1983-11-17

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed from Monday, November 14, 1983 consideration of the motion of Mr. De Bane that Bill C-170, an Act to authorize investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishery enterprises, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry.
Hon. Roger Simmons (Burin-St. George's):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise to support Bill C-170. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) deserves the lion's share of credit for the initiative which is contained in this Bill. He, together with many others, has worked over many months to come up with the set of arrangements which are now before the House. I commend him and the many others who were involved, including the Premier of Newfoundland, Mr. Peckford, for the excellent results which have been achieved.
The deep sea sector of the fishery is the very cornerstone of the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada. I have some related figures, Mr. Speaker, which will show you what 1 mean. In 1982 there were sales of just over three quarters of a billion dollars, $770 million. And that was in a year when the industry was not in full swing. Indeed, some of the fish plants had been obliged to close late in that year, August and September, for various reasons, including financial ones. Notwithstanding, there were sales of more than three quarters of a billion dollars, which meant that 44,000 people in Atlantic Canada were employed in the deep sea sector. There were
20,000	fishermen, either in small boats, which in effect commute to fishing areas every day, or in trawlers and draggers, which go further afield and return home every few days with the catch.
[DOT]	(UlO)
There are 20,000 people in that category, another 24,000 men and women who depend directly on the fish processing plants in Atlantic Canada, a total of 44,000 people depending on this part of the fishery alone. When you relate those figures
to the population of Atlantic Canada, Mr. Speaker, you see how significant the deep sea fishing activity is to the economy of the region. It is fair to say that, in relative terms, the deep sea fishery is as significant to Atlantic Canada as is the automobile industry to central Canada. For that reason alone, letting the deep sea fishery go under is unthinkable.
That was one of the options, Mr. Speaker, one I thought was academic and to be dismissed out of hand until 1 heard continuing and disturbing suggestions that somehow the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Government of Nova Scotia and the Government of Canada ought not to be involved in this exercise. If you accept the argument that those three Governments ought not to be involved, you must ask the question: What then happens without the involvement of those three Governments? 1 would suggest one of two things: either the industry goes under completely, a complete collapse of the deep sea sector and the resulting chaos for three, four or five years until someone comes in and picks up the pieces; or we could have Government involvement in another way, as we have had over the years, that which I choose to characterize as the band-aid approach where we throw good money after bad by giving taxpayers' money to fish company managers to manage as badly as they have managed their own money.
There were, Mr. Speaker, just three options: to continue applying for band-aids; to walk away from the problem and allow economic and social chaos of a substantial size; or to do what is being proposed in this legislation. I support wholeheartedly the approach taken in this legislation, having in mind that I represent the largest fishing riding in all of Canada. I represent 1,500 miles of coastline with 135 communities, almost all of which have a very direct relationship to the fishery, many of them to the deep sea sector.
By way of example, there are 12 so-called deep sea plants in Newfoundland, eight of them in the riding of Burin-St. George's. Those plants are at Burgeo, Ramea, Gaultois, Harbour Breton, Grand Bank, Fortune, Marystown and Burin. In addition to those eight plants there are another 14, for a total of 22, in the riding of Burin-St. George's which depend on the fishery.
It would be helpful if we tried to put a human face on what we are talking about. Let us look at a community such as Ramea. This is a community of 1,400 people located on an island a few miles off the south coast of the island of Newfoundland. One hundred and twenty-five people of the community work the boats, either the trawlers or the inshore, and another 300 or so work in the plant. With fishermen and fish plant workers together there are 450 people out of 1,400 who

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act depend directly on the fishing industry for employment. One out of every three people in that community are directly employed in the fishery. For them the choice is not between fishing and some other employment activity. The choice is between fishing and nothing. The choice is between having a job in the fishery and seeing their employment opportunity, community and whole lifestyle collapse. That is Ramea.
I could mention Gaultois, which is also on an island and depends on a fish plant for its employment. 1 could mention Harbour Breton. I could mention some of the inshore communities like McCallum, Franpois, Grey River, Grand Bruit and La Poile. These communities know only one way of life. It is a way of life that has served them very well. If you are looking for record crime rates you do not look to these communities. If you are looking for vagrancy and vandalism you do not look to these communities. These phenomena are almost foreign to the very proud and dignified way of life which the people in those communities pursue. I for one want to see to it that we in this House do everything within our power to ensure that that way of life is allowed to continue, is encouraged and is allowed to enhance itself. Canada is well served by people of that ilk. Canada is well served by people with a value system such as we find alive, well and thriving in communities such as I have mentioned.
