that would be imposed on Canadians. It has nothing to do with medicare or the new Canada Health Act, as I have clearly said.


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


DELAYS IN PROCESSING TAXPAYERS' RETURNS
Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. The Minister will know that thousands of Canadians are still waiting for their income tax refunds. The delay in processing this year's refunds was a direct result of a one-month delay in sending out the blank returns and a two-month delay while the computers were reprogrammed. Now it is to late to do anything about the 1982 returns. What steps are being taken by the Government to ensure that there are not these unconscionable delays in the processing of 1983 income tax returns?


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Madam Speaker, I am glad the Hon. Member brought up the subject. I listened carefully to the preamble to his question in which he mentioned the exact causes of the delay in mailing or processing income tax returns, and in fact, departed from what was said by his colleague from Athabasca and from his own earlier statement, both of which were entirely irresponsible in their conclusions as to the reasons for the delay. I would like to point out that today, 98 per cent of income tax returns have been processed and that over $6 billion has been refunded to Canadian taxpayers. We were sorry about the fact that the delay in passing legislation in the House caused the delay in processing income tax returns. We are taking every possible step to ensure that next year, we shall be able to process returns as quickly as possible and expedite the mailing of tax refunds to taxpayers, as has been our custom in the past.


Douglas Grinslade Lewis: Madam Speaker, that is not what the Director of Taxation for P.E.I. said last January 7.


AMENDING LEGISLATION
Douglas Grinslade Lewis: I would like to direct my supplementary question to the Minister of Finance. The Minister is on record as saying that he wants to "end the uncertainty over our tax laws and let affected taxpayers know precisely where they stand". That is what he said last December 7. The Minister of Finance tabled the budget on April 19. It is now five months later, and the enabling legislation has still not been brought forward for debate. When will the Government bring forward for debate the income tax legislation in order to eliminate administrative delays, to allow for effective tax planning, and to eliminate delays in processing the 1983 income tax returns?


Hon. Marc Lalonde (Minister of Finance):: Madam Speaker, I welcome the eagerness of the Opposition to deal with this particular legislation. 1 remind the Hon. Member that the Ways and Means Motions are before the parliamentary committee on finance. I invite the committee to deal quickly and effectively with those measures. I can tell him that, as soon as

September 20, 1983
Oral Questions
the Crow legislation is passed by the House, I will be very interested and eager to introduce the Bill-


John Horton McDermid: Blackmail.


Marc Lalonde: -dealing with taxation, at the first opportunity.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Mr. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Madam Speaker, 1 have a question to ask the Secretary of State for External Affairs with regard to the opening of the General Session of the United Nations this afternoon. Would he indicate to the House his commitment that he will use his speaking opportunity next week to express the views of the Parliament of Canada with regard to KAL Flight 007, as unanimously adopted by this House? Further, would he indicate whether the Government has any plan or strategy to bring the entire matter surrounding the murder of those passengers before the Assembly for resolution?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I intend, of course, to deal with the question of the airliner in my address at the United Nations. I will certainly consider his suggestion that 1 use as much of the resolution as was unanimously adopted by Parliament in the expression of those views. No decision has been taken as to whether it would be appropriate at this stage to make an attempt to put this particular item on the agenda of the General Assembly. Discussions are going on with other countries as to whether this would be an effective step to take at the present time.


REQUEST FOR STRONG CANADIAN REPRESENTATION
John William Bosley: Madam Speaker, my supplementary question relates to the last part of the Minister's answer. Surely the Minister would admit that, given Canada's involvement in trying to persuade the Security Council to deal with the matter, which the Soviets vetoed, Canada certainly has an obligation-if it does not believe the Soviet Union is in fact stonewalling on the issue, as many people do- to press forward as far and as hard as possible to persuade the United Nations to deal with a matter of such international importance and of such repugnance to all citizens of the world?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: I have no difficulty with the comment made by the Hon. Member. I think we all share the repugnance. We were among those who asked that the matter be dealt with by the Security Council. The conclusion of the Security Council was unfortunately vetoed by the
Soviet representative. Now there is a question as to whether the insertion of this particular item on the agenda of the General Assembly would make an effective contribution to the situation, particularly in light of the fact that the matter is presently being dealt with and will be dealt with in Montreal at the General Assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
There is no difference between us as to the depth of our repugnance. It is a question as to what is the most effective step that could be taken in present circumstances.


USE OF GANDER AIRPORT BY SOVIET AIRCRAFT
Hon. Sinclair Stevens (York-Peel):: Madam Speaker, my question is also directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs whose Department has indicated that it is reviewing the situation with respect to the landings of Soviet aircraft at Gander Airport. Would the Minister indicate whether his Department is in a position to recommend the closing of Gander to further Aeroflot flights and, second, has it taken the precaution of at least attempting to monitor what is being carried on these planes as they land and then leave from Gander?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, there have been no flights at Gander, or stop downs at Gander, since the particular declaration was made terminating the Aeroflot flights to Montreal. There have been no flights except the particular flight that I thought was justified, to return the circus to Moscow. I should add that, apart from the Aeroflot flights that were regularly scheduled, the number of flights that have used Gander is very limited. I think there were only one or two flights in 1983, up to the present time. There have been no other flights, to my knowledge, since we announced the termination of the regular Aeroflot flights.


LANDING RIGHTS AT GANDER-COMPENSATION FOR KOREAN AIRLINER VICTIMS
Sinclair McKnight Stevens: Madam Speaker, again my question is directed to the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Would he answer two questions? First, have there been no further Soviet flights because they have chosen not to come into Gander, or has the Government told the Soviet Union that its landing rights at Gander have ended?
Second, in view of the fact that the editor-in-chief of the Soviet Communist Party newspaper has indicated that there will never be an apology or any compensation for the victims of the KAL 007 tragedy, would the Minister indicate what further steps will be taken by the Government to ensure that compensation will be forthcoming, in view of the fact that it has practically been laughed at in its first two attempts just to deliver a note indicating a hope to seek compensation?
September 20, 1983


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Madam Speaker, the present circumstance is that the Soviet authorities have not formally requested permission to come down in Gander for any flight. That is formally. I had intimation that they might have asked for permission for Mr. Gromyko en route to New York, but that was not dealt with because the request has not been made. But there have been no flights up to the present time, to my knowledge, and each of them will be dealt with on their merits since the number of flights is so limited that it does not seem to me to add materialy to the action we have taken at the present time.
The Hon. Member will also realize that we have suspended, or delayed, signing a memorandum of agreement between the Government of Canada and the Soviet authorities with respect to the future use of Gander as a refuelling base. That action itself has rather adversely affected the future prospects, at least for the moment, for Gander. In the circumstances I feel that I have taken sufficient action with respect to Gander to demonstrate the attitude of the Government of Canada.
With respect to the compensation, I do not think that this will be an issue that will be quickly resolved. There are countries such as the United States, Canada, and South Korea, that are all making the same claims against the Soviet Union. 1 have explained to the Hon. Member the steps that I have already taken. If there are further steps that would prove to be effective in order to secure compensation for the families affected, then I would be prepared to consider those steps.


INDUSTRY
Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Madam Speaker, my question is addressed to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce and it concerns the White Farm situation. He indicated in a previous answer this afternoon that negotiations had been going on yesterday and were going on at the present time. I want him to know that not only I but the vast majority of workers at White Farm do not want TIC to regain control of that company. They had nothing but one fiasco after another for two years while TIC owned it.
Why is a viable company such as Linamar Machines of Guelph, which was a former minority owner, not upfront in the bidding and not being encouraged by the Minister, his Department or his officials, to submit an acceptable bid to take over the company and make sure it remains Canadian, operating in Canada, and in Brantford?


Edward C. Lumley: Madam Speaker, I am not aware of all of the details of each of the offers, but my understanding from the receiver is that there were deficiencies in each one of the offers. 1 he company
Oral Questions
which the Hon. Member suggests would certainly be acceptable to the Government of Canada as long as it wanted to undertake the three criteria that we basically have recommended to the receiver which are; one, operating it as a going concern; two, making valuable use of that leading edge technology; and three, protecting the dealer network.
If there is another offer of which we are not aware, we would be happy to have a look at it. I know that the receiver, who has been very co-operative in this whole process, would be most interested in looking at any offer coming forward from any company.


MONEYS OWED TO EMPLOYEES
Derek Nigel Ernest Blackburn: Madam Speaker, the Government guaranteed 90 per cent of the loans from the banks to the White Farm Equipment Company to keep its head above water. TIC owes the workers on average anywhere from $4,000 to $8,000 in back pay, vacation pay, other fringe benefits, and severance pay. If the company should go into liquidation-and it does appear as if it is heading in that direction-will the Government give the same guarantee to the employees that it gave to the banks? Why not have equal justice for all in a situation like this where 900 employees may very well be turfed out onto the street with no money whatsoever and no recompense whatsoever?


Edward C. Lumley: First, Madam Speaker, like the Hon. Member, we hope that liquidation will not be necessary. Second, with respect to the money owed the employees, if I am not mistaken 1 think that the receiver is under some obligation and has funds to pay things like vacation pay. Under the Bankruptcy Act, the directors are responsible for salaries owed to employees and the Enterprise Development Board which reports to the Government of Canada through the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce has a representative on the board. Thus we are partly responsible for those salaries, and I am confident that any moneys owing to the employees will be resolved.
I might just add that my colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs, has talked about the Bankruptcy Act being a Government priority whereby workers will be treated as secured creditors. I would hope that every Member in the House will be supportive of changing the Bankruptcy Act in this regard.


SENATE REFORM
Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Prime Minister and it is based on the fact that out of six members of the Joint Committee of the Commons and the Senate reviewing the Senate reform question, out of the six Liberal Members of the Commons who

September 20, 1983
Oral Questions
should be attending those committee hearings there have been only two today in Edmonton, and indeed the attendance of Liberal Members has been rather atrocious throughout these hearings. In view of that, I question the sincerity of the Prime Minister and the Government-


Madam Speaker:: Order. At the present time I am questioning whether that question is in order in the House since the Hon. Member is seeking information about committee meetings. As he knows, those questions should not be asked in the House of Commons.


Erik Nielsen: Not at all, Madam Speaker. If my question had been heard in its entirety it would be apparent that I was not seeking information about committee hearings. The question I am-


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. It simply was not apparent after several sentences. I would urge the Hon. Member to go right to the heart of the question and then I would know if it is in order.


Erik Nielsen: I am sure Hansard will show in both interventions of the Chair that I was on the word "question".


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Erik Nielsen: My question to the Prime Minister-if those jackals over there will simply calm down-is if he is serious about Liberal attendance at the meetings, will he ensure through his responsible Minister, the Minister of Justice, that Liberal Members of the Commons attend those committee meetings so as to enable the committee to do its work?


Madam Speaker:: Order. That question is obviously out of order.

[ Translation]


THE ECONOMY
Mr. Jean-Guy Dubois (Lotbiniere):: Madam Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Finance.
Yesterday in the House, the Leader of the Opposition referred to the report of the International Monetary Fund with respect to the economic situation in Canada. Madam Speaker,
I do not know whether the Leader of the Opposition actually read the report. In any case, I would like to ask the Minister of Finance whether, as the Leader of the Opposition said yesterday, there was a reference to the situation in Canada and whether in referring to this country's deficit,, there was not also a reference to Canada's economic recovery?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I thought the Hon. Leader of the Opposition went away last week to do his homework on the economic situation. I am
sorry to say that the Leader of the Opposition either failed to do his homework or he is really a very poor student.
He referred to a report of the International Monetary Fund that was published Sunday, and he made a number of statements regarding Canada's deficit. If the Hon. Member had bothered to read the report, he would have seen that the document does not indicate anywhere that Canada has the largest deficit of the seven major industrialized countries, and furthermore, the report does not provide any classification or ranking of countries according to the relation of their deficit to the Gross National Product. On the contrary, the report says more specifically, on page 39, that Canada-
Madam Sepaker: Order, please! We are trying very hard to keep questions short, and the same should apply to answers.


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, it is clear the Leader of the Opposition misled the House yesterday on the subject we are discussing. The report clearly indicates that Canada, and I shall quote in English:

-have gone further in re-establishing conditions for sustainable growth and have consequently provided their economies with greater scope for expansion-
[ Translation]
Compared to countries like France, Italy and a large number of smaller industrialized countries.


INDUSTRY
Mr. Arnold Malone (Crowfoot):: Madam Speaker, the reason the Liberals are so happy is they found out we were just better than Italy.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Madam Speaker:: Order, please. This is Question Period.


Arnold John Malone: You don't need to correct me, Madam Speaker; I am not NDP.
I have a question for the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Yesterday the Hon. Member for Kindersley-Lloydminster asked:
Has he or his Government, cither officially or unofficially, directed or placed an objection to the receiver's selling of White Canada interests to White U.S.A.-
-to an offer from a United States company.
The Minister answered:
-we do not favour that particular proposal-
September 20, 1983

My question is why?


Edward C. Lumley: Very simple, Madam Speaker. The Opposition, which is very concerned about government deficits, will understand this because the net result of that application would mean we would lose $8 million already and would have to add another $1 million to the pot if that application were acceptable. I am sure the Hon. Member would understand the reasons for that.


INQUIRY RESPECTING REASONS FOR GOVERNMENTS POSITION
Arnold John Malone: Madam Speaker, the same question was asked and the same answer was given with respect to TIC, and again my question is why?


Edward C. Lumley: I am
sorry, Madam Speaker. I am not aware of the Texas Instruments Company question. I do not recall it ever being asked of me.


UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance. The Minister may know that yesterday I raised the plight of people in my constituency who are about to run out of unemployment insurance, who have been looking for but cannot find jobs because there are no jobs, and who cannot pay their bills because the welfare payments they get, or are about to get, will not be sufficient to meet their commitments. In what way does this plight in which they find themselves contribute to the over-all economic recovery which the Government tells us is on the move and is showing signs in Canada?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, it is obvious there are still a large number of people who are facing very difficult personal situations. Even in times of very high prosperity in this country we have known people who have lived in poverty and have had to face very difficult situations. I have a great deal of sympathy for those people who are facing such situations. But what the record shows is that the Canadian economy is growing at the present time faster than any other economy among the industrial countries. We are creating jobs faster than any other industrial company.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh!


Erik Nielsen: Come off it.


Marc Lalonde: Indeed, we have succeeded in cutting inflation by half in the course of the last year. As a matter of fact we have reduced inflation more than any of the largest seven industrial countries. We are doing everything we can to help
Oral Questions
the plight of Canadians who are facing difficulties, by stimulating the economy.


Erik Nielsen: Rubbish.


Marc Lalonde: But I cannot guarantee to the Hon. Member that he will not be able to identify Canadians even in the best of times who will be in difficulty. I am afraid this is what we must face. What we should do through our social security programs is to try to help those people, and this is what we have done as a government, contrary to a lot of provincial Governments-


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down.


Madam Speaker:: Order, please.


REQUEST FOR EXTENSION OF BENEFITS
Ian Deans: Madam Speaker, the Minister indicates that the Government is working as hard as it can to create jobs. In the meantime, given that we cannot produce a sufficient number of jobs today or next month, or let us say even by this time next year, to meet all of the needs of the people who are unemployed and looking for work, will the Minister recognize the need to extend unemployment insurance benefits to those who are legitimately out of work, who are looking for work and who cannot find work, during this period when the Government has no programs that will meet their needs?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, the Hon. Member knows that the Unemployment Insurance Program is already running a large deficit. He also knows that welfare programs, the social assistance programs, are under provincial responsibility and that social assistance programs are there to help people who are in dire straits. My hon. friend should realize that we, as a federal Government, have maintained the social net in this country. We have maintained the social programs, contrary to what has happened in a lot of other countries and contrary to what has happened in a lot of Provinces.
I submit to the Hon. Member that the points he raised should be raised in the provincial Legislature of Ontario-


Ian Deans: This is where they should be raised.


Marc Lalonde: They should be asking the provincial Government of Ontario to do its share-


Ian Deans: These people are unemployed, damn it.


Marc Lalonde: -in terms of helping people in providing adequate welfare payments-


Ian Deans: Social insurance was never intended to be pulled back.

September 20, 1983
Oral Questions


Marc Lalonde: -and providing them with adequate money. At the same time I invite my hon. friend's Party to support the Crow Bill-


Ian Deans: Sit down.


Marc Lalonde: -and create those jobs that we need and provide for the investment of $25 billion in this country.


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


CONSUMER AND CORPORATE AFFAIRS
Mr. W. C. Scott (Victoria-Haliburton):: Madam Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. I have received copies of petitions from the Townships of Somerville, Anson, Hindon and Minden, Fenelon Falls, Verulam, and many others. They deal with the new print in the 1983 Bell telephone books for the Lindsay-Peterborough area. Will the Minister speak to Bell Canada and ask that company to assure her that this print will be larger so citizens can read the directories? I hope this matter comes within her Department.


Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Madam Speaker, I am not at all sure that it does, but I will certainly take the matter under consideration and look into it immediately.


SHIPBUILDING
Mr. J. M. Forrestall (Dartmouth-Halifax East):: Madam Speaker, 1 have a question I would like to direct to the Minister of Finance. The Minister will be aware of the growing concern about the PIP grants program rewarding Canadian entrepreneurs by forcing them offshore for leasing purposes. 1 ask this question because we now know that in the first six months of this year we lost some 5,869 jobs in Canadian shipyards. Is the Minister giving consideration to the modification of that program so as to keep these jobs here at home in Canadian shipyards?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, I always take the representations of the Hon. Member seriously, and I will examine his representation.


CONSTRUCTION OF DRILLING RIGS
J. Michael Forrestall: Madam Speaker, I have a supplementary question for the Minister. Would he take a look at what he considers a representation in
light of the imminent loss of $250 million in new construction for three jack-up rigs for exploration work off the East Coast of Canada alone, three rigs which in turn might provide some 1,800 new jobs for East Coast and river shipyards?


Marc Lalonde: Madam Speaker, the answer is the same as for the first question.


John Horton McDermid: He doesn't know.


MULTICULTURALISM
Mr. Jack Murta (Lisgar):: Madam Speaker, I have a question for the new Minister of State for Multiculturalism. First I want to congratulate him on his appointment to the Cabinet.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jack Burnett Murta: The Canadian Consultative Council on Multiculturalism, or what is known as the CCCM, is responsible for providing an ongoing source of consultation to the Government on matters pertaining to the development of Canada's multicultural policy, based on the broadest possible representation. Of course we on this side of the House would very much agree with the basic concept of that particular body.
Why or how is the Minister carrying out a reduction in the size of the Council from the 100 members that it had. to a proposed 25? Why the number 25, and how does the Minister expect to get that broad cross-section of opinion so necessary in this area?


Hon. D. M. Collenette (Minister of State (Multiculturalism)):: Madam Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his question. I worked with him for many years going back to the transport committee, and I am sure we will continue our good relationship.
With respect to the CCCM, the Cabinet did agree in July, following a unanimous recommendation by the CCCM, to reduce the effective working group of the Council to 30 members, not 25 members. That, I repeat, was a recommendation of the Council, and the Government responded to it. The name of the Council will change to the Canadian Multiculturalism Council, which will be a little easier to say. With respect to the operations of the Council, we feel 30 members will be a more effective body in discharging its obligations and giving advice to the Minister. As to the nominees for that Council, that is subject to the normal consideration and consultation.

September 20, 1983


PETITIONS
Madam Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the petition presented by the Hon. Member for Vaudreuil (Mr. Herbert) on Monday, September 19, meets the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.


Madam Speaker:: The petition presented by the Hon. Member for Brampton-Georgetown (Mr. McDermid) on Monday, September 19, does not meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.


[Stage Direction]
MR McGRATH-S.O. 21 STATEMENT OF MR. CULLEN-ruling OF MADAM SPEAKER
Madam Speaker:: Order, please. I would like to make a few remarks on the point of order raised in the House by the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) concerning a statement made by the Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton (Mr. Cullen) under Standing Order 21.
1 believe at the time the statement was made I said to the House that it seemed to me the particular statement was in order. However, having reread it in Hansard, it seems to me that it was extremely borderline and that perhaps it would have been better dealt with under a point of order, since the major complaint of the Hon. Member was that some modifications had been made to Hansard. However, Hon. Members had a chance to reply and to rebut, so 1 am satisfied that no Member has been frustrated in his right to express his views.
I thank Hon. Members for pointing out this particular case. It is not always easy for the Chair to know what will be the conclusion of an Hon. Member's statement. Some preambles to the questions they want to raise are longer than others. Sometimes the Chair waits patiently and realizes that perhaps the statement was not entirely in order. However, with the help of the House from time to time, I will be able to maintain the objectives of that particular Standing Order. I think we are doing pretty well under it. I will try to check Hon. Members sooner, although I am very reluctant to intervene too soon because I like to give Hon. Members a chance to express themselves.

Regarding the point of order raised by the Hon. Member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen) in which he protested changes made in Hansard, saying that they went well beyond those allowed in the course of normal editing, 1 realize that the Hon. Member is not questioning the impartiality or integrity of those who are
Point of Order-Mr. McGrath
assigned to transcribe and revise the Debates, but he nevertheless implied, as did the Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton (Mr. Cullen) in his statement, that the changes made in the transcript went well beyond the limits allowed in editing Hansard. I may remind Hon. Members that Hansard is not a verbatim transcript of the Debates. It is a transcript in extenso of the Debates and obviously, in the case of repetition or for a number of other reasons such as more specific identification, it is acceptable to make changes so that anyone reading Hansard will get the meaning of what was said.
The rule is that when Hon. Members correct their blues, they are not to change the substance or meaning of what they said but only try to improve comprehension of the text. That is the rule and the same rule applies to those who edit Hansard. They must not go beyond their obligation to make a sentence more readable, since there is, after all, some difference between the spoken and the written word.
After reviewing the record and considering the comments made in the House on the days following the occurrence, the Chair is of the opinion that Hansard of Tuesday, September 13, provides, in both versions, a full and objective account of the proceedings. The substance was not materially changed, and the form is the prescribed one. Hon. Members will be aware that calling someone by name in the House is not permitted, certainly not by the person's first name, for the very simple reason that we must know who is meant. There might be three or four Moniques, and we might have five or six Erics, but we only have one of those, no doubt about that. And we do not need more than one.
The editors of Hansard have to change the text so that the reader knows who is meant. In the present case, we had someone who was called by her first name. It was therefore necessary to identify that person as being the Minister of National Health and Welfare. There was also the element of repetition, and furthermore, the sentence was very short. Usually we delete repetitions. When a person is speaking, there is of course a tendency to say the same thing twice, but these repetitions are not reproduced in Hansard. For all the reasons mentioned, the editors of Hansard did the best they could in the circumstances. 1 looked at the text from every possible angle, but 1 really do not see how 1 could have improved on what was produced in the final editing. In my opinion, the final edition of Hansard, considering the freedom given the editors, is objective and was done in the best interests of the House.
The Hon. Member for Yukon suggests that we resubmit the blues to Hon. Members if the editors feel that substantial corrections are necessary. Now we may do that in cases where there is a reasonable doubt, but this will complicate the work of the Hansard editors enormously and also delay the printing and translation of Hansard. So, if Hon. Members agree, and considering the fact that incidents of this nature are rather uncommon, we shall continue to trust our editors.

September 20, 1983
Point of Order-Mr. McGrath


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, I thank you for that ruling. One thing however occurs to me, and that is that, to use this case as an example, the French transcript went to the office of the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney) for vetting, for correcting. Subsequently it went back to the editor unchanged, and it was changed by the editor. He, the editor, had to exercise a value judgment after a value judgment had been exercised by the Hon. Member, who made no change. You, of course, today have exercised a value judgment with which I wholeheartedly agree, but it denies the Member from exercising the same judgment, because the Member himself or herself could come to a judgment entirely opposite to that exercised by the editor in making the changes subsequent to the vetting of the transcript by the Member; and of course the Chair can come to a judgment the same as that of the editor but quite different from that of the Member.
In order to ensure the utmost fairness, I think as far as humanly possible the transcript should be resubmitted when changes have been made subsequent to the examination by the Member whose transcript is in question.


Madam Speaker:: The Hon. Member is concluding exactly the contrary to what I have concluded, that we should continue to have confidence in the editors because, as I have explained, it delays the process enormously if we resubmit the "blues" to the Hon. Member. The Speaker is there to make those judgments, and 1 have made one today. As the Hon. Member says, there has been no unfairness. 1 think Hon. Members might inform themselves as to what is admissible and what is not. If the Member in question had been better informed, he probably would have corrected that sentence himself.
However, I think we have done really well despite all of the discussions we have had. I cannot promise that we will re-submit the "blues"; I will only say that in so far as it is humanly possible, we will do so.


David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, I do not want to belabour the point, but those of us on this side of the House would like to study your ruling a little more carefully and perhaps have this matter discussed through the normal channels. I believe that this kind of discussion, the bargaining or whatever, should not take place on the floor of the House. Perhaps we could discuss this matter with you and also through the normal channels.


Madam Speaker:: It should take place on the floor of the House. It is a point of order. There is no other way but to discuss it in the House. I would be very reluctant to discuss it behind the curtains.


David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, I am sorry, I was not talking about the particular point of order. I was talking about the general point that flows from the specific question raised by the Hon. Member for Sarnia-Lambton (Mr. Cullen). Perhaps that could be dealt with among House Leaders or whatever.


Madam Speaker:: I am in favour of anything that will help House proceedings.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


David Michael Collenette: Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. You may recall that yesterday we had some discussion about the visit on Monday of Prime Minister Thatcher. We put through a House Order. It became evident among discussions with the House staff that there would not be enough time to make the necessary physical arrangements between three and four o'clock on Monday. Therefore, after consultations between House Leaders there has been an agreement that we would have Question Period at eleven o'clock on Monday morning, to be followed with the normal Routine Proceedings until one o'clock. The House would then adjourn until 4 p.m. Therefore, the House Order of yesterday should technically be rescinded.
The new House Order would read as follows:
That on Monday, September 26, 1983, the House shall meet at 11 a.m. and the order of business shall be that usually followed on a Friday, provided that the House shall adjourn that day at I p.m.;
That the address of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to be delivered in the House Chamber on Monday, September 26, 1983, at four o'clock p.m. before the Members of the Senate and the House of Commons, together with all introductory and related speeches, be printed as an Appendix to the House of Commons Debates of that day and form part of the records of this House; and
That Prime Minister Thatcher's speech, attendant and related remarks be made available to the media for transmission in the usual way by the House of Commons broadcast system.
I might add that this means some Ministers who will be in meetings with Mrs. Thatcher will be unable to be here for Question Period. I am sure Members will understand that.


Erik Nielsen: Madam Speaker, that is agreeable. That order is not a copy of what the Minister was kind enough to provide to me, but I listened carefully to the wording and it is acceptable to us.


Madam Speaker:: Does the House agree that the order of yesterday be discharged and be replaced by the one just read to the House by the Minister of State for Multiculturalism (Mr. Collenette)?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Madam Speaker:: It is so ordered.

September 20, 1983


QUESTIONS ON THE ORDER PAPER
[Stage Direction]
(Questions answered orally are indicated by an asterisk.)
Mr. John Evans (Parliamentary Secretary to President of the Privy Council):: Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,718, 4,971 and 4,996.


Mr. Fisher: 1.	Was Mr. Donald Matthews of London, Ontario appointed to head a study of Canada Mortgage and Housing operations and, if so (a) on what date (b) on what date did the study end (c) how many days did the study function in total?
2.	Were any other persons appointed to act as staff on the inquiry and, if so, in each case (a) what was his/her name (b) for how many days did he/she work on the study?
3.	What amount was paid for fees for personal services to (a) Mr. Matthews (b) any extra staff (i) per diem (ii) in total?
4.	Were additional amounts paid to (a) Mr. Matthews (b) any extra staff for receipted expenses and, if so, what were the amounts?
5.	Was Mr. Matthews a candidate on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party in the Constituency of London East in the general election in (a) 1972 (b) 1974?


Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: 1 am
informed by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation as follows:
1.	Yes. (a) July, 1979. (b) The study ended on October 15, 1979 and the report was submitted on October 26, 1979 to the Hon. Elmer MacKay, the then Minister responsible for CMHC. (c) July 15-October 26, 1979 (104 days).
2.	Yes. (a) and (b)
Patrick E. Brady	7 days
Mac D. Campbell	4 days
Michael A. Goldberg	5 days
G. E. (Ernie) Jackson	2 days
Richard R. Lebeau	6'/2 days
Andre Pigeon	11 days
Donald M. Smith	2 days
Lawrence B. Smith	18 days
The services of F.W. Graves and Thomas S. Sloan were also retained but they were not paid on a per diem basis.
3.	(a) (i) $300 (ii) $11,700, (b) (i) Varied between $300 and $500 (ii) $21,150.
4.	(a) Yes-$5,533.75, (b) yes-$10,807.67.
5.	(a) Yes, (b) no.


Mr. Orlikow: 1.	What is the composition of the Board of Directors of the Canertech Conservation Inc. and what is the address and occupation of each individual?
2.	What is the compensation and what are all the benefits paid to the chairperson, directors, president and vice-presidents of Canertech Conservation Inc.?
Order Paper Questions


Mr. Dave Dingwall (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources):: Petro-Canada reports as follows:
Name	Address	OccupationLome D. R. Dyke	1003, 213 Notre Dame, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3B 1N3.	President and Chief Executive Officer, Canertech Inc.Wilbert H. Hopper	P.O. Box 2844, Calgary, Alberta. T2P3E3.	Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Petro-Canada.David P. O'Brien	P.O. Box 2844, Calgary, Alberta, T2P3E3.	Senior Vice-President, Finance and Planning, Petro-Canada.
2. Information is proprietary to Canertech Inc.


Mr. McKinnon: 1.	Is the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources paying $142,656 to establish the prinicpal parameters governing the effectiveness of flocculants to remove particulate matter in coal washery effluents and provision of criteria for the preparation of superior flocculants for specific application and, if so, for what reason?
2.	Will this study be in connection with an attempt to convert Cape Breton coal?


David Charles Dingwall: The Department of Energy, Mines and Resources reports as follows:
1.	Yes, EM&R issued a contract for $142,665.52 to Raylo Chemicals Ltd. of Edmonton, Alberta to establish the parameters governing the effectiveness of flocculants to remove particulates matter in coal washery effluents and provision of criteria for the preparation of superior flocculants for specific applications.
This scientific research and development contract is part of the continuing effort to support the Canadian coal industry by provision of environmentally acceptable techniques/materials for use in Canadian coal preparation plants.
2.	No.


John Leslie Evans: 1 would ask, Madam Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.
[ Translation]


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


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.

September 20, 1983
27302___________________________________
Export Development Act



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-110, to amend the Export Development Act, as reported (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motions Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
Hon. David Crombie (Rosedale):: Madam Speaker, it gives me some pleasure to be able to speak on this Bill this afternoon. As all Members know, since the opening of the doors for the fall part of the session of this Parliament we have been dealing with this Bill. We in the Progressive Conservative Party have stood against the Bill as written. This is the eighth day we have put forward speakers, which demonstrates to the House and to those who are concerned, as most Canadians are, that this is an extremely important Bill.
By and large our criticisms of the Bill have related to three general areas. These three general areas take as their first assumption the importance to this country of trade. We welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. I cannot think of any theme which has occupied the minds of Progressive Conservative Members more often than the importance of trade to this country, of being able to be world competitive, being able to develop products and services which will stand us in good stead as a trading nation of the world. We have spent time on this Bill to ensure that our objections to it as written are clearly understood.
There are three reasons we are opposed to this Bill. Speaker after speaker has tried to indicate as clearly as possible to the Government, not often listening, why those three criticisms are important and ought to be considered by the Government when it makes it final speeches. First, we have dealt with the Bill itself. We have dealt with it in terms of the corporation. Speaker after speaker has pointed out that the request by the Government to double the capital authorization of this corporation is far beyond what is necessary, an actual doubling of the capital authorization. That is why the motion put forward by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) indicates clearly recognition of the need for credit, the need for insurance, the need for the corporation to be able to assist in our exports, and allows for growth in that opportunity. It does not simply double without any further parliamentary control the capital authorization of the Export Development Corporation.
Also with respect to the corporation, a number of Members in this Party have pointed out, hoping that the Minister responsible and the Cabinet generally would pay attention, that there are criticisms, honest, clear and sincere criticisms by people in this country who use the services of the EDC, that it is wanting, particularly with new customers. Surely it is new customers that this country is interested in when it comes to export. It is with new customers in particular that we have had difficulty making sure that the corporation plays a role that is
efficient, that does not have undue delays and is open and accessible to people who want to export from this country to other countries of the world.
We know the importance of jobs and world competition which this country has to engage in over the next 20 years. That is why we have been unimpressed. When it comes to dealing with the corporation, the Government simply will not listen to fair and honest criticism made not only by us but by citizens, companies and corporations in this country which tries to use its services.
There has been a second area of criticism and concern, one which the Government would do well to pay closer attention to. That is the question of the role of Crown corporations in the country. This Bill raises once again a question which has always been an important one to the country, and that is the role of Crown corporations, particularly those Crown corporations that deal with economic development and economic growth.
There is no question that, certainly in the early and middle parts of this century, we have had a proud record of what Herschel Hardin, in a book he wrote some ten years ago, described as the importance of public entreprise to the future of Canada. It was a proud record, but if I could, Mr. Speaker, I would like clearly to explain why we take objection to the way Crown corporations have not been used by the Government but have been abused by the Government.
In 1962, 21 years ago, there were 28 Crown corporations in the country which controlled $8.4 billion worth of assets. Twenty years later there were 300 Crown corporations employing 263,000 people with assets of $74 billion and liabilities of $63 billion. Those are enormous figures, Mr. Speaker. For example, the $63 billion that is owed by the 300 Crown corporations in the country is equal to the total budgetary request of the Government for the last fiscal year.
Clearly, Mr. Speaker, Crown corporations have assumed a role and an importance far beyond that which Canadians understood it to be. If I may, Mr. Speaker, let me indicate that the point I make is not a point that comes only from the Progressive Conservative Party. I direct your attention and the attention of the House, Mr. Speaker, to the Auditor General's Report of seven years ago to which the Government paid absolutely no attention. At that time, the Auditor General in his Report said:
In the majority of Crown corporations audited by the Auditor General, financial management and control is weak and ineffective. Moreover, co-ordination and guidance by central Government agencies of financial management and control practices in these Crown corporations-
I emphasize the following words.
-are virtually non-existent.
The Auditor General said that seven years ago.
These sentiments were echoed in the Lambert Report which said the same thing. What those reports basically said and what I say to you today, Mr. Speaker, is that the Government
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has so abused the principle of Crown corporations that we no longer have the ability to control those things which we have created. I quote from the Lambert Report, which was an excellent report as many Members may recall. It said:
In examining the bewildering array of Crown corporations we have found that existing provisions for classifying them and for accountability for each category have been rendered obsolete. The resulting state of confusion, if left unattended,-
This report was written seven years ago.
-will seriously impair the value of these agencies as instruments of public purpose and do further damage to the tenuous and sometimes obscure accountability links that, in varying degrees, we already have with Government and Parliament.
It is not foolish or silly of me to indicate to you, Mr. Speaker, the second concern of our Party with respect to this Bill. That concern raises a question that the Government has been unwilling to deal with for these many years, and that is the role played by Crown corporations which try to help rather than hurt. For example, those of us who have supported certain Crown corporations in our time have always been clear on one principle about Crown corporations, and that is that they had objectives which were publicly arrived at and which were operated by a board consisting of people primarily from the private sector so that they be run in a businesslike and efficient manner. That principle has been reversed by the Government. At every turn of the road the Government seeks to remove Crown corporations from the scrutiny of the House and the public.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the third area of criticism this Party has for this Bill lies in the area of control by Parliament. Our ability now to control 300 Crown corporations through the House and its committees has, as the Auditor General has said on more than one occasion, been rendered obsolete. The power that Parliament has to control Crown corporations goes to the very heart of what the parliamentary system is about. All of the rights that you enjoy on our behalf, Mr. Speaker, arise from the power of Parliament to control the public purse.
Anyone who says with a straight face and a clear eye that today, after 15 years of Liberal Government, Parliament can control $74 billion worth of assets from 300 Crown corporations is a stranger to the truth, because to do so is not possible. In fact, the Government has become so inured to resolving the problem that it finally invented a Crown corporation to control Crown corporations. That, Mr. Speaker, is why we stand against this Bill and will continue to do so.


Hon. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise and speak on Bill C-110 after hearing the comments made by my distinguished colleague, the Hon. Member for Rosedale (Mr. Crombie). It shows that the Conservatives from the east, the west and the middle of Canada all feel the same way about this abuse of legislative process that puts more and more money in the hands of Crown corporations.
I feel that the Conservative position is not one that is opposed to Crown corporations simply because they are Crown corporations. We believe that there is a place in our society for
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Crown corporations. All we want is to be sure that they are accountable and that they are accountable to Parliament. After all, we bring them into the world and we should look after them. We should see that they act in a businesslike and reasonable manner and we should see that we do hear from them as to their financial manoeuvrings, their profits, their losses and the work they are doing.
There are several things about this Bill that we do not like. We are against the legislation that exists as well. However, this Bill would increase the borrowing power of this particular Export Development Corporation from $10 billion to $20 billion. That is a great deal of money. It will be done without any referral back to the House to find out what will be done with the $20 billion that the corporation would then be able to borrow. It increases the ceiling for loans and guarantees far beyond what it is at the present time.
I would also like to point out that the EDC is not required to table an operating budget, it is not required to table a capital budget and it is not required to provide us with any information on the size of its payroll. Given those three factors, it is very difficult to believe that we are not giving it a blank cheque to do what it wants.
1 would like to quote from the Report of the Auditor General for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1982, at page 47, where he said, inter alia:
The time has come for meaningful action to be taken to increase the accountability and control of Crown corporations.
This Bill goes in the exact opposite direction. I really do not see why we should have to tolerate this absolute disregard and defiance of what the accountants tell us is the problem.
I would like to speak for a moment of what has happened with Canadair, the famous Canadair, which was taken over by the Government, along with a Toronto firm, de Havilland, so that it would have what it referred to as a viable air industry which it hoped to sell to private industry when it was finished with it. The Government bought the firm for $46 million. It gave the firm a loan guarantee of $1.35 billion and equity infusions of $440 million. One of our complaints about this firm, of course, is that the board of directors is dominated by Government appointees, the chief one being the Hon. J. P. Goyer, the former Solicitor General and former Minister of Supply and Services. In both of these positions he was a member of the Liberal administration. Along with two other appointees of the Government, he was left to run Canadair. These three appointees have been spectacularly unsuccessful in this operation, Mr. Speaker. They have lost $1.4 billion. One could wonder how much cheaper it would have been to do almost anything else other than to appoint these three people to those positions.
Some people believe that it is a great thing to be sent to the Senate. It costs a lot of money. If you were to reckon that a Senator receives $50,000 a year, and that there are 100 Senators, the amount of money Canadair lost in one year would keep the Senate running for 280 years. This profligate

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spending amounts to 280 years of the existence of the Senate. However, if you would like to spend it all in one year the way Canadair did, you could pick 280 of the largest cities and towns in Canada and get them to expand their councils to 100 people and give them each $50,000 a year. That is the kind of bill you could pay with the money which Canadair managed to lose in one year. It is an astronomical amount of money to consider.
There is one individual who has kept his role in this pretty quiet, that is, the current Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien). When we first got into the Canadair project, particularly the Challenger aircraft, he was the Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. Today I was looking through the records of the House of Commons. The public accounts for the fiscal year which ended in March of 1919 showed some interesting figures from the time of Confederation, which came about in 1867, to 1917, 50 years later. The Canadian Government had managed to get into debt to the extent of $112 million in 1869, in two years. It then went along paying its way to a fair degree, and it was in 1917, three years into World War I, that it managed to get in debt up to the $1.3 billion which Mr. Goyer and his friends were able to lose in one year. What it took to run the country for 50 years, they managed to run up in the form of a loss in that one year.
The Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources was very proud in the early days of the Challenger program. On February 10, 1977, he had been that Minister only since September. He said, as reported at page 2934 of Hansard for that date, and 1 quote:
1 have only been holding that position since September-
He meant the position of Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce. He went on to say:
-I announced that Canadair in Montreal would undertake a program for the construction of a revolutionary executive jet, the LearStar. If the program becomes productive, we will directly create some 1,500 jobs at Canadair in Ville Saint-Laurent, which means more jobs than on the Olympic sites during the construction of that so popular stadium in Montreal. Unfortunately the press did not often mention it. And not only those 1,000 jobs directly related to Canadair.
It is only of passing interest that he managed to lose 500 of those jobs in one paragraph. However, there he was, boasting, and we put up with that boasting day after day in the House. Every time the subject was brought up, the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources would have more to say on it. He said on March 8, 1977, as reported in Hansard at page 3763:
I could go on like this, Mr. Speaker, in many other fields. However, I might talk for a few seconds, with your permission, about the famous LearStar jet project. I was asked questions in the House this afternoon on that matter. This is becoming one of the greatest success stories in the history of industrial development in Canada.
Such naivete, Mr. Speaker, is unbelievable, at that stage of the negotiations and of the operation of the Crown corporation. He continues:
Within three months, we have already sold 71 aircraft at a cost of some $5 million each.
He goes on to say:
Today, less than six months after Canadair first became interested in that project, 60 orders with deposits have been placed and contracts signed. ... by the end of 1977, a total of 131 aircraft will have been sold, the minimum required for that project to be completely profitable.
This is at March 8, 1977, Mr. Speaker, and he claimed that by the end of that year we would be breaking even on the entire project. That indicates very clearly, Mr. Speaker, the difficulty you have when people who understand very little about the operation of business get into a controlling position of business and are able to delude themselves the way in which the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources was able to delude himself at that time. Again he said on March 8, 1977, as reported at page 3763 of Hansard, and 1 quote:
... of the 79 sales made so far, only two or three are for the domestic market. All the others are for export. So we have a great advantage. This project is creating jobs in Canada and the high-quality finished product is being sold around the world. This is one example of the job of work the government is doing in an effort to maintain our capability in the field of high technology while increasing our exports abroad.
Of course, we all know the Federal Express story. The Government lent Federal Express the money to buy its planes and it lent a company the money to build the planes. Therefore, both the vendor and the purchaser were being financed by Government money, and in the eyes of the Government that made for a great success story. It was selling planes. To finance both sides in a deal like that is a mug's game, and it should have been known at the time. In fact, it turned out to be worse than that because, far from buying the planes, Federal Express held the Government to its contract and was able to settle without taking the planes and was given a plane, and 1 believe it was $4 million, just to let the Government out of a bad contract.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would like to mention something which happened considerably later. It was illustrated in The Canadian Military Journal in the winter of 1981, some four years later, when everyone in the country, except the Minister, knew what a failure that program was. The Minister, whose name is mentioned, at the time of the Challenger roll-out was quoted at page 18 as saying, and I quote:
... that he had warned them, (with tongue in cheek) that "if the airplane doesn't work, you will all be out of a job and so will I.
I'm glad the Challenger is such a tremendous success, so now our jobs are secured".
I do not know if the Minister's job is secure or not. I understand he is trying very hard to get another one. But we will find that out within the next few months. However, these frivolities from people such as the Minister-and there is no indication that the Government has become any more hardheaded about it-and the frivolities from politicians in such positions, has cost the Canadian taxpayers $1.4 billion, and I would ask Hon. Members of the House to consider very carefully why we should extend a line of credit to the EDC from $1 billion to $2 billion in order that they can lose money even faster than Canadair, even though it is hard to believe that that is possible.
September 20, 1983


Hon.   J.-J. Blais@Minister of National Defence: Mr. Speaker, I am amazed at the Hon. Member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon) and the arguments which he has advanced. Surely he does not take himself seriously, nor does he take his argument very seriously. How can the hon. gentleman be at odds with the Hon. Member for Rosedale (Mr. Crombie) who, before the Hon. Member for Victoria rose, indicated that he fully approved of the role which EDC played, that Canada cannot survive in an international environment without the promotion of exports, and how instrumental EDC has been in promoting exports and creating jobs within Canada?
In today's marketplace, Mr. Speaker, there is no question but that if you wish to strengthen your manufacturing capacity you must sell abroad.


Arnold John Malone: Who says?


Mr. Blais:: The Hon. Member for Crowfoot (Mr. Malone) says, "Who says?" the fact is, he knows full well that the industry which supports his constituents would not be able to survive were it not for exports. Of the grains grown in Canada, 66 per cent are exported. The only way I can suggest there is any relevance for the Canadair issue in this debate is because the Hon. Member for Victoria wanted to tie the aerospace industry into exports. It is true that in the aerospace industry, which now involves approximately 40,000 workers in Canada, 80 per cent of that industry's production is for export. The hon. gentleman knows that, he was the critic for National Defence. Having followed the evolution of dossiers in National Defence, he knows how important exports are in maintaining a defence production manufacturing base in Canada. Yet he finds objections to a doubling from $1 billion to $2 billion of the line of credit of the EDC in order to facilitate the financing of exports. I just do not follow that sort of reasoning.
The other point I just cannot accept from the hon. gentleman is his castigating the Canadair Challenger. He criticizes the Government concerning certain actions which might have been taken in the past relating to the financial arrangements of Canadair. That has been done before in this House and in committee as well. But what he was saying, Mr. Speaker, is that somehow the Challenger was a poor investment. 1 personally was involved in that from my very early days in Government and 1 look back upon it with a great deal of pride because there was a very high risk at the time and the then Minister of Industry, Trade and Commerce, the now Minister of Energy (Mr. Chretien), identified that risk. But this Government and Canadair assumed the risk, and as a result we now have the Canadair Challenger which is the single most effective executive jet rolling off a production line today.
The hon. gentleman knows very well that the Lockheed JetStar is now no longer produced and that the only competition for the Challenger is the Gulfstream III. The international community recognizes that in terms of fuel efficiency, range, passenger comforts, economy of maintenance and
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performance, the Challenger is superior to any of the competition.


Mr. Blenkarn:: You know better than that.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, 20 civil aeronautic records have been broken by the Canadair Challenger. I do not know whether it is because he is from Toronto and the Challenger is manufactured in Montreal and the old competition between those two metropolitan centres is at play, but the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) has given himself a mission of attempting to defeat the success of the Canadair Challenger in the Canadian market.


Some Hon. Members:: Shame!


Jean-Jacques Blais: This is to the detriment of the workers, not only those involved with Canadair but also in the whole supply network, some of whom are in the hon. gentleman's own riding.
I am suggesting, Mr. Speaker, the fact that has to be learned here is that Canadian technology is superior once Canadians take the trouble to develop it and bring it into the marketplace. We have had some losses with the Challenger, but in effect that money did not disappear into thin air. It went into development costs, paying suppliers and workers in Canada, and it provided us with the best aircraft of its class anywhere in the world. That is a fact. But what is happening because of the Opposition's criticism of that aircraft? I was in Bromont, Quebec, to open the new blade and vane plant that General Electric built as a major part of the offset program for the purchase of the CF-18 from McDonnell Douglas. That offset is valued at close to $500 million within the next 15 years. I spoke to people who utilize executive jets, from the U.S. as well as from Canada, and they asked me, "What is the matter with you Canadians? Why is it that you criticize your own best technology? We are hesitating about buying Challengers." 1 asked why. They said, "Because we do not know if you are still going to be in production by the time we reach the mid-life of that particular aircraft. We do not know whether people on the other side are going to want to maintain production of the Challenger. That is why we are concerned about making an investment of over $10 million." That is the point they were making, because they say that when they fly an aircraft, they just do not buy it for today, they buy it for the next 25 years and they need to have spare parts and logistic support, and they have to know that the aircraft is going to be in production. Well, Mr. Speaker, 1 told them right there and then that as far as this Government was concerned, we were going to keep the Canadair Challenger in production.


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!


Jean-Jacques Blais: However, Mr. Speaker, I said I wanted them to get to their friends on the other side of the House who were destroying, through their vituperative attacks on Canadian technology, our ability not only to save jobs in Canada but also to make Canadian technology available and popular in the

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international market. The narrowmindednesses of those power-hungry individuals on the other side of the House-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Jean-Jacques Blais: never ceases to amaze me because even though they may figure that one issue may be politically advantageous in the shortrun, the next 18 months or two years, they forget that Canada does not operate in the short term. Canada addresses its future to the long term. We want to ensure not only jobs for today and tomorrow, but we want to ensure the existence of an industrial structure in this country which will ensure jobs for the next generation.
We are competing with the whole world to create those jobs in Canada here today for the future and one of the areas is the aerospace industry. Why? Because it is an export sensitive industry. That is why the Government and the Provinces of Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, indeed every Province in this country, wants to find located within its boundaries-what? The aerospace industry. Even Nova Scotia does. The Hon. Member for Dartmouth-Halifax East (Mr. Forrestall) will know full well that as a result of this Government's policies we have established in his Province a capacity in the aerospace industry that is-yes, IMP, and you know full well the reasons why IMP is developing.


J. Michael Forrestall: My God, you were in diapers when IMP started. What are you talking about?


Jean-Jacques Blais: All I am saying to you, Mr. Speaker, is that EDC is essential if we are going to tap the international market. If we do, we are going to need money, and if the hon. gentlemen opposite think that in their short-term political interest they can make political points, I call upon them to think about the long-term future, it is their children who are going to be living in Canada, not just those of the Members on this side of the House, who are of course going to be in Government for some time to come.