This Bill does not seek to make welfare ghettos of those communities, Mr. Speaker, but to allow them to continue a profitable economic activity which they have pursued with vigour over the years and still want to pursue. The only reason they have not been able to do it unimpeded is that we have had some fish company managers who have let their enthusiasm get in the way of their judgment. They have allowed those deep sea companies to become overextended financially and generally have made some other incompetent, ill-advised decisions, financial and otherwise.
The consequence is that we have an industry with much potential. After all, if you cannot make money selling fish in today's world, what can you make money at? The potential is there and has always been there. The independents are proving that so well. Even in very hard times the so-called independents in my riding are doing very well at a time when they had many adverse factors with which to contend. They continue to sell their fish. They continue to make a dollar.
[DOT] (U20)
The same could have been the case with the deep sea sector, if we did not have some overenthusiastic fish company managers who made some terribly incompetent decisions. Our time is being taken up here today because of the chaotic, disastrous results of those incompetent decisions.
In this Bill, the Government of Canada, in collaboration with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Nova Scotia, proposes the only sensible course of action open to it. A couple of days ago I listened with some interest to my good friend from South Shore (Mr. Crouse), in Nova Scotia, who spoke in this debate. Among other things, he suggested that a thorough search of the private sector has not
been done in an effort to find investment capital. I respect his view, and that may well be his view, but I submit to him that it is a very wrong view.
I do not ask him to accept my version on my say so, but before he makes that kind of statement publicly I ask him to compare notes with a colleague from his own Party, the Premier of Newfoundland. It is no secret to the House that the Premier of Newfoundland wanted very much to get the deep sea sector back on a stable footing without the involvement of the Government of Canada. The Premier of Newfoundland did everything he possibly could to attract private capital. His exploits to find private capital on both sides of the Atlantic are well known. He did everything within his power to try to find private capital. The principals of Fisheries Products also did everything within their power to find private capital, as did the Canadian Development Corporation and the Bank of Nova Scotia. Therefore I believe it is somewhat misleading for the hon. gentleman from South Shore to say that there is private capital out there.
Let me put it differently. If he knows of private capital which is out there, let him tell the House and the Government. I make an undertaking to him now that if he can come forward with the private capital we will scrap this Bill. We will do away with it because there will be no need for it.
The reason this legislation is before us today is that all Parties involved, the Government of Newfoundland, the companies concerned and the other investors, have all failed in the most diligent effort to find private capital to stabilize this deep sea sector. The gentleman from South Shore wants a schedule by which the Government would divest itself of the shares. I believe he has a schedule. I believe he has a firm undertaking from the Government and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans as well as the Premier of Newfoundland that the divestiture will take place at the earliest possible opportunity. If a buyer shows up reasonably soon, the shareholders provided for in this legislation will be very happy to talk to that buyer on an urgent basis.
I always become a little amused when I hear the Tories talking about the socialist umbrella, as the gentleman from the South Shore characterized it. I do not know where that leaves the Premier of Newfoundland, because he is part of this same so-called umbrella, or where it leaves Premier Buchanan of Nova Scotia. 1 never thought of him as being a socialist. 1 suppose it is the same old story in which the Tories stand for many things. They stand for one thing in this Chamber, something else in the hustings, something else in the Government of Nova Scotia and something else in the Government of Newfoundland. It must be very convenient to talk out of all sides of one's mouth at the same time.
This legislation has nothing to do with socialism. It has to do with a pragmatic approach. It has to do with responsibility. It has to do with doing what has to be done. The alternative is to allow those thousands of jobs to go down the drain.
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Let us make up our minds. Which is it? Is it some sinister approach which the gentleman from South Shore would have us believe? Or is it, as the Premier of Newfoundland, another great Tory, says-the best thing that happened to Newfoundland since Confederation? Which is it? Is it good or is it sinister? The economic viability of the industry must be the ultimate objective.
We have tempered that objective, of course, with a social cabinet. We recognize that communities such as Ramea, Gaul-tois, St. Anthony and Harbour Breton would have no future outside the fishery. So the Government has said that in those cases the industry ought not to bear the financial brunt. The Government of Canada on behalf of the taxpayers ought to address that issue. If it is determined that it is in the best interests to put taxpayers' money into communities like Ramea, the Government will do it quite apart from any objectives of the company which will manage the industry.