J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The debate has gone along quite well and we have, I think, as a general rule in the Chamber, respected the rules with respect to relevancy. I find it somewhat astonishing that a responsible Minister of the Crown would rise, take up 13 minutes of House time, and make absolutely no reference to the matter in front of us. Nor did he even make any reference to the Bill in general concerning the EDC. 1 think that perhaps there is some point beyond which the leniency of the Chair should not in fact properly go.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Hon. Member is, in the Chair's opinion, absolutely right. The Chair takes great care and pain to exercise the utmost leniency in determining whether a Member's remarks are relevant or not to the subject matter at hand. On many occasions the Chair sits quietly and gives the benefit of the doubt to the Hon. Member who has the floor, because it is anticipated that sooner or later the Hon. Member will deal with the heart of the matter. That happens regularly, in many speeches. However, in the matter involving the last two speakers, the Chair must say that they strayed somewhat far from the subject matter now being debated.
First, I should remind Hon. Members that we are dealing with the Export Development Act and motions which seek to amend two clauses thereto, and that some reference was made to them late in the speeches, I must say, but very little reference has been made. It turned out that the debate dealt with another Crown corporation altogether. In recognizing that the Chair has some difficulty in applying the rule of relevancy, and that Hon. Members are indeed seriously attempting, by illustration, to make valid points in debate, I would invite them to come back to the heart of the matter.
[ Translation]


Hon. Roch La Salle (Joliette):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a few comments on the Bill before the House and the amendments we are considering today, since they concern a fundamental principle-that is quite clear-namely, that Parliament must retain control over the expenditures of Crown corporations. I was listening earlier to the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais), whom I would like to congratulate on his new duties. The Minister inferred that the Progressive Conservative Party was more or less indifferent to the importance of Canadian technology and the expansion of Canadian industry. I did not particularly enjoy listening to the malicious and inappropriate comments the Minister of National Defence made before the House. The Minister did not, of course, deal with the contents of the Bill but reminded Hon. Members that the Export Development Corporation had made it possible to accomplish a great deal and, in doing so, had provided a stimulus for Canadian industry.
The Hon. Members opposite know perfectly well that we are entirely aware of the importance of Canadian exports, and that we want those exports to increase. We realize, Mr. Speaker, in speaking to this bill, that it is important for Canada to have access to foreign markets. We are in favour of such markets, and we support the Government provided-I think all of us and all Canadians will readily understand this- that Parliament retains control over the expenditure of public funds. It was true yesterday, and for the last 15 years, and especially the last 5 I must say that we have never seen a Government that has been so eager to dilute and diminish the power of Parliament to control expenditures. The Government is not alone in this building today. Parliament is here and it consists of all Canada's elected representatives. I believe that the responsibilities of these representatives consist in ensuring that public funds, that tax monies collected by the Canadian Government, are spent in a useful and positive manner and in the best interests of Canadians.
That is the principle we are defending in our debate on this Bill and in the amendments we are proposing. We want to make Government Members understand that Canadians want
September 20, 1983

Parliament to have its say when their money is being spent and we mentioned examples including Canadair without challenging the desire of any Government that is supportive of its industry to promote companies like Canadair and the products it has to offer on the world market. But to go so far as to allow a company like Canadair to misrepresent its financial situation in Cabinet and to let it get away with padding their order books ... 1 think the Minister of National Defence, like all those other Hon. Members, would be well advised, if they have the courage to do so, to demand that this company at least come clean before a Government that has made it possible for them to make a number of extraordinary accomplishments in the aerospace field. However, if we respect our commitments to our constituents, we cannot allow our corporations to deceive the Government in order to obtain subsidies, and thus cause the public to raise a number of questions for which there is every justification but no answer.
That is why, in the interests of all Canadians, we are emphasizing the basic principle that Parliament must retain control over the expenditure of public funds. This should be abundantly clear to Canadians watching us today, Mr. Speaker. But why, and especially in recent times, are Hon. Members opposite who, like me, are not in Cabinet, leaving it up to the ministers to decide whether or not to give Government support to this or that Crown corporation? Those Hon. Members, like myself, are entirely aware of the increased deficits of Crown corporations. But these corporations do not have to ask Parliament for appropriations.
Mr. Speaker, we know perfectly well that under any Government, representatives, directors and chairmen of corporations are appointed by Cabinet. The chairman of Canadair or Air Canada is not appointed by the Member for some obscure riding but by Cabinet. We all know that. As a result, these people have no obligation to ask for appropriations and have them approved by Parliament. This institution should have responsibility for the expenditure of public funds-that is what Canadians want to know and what they deserve to know. This Government could not care less how public monies are spent by these Crown corporations.
This lack of control on the part of the Government is unacceptable and reflects-I challenge anyone to say otherwise- irresponsibility on the part of a Government that professes to respect the individual. That is the battle we are fighting in the House, Mr. Speaker, and we are being criticized because we insist and demand that Parliament control the expenditures of these corporations. Is this not perfectly legitimate? Mr. Speaker, I have always felt that the expenditures, the massive loans these corporations must contract and which are endorsed by the Government, are just a blank cheque, and they are under no obligation to get prior approval from the House, whose Members are accountable to the people. That is precisely the question which we are raising today, which we raised yesterday and which we will continue to raise as long as necessary
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because, deep in our conscience anyway, we feel the obligation to ensure that this wanton spending of public funds be stopped, Mr. Speaker. We simply have to insist that this Government refrain from taking decisions in the inner sanctum of Cabinet and from disregarding altogether the opinion of those who have been elected to defend the views and the interests of the population.
That, Mr. Speaker, is why we are asking today to this Parliament, to this House and to Hon. Members who perhaps fail to grasp the significance of our claims that the House be given control over Government spending, because of course the Government is spending the money collected from Canadian taxpayers. With respect to the powers of Crown corporations, we have seen too many examples in recent years-particularly the deficits of Crown corporations and those of the Government-not to seek to regain control by moving amendments to this Bill. Mr. Speaker, it goes without saying that we are all in favour of unlimited development, but we insist that the corporations responsible for such development be held accountable to the elected representatives.
1 happen to think that it is a legitimate principle and that we have to uphold it in the House. It is a debate and an objective which we must pursue in the best interests of the Canadian people. Contrary to the views expressed earlier by the Minister of National Defence who said that we could not care less about Canadian technology and industrial growth, God knows they have no lesson to teach us when it comes to job creation. It is all very well to talk about creating temporary employment, but what Canadians want are permanent jobs! They also demand responsible management, which they have not had these last few years.
In our amendments and our arguments, we are asking and demanding that the Government give Parliament some control over the spending of the taxpayers' money. We ask, and justifiably so, that Canadians be protected, and not by the Government but by the House of Commons, which indeed played such a role a long time ago and should keep on doing so. However, the Government is trying to grab more and more power as we have seen in other areas, but in this case, if we have anything to do about it, Parliament will not lose its control over the expenditure of public funds. Mr. Speaker, these are the comments that I wanted to make and felt I had to make in the interests of Canada and the future of Canadian industry.


Mr. Jim Peterson (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to make a few remarks in the House concerning the Export Development Corporation. I believe that it would be reasonable for all Members of the House to consider the EDC within the context of what we as Canadians want to achieve

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over-all on the economic plane. When considering our great strength in Canada we must realize that we depend on our exports above all else for our economic strength. More than any other western country, Canada is an exporting nation in which 30 per cent of our Gross National Product comes from our exports. This is higher than the level in Japan, the United States or any other western nation.
During the past year we have seen the results of strong policies in this area. We have had a record surplus on our trade account. I believe that this record only shows the direction in which we should be heading. Instead of being a success with which we should be satisfied, it indicates to me that since we have succeeded even in these difficult times we cannot sit back on our laurels. We have an opportunity to go ahead and make even greater inroads into international markets of the world. I believe this can be accomplished by setting a new economic target for Canada.
We have many new good news themes coming forward today. For example, interest rates are down and inflation is down. Unfortunately, unemployment is at an unacceptably high level. What direction must be followed in the future in order to resolve these problems? I would suggest that the six and five program, which was very successful, was a defensive measure. We will have to control inflation and keep that defensive measure in place, but the sign of a good team is a balanced offence and defence. 1 believe that our offence should be on the export side. I would suggest that all Canadians could support a measure under which we work in a non-partisan way as Canadians from every part of the country to try to increase our share of international trade over the next several years from the present level of 3.6 per cent to 4.6 per cent. This is a positive measure which I believe all of us could support.
What should be done specifically? It is not enough to say that we must increase our share of world trade by one percentage point over the next several years. 1 believe an integral part of the specific measures we should follow to achieve this goal is making the private sector in Canada competitive in the world marketplace. The Government cannot do that. It will be producers in Canada who will determine their ability to compete in world markets. However, part of that competition comes from the public sector for the private entrepreneurs in our country. Part of that support is represented in the EDC.
Every country in the world has some type of body which supports its exporters. It is the Export Development Corporation which is the subject of the debate today. Much of the debate focuses on the fact that our exporters and the EDC itself have been extremely successful in the past. The fact that we want to expand the resources of the Export Development Corporation is an indication of what truly is a Canadian success story and something of which we can all be proud. I am not talking only about those of us in the Government, but about all Canadians from coast to coast.
The fact that we need extra funding for the Export Development Corporation means that we are on the road to achieving that goal of increasing our share of world trade. The Opposition has argued in part that this is an enormous sum to be
spending. It has talked about Crown corporations running amuck. However, does the Opposition suggest to us that there is any country in the world where this type of support to the private sector, in terms of concessional financing and insurance against risks, is carried on only by private institutions without the help of public funds? No, they do not. Even the Opposition would have to agree that this is a role which is best performed through the public sector, or at least that we have not found an alternative.
I have listened to many Opposition comments on this subject. I would have to agree with the Hon. Member for Elgin (Mr. Wise) and the Hon. Member for Rosedale (Mr. Crom-bie) who have said that their experience with EDC has been one of general satisfaction, and even in some cases enthusiastic satisfaction, for the role that has been played.
We can talk of many success stories. For example, 1 saw in today's paper that Mitel has undertaken a public issue of $20 million using the new research and development incentives under the previous budget and taking advantage of scientific research investment contracts to raise this $20 million from the private sector in order to increase its capacity to become a world scale producer. Mitel is just one of the many success stories we have in Canada. Public sector support went into the creation of Mitel by way of grants. We have co-operated with Mitel in developing tax incentives, which work on an on-going basis. Certainly the type of service performed by EDC in helping it export to various countries in the world is a valuable complement to what will be an even stronger economic future for Canadians.
There are developments taking place around the world, and one which I welcome is the recent appointment of James Medas in the United States. He is the former Special Assistant to President Reagan and is now the Deputy Assistant Secretary in the State Department. His sole responsibility is to deal with Canadian-U.S. issues.
The United States takes approximately 70 per cent of Canada's exports and provides us with about two-thirds of our imports. The United States is more than a trading partner, it is a close ally when it comes to determining the strength of our economic sectors.
I look forward to a closer co-operation with the United States in resolving the problems which we have experienced over the past several years. I believe we should be concerned about signs in the United States where there are over 60 Bills in Congress aimed at the freedom of Canadians to do business in the United States. This is of no small concern, but with the appointment of this particular individual and with an increased emphasis by our Government, led by our dynamic and outward looking Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan), I believe that we will be able to resolve these problems in a way that is even more salutary than in the past, in a way that will take us to the goal of which I spoke, increasing our share of world trade from 3.6 per cent to 4.6 per cent.
September 20, 1983

What are some of the criticisms that have been leveled at us by the Opposition? The Hon. Member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Corbett) gave a very impassioned speech about Government spending being too high. He wants us to reduce taxes. None of us, 1 suppose, will ever be satisfied with the level of taxes in this country. But when you compare his statements with some of the statements made by other Members in the Opposition, they are somewhat different. For example, the finance critic for the Opposition want to see us use the extra funds, those from the increase due to the lowering of the level of the deficit and the fact that our economic circumstances turned out better than the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) predicted in his April budget, to help consumers. I beg your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, but could you inform me as to how much time 1 have left?


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: I regret to inform the Hon. Member that his time has expired. He may continue if there is unanimous consent of the House. Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: I can say that this may be a mixed blessing. But it is with a great deal of pleasure that 1 continue, Mr. Speaker. It is important to point out to Canadians that while we all support the ideal of lowering taxes and lowering Government deficits, even the Opposition does not have a solution in its hands on how to do it. The finance critic said, "We will use these extra funds to stimulate consumer spending." The Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Mulroney) demonstrated his preoccupation with the fact that the deficit was too high. How do you decrease the deficit if you decrease taxes? We all want to get business rolling. 1 would suggest that one of the most important things we can do is to assist specific measure that will help our economy grow. The best way I see of doing that is to assist our export-oriented producers. They are the ones who have demonstrated that, on a world basis, they are competitive, that they can meet the tests of productivity on an international scale. What better way to do it than to increase the funds and resources available to an institution with a proven track record, namely, the Export Development Corporation?
Hon. Members of the Opposition have indicated at times that they feel the EDC might not be sufficiently accountable to Parliament in terms of its spending.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: You have got it.


James Scott (Jim) Peterson: I think the Opposition must look at the facts. After all, it was a Conservative Government that inaugurated the system under which the EDC's capital budget and its reference levels would be approved by an elaborate departmental process. That was a Conservative measure that is being followed by the EDC.
Second, we know the EDC must go through the Estimates process. If it has a loss ratio which has to be made up by a Supplementary Estimate, that goes to committee. Members of
Adjournment Motion
Parliament then have an opportunity to explore in depth all of the spending of the EDC. In addition, we have the office of the Auditor General, a very effective mechanism for evaluating the effectiveness of Government programs. We have the audit committee which reports to the Auditor General's office. The Department of Finance, again, can be examined through the Minister on what happens in EDC under any of our provisions because the Minister of Finance must approve any new borrowings or EDC prospectuses.
The corporation's programs have also been the subject of a comprehensive audit. The Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) knows that a comprehensive audit is a very thorough undertaking by very competent public officials to ensure that the money is being spent effectively in our economy.
These are many ways in which the EDC is held accountable to Members of Parliament. It would be a shame for us, Mr. Speaker, at a point when our exports are leading in many ways our economic recovery, when, to me, they offer the greatest potential for economic recovery in the future and for an expansion of our growth, to cut back on what is a very strong, and I can say I am proud of it, Canadian success story.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please! It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: The Hon. Member for Fundy-Royal (Mr. Corbett)-Transport-Provision of alternative service to communities affected by Via Rail cutbacks, (b) Communities without service; the Hon. Member for Athabasca (Mr. Shields)-Energy-Incentives for oil sands projects, (b) Government offer; the Hon. Member for Burnaby (Mr. Robinson)-Trade marks and patents-Proposed changes in drug manufacturing licences, (b) Former Minister employed by Department.

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of Bill C-l 10, to amend the Export Development Act, as recorded (with amendments) from the Standing Committee on Finance, Trade and Economic Affairs; and Motions Nos. 3 and 5 (Mr. Blenkarn).
Mr. Lyle S. Kristiansen (Kootenay West):: Mr. Speaker, I am happy again to participate in this debate on yet another amendment to the legislation regarding the Canadian Export Development Corporation.
1 want to say at the beginning that I and my colleagues in the NDP, generally speaking, support the thrust of the Conservative amendments to this Bill, including this one, not because we accept the simple argument, and what some of us would think is the simple-minded argument of some, that any expanded public role or state intervention is wrong per se, because it is not. Rather, we support the thrust of the amendments before us because we believe in the safeguarding and creative processes of governmental and public accountability.
To those Members of the Conservative Party who share this rationale, and I know there are many of them, I say we agree with you. But to those other Conservatives, particularly B.C. Conservatives, such as the Hon. Member for Capilano (Mr. Huntington), the Hon. Member for Prince George-Bulkley Valley (Mr. McCuish) and the Hon. Member for North Vancouver-Burnaby (Mr. Cook) and, in fact, most B.C. Tories who are the blood brothers, bed partners and policy partners of the Conservative Government of British Columbia, the Social Credit Government of British Columbia-1 must say that 1 cannot and will not agree with their demonstrated purpose which is to centralize public authority and to destroy even the existing mechanisms of public accountability of Crown corporations and public policy.
The B.C. Social Credit Government, the B.C. Conservative Government and all the P.C. Members I have mentioned, who have on a number of occasions gone public making it clear they are all one and they essentially believe in the same things, are part and parcel of a government policy in Victoria which has disbanded the legislative committee on Crown corporations. Meanwhile, some of the federal Tories have the unmitigated gall to say in this House that they want desperately to see the same kind of committee in order to bring our federal Crown corporations under control.
They cannot have it both ways. They and their friends in British Columbia have disbanded the legislative committee on Crown corporations, thus destroying the very kind of agency which their colleagues in the federal Parliament have advocated.
Do they speak with a forked tongue, Mr. Speaker, or are they simply confused? I prefer to believe that, because they are honourable men and women, the latter is the case. But
Canada at this time of economic difficulty and challenge cannot afford such gross confusion that says "nonaccountable state intervention and irresponsible heavy borrowing by Crown corporations and Government agencies is okay as long as it is us Tories and Socreds that do it, but it is the devil's work and the road to ruin if done by anybody else." They cannot have it both ways. We can look at the record in British Columbia to see what these people do when they have the power of government. That Government, essentially a Conservative Government, has gone from $4 billion to $14 billion or $15 billion in Crown corporation and agency debt in less than eight years. There has been an increase in that Government's Crown corporation debt by over 350 per cent in less than eight years. That is what a Conservative Government has done in the Province of British Columbia. Often this is based on totally false projections of market growth and revenue potential despite some very informed warnings to the contrary. Conservative words and actions just do not jibe. They talk one line and they follow another. They are not bad guys, just confused.
Saul Alinsky once said that the secret of successful social action is to get people to do the right things for the wrong reasons. In the case of this Progressive Conservative amendment, the Official Opposition is advocating doing the right thing for the wrong reason. But because we would never question its motives in the House, we will likely support most and possibly all the amendments in order that we may do the right thing for the right reason-to provide greater parliamentary control and public accountability, and not simply because of blind dogma.
The "tinker toy" approach of the Liberals to government must be stopped. Growth for the sake of growth is just plain dumb. I fully agree with my Conservative friend who decried the number of bureaucratic academics in Government. To that I would add the excessive number of lawyers and others, whom I would call woolly-headed idealists abounding in the circles of Government and many other institutions across the country. By "idealists", I am referring to those lawyers and academics who fall into the trap of thinking that simply because a law is passed something has actually been changed. Anyone with experience in the real world knows that that just ain't so. Unless we have the will to perform a function, unless we have enforcement mechanisms, unless we have our roots down deep in the marketplace and in the realities of the world, nothing happens simply because a few words in the law have been changed. It just does not work that way.
There has been some talk and debate, going slightly beyond the amendment generally addressing some of our export and development strategies for trade. One example of export and industrial strategy has to be the joint decision of the Government opposite and the Conservative Opposition to launch the pre-build pipeline, an issue they would like to forget. That was part of an export strategy. They have fallen flat on their faces with that, as they have fallen flat on their faces with Northeast Coal in British Columbia, a combination of provincial Government and federal Government bungling. They gave the United
September 20, 1983

States exactly what it wanted. We built a pre-build pipeline at our expense to sell our gas at cheap prices to the United States. They gave up all our leverage, as Canadian Governments have often done, for future bargaining over trade and other matters. Then they squeal because the Americans keep coming back and saying, "Cut your prices, cut your prices". We keep lowering the prices because we have no leverage left. We have no guarantees. The lever which could have been used to strengthen our economic position was thrown away. Both the Liberals and the Tories were compliant partners in the whole process.
Now we see the Conservative Government of British Columbia and the federal Liberal Government, with regard to Northeast Coal, using taxpayers' money to subsidize the export of a non-renewable resource. As was the case with the pre-build pipeline, our Japanese customers are now saying that they must have a lower price, and we have no option but to give it to them because we have thrown away whatever leverage we might have had. How long do we have to listen to these Liberal and Tory bunglers? They throw away our leverage.
One does not play poker in the international marketplace with all one's cards face up. The other guys do not play the game that way. Canada has that kind of absolutely stupid reputation. That Party on the Government side and the Official Opposition on this side still have the same naive attitude they have displayed time and time again-give the store away and wonder why others take advantage of us. 1 for one and some people in business and labour with whom I have been associated, who know a little about bargaining on both sides of the table, do not believe that we can throw away all our bargaining power and then have the unmitigated gall to complain because the rest of the world does not hand something over to us on a platter. There has to be an end to this kind of jackass, stupid bargaining. We should get on with the job of developing a country which works and of which we can be proud.


Mr. Joe Reid (St. Catharines):: Mr. Speaker, in following so shortly after the comments of the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Peterson), 1 am pleased to join the debate and to emphasize once again that the issue is not one of trade, that the problem is not trade. It is the issue of parliamentary accountability that has plagued this Parliament. More than any other, it distinguishes the Party for which I speak this afternoon from the Party which represents the Government. I will be referring this afternoon to the continued proliferation of Crown corporations and the lack of parliamentary accountability.
The Auditor General noted seven years ago that the majority of Crown corporations lacked financial management and fiscal control. Four years ago the Lambert report indicated that existing provisions for classifying Crown corporations and the accountability of each had been rendered obsolete. Just one year ago the Auditor General warned Canadians that the growing practice of using Crown corporations to conduct a widening range of Government activities has so strained our accountability framework that Parliament may not be able to
Export Development Act
exercise its fundamental responsibility for overseeing receipts and disbursements of public funds.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. We are dealing with Bill C-110, an Act to amend the Export Development Act.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Why don't you read the amendment?


Jean-Jacques Blais: It is part of the accountability process involved in this particular Act. The reason the Hon. Member is debating this Bill is that a provision is built into the Act that every now and again we have to come back before the House in order to change it.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order, please. Obviously the Minister is making a speech.


Joseph Lloyd Reid: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Is it accountability or lack of accountability? Bill C-110 is now the battleground, and the amendments proposed by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn) have set out the position of this Party extremely well.


Jean-Jacques Blais: That is why we are here.


Joseph Lloyd Reid: 1 tell the Minister opposite that the vast majority of Canadian people support our position that Parliament must ultimately control the purse strings of the nation. Quite frankly, Canadians are fed up with billion dollar deficits and lame excuses. They are tired of the stonewalling and backpedalling on the Government side. People work too hard for their money to see it squandered by Crown corporations without so much as an explanation or without coming before Parliament.
We see in Bill C-110 all the elements of one more Crown corporation slipping away from Parliament's control. The Export Development Corporation has at present $10 billion in borrowing authority and $1 billion in authorized capital. Of these limits, less than $5 billion has been used up in borrowings and less than one-half of the authorized capital has been paid in.
We on this side fought the suggestion that the limits should be doubled, and we did so for a very good reason. If the Export Development Corporation needs more borrowing authority or more capital, the EDC should come to Parliament, ask for and justify that request. The Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan) disagrees. He says that it is tiresome and inefficient to come to Parliament to justify the expense, and if a Minister is responsible, then what is the problem of the Opposition? Our problem has been the experience of the past. Our problem is the Post Office, VIA Rail, de Havilland, Canadair, Eldorado Nuclear, and 1 could go on. Name any Crown corporation. Year after year the deficits mount and the questions go unanswered. Meanwhile, the public goes on paying and praying. Motions Nos. 3 and 5 as well as Motions

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
Nos. 6 and 8, seek to keep the Export Development Corporation on a responsible track.
Bill C-l 10 proposes to increase the limits of a discretionary section of the Act from $3.5 billion to $10 billion. Under this section, the Cabinet may overrule or override a decision which the board of directors of the EDC has judged not to be in the best interests of the corporation. Not a good deal for the corporation is defined in the Act as one that "would, if entered into or issued, impose upon the Corporation a liability for a term or in an amount in excess of that which the Corporation would normally undertake." Should the corporation make the decision, the Cabinet may yet decide, good deal or not, whether it chooses to approve the transaction, and it is free to do so under these provisions of the Bill. It can overrule the board of directors which it has set up. Needless to say, if the transaction proves to be a dead loss, the taxpayers are obliged to make up that loss, or the deficit.
We believe that $3.5 billion, even with today's money, is ample. Should it not be sufficient, the Government owes it to the taxpayers of Canada to come before Parliament to ask for more. There is no indication, however, that $3.5 billion is an inadequate total at present. Less than half this amount has now been used. Why the unseemly scramble for an almost threefold increase? Does the Government have more Algerian monuments in mind, or are we to become a corporation of speculators, par exellence, a superman?
The motions before us simply wish to give the Members of this House an opportunity of review, and nothing is more fair than that. The Minister has tried to downgrade this debate, as has the Parliamentary Secretary, by attacking the Opposition for not caring about trade. Of course we care about trade. Of course we are concerned with our export business, and sometimes the deficit. However, this debate is not about trade. It could have and would have taken place over any other piece of legislation seeking to remove a Crown corporation a little further from the responsibility of Parliament.
I would be rather derelict in my duties and responsibilities to my constituents, as would any Member of this House, if I did not stand in my place and make every effort to protect their hard-earned dollars. Canadians have seen from experience what happens when Parliament's control over the pursestring is weakened. Deficits and red ink financial statements are now the order of the day. It is time that stopped. We on this side have proposed amendments to put a halt to this continuing erosion of our dollar. It now behooves the Government to demonstrate that it too has respect for the taxpayers' dollar by accepting these amendments. I urge the Government, in this last minute of my time, to do so.


Mr. Bruce Halliday (Oxford):: Mr. Speaker, at this stage in a debate it is sometimes difficult to bring a lot of new information before the House. However, when a Government is determined to resist change and resist improvements to a Bill as much as this Government, it is sometimes necessary to emphasize the points you want to make.
The amendments we are dealing with, Nos. 3 and 5 put forward by the Conservative Party, deal with the authorization for capital borrowing of the Export Development Corporation. A couple of main issues spring to my mind when we think of the Export Development Corporation. One is, as other Members have suggested, trade. Some Government Members try to make it appear that we on this side are opposed to trade. If one examines some of the facts as to what has happened with regard to trade during the last 15 years that this Government has been in power, one finds some very interesting figures staring one in the face.
At present about 30 per cent of our Gross National Product is derived from trade. We appreciate that. Others have indicated the importance of that.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Talk about the trade surplus.


Bruce Halliday: The Minister talks about the trade surplus raw materials and grain products and does not mention the surplus in manufactured goods, which is way down. In 1968, the share of world trade that Canada enjoyed at that time was 5.74 per cent. In 1981, 13 years later, it was down to 3.8 per cent, close to a 50 per cent drop in the proportion of world trade that this country enjoys. That is no credit to the present Government. It indicates its lack of concern about the trade this country should be enjoying.
The Canadian Manufacturers' Association looked at this problem from a different point of view. It indicated that if we were to regain our share of world trade to the extent we had in 1970, just 11 years ago, we would create 2.7 million jobs. That is the number of jobs that would have been created during the past 15 years if the Government had had a true concern about trade and not just trade in raw materials and other products which do not produce many jobs, like the manufacturing sector does.
We might ask ourselves why we have had this poor trade performance. A few moments ago we heard from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Science and Technology (Mr. Peterson). He tried to justify the present status of trade that he believes we are enjoying. He failed to acknowledge that the significant drop from 5.7 per cent to 3.8 per cent is probably because we have suffered from a lack of productivity in this country over the last number of years under this Government. We may ask why we have suffered from a lack of productivity. It probably boils down to one most significant point, which is the fact that the present Government, although it is trying to recoup its position now, has, over the years, failed to recognize the need for spending money on research and development in science and technology.
I well remember that when I first came to the House about nine years ago, the then Minister responsible for science and technology was trying to tell Canadians that we did not need to spend money on research in science and technology, that all we needed to do was to buy the research from the United States or from some western European country. The attitude
September 20, 1983

of the Government was that money did not need to be spent on science and technology. As a result, we now see that we are spending 1.2 per cent of Canada's GNP on science and technology compared to the United States which spends 2.4 per cent of its GNP on science and technology and Japan which spends 2 per cent of its GNP on science and technology. It is not surprising, therefore, to anyone who analyses the trade situation, that one of the major reasons for our difficulty is the fact that we as a country under the present Liberal Government have not been willing to spend any significant amount of money on science and technology.
Trade is the main consideration here today. The other consideration is the issue of Crown corporations. These are the background problems which lie behind the Bill that is before the House today and the amendments we are trying to introduce to this new legislation.
When looking at the issue of Crown corporations, one interesting fact that comes to mind is that they employ some 263,000 persons. That is over a quarter of a million persons. Yet I am sure that Canadians do not realize that Government Departments themselves employ fewer people than that. There are fewer public servants employed in Government Departments than in Crown corporations now. That is how far out of hand and out of control the Crown corporations have got, and many successive Auditors General have told us so. There are now roughly 25,000 more people employed by Crown corporations than by Government Departments. That, of course, does not take into account the 84,000 people in the Armed Forces.
One cannot help but think about the waste that has been shown to us over the years by the successive Auditors General with respect to Crown corporations. My colleague who is here in the House this afternoon, the Hon. Member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse), told an interesting story some years ago when I was a novice in the House. It was before the 1979 election, I believe, Mr. Speaker, and at that time he said that, in his view, it only took two documents to win an election. One was a description of how our tax dollars are spent and the second was the Auditor General's report. I believe that the Hon. Member for South Shore knows what he is talking about. He has campaigned in perhaps seven or eight elections.


Mr. Crouse:: Ten.


Bruce Halliday: Ten elections, I am sorry. He said that all he had to do was to bring to the attention of his electorate in South Shore the manner in which tax dollars are spent by Crown corporations, for example, and the waste that occurs there. A research document that was prepared prior to this debate gave 18 horrendous examples of how Canadian tax dollars were wasted by the various Crown corporations.
Another interesting aspect of today's debate is the subject of the failure by the Government to be responsible to Parliament for some of its expenditures. This has been discussed a great deal during this debate. However, when the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais) spoke a few moments ago, he did not even refer to that point. We are making it one of our major points, yet the Minister did not acknowledge it as being an
Export Development Act
issue. He spoke as if the accountability of the Government was not of concern to the people. I was disappointed that he did not make some reference to that particular complaint that we have.
The other major issue that I would like to touch upon for a moment or two, Mr. Speaker, in the time that is remaining to me, is the lack of private-sector involvement in Crown corporations. I will first acknowledge that the Bill before the House will improve that situation somewhat as far as the Export Development Corporation is concerned. Before, there were to be 12 members on the board, at least six of whom were to be public servants. We will now have 15 members on the board, apparently with no requirement in the legislation for some of them to be public servants, yet the Government has said that there will be six of them nonetheless.
I had an interesting experience this past weekend which I cannot help but recount. I had the occasion to be at a banquet with one of the leading Liberals in Ontario. He happens to sit on the board of one of the country's prominent Crown corporations. He told me that what bothered him most about Crown corporations was their failure to have the private sector adequately represented on their boards. I found it interesting, in light of the debate we are now having regarding EDC, to hear this gentleman who is one of the strongest supporters of the Liberal Government indicate that his principal criticism of Crown corporations was their failure to meet the increasing need for more input from the private sector.
The same issue was, of course, raised by the Economic Council of Canada. It realized as well that that problem exists, and its document entitled "Intervention and Efficiency" states on page 51:
Canada is perhaps the country with the least private-sector participation in export financing decisions.
That corroborates what my Liberal friend told me at lunch the other day, and that is, that we need to have more input from the private sector.
Perhaps I may close, Mr. Speaker, by reading something which sums up the situation surrounding Crown corporations. As I am sure you have heard before, Mr. Speaker, Professor Andre Raynauld of the University of Montreal said that Crown corporations were, and I quote:
-rapidly becoming a bureaucratic monster, borrowing and lending money, making unsound loans to foreign countries, extending its empire, and involving Canada in transactions and negotiations that are both costly and inefficient.


Mr. Robert C. Coates (Cumberland-Colchester):: Mr. Speaker, in echoing the words of the Hon. Member for Oxford (Mr. Halliday), and especially his last words, I would have to say that the bureaucratic monster referred to by the professor whom the Hon. Member quoted has already come into existence. We have the monster. It is now time to find somebody who can slay the dragon.
If the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais) is to be used as an example of how we secure accountability, particularly when it involves something like $50 billion to $60 billion of taxpayers' money, suggesting to us that accountability

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
comes when the legislation is amended is the height of irresponsibility and is an example of just exactly what this debate is all about and the reason why the Government has screwed things up in this country so badly for so long.
The people of this country require and desire some real accountability and recognition.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Has the Hon. Member ever heard of Estimates?


Robert Carman Coates: Estimates? Before the Hon. Minister came here, we knew what Estimates were and we knew how they were debated and we knew something about the accountability of Ministers for the money they spent. I wonder how many times since the Minister has been on the Treasury benches he has appeared before Members of Parliament to be accountable for the moneys that were his responsibility and were spent by him.


J. Michael Forrestall: Three times in seven years.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Three times in one year.


Robert Carman Coates: Three times. That is an example, Mr. Speaker, of exactly what I am talking about. There is no accountability. The Government is out of control. A $31 billion deficit is the end result of the Government being out of control. That is what we are talking about here today. The Government layers on another $30 billion or $40 billion that it wants to move around at its whim and pleasure for its friends, and we say that there is no responsibility to the taxpayers of the country. We say that we need to get things under control so that Parliament does have something to say.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order which refers to the question of procedure and Estimates. There are usually Main Estimates and Supplementary Estimates As, Bs and often Cs. In most instances 1 have appeared before committees in order to defend Estimates, either the Main Estimates or Supplementary Estimates As, Bs or Cs.


Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, that is just a spurious point of order. It is another example of the Minister not really being serious about what this debate is all about. That is a sad fact of life. Here we are debating a piece of legislation which could involve at least $50 billion of the taxpayers' money, which will be lent to various people. Some of it will be returned, some of it will not, if this corporation's past history is any example of how one can blow money totally. Yet, the Minister is getting up and suggesting to us that every once in a while there are some Estimates which come before us. That is true, but for a very limited period of time. You reach a deadline, and it does not make any difference what you are talking about during that period of time, all of a sudden Parliament spends two, three, four or eight hours voting, just rubberstamping, with no real control by the Opposition which is faced with a majority Government. It is the worst kind of democratic dictatorship there is when a majority comes in and just forces all the expenditures through in a limited number of hours. Hon.
Members of Parliament on this side of the House are given no opportunity at all to speak to and be concerned about most of these issues, especially the overspending which is exemplified by a $31 billion deficit.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Why did you not change the rules when you were in power?


Robert Carman Coates: We, as Members of Parliament on this side of the House, have made some very reasonable amendments. We have made some proposals which would improve the Bill, which would guarantee protections to the taxpayers which do not exist now, and if the Government were responsible, it would take seriously those amendments and say, "All right. You want more protection for the taxpayer, we all should want more protection for the taxpayer and so we will accept a degree of accountability which does not exist in the Bill now." The amendment would be accepted, and then we would really be able to take this Government seriously. But you cannot take a government seriously when you tell it what its failings are, when a person as non-political as the Auditor General backs up your argument, and it still rejects out of hand any aspect of the proposals which you bring forward in the form of amendments.
We talked about the greater involvement by the private sector on the board. The Hon. Member for Oxford just laid out some of the criticisms which exist about our country as compared with others. There is no one in this Party who does not want to assist the private sector companies to become better traders than they are at the moment. Any way we can do that, we are anxious to do it. That is what it is all about. That is where the jobs are.
Someone was talking about reducing the deficit and at the same time giving people back more of their tax dollars. That can happen, Mr. Speaker, if we take the almost two million people who are unemployed today and give them jobs. And if we can assist the private sector to go out and get the contracts, wherever they might be, and produce the jobs here, then we will get the people off the unemployment rolls. They will not then be a drag on the state. They will be an asset to the state. There will not then be a $31 billion deficit. We will be trying to bring our budget into balance. However, if we are going to be the captives of a bureaucracy sitting on this board, as they are in every other Crown corporation, then I say, Mr. Speaker, we run the risk of another Canadair, another de Havilland, another one of the myriad Crown corporations which just mess things up and which have a bunch of incompetents at their head because this Government does not know how to get beyond the pork barrel. The only people who end up on boards are defeated Grits.


Jean-Jacques Blais: That is not true.


Robert Carman Coates: As the Right Hon. John Diefenbaker said when he was in the House, "They know how to win their war against poverty"-
September 20, 1983


Mr. Berger:: 1 rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. gentleman referred to defeated Grits on the boards of Crown corporations. I would like to ask him if David Culver, the President of Alcan, who is the Chairman of Canadair, is a defeated Grit.


Robert Carman Coates: I will ask the Hon. Member if he remembers a fellow by the name of Barney Danson, who is now Chairman of de Havilland, who ran up something like a $446 million deficit last year, and who, when he served in the Armed Forces, was in the Army? He knows as much about de Havilland and aircraft as my son, who has never flown in one.
What the Grits had better get out of the habit of doing is just finding soft chairs for every defeated Liberal, and I will tell you that after the next election you really will be lonely because you are not going to have a government in Canada, and there is not going to be any-


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. Order. 1 am sure the Hon. Member for Cumberland-Colchester (Mr. Coates) realizes that remarks should be addressed to the Chair.


An Hon. Member:: Right on.


Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. Maybe I got carried away a little bit.


An Hon. Member:: Now you are speaking the truth.


Robert Carman Coates: There are many Liberals who are almost more fortunate in being defeated than by being elected, because they end up in some form of heaven, or at least as close to heaven as you can get while you are still on earth, by being appointed a director of some Crown corporation. And if you do not end up in a Crown corporation, you end up in the other place, which is even lovelier, because that is the way to go to heaven while you are still on earth.


Mr. Epp:: Especially for the member from Yonge and Bloor.


Robert Carman Coates: To come back to this Bill and the reality of the day, we must face up to the fact-


Jean-Jacques Blais: I rise on a point of order, Mr. Speaker.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair would like to call to the attention of the Hon. Member that, even allowing for the interruptions, the time allotted to him has expired.
The Minister of National Defence is rising on a point of order.


Jean-Jacques Blais: Yes, Mr. Speaker, simply to point out to the House that the Hon. Member should recognize heaven, having been in limbo for two and one half years.


Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, the Minister of National Defence had better improve upon his humour or the possible art of making jokes, because he is really not creating any special
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image for himself. He is no Rodney Dangerfield, that is for sure.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. The Hon. Member may continue with the unanimous consent of the House. Is there agreement for the Hon. Member to continue?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There appears to be unanimous consent for the Hon. Member to continue his remarks.


Robert Carman Coates: Mr. Speaker, I very much appreciate the willingness of the House to give me some additional time and I believe I would like to go back, not to the partisan aspect of my speech, but to say just how seriously we, on this side of the House, take this particular piece of legislation. It is important because of the possibility of creating employment for those people in this country who right now feel they have little or no hope of entering the labour market again. What we are saying, Mr. Speaker, is that this can be done with all kinds of built-in production for the public and without in any way interfering with the effectiveness of the legislation in question. As a matter of fact, if there were greater private sector participation on the board of the EDC, there would be all kinds of possibilities which will never exist if it is loaded with public servants. They are not out there every day fighting for their lives, trying to get contracts which will keep their companies in operation. They are sitting here in their glass houses surveying all they control.
What we seriously recommend is to put into place business people who know what it is like to have to go out there and fight for a contract. They need the EDC to be of assistance, not a hindrance. They need to know what it is going to do for them and that it has to account for what it does to the Auditor General and the Parliament of Canada. We do not have that now, but if we receive that, then I think this Government will make a degree of progress which does not seem possible at this moment in time, and we will be much more satisfied that the Government at last realizes what has been happening in this country and will then know how to get it moving in the proper direction.


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


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The question is on Motion No. 3. 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:

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Pursuant to Section (11) of Standing Order 79, the recorded division on the proposed motion stands deferred.
The question is on Motion No. 5. Is the House ready for the question?


Some Hon. Members:: Question.


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 nays 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.
The House will now proceed to Motion No. 6 and Motion No. 8 which are grouped for debate but will be voted on separately.


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Motion No. 6.
That Bill C-l 10, An Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 14 by striking out line II at page 13 and substituting the following therefor:
"shall not at any time exceed 3 billion 500 million and T\
Motion No. 8.
That Bill C-l 10, An Act to amend the Export Development Act, be amended in Clause 18 by striking out line 38 at page 17 and substituting the following therefor:
"shall not at any time exceed 2 billion 500 million and I".
He said: Mr. Speaker, the House will know, and I hope the Minister now appreciates, that this Party is 100 per cent in favour of increasing Canada's trade. Indeed, if we were in Government we would not be falling behind in our share of world trade the way we have done under this Government. Our trade would be growing and expanding and we would be using the private sector and the ability of private entrepreneurs to supply the financing, the go, the insurance and the capacity this country so badly needs. The issue is not trade, the issue is accountability to Parliament. Parliament cannot under any circumstances give any government a blank cheque. Parliament cannot vote money for no definite purpose other than the amorphous purpose to supply to some group of bureaucrats in the future some day, somewhere, the right to take without a vote ever again money to support a program, whether it is good, in the sense that Parliament would approve it, or not.
Sir, the Minister of National Defence (Mr. Blais) has been here most of the afternoon and he said we could vote on appropriations for money to be put into the EDC, which would presumably be available to the Government to spend as it desires with respect to export promotion. The Minister will
know that that is not the case. Once this Bill is passed, the Government will be able to draw down $62 billion in one form or another by either subscriptions to capital or through loans by the corporation, by insurance placed by the corporation to cover export goods or by loans made by the Governor in Council to people who, as the corporation's own directors have said, are not credit worthy, or by guarantees made to people who, as the Corporation's own directors have said, are not credible.
Sir, this Bill gives the Government $62 billion worth of authority, and any Member of Parliament who allows this Bill to go through the way it is is not fulfilling his duty to his constituents, the people of Canada. This is a heinous Bill, which under no circumstances should ever pass this House of Commons. I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that in the last group of amendments over 80 Members of Parliament speaking for the Progressive Conservative Party spoke out and demanded accountability. 1 say to you, Sir, that those Members will again rise and speak out demanding accountability. We will continue to rise and speak out demanding accountability because we will not have Parliament become a rubber stamp for $62 billion without any further votes, just on the basis of something that some Minister and his henchmen in the Civil Service may decide is in our best interests.
Under no circumstances, Sir, can this Bill be proceeded with in the way it is. These proposed amendments will at least partially control the rape of the public Treasury and the credit of Canada. We must pass these amendments or work out something with the Minister or the Government to come to grips with the problem, we cannot go on forever debating the contention that Parliament is meaningless and this Government has the God-given right, because it is Liberal and trade is a wonderful thing, to grab $62 billion and use it as it sees fit.
Sir, dealing with Motions Nos. 6 and 8, the Government presently has the right to endorse, guarantee and insure up to a limit of $3.5 billion by Order in Council alone activities in the nature of trade which the directors of the EDC find improvident or poor deals. How that legislation ever came to be in place is beyond me. How any previous Parliament could have ever given the Governor in Council the right to go out and sign Canada's endorsement on promissory notes right around the world is beyond me. 1 remind Your Honour that these are promissory notes which the directors of the Export Development Corporation find to be the kind with which Canada should not be involved. However, that is what the present Act states. Under Bill C-l 10, the Government wants the right to extend this guarantee provision, this insurance provision, ordered by Order in Council alone, to $10 billion. The amendment brings it back to reason, back to the $3.5 billion. It does not go far enough. The amendment should abolish the right to make guarantees without coming to Parliament. However, that is as far as one can go when one is amending a piece of legislation, according to the rules of the House.
September 20, 1983

O)
Then the question comes to us: Does the Government need this money? How does it use these guarantees? The fact is that while it has the right to go out in the world markets and sign improvident promissory notes and give improvident guarantees, which even its own directors and its own officers say are not fair, are not good and amount to bad business for Canada, it has done so to the extent of $460 million. It still has the authority, under the existing legislation, to guarantee over $3 billion worth of trade notes and receivables and the like without the Bill going through.
One of the key principles of legislation demanding money from Parliament is that there be a need for the money. The Government cannot, under any stretch of the imagination, show the need for the guarantees and the kind of activity described in Motion No. 6. It still has over $3 billion of the right to give insurance and guarantees by Order in Council, without ever coming to Parliament, under the existing legislation; yet the Minister, without any thought at all, without ever explaining either in committee or in the House why he needs this guaranteed right, is coming to Parliament to ask for $10 billion worth of the right to sign promissory notes and make guarantees. He does not need that authority. There never was a need for that authority. There is no demand for that authority. No Parliament should have ever given the authority in the first place. To demand what he wants is totally and absolutely obscene. It is the kind of request that should be torn out of the Bill. I would expect the Minister in this debate to stand up and withdraw the whole section because he should know that this business of guaranteeing insurance claims, receivables and promissory notes that are not within the concept of the requirements of a prudent board of directors is the kind of guarantee that no one should allow.
I notice that Your Honour is rising. I will ask the consent of the House to continue because, unfortunately, these amendments are both separate and grouped for debate, and I would appreciate some help.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent for the Hon. Member to extend his remarks?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


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


Donald Alex Blenkarn: Mr. Speaker, I thank the House. Motion No. 8 is different from Motion No. 6 in that it deals with another activity by the Government. Under Motion No. 8, the present Bill provides that the Governor in Council have the right to take money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund up to the extent of $2.5 billion and to lend that money to foreign companies, foreign countries or people to finance foreign trade. I want to read into the record of the House the terms of the loans as follows:
31. (1) Where the Minister reports to the Governor in Council that
(a) the Board is of the opinion that a proposed loan or guarantee of the kind
described in section 29 would, if made or issued, be for a term or in an amount
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in excess of that which the Corporation would normally undertake in relation to any one export transaction, person, country, government or agency thereof or in relation to a particular export transaction, person, country, government or agency thereof, and
(b) in the opinion of the Minister it is in the national interest-
The Minister can make those loans from the Consolidated Revenue Fund right now to the extent of $2.5 billion, and he wants it to be increased to $10 billion. What he is asking us to do in Bill C-110 is to give him $10 billion so that that money will never again have to come to a vote in Parliament. The Bill carries on until the money is all spent. It is a statutory amount in the Estimates. One never votes on it, one cannot dispute it. It is like the old age pension. One cannot say anything about it unless there is a change in legislation. It is statutory. He wants the right to have that amount of $10 billion so that by Order in Council it can be lent to whoever for whatever period. That is the way it will be. Right now the Government has the right to spend up to $2.5 billion. The Government has lent $711 million as of its last end of year. Therefore, as of its last end of year, it had roughly a $1.8 billion leeway.
The Government may state that it has commitments to give to foreigners, that it has agreed to give, for example, the people of New York City $600 million of Canadian money at 9.7 per cent. I want to say to Your Honour that the New York deal was turned down in large part by the directors of the Export Development Corporation, but the Cabinet, so businesslike, so competent, so capable, so careful with the money of the taxpayers of Canada, wanted to lend to the city of New York, which was at one point, I believe, virtually declared bankrupt, $1 billion. It therefore had to come up with $650 million from the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada needs to help the poor, deprived people of New York. The Government of Canada therefore has a commitment, according to the Minister, to take out of this $2.5 billion allowance that extra $650 million or so to give to the city of New York. Even if the $650 million is taken against the limit, there is still a great deal of a limit there.
There should not be any limit there. If the Government of Canada wants to make grants, loans or advances through Cabinet order, then it should come to this House and present an estimate, a Bill, and allow Parliament to vote with respect to the money so that Parliament would have some say as to the purpose of the money.
What we have here is a Bill which gives the Government the right to use the money any way it wants. There are really no restrictions. Any transaction in any agency, government or corporation does not have to be proven to be for the benefit of Canada. As long as the Minister says it is for Canada's benefit, then it is and we rubberstamp it. Under these two provisions there is the right to go to a total of $20 billion. That is unconsionable.
If the Minister were to come to us to say that the Government will need $500 million of taxpayers' money from the Consolidated Revenue Fund to promote a particular job or project, we could work out a system whereby the money could
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September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
be expedited for that project or system. But to give any government, even if it happens to be a Progressive Conservative Government, this right not only this year but next year and in the years to come is wrong because a government is only that. The Members of this House are the representatives of the people of Canada. They have the obligation from the time Parliament was first created to grant or refuse funds to Her Majesty. It is our obligation as Members of Parliament to fight for that principle and to insist upon it.
I point out that that is what this debate is about. It is not about exporting or foreign trade. It is about one thing, the fact that government must be accountable to Parliament and government does not have the right to demand a blank cheque of Parliament. It matters not what the cause is. Export is quite a valid cause, but the cause does not matter. The Government does not have the right to ask this of us and it does ask this of us in this Bill. These amendments must be supported, and I would appreciate the House giving them its support.