Finally, the question arises: Do I, as the Member who represents the largest fishing riding in Canada, have some reservations about this particular Bill? As a matter of fact, I do. It is not a perfect document. It is the result of a set of compromises which have been worked out with all the Parties involved.
Allow me, then, to state one of my reservations. This Bill has the effect of taking the Bank of Nova Scotia off the hook. I do not like that and I do not care who knows that I do not like it. The bank does not deserve to be taken off the hook. When the bank advanced the credit, it took its chances, or so you would believe. When the day of reckoning came, the bank should have lost its shirt for aiding and abetting incompetent fish company managers for making incompetent financial decisions. But that is not what happened; the bank did not lose its shirt because it had an ace up its sleeve. It had the Government across a barrel, in effect. It knew Governments would not stand by and allow bankruptcies to proceed and the assets of the deep sea sector dismantled and auctioned off. That would have put the industry in chaos for three to five years. The bankers sat in Toronto and smiled, and well they might. Their no lose scenario was working to perfection. Taxpayers would once again bail them out. At the right time we have to address that issue. We have to rein in those bankers so that they serve the people of this country instead of abusing them. This is the place, but this is not the time.
Let me say in conclusion that whiie I have some very serious reservations about the role of the bankers in this field, 1 recognize the Governments involved are doing the only thing they can to salvage the situation. It will do more than salvage; it will stabilize the situation and make for a very profitable fishery in the years ahead in Newfoundland and Atlantic Canada.


Hon. John C. Crosbie (St. John's West):: Mr. Speaker, in speaking on this Bill, I must point out that it is a very sketchy and incompetent piece of legislation that we are asked to approve by the Government opposite. This Bill does not in any way explain to us how the Government plans to carry out the so-called restructuring of the fishing industry in Canada.
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
The Minister when he introduced the Bill, as reported at page 28848 of Hansard, asked the question:
How can an industry that has so much going for it manage to get itself into such serious trouble?
The Minister went on and introduced the Bill but never once answered that question. There has been no rational explanation by the Government as to how the East Coast Atlantic fishery got into the state it is now in. The Minister has not explained whether or not this has anything to do with the policies of the federal Government. The fishery is solely within the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada. The Minister has not explained what policies of the federal Government might have contributed to the debacle in the fishing industry off the East Coast of Canada. He has not explained to this House how these policies will be changed or what new policies there will be that might change the situation.
His introduction of the Bill was full of half-truths and specious reasoning. The Minister said that the agreements reached with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia reflected to some extent the recommendations made by the Kirby task force. 1 do not know to what extent this Bill and these restructuring agreements agree with the report of the task force. They appear to be diametrically opposed. There was great conflict between the Kirby task force and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane). The recommendations of the task force are not carried out in the Bill. In fact, it does not even refer to the restructuring agreement entered into with Newfoundland or with Nova Scotia.
Then the Minister went on to say that the industry needed to become leaner and more efficient ashore and afloat. How will the industry become leaner and more efficient ashore and afloat if the Bill is passed? If Government-controlled corporations are to take over the industry in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, is it likely that there will be a leaner and more efficient structure, especially when a government or two governments are involved? Of course not. In my view, unfortunately we will see a Canadair applied to the fishing industry. There will be a great deal of losses in these new companies. They will not be leaner and more efficient. Once the politicians are involved, they will be anything but lean and efficient.
The Minister claimed that he reached an agreement with the Governments of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. He has not reached an agreement with the Government of Nova Scotia. There is a so-called agreement in principle, but there is no other agreement with Nova Scotia. He said that it was an agreement in principle. That is all it is.
There was no explanation by the Minister of why we should approve the Bill and no suggestion as to how it should be improved. There is no accountability under this piece of legislation. It is inadequate, disappointing, frightening and irresponsible. The legislation authorizes the Government to make loans, to give guarantees or to give grants to any fishing company or fishing arrangement that it wishes. It does not have to report back to the House as to whom it has made the

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act loans, to whom it has given the grants or why. It does not have to report annually to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry as to what it has done, why, to whom it has done it or how much money it has spent. The Government asks us to approve $138 million to be spent between now and March 31, 1985, without its having any obligation to return and report to the House.