Mr. Murray Cardiff (Huron-Bruce):: Mr. Speaker, I am sure it is clear in general terms to Members opposite why we on this side have reservations about the Bill before us. It is question of accountability to Parliament of a Crown agency to control a very significant chunk of public money. This Bill would give it control of a very much larger chunk of public money as well. In itself, the request for more money might make some sense, although I must say that so far I do not believe that the Government has had the courtesy to try to present any sensible case for asking for such a huge increase in the ceiling put upon EDC by statute.
I say to Government Members opposite that if there is a sensible case to be made why the Export Development Corporation needs so much increase in the ceiling, to please make it.
I know that some of my colleagues on this side are concerned that EDC is being used by the Government to become another foreign agency, particularly since the Government wants to have a CIDA representative on the board. I must say that I personally may be less alarmed about the question of EDC acting as a giver of foreign aid since I was convinced by the hearings of the Special Committee on the National Trading Corporation three years ago that concessionary financing is a virtual necessity for our export community. I mean that I do not regard concessionary financing as a form of foreign aid. It is a form of promotional financing offers, such as other countries make in their credit mixed packages and such as we must make if we are to sell abroad on many major projects.
Perhaps it does cost the country money in a way, but if properly handled it is the kind of public cost that should be repaid by public benefits such as an increased revenue base for Government.
All of which is to say that I could see certain kinds of arguments that the Government might have in mind as reasons for asking now to have the ceilings on EDC increased by so much. But the Government does not appear to want to grant us the courtesy of making these or any other kind of sensible arguments to convince us that the money limits it is proposing
for EDC are really needed for the corporation's exercise of its proper purposes.
What is of very great concern on this side of the House is that the Government appears to treat the Act we are being asked to amend as a form of spending authority. It appears to want Parliament to approve enormous increases-in fact a tripling or quadrupling-in the authorized capital and loan limits on EDC, yet without going through the formal and, I suggest, sacred process of getting formal spending authority from Parliament. What the Government appears to be proposing is that the Parliament of the people, which has grown through the centuries precisely because it has held the power of the purse strings, should step aside and allow a Crown corporation to determine, in consort with the bureaucrats of the Treasury Board and the PCO, how and when to spend a big chunk of the taxpayers' money.
This is just not acceptable. We may have the greatest respect in the world for the talents and good judgment of civil servants and Crown employees, but the fact remains that this Parliament exists, as it has always existed, to provide a check upon the Crown and its employees. The bureaucrats may have good judgment and might exercise good judgment, but when it comes to making decisions about spending public funds it is not their judgment to make. It is ours, even if we exercise judgment poorly.
It seems to me to be a fundamental principle of our parliamentary system that no funds-not even one single penny- can be properly spent without some sure and certain parliamentary authority. Merely passing a Bill that increases the statutory ceiling for EDC's capitalization does not confer any kind of spending authority at all in my view. If that is so, then the Government's apparent belief that EDC can receive new appropriations of its authorized capital merely by Order in Council and without a parliamentary appropriations Bill is wrong. If it is wrong, then we should ensure, as custodians of the public purse, that we get this matter cleared up before we make any changes in the statutory ceiling on EDC.
Let me repeat the point. In my view, no matter how good the judgment of bureaucrats may be, when it comes to spending public money, it is not up to them to decide that public money may be spent. At the very most, it is the proper job of the bureaucrats to decide how this money will be spent once we here in Parliament say that it can be spent. Once again I say that even if we exercise bad judgment about spending public money, we here in Parliament are the only body in the land that can exercise any judgment, good or bad, about spending public money. That power to grant or to withhold money from the Crown is a power belonging to the people and held by us in trust as their elected representatives. This is not merely some vague or colourful historical theory. This is the actual fact, constitutionally recognized, and we are sworn to uphold the Constitution that recognizes it. We are also pledged, by our act of faith with our electors, to maintain for them the power to grant or withhold money from the Crown.
Time and again in Parliament we on this side object to the kind of attitude displayed by the Government toward the
September 20, 1983

spending of public money. It is almost the whole of what was meant when we talked about bypassing Parliament. It may be in the nature of governments to want to exercise power without any controls. Apparently, it is in the nature of many people at any rate. But it should certainly be in our nature as Parliamentarians to want to oppose that tendency of Government.
We have grown accustomed to watching Members on the other side of the House bark like trained seals when their Cabinet bosses tell them how to vote. However, even given that whimpering, cringing response, we should expect that Government Members who are afraid to challenge their Cabinet bosses here in the House would sit down privately with them and explain the limits to them. Something very important is leaching out of our system of government if Parliament goes along with the trampling of its control over the public purse.
Therefore, my colleague for Mississauga South (Mr. Blen-karn) has proposed amendments that would deny the Government increases in the ceilings that it wants to use as a signed blank cheque. What I would like to see is an Export Development Corporation that serves the needs of Canada's exporting community in a broad sense. I suspect 1 may be less restrictive than some of my colleagues in my understanding of what kinds of functions properly fall in this mandate. And yet, equally with them, I want to see EDC preserved as an instrument that serves only our export aims, and not our unrelated foreign policy aims. It is merely a failure of imagination or administrative competence if the Government cannot manage its foreign policy aims without corrupting the functions of agencies like the EDC. At the moment, however, EDC is not short of money or of borrowing authority. If we accept the amendments of my colleague from Mississauga South, we are not going to starve the corporation. What we are going to do is to say, as a Parliament, that we are not sent here to give away power over the public purse but to retain it and to exercise it. And so I say to Members opposite, that whether they want to speak in private to their Cabinet overlords to persuade them to accept our amendments or withdraw the Bill, or whether they are willing to stand up and be counted here in the House, they should in either case accept and support the amendments proposed by my colleague.
1 think it is clear to all Members opposite that the public has not been impressed with their stewardship of the public purse and their management of the country's economic affairs. It is no good blaming mismanagement on the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau) and the Cabinet if Members opposite continue to vote with them and never act as they were sent here to act. So I say to Members opposite that we look to them to act as we do, ensuring that the parliamentary controls over EDC are not weakened but that we begin to reassert our historical authority over public spending. I urge support of the amendments proposed by my colleague, the Hon. Member for Mississauga South.


Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, in joining to support this amendment I should like to say that it is of basic
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importance that Members opposite really understand what they are doing even if they do not understand the proposals that my colleague has made with regard to Bill C-110. Somewhere along the road we do have to put a ceiling on government spending. There is absolutely no way that we can allow governments or government Crown corporations to continue to grow in the direction in which this Government has been allowing them to go now for approximately 18 years, and more especially in the last three or four years.
We are not speaking against exports. Many of my colleagues have stated that we are not debating that issue at all. We recognize that there is ample room for more export than we have ever had before because we have a $20 billion deficit and because our industries are running at only about 80 per cent capacity. Therefore, there is ample room for business to catch up in Canada and get the show back on the road.
It has not been a lack of funding that has created this situation, it has been a lack of initiative and the political climate provided by the Government in order to facilitate the exporting of what we can do best.
Unfortunately, many Canadians, and I would even suggest that perhaps a large number of bureaucrats, are not even aware of the numbers or the names of many Crown corporations in Canada. I remember when AECL was before the Public Accounts Committee. Each day Government Members would come in and give an increased number of Crown corporations. You would remember that, Mr. Speaker. It was an embarrassment to them. 1 would wager today there is not a Canadian, in the Civil Service or elsewhere, who would be able to put an exact figure on the number of Crown corporations we have. As a result, we have to exercise some kind of control over that.
I would like to bring to the attention of the House the question put on the Order Paper by the Hon. Member for Esquimalt-Saanich (Mr. Munro). The question was answered on June 29. There we have Petro-Canada, a Crown corporation. It is just a baby as far as Crown corporations are concerned. But yet there are 33 subsidiaries to Petro-Canada at the present time. It has exploded. This is what happens unless you can exercise some kind of control over a situation like that. Further, we find one individual in particular has 23 directorships on Crown corporations. It is a massive business for the bureaucrats in which to get involved. I would hope that Members opposite would recognize just exactly what they are doing.
If the system had been working, if we had an example, then I could go along with it, and I am sure my colleagues could too. But between 1977 and 1982, Canadian productivity rose by just .3 per cent, whereas in Japan it rose 27.6 per cent; in Italy it rose 22.6 per cent; in France it rose 22.3 per cent; in Germany it rose 14.7 per cent; in the United Kingdom it rose 18.2 per cent, and in the United States it rose 3.6 per cent. But here in Canada our productivity rose .3 per cent. Extending the amount of money that is provided to this Crown corporation will not resolve the problem.

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
We recognize one of the great institutions that we have in Canada, which I believe has a lot of credibility, the Economic Council of Canada. In its recent report, on page 51, we find this:
Canada is perhaps the country with the least private-sector participation in export financing decisions. The governments of most other industrial nations encourage bank participation in this area, more so than does the government of Canada. In six of the industrialized countries examined, the supply of primary financing is left completely in the hands of the private sector, which may, however resort to public rediscounting facilities. In most of the 17 countries studied, the negotiations for granting export credit are also left to the private sector. This is not the case in Canada, where direct negotiations take place between the EDC and the foreign buyer. When the banks are invited to participate jointly with the EDC in long-term financing, they often complain of being denied access to all the information and to the negotiations, and of being presented with ready-made proposals.
This is exactly what I was saying earlier when I said 1 do not think that any of the bureaucrats really have all the basic knowledge and information required in these situations.
The Economic Council report devoted a full chapter to the subject of export finance and the EDC. The Government Members on the other side of the House would do well to read the report before performing on cue before the proposed amendments are put to a vote. The thrust of the report is to scale down and reorientate the EDC, not to augment it. Seven of the report's 31 recommendations pertain to the EDC.
The Economic Council found that few credit and insurance gaps exist in Canada. It questioned whether or not the EDC needs to be involved in insurance and in financing when the private sector is able to meet the need. It observed that Canadian exports are not as heavily subsidized as exports in other countries, and what subsidies do exist find their way to a very limited number of firms. It recommends that the EDC do less direct financing and that the private sector do more.
These are the recommendations made by the Economic Council. I hope Members opposite will pay attention to them:
We recommend that the Export Development Corporation gradually move towards providing export credit re-insurance, leaving the field of insurance proper to the private sector. We further recommend that the Export Development Corporation serve as the insurer of last resort to close any gaps left by the private sector in the supply of export credit insurance.
We recommend that the Export Development Corporation continue to provide direct financing for Canadian sales abroad when there is reason to believe that the private sector is unable to provide the required credits. Public financing should be made available only under terms and conditions commensurate with the risks involved and the costs of such assistance-including the opportunity cost of the funds used-except in those cases where it is deemed necessary to take into consideration the export-support programs of other countries.
We further recommend that the Export Development Corporation's gradual withdrawal from most direct lending activities be accompanied by an increased concentration of its efforts in the field of credit insurance and bank guarantees. The Corporation should also stand ready to provide refinancing facilities for private lending institutions engaged in export finance.
We recommend that the federal Government continue its efforts, at meetings of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, to obtain an international agreement to further limit subsidized export credit. In the absence of such an agreement, we recommend that Canada use subsidized credit only in cases where there is a sufficiently strong presumption that it will facilitate the opening of new markets, or that it will increase the market share for Canadian products.
We recommend that, in the absence of an international agreement to further limit subsidized export credit, the federal Government consider the advisability of matching foreign export-support programs that currently have no equivalent in Canada and of providing assistance to domestic firms which must compete with imports that have benefited from foreign subsidized credits.
We recommend that the private sector be encouraged to supply direct export credits to Canadian producers even when a public subsidy is deemed necessary. The federal Government, through the Export Development Corporation, should assume the cost difference between the preferential conditions offered and the conditions that would have prevailed had private financing been offered in the absence of public support.
We recommend that the Export Development Corporation manage separately those of its activities that are intended to expand markets for Canadian products. We further recommend that provision be made for greater co-ordination between the Export Development Corporation and the Canadian International Development Agency whenever their activities overlap.
I apologize for reading these recommendations. I know it is always boring, but I wanted to bring to the attention of Hon. Members opposite what the Economic Council of Canada indicated. I thank the House for the opportunity to present it at this time.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: Mr. Speaker, I support Motions Nos. 6 and 8 in the name of the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn), and I want to give the reasons for saying so. Government Members might be somewhat surprised by the manner in which the Official Opposition is speaking out on this Bill. They might have felt there would be a period of time in the House when Opposition Members would make their case and then silently slip away into the night. I am sure that was the Minister's hope. The reason the Official Opposition is so adamant and that many of its Members are speaking on these various motions is that the Bill has finally given us a vehicle with which to press home the point that Canadians are not satisfied with the financial accountability the Government has applied to the use of taxpayers' money.
Whether one speaks about the Export Development Corporation, other Crown corporations or the daily administration of Government itself, Canadians across the country are concerned about the lack of accountability. Unless Government Members are willing to make some changes and to come to some understanding on the motions that have been moved, they might have to sit for some period of time yet to hear the case we are making on behalf of Canadians. We intend to keep making the case.
Motion No. 6, which was adequately described by the mover, would allow the Government of Canada to increase the limit on promissory notes to $10 billion from the present $3.5 billion. When one looks at that motion, it is interesting to note that the Government has come to the House of Commons with a request to increase the limit to $10 billion when in fact it has not expended the present limit. 1 understand it has expended about $460 million, leaving over $3 billion or roughly 80 per cent of the present limit. Surely the first question which must be asked is why the Government wants to increase the limit if the present limit has not been expended in the first place.
The Government cannot simply be given a blank cheque, because our past experience with its profligate spending and its
September 20, 1983

desire to operate outside Parliament or away from the scrutiny of Parliament would allow it to do so again in spades, even more than what is presently in place. The Government has not been able to expend the limit, yet it wants the limit increased. The Minister and his supporters do not give us the reasons for this.
1 ask Government Members whether or not they have asked their Minister why he wants it increased from $3.5 billion to $10 billion. If they have asked him, which 1 doubt, even more important, are they able to explain to the Canadian public why the Export Development Corporation, through the Government, needs a $10 billion limit rather than the $3.5 billion which is not being totally used at present? I am sure they have not asked the Minister about this.
It is not only the Opposition which should hold the Government accountable. Government Members should hold their own Ministers accountable, and I suggest they are not doing it.
I do not know why the Government would want to come to Parliament and request an increase in the limit when at present it is only expending 20 per cent of the $3.5 billion. This is what we are being asked to do.
Motion No. 8 would allow loans through the Consolidated Revenue Fund to be increased from the present limit of $2.5 billion to $10 billion. Again we find that the Government has not reached the present limit in this respect. It is at some $700 million as against the $2.5 billion limit. I will not make the argument again about why it asks for more when even this profligate Government has not expended it to the limit. What is more important is that we would allow these expenditures from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. If the Canadian public does not understand what is the Consolidated Revenue Fund, let me indicate that it is a fund that has been financed by Canadian taxpayers. It is a pot of their money. The Government is saying that it wants that limit without a vote in the House by elected Members of Parliament. This is what the Government is after.
1 ask Government Members whether they have asked the Minister how they are to explain back home an expenditure of up to $10 billion without any parliamentary vote, without any parliamentary discussion, without any parliamentary scrutiny. Have they asked, or do Government Members simply relish their reputation for asking nothing, seeing nothing, hearing nothing-


Mr. Friesen:: But spending everything.


Arthur Jacob (Jake) Epp: They want to be allowed to sit on the right side of the Speaker; then life is complete for a Liberal. It is a little more complicated than that.
Yesterday I had an opportunity to have a discussion with a number of representatives from the private sector, people from the United States, Australia and Canada. The purpose was to have an exchange between people in the private sector and people in the public sector in terms of accountability, how Parliament functions and how it should function. Executives of
Export Development Act
the private sector simply cannot understand how Members of the Crown and executives of Crown corporations are not literally put on the griddle by their supporters on a constant basis, asking reasons why something was done in such and such a way and what is the bottom line. They cannot understand it, and neither can Canadians.
A recent poll indicated that for many Canadians Parliament is irrelevant. There are reasons for that. I will not go through all the reasons. However, I suggest that Parliament only became relevant in Britain when it was able to hold accountable those who were in charge. The reason Parliament is not important to Canadians today is that they see that that function has been largely lost by Parliament. Nobody is more to blame than the Government opposite.
There are all kinds of emoluments or certain perks that Members of Parliament may have, but do not question the real issues, such as how the Government is spending the taxpayers' money. That is the real issue. The Minister, fine chap that he might be, knows that all he has to do is to ride out the storm and eventually it will be a $10 billion limit here, a $10 billion limit there, a $60 billion limit on EDC. What can he do then? He can go and have his party with the boys at EDC. He will say, "Boys, it was a long, hard battle, but here's your money. I got it for you."
1 am being very blunt with the Minister. I say to him that it is high time that this Government came to grips with that accountability question. I see you rising, Mr. Speaker, I am sure in anticipation of my next sentences. I simply say that if the Government wants Parliament to become relevant, then let it become accountable and be willing to come under the scrutiny of accountability which I believe the Members of this House are willing to give it.


John William Bosley: Mr. Speaker, I rise for the third time on Bill C-l 10, this time on amendments Nos. 6 and 8 proposed by the Hon. Member for Mississauga South (Mr. Blenkarn). 1 do so following the Hon. Member for Provencher (Mr. Epp). I say to that Hon. Member that I wish I had thought of many of the words he contributed and to congratulate him on his speech. 1 would like to follow on what he has said because the Minister is present.
I should say to the Minister that if he would see his duty in terms of parliamentary control over spending the way he sees his obligation as a Minister to be here when his Bills are before the House, which is unusual for Members of the Liberal Cabinet, we would not have a problem. What is frustrating about this issue, and we have debated several of these issues, is that we appear to be butting our heads against the brick wall on an issue that ought to be fundamental to any Member of any government in Canada.
The Hon. Member for Provencher put the figures on the record. Let me just repeat them briefly. The funds already available under the section which amendment No. 6 deals with are $3.5 billion, of which just over $460 million have been taken up, the funds available under amendment No. 8 are $2.5

September 20, 1983
Export Development Act
billion, of which $1.4 billion have been committed but only $711 million have been advanced.
Just as important is the fact that there is unused authorization, which makes a mockery of the suggestion that more authorization is needed. Just as important, if in other sections of the Bill we were talking about the EDC in terms of its own transactions needing greater authorization, we are in this case talking about transactions which the EDC cannot finance. In both cases we are talking about either insurance guarantees or loan guarantees which require the approval of Cabinet over what for the sake of reference may be called the Cabinet's own account. Let us be clear about what that means.
The Cabinet has proposed that we consider increasing authorizations beyond what appears to be necessary in accounts the very nature of which is that the decisions to spend those moneys will not be taken by an independent or semiautonomous Crown corporation, but will be taken directly by the Cabinet, because they are not good for proper business transactions in the sense that they are too great or beyond the scope or outside what the EDC believes it can do.
We have a marriage of two principles here. We are being asked to consider increasing authorizations well beyond needed funds, based on the existing experience, to be spent in secret by the Cabinet. All Parliament will ever know is after the fact. It ought to be a simple matter to get it clear to a Minister of the Crown that everybody in this House wants to see Canadian trade expanded. This debate will go on forever about the trade aid question. There will be times when it will be necessary to use forms of EDC financing, forms of EDC guarantees, forms of CIDA aid assistance to make deals. Everybody in the business knows that. Everybody in the world is competing on those terms.
When the Cabinet has a proposal that would be good for Canadians business in its view, one that would require funds to be advanced under these sections, those sections which the Cabinet has authority over and which it believes would be good for Canadian industry and trade and job development, the principle espoused in the Bill is "We will do it, but we do not dare trust telling Parliament in advance about making those extensions of Canadian liabilities the qualities of the deal. Later we will tell you what we used your money for." The principle that ought to be near and dear to the heart of the Minister is that Parliament authorizes the spending of the money and therefore Parliament ought to consider deals that are beyond the business scope of EDC. If we cannot deal with the scope of the internal matters that relate to EDC, surely to goodness when those deals involve direct Cabinet approval because they are beyond the scope of EDC, those are exactly the situations which ought to be before Parliament for its scrutiny.
It is really that simple. Perhaps nowhere else in this Bill is this principle more important than in the sections governed by these amendments. The principle is this. If the Minister believes that selling something Canadian to another country is in the best interest of that industry and of Canada and he proposes to guarantee it, if he wishes to avoid creating the
impression that there is something to hide in that deal and avoid creating the impression that the Government proposes to create more fiascos of the nature we have seen in the last little while after the fact, then let him say one of two things now. Let him say that the Members of the Opposition are right, that Parliament should see deals that exceed the EDC natural disposition before they are made so that the Minister can get the best wishes of Parliament. Second, the Minister could say to the House that the EDC needs authorization 7, 8 or 9 times what already has been spent, or that those changes are not necessary in any sense of normal business practice.
I note the clock, Mr. Speaker, so through you, I would say that the Minister must come to recognize that the opposition on these points of fundamental principle will not go away. Parliamentary control over spending is far too important.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION

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

Robert Alfred Corbett: Mr. Speaker, on December 15, 1981, after the infamous announcement made by the then Minister of Transport indicating that it was his intention to axe 20 per cent of the nation's rail services, which threat he in fact carried out, I asked the Minister what he would do to provide alternate services to such communities as Minto and Chipman, Napodogan and Juniper, Plaster Rock and McGiv-ney and others. He informed me that bus service would be provided to those communities that were left without alternate sources of transportation. That was on December 15, 1981, Mr. Speaker.
Yesterday we were treated to an announcement by the new Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy) that in effect there may have been some mistakes made by the former officials of VIA Rail which were, of course, sanctioned by the then Minister of Transport, and that he would ask VIA Rail to take a look at the cuts that were made with a possible view to restoring two of those lines, one of which was the Edmundston-Moncton run which would service a great many of those communities I just mentioned.
I was pleased to hear that the Minister is making that recommendation to VIA Rail officials, and I would anticipate that not only will he ask that they review it, but will suggest in strong terms that they positively favour the re-establishment of
September 20, 1983______________________ COMMONS DEBATES
that particular run between Edmundston and Moncton. 1 shall listen with a great deal of interest to the Acting Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport. No doubt he will address himself to that particular question as it is indeed of particular relevance to the question I posed to the Minister back in 1981.
I would also like to hear the Acting Parliamentary Secretary address himself to the other major cut that was made to the railways in New Brunswick, primarily the elimination of the VIA Rail service, the Atlantic Limited, which was certainly one of the most popular trains in the nation at the time and which carried approximately 240,000 passengers annually, the elimination of which left southern New Brunswick and area virtually without connection to Upper Canada and to points west.
I would like to read from an article that appeared in The Telegraph-Journal on October 7, 1981, and I quote:
Modern new trains will be coming to the Maritimes in the summer of 1983, Federal Transport Minister Jean-Luc Pepin said here Tuesday-
He said:
"That's why I'm willing to gamble. Popularity is a very, very difficult thing in life, so I'm willing to take two years of flak because people in the Maritimes and in the West, in two or three years from now, will ride in their LRCs and they'll say this guy Pepin wasn't so crazy after all, was he?"
According to The Telegraph-Journal, Mr. Speaker, he went on to say that:
-he is anxious to hear the reaction of people in Moncton and Saint John a few years from now when the light, rapid, comfortable (LRC) trains are introduced. He said he would like to hear them say "Mr. Pepin was not so nuts after all."
The summer of 1983 has come and gone and so have the hopes and aspirations of all of those in Saint John and Moncton and other areas which might have taken the word of the Minister and hoped that they would be riding on LRC trains. But in fact this did not materialize, just as the Minister of Transport of the day has dematerialized.
The comment to the now Minister would be that I would hope he will actively, even if it is in a political way, pursue the possibility, in a very positive manner, of re-establishing the Edmundston-Moncton route, as we have been pressing for, and also pursue the re-implementation of that most popular train, the Atlantic Limited, which created such a beneficial service to the residents of southern New Brunswick as it carried passengers from Moncton through Sain John to Montreal. Those people have been left without direct transportation to Montreal. They now have to travel hundreds of miles backwards to get to Montreal if they are going to take the most economical form of transportation. Who can afford air fares now, except those of us who are subsidized by the citizens of Canada so that we can travel back and forth on Air Canada?
I would leave the House with this thought. The decision that these services be eliminated must rest with the CTC. Just get those trains on and when we form the government we will ensure that they stay on.
Adjournment Debate


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, 1 thank the Hon. Member for his concern about this vital matter. Undoubtedly he is expressing the concerns of many constituents who have spoken to him about the cuts in rail services to their communities. However, I believe in all honesty he would admit that he is glossing over the problems which led to the decision VIA Rail had to make several years ago to cut some of its services. It was facing an increasingly large operating deficit which was in the neighbourhood of half a billion dollars a year. The Government had to make a decision to either continue to pour money into the operating losses or cut some of the services, take some of that money and put it into spending for new capital equipment which would enable VIA Rail at some future date to have new capital equipment with which to better serve the Canadian people and attract the kind of passenger traffic which is necessary to make it a viable service.
I am sure we have all heard of the huge amounts of money it costs to transport each passenger. I am not the parliamentary secretary for this Ministry, but I believe that every time a passenger pays $1 for rail transportation the Government contributes $4 or $5 in addition.
The present Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy) has directed that efforts be focused on achieving four main objectives: an improved national system of rail passenger services coast to coast; improved service to regional areas; increased operational efficiency and improved financial performance; and encouragement of feedback from the public generally and from other affected parties on Canadian rail passenger services. He is holding a meeting in Edmonton on September 29 with his provincial counterparts to discuss these matters and, hopefully, he will come up to the kind of judicious solution we expect from him. Thank you.


ENERGY-INCENTIVES FOR OIL SANDS PROJECTS. (B) GOVERNMENT OFFER
Jack Wendele Shields: Mr. Speaker, on June 2, just prior to the summer recess at the House of Commons, I asked a question of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Resources (Mr. Chretien). I suggested that the development of the oilsands creates thousands of jobs in virtually every sector of the Canadian economy, and particularly in Central Canada. I wanted to know whether the offer being made to BP and PetroCan on the Wolf Lake project in northeastern Alberta was being made to other oil companies to develop the vast resource of the oil sands industry in northeastern Alberta. His reply was that they could make an application and it would be reviewed by the Minister. He went on to say, and this is something to which I take serious objection:
Of course one of the problems is that many of the projects in the past were based on an ever-increasing international price for oil. We see now that the price has gone down so the economics of these projects are not the same as they were two years ago.

September 20, 1983
Adjournment Debate
Most of the difficulties are not because of the tax propositions we have put forward.
Today in Calgary the Minister of Energy and his Alberta counterpart announced that the $300 million Cold Lake project will go ahead. The reason the project is going ahead, Mr. Speaker, and 1 am reading from the press release, is that the federal Government will provide earned depletion allowance and waiver of payment of the petroleum gas revenue tax until the company has recovered its capital costs in accordance with federal budget provisions announced in April, 1983.
The Minister has the audacity to stand in this Elouse, Sir, and say to me that the economics of this project are no longer feasible, and then in a press release today, to get maximum political impact in Alberta, particularly in northern Alberta, he says that they have waived the PGRT, a tax which damn near killed the industry in western Canada and the western basin.
When I asked this question I suggested that there were thousands and thousands of jobs available if the Minister would get off his posterior and get those oil sands developed in northeastern Alberta. He states in the press release that 700 direct jobs will be created and filled primarily by residents of the Cold Lake region. Another 90 permanent jobs will result from the operational phase of the project.
My point is, Mr. Speaker, that if the Government with its national energy policy had offered this deal to Imperial Oil in the very first place we would have a $12 billion construction program in northeastern Alberta developing one plant in Cold Lake, and another $12 billion plant north of Fort McMurray developing the oil sands in that area. Rather than 90 permanent jobs each plant would create 2,000 permanent jobs. Rather than a construction force of 700, we would have a construction force of ten times that size. When we get up and ask the Minister of Energy questions concerning the effect of the PGRT on the industry in northeastern Alberta we continuously get these shuffling evasive answers and that is just not good enough. In fact, Mr. Speaker. I will not use another term which is unparliamentary but it is certainly evasive. I would think that you can imagine what I would like to say.
At two o'clock today Edmonton time, Mr. Speaker, the Minister announced with great fanfare a project to develop the oil sands in northeastern Alberta which will probably have one tenth of the impact it could have had on the constructions force. All this at a time when people are looking for jobs and cannot find them, when people are begging for jobs. Unemployment is extremely high across the country and a megaproject the size of which I am talking about multiplies the number of jobs right across the land, so there would even be increased employment in central Canada. This affects virtually every Province in the country, Mr. Speaker.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, the hon. gentleman, in his comments, obviously ignored the economics of oil production. He ignored the fact that international oil
prices over the past two years have been extremely depressed which has affected some of the larger oil sands proposals, even though generous Government incentives had been offered. He pointed out that a deal was announced today in Calgary, I believe, but he also forgot that the incentives included in the deal announced today were previously announced in the budget of April 9, 1983.


Jack Wendele Shields: Too late.


David Berger: He also failed to mention that in addition to the concessions the Government of Canada has made, the Alberta Government will be lowering its royalty payment requirements. Although he may attribute all the blame to the federal Government, it would be more correct to note the over-all world situation than to note the efforts being made by other Governments in order to encourage production of this nature.
The gentleman was correct in saying that at the peak of its construction, 700 direct jobs would be created and another 90 permanent jobs would result from the operational phase.


TRADE MARKS AND PATENTS-PROPOSED CHANGES IN DRUG MANUFACTURING LICENCES. (B) FORMER MINISTER EMPLOYED BY DEPARTMENT
Mr. Svend J. Robinson (Burnaby):: Mr. Speaker, yesterday during Question Period I asked the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs. Erola) a question concerning the Government's proposed plans to remove Section 41(4) of the Patent Act. The effect of this change in the legislation would be to substantially increase the prices of pharmaceutical drugs to Canadian consumers as well as to increase taxes generally as a result of the dramatic rise in the total cost of preventional pharmacare plans. I could perhaps provide a bit of history concerning this situation.
In 1969, the Hon. Ron Basford brought forward proposed amendments to the Patent Act which implemented a scheme of compulsory licensing. This was as a result of a report by a parliamentary committee which very clearly documented that pharmaceutical drug prices in Canada were the highest in the world at that time. It was in response to this very, very serious situation that the Government moved in 1969. As I indicated, Ron Basford brought forward legislation to in fact permit the manufacture in Canada of generic drugs. At the time, the Conservative Party bitterly opposed this change. Today, it remains silent on the proposals of the Government. In 1969, the Government moved forward despite a very serious and powerful lobby by the multinational drug corporations.
Since the legislation was enacted in 1969, I would note that drug prices in Canada have dropped quite dramatically. The availability of generic drugs, both to hospitals and to consumers, has resulted in drug prices in Canada which are significantly lower than those in the United States, for example.
Just to give a few illustrations of the impact of this important legislation, I would note that 250 milligram tablets of chlorpropamide are sold in a one thousand tablet lot in Canada for $14.07, while it cost some $281.38 in the United States.
September 20, 1983

This drug is commonly used by diabetics. As well, concerning medication for heart patients, 1,000 tablets of chlorthalidone costs $30.47 in Canada and $289.98 in the United States. This is the cost from the wholesaler to the pharmacist. As a final example, one of the most commonly used pharmaceutical drugs in Canada is diazepam, the generic name for the drug better known as Valium. Again concerning the price to the pharmacist from the wholesaler, five milligram tablets of Valium cost $3.13 per 1,000 tablets in Canada and $189.97 in the United States. Clearly the effect of the legislation introduced in 1969 was to dramatically lower the costs of a wide range of pharmaceutical drugs to Canadian consumers and provincial Governments.
Earlier this year the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs proposed to repeal this important provision. It is interesting to note that the original author of the legislation, Ron Basford, has come out strongly opposed to the proposal and in fact has indicated that the Government is caving in to the multinational drug companies.
I note as well that a number of Members even in the Government caucus are speaking out in opposition to this regressive proposal because they recognize the very significant impact it would have on Canadian consumers. I would also ask how the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) could possibly defend such a proposal. She claims on the one hand to be trying to protect Medicare, but, of course, if the proposal of her colleague, the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (Mrs. Erola), is enacted, then the cost to provincial pharmcare plans for pharmaceutical drugs will go up very significantly. Indeed, so significantly that it could seriously threaten the survival of provincial pharmacare plans. There also would be a serious job loss in the generic drug industry in Canada which currently employs some 1,300 individuals.
In my view the impact of this legislation on the sick, poor and particularly elderly Canadians, whose reliance upon pharmaceutical drugs is greater than most of the others, would be devastating. I repeat that the Government's proposal amounts to nothing less than an attack on the poor, the elderly and the sick. It is for that reason that that the federal New Democratic Party is strongly opposed to any amendments whatsoever to Section 41(4) of the Patent Act.
I noted as well in my question yesterday that the Government has refused to consult until this point with those who are most affected; the Consumers Association of Canada, the National Anti-Poverty Organization and provincial governments. All are strongly opposed to this legislation. Indeed, the only group which has been consulted is the multinational drug industry and its former lobbyist, Martin O'Connell, who is now being paid by the taxpayers of Canada to advise the Government on these proposed legislative changes.
I urge the Government to withdraw any suggestion of these amendments and not to in any way dilute compulsory licensing
Adjournment Debate
in Canada. I would hope that the Government would recognize that the impact of this legislation would be very devastating, indeed, to many thousands of Canadian consumers, particularly the elderly, the poor and the sick.


David Berger: Mr. Speaker, 1 have often wondered how the Hon. Member could stand in the House with a straight face and make some of the outrageous exaggerations and assertions that he makes, particularly when he is trying to play with the sensibilities of the elderly, the poor and the sick, trying to score cheap political points at the expense of some of the people in our society who are least able to defend themselves.
I also argue that he is guilty of monumental hypocrisy. He and his Party are always crying about jobs. Now he is upset that the Government is showing concern about jobs in an extremely vital industry, an industry which holds so much portent for the future.

The Hon. Member ought to know, Mr. Speaker, that the current study was initiated following the shutdown of a number of drug companies, especially in the Montreal area, and that the Government of Quebec and several other provincial governments expressed serious concern about the future of that industry.

The Government's objective is to maintain low prices for consumers. I repeat that its objective it is to maintain low prices for consumers and to create a business climate that will support development of the industry with an emphasis on the growth of return, the development of exports and an active ingredient manufacturing in Canada.
The consultations are broad. Provincial Governments are being consulted. Last week, the Minister met with provincial Ministers, consumer organizations, patent holding manufacturers, generic companies and health care professionals. Also, the Minister of National Health and Welfare (Miss Begin) has expressed her concern that costs be kept low. A balance is being sought by the Government, even though that is an extremely difficult thing for the Member and his Party to understand.
With regard to Mr. O'Connell, he fully disclosed his previous association and severed all ties prior to being retained by the Minister. The Minister felt that his awareness of the company's concerns and his knowledge of government workings would be an asset in this particular review. There is no question but he is exercising his present attitudes in a fully impartial manner. I would ask the Hon. Member to stop dragging another person's name in the mud.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow afternoon at two o'clock.
At 6.25 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Wednesday, September 21, 1983