We just listened to the Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's (Mr. Simmons) trying to blame the position of the industry on incompetent decisions by fish plant managers. What absolute tripe, to blame fish plant managers! What caused the crisis in the fishing industry? It was not the Bank of Nova Scotia which caused it. The Bank of Nova Scotia, poor devils, tried to support the fishing industry down through the years. They made loans and did their best to carry the fishing industry until it got beyond them. Why did it get beyond them? It was because of the interest rate structure in Canada. This incompetent Government which sits opposite allowed interest rates to rise to 22 per cent and 23 per cent. Today the rates are still 14 per cent or 15 per cent for companies engaged in the fishing industry.
This industry has very little equity in it. It has always been undercapitalized, has always had to borrow money and go to the banks to be supported. That is the history of the East Coast fishery. There has been heavy participation by the banks in the fishery. The banks and entrepreneurs took risks. Then this incompetent Government allowed the interest rate to go to 23 per cent, wrecked those fishing enterprises and made it no longer possible for the banks to carry the industry; the only alternative was for the Government to step in and carry it. There was no mention of that by the specious Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's. It has nothing to do with fish plant managers. The Hon. Member said that they overexpended. If the fishing companies overexpended, it was because they were encouraged to overexpend by the Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's, by politicians and by Governments generally. It was because DREE made grants and loans available, as did the provincial Governments.
Another reason the fishing industry is in its present position is overcapacity, but the main reasons are high interest rates and lack of equity, as well as marketing problems. The Minister did not explain that National Sea has had to close its plants in Newfoundland, not because of overexpansion or incompetent decisions of fish plant managers, but because it could not sell the product. The situation in the market for frozen fish products in the last year or two has been difficult because of the recession and competition from other products such as turkey, chicken and the like. National Sea has had to close at Burgeo and St. John's because of these marketing problems.
The Hon. Member did not explain that a lot of the trouble was caused by lack of sufficient throughput; many plants do not have sufficient fish to put through to keep the plants operating for a long enough period to meet overhead costs. Sufficient fish are not being caught to go through those plants. That is the responsibility of the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada decides on quotas and allocates quotas.
The federal Government of Canada is largely responsible, 1 would say to a degree of at least 90 per cent, for the crisis in the East Coast fishing industry. That is why it is the Government's obligation to bring in a measure to help it. Unfortunately the only alternative it is offering is the Bill now before the House.
We have no option but to support the Bill now before us. How could we stand by and see the East Coast fishing industry, the offshore fishing industry, collapse? In my own district of St. John's West there are 23 fish plants. One major plant is the National Sea plant with six stern trawlers. It is closed today; it has been closed for several months. It employs 400 or 500 people. There is the major fish plant at Trepassey of Fishery Products Limited with five stern trawlers. It has been closed for the last two or three months. It employs 500 or 600 people. There are three inshore plants at Petty Harbour. At Bay Bulls there is a major inshore plant. Unfortunately it was just destroyed by fire. The O'Briens, a tremendous force in the Newfoundland inshore fishery, are hoping to rebuild. Witless Bay has an inshore plant. There are plants at Tor's Cove, Calvert-the Ferryland saltfish operation-Aquaforte and Fermeuse. The plant at Fermeuse is a major one which used to be supplied by offshore as well as inshore vessels. Now it is to be restricted to an inshore operation. Also there are the ones at St. Marys, Riverhead, Jersey Side, Argentia, Branch, St. Bride's, Little Harbour East, Fairhaven and Arnold's Cove. It is a major National Sea plant with only a few workers today; normally there are 300. Also there is the Admiral's Cove inshore plant and one at Southern Harbour. Of 23 fish plants, all of them are closed today with the exception of Arnold's Cove which has a few workers. Twenty are principally involved in the cod fishery, one operation for crab only and two for saltfish only. Naturally I will support the Bill. What alternative do I have? We cannot continue to have all those plants shut.
There are other problems upon which the Minister did not touch. He did not explain when he would start the resource-short fishing program to assist inshore plants. "The resource-short plant program", they so grandly call it. I have a telegram to the Minister from the community of Fermeuse asking when he would carry out his promise in the agreement signed in Newfoundland on September 26 to allocate fish to Fermeuse under the resource-short plant program. When will he get that off the ground? Canadian trawler operators have offered to catch offshore fish and sell it to inshore operators at cost. Inshore plant operators say that they cannot afford to pay that cost. There is a stalemate. The plants are still closed and people are still unemployed. The Minister does not seem to be bothered about it. He does not seem to be agitated about it. He did not mention it when he introduced this legislation to the House a few days ago.
If there can be no agreement between plant operators and Canadian trawler operators, and if it is possible for inshore plant operators to make a deal with foreign-owned fishing operators for this year, why not let it go ahead? If that is the only way plants like the one at Fermeuse can start to operate
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again-and I have forgotten for exactly how long it has been closed; probably a year-then I suggest and recommend to the Minister that he arrange a deal and allow foreign-owned vessels to be used this year to catch the fish and get those plants operating again.
What we are being asked for in this Bill is to give the Government carte blanche, a blank cheque to intervene in the fisheries as it likes by way of loan guarantees or grants. That is what we are being asked to do. Having helped to bring about the collapse of the Canadian East Coast fishery, it is certainly questionable whether the Government of Canada has the competence to restore the East Coast fishery to economic viability. What has the Minister said that indicates to us that the Government is going to restore economic viability in the fishery? What is it going to bring to the fishery other than an unlimited supply of public funds?
What does the Government have to offer except public money? It has not shown us how it will make this industry lean and efficient or how the independent fish processor will be protected. It has shown us nothing, yet it asks us for a blank cheque. This legislation should be amended so that they have to report back to this House through the fisheries committee each year exactly what moneys have been spent under the legislation, who have been given guarantees and loans and just what is happening.
There is a vital inconsistency in the various clauses of the Bill. I quote two of the objectives:
-first, that the Atlantic fishing industry be economically viable on an on-going basis, second, that employment in that industry be maximized subject to the constraint that those employed receive a reasonable income-
There is an inconsistency in that objective. To be economically viable and to maximize employment is the matter of contention that has been at issue between the Kirby task force and the Government ever since the Kirby task force reported. The Government has not accepted the Kirby task force because it cannot decide that question. The question is still undecided. It is before us in the agreements that have been signed with Newfoundland. That inconsistency still has not been settled.
It is not with any great sense of elation that I have reluctantly concluded that we have to accept this Bill. It is only because nothing better has been put before us. The Minister did not answer any questions on the important issue. The Government is trying to press us to pass this Bill without any discussion in the House or in committee, although it was on July 2 that the Minister announced he was going ahead with this scheme. It was on September 26, two months ago, that the agreement was signed with Newfoundland. This Bill was only put before the House on October 31. We are being asked to rush it through in 24 hours even though the Government has bungled this problem for over a year.
Some of the questions the Minister should answer either in committee or in the House when the Bill returns are as follows: How is the Government going to assist the independents and
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act keep them involved in the fishery? They are discouraged and now want to get out. We have the statement of Alphonsus Best of Southern Harbour, the President of the independents' association in Newfoundland. He says the Government may as well buy them out and take them over now; they cannot stand unfair competition which they feel they will have from the two giant Government-controlled corporations. The Minister did not touch on that.
What is the Minister going to do to protect us in the U.S. market from actions taken there in the nature of anti-dumping and restraint of trade? There will be countervailing tariff applications made in the United States. They will complain of unfair competition to U.S. fishermen from these Government-controlled and financed companies. What steps has the Minister taken to try and avoid that threat? What has he done in the United States to try and get around that major problem? What steps will he take in the future? There is a great danger of countervailing tariff action in the U.S. because of the so-called restructuring.
The Minister has not told us what decisions are going to be made about very delicate matters, such as who will be entitled to fish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence to catch the increased red fish stocks that are now supposedly present in the Gulf. In 1974-75, the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia trawlers as well as other trawlers were ordered not to fish in the Gulf until the red fish stocks came back.
The fish plants on the south coast taken over from the Lakes at Ramea, Burgeo, Gaultois, and Harbour Breton, need access to those stocks. That is why they were put there in the first place. As to the Nova Scotia vessels, is the Government going to permit trawlers to re-enter and fish in the Gulf again for a certain quota of red fish or not?
What is to be the decision there? What does the Minister plan to do about that? How can this restructured company in Newfoundland be viable economically if it is not allowed to fish those stocks? The Minister should explain how they are going to be viable if they have to send their trawlers north off Labrador, even though they are not especially ice strengthened, at three or four times the cost and two or three times the danger? How will they have access to the fish stocks that will permit them to be lean, hungry and viable? The Minister has not even touched on that problem. What is he going to do about the unclear aims; economic efficiency and viability versus employment as well as Unemployment Insurance benefits or social considerations?
Who will be the directors? Will they be political hacks? Will it be Liberal hacks appointed by the Government, as is usually the case, or will they be independent-thinking people with some experience in business, law, the fishery or labour? What kind of people will be directors?
How can a miracleman be found who will be able to do all the inconsistent things he will have to do as managing director of one of those two huge companies? He will have to satisfy federal politicians, federal bureaucrats, provincial politicians and provincial bureaucrats. He will have to deal with his directors, the plant employees, inshore fishermen and trawler

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Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act fishermen. They all have inconsistent purposes. The interests of one are not necessarily the same as the interests of the other. How will he be able to run an efficient company, look after marketing, sales in the U.S. and the European Common Market as well as fish production? Where is such a superman to be found? He will have to look after the members of every fishing district which has a fish plant apart altogether from Governments. When are they going to find such a man?
These two companies have no financial plan for next year. They do not know what their budgets will be for next year. They do not know who will be in charge. Morale is shattered. The Minister has not spoken of all these problems. The Minister thinks all problems will be solved because the Government will put more money in and it will be a Government-controlled corporation. What is the fishing plan for those companies for next year? What quotas of fish stocks is the Minister assigning to those two companies for next year? There is total confusion. The Government bungled the attempt to get the shareholders out of the way of those companies. It took so long that it did tremendous damage to marketing in the United States in the case of Fishery Products Limited.
There was bungling with reference to the Government's own Canada Development Corporation, complete bungling. That company, which is 48 per cent owned by the Government, could not even discuss with the Government some sensible way to compensate them to get their shares and those of the Monroes. The Government had to be brought to its knees by court action taken in Canada and the United States. It was a complete bungling. The Minister should submit his resignation now because of the untold damage caused by the shareholders. What agreement has been reached with the shareholders? What is agreed to be paid to the CDC, the Monroes and the Lakes? The Minister has not given us any figure as to what happened there. I hope it will all be discussed and explained in committee.
How are they going to overcome the disruption in the U.S. markets? The fishery was better off when the entrepreneurs were in charge, risking their money, such as they had, and borrowing from the banks. They were hard workers and gamblers. I would like to say a kind word about them as they depart.
The Lakes, the Penneys, the Moores, the Russells, the Monroes, their replacements will be hard to find. It is never the same when you are dealing with somebody else's money. There is no bottom line. The Government is going to put in the money. If they lose $100 million this year, the Government will put in another $100 million next year. It is not hard to find people who do not mind spending other people's money. It is a far different breed that built up this industry. They risked their own money and the money they borrowed from the banks, only to be finally done in by an incompetent Government which allowed interest rates to go to 23 per cent.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. 1 regret to interrupt the Hon. Member but I must inform him that his time has expired.


Mr. De Bane:: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to ask the Hon. Member a question. Is the Hon. Member aware that the Premier of his own Province has publicly stated that this is the most beneficial action for his Province taken by the federal Government since Newfoundland's entry into Confederation in 1949? Second, is he aware that the Premier of his Province has just tabled in the Legislature of Newfoundland a Bill ratifying the agreement that we have signed and urging that it be passed unanimously?


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I am certainly aware that the Premier of the Province welcomed the fact that the Government of Canada had at last come to its senses and agreed to give the provincial Government some say in how the new company was to operate, and the Premier also welcomed the fact that the Minister had finally taken a more reasonable stand by dropping the position he had taken on July 2 and entering into an agreement that was more favourable to the provincial Government and would give it some say in the fishery. However, if the Premier ever said that this was the greatest thing since Confederation or sliced bread, then I would only have to say to the Minister that 1 do not agree with him.
I think that this action will stave off the complete collapse of the fishery industry but it is the only alternative that is presented to us. The only alternative to the collapse of the fishery industry is a blank cheque which the Government will now give these companies in order to save the industry for a while. However, I do not say that this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I have not seen any plan presented by the Minister that would show us how this will result in any benefit other than to keep fish plants open at the moment. It is a confession of abject failure on behalf of the Minister.
The Premier of Newfoundland is pleased because the Government of Canada had to concede that the provincial Government should have some say over the operations of the company. Naturally he was pleased that the Minister dropped his previous stubborn and stupid attitude, but if the Premier said the words attributed to him by the Minister, then 1 would have to say that I do not agree. I think that this is a bad job that has been initiated by the Minister and his Government and we have no alternative but to support it and hail it. Other than on that basis, I would not agree with the Minister.
What was the second part of the Minister's question? The first part of his question was so jejune that I have forgotten the second part of his question.


Mr. Orlikow:: Mr. Speaker, 1 listened with great interest to the speech made by the Hon. Member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie). I am not an expert in this field and I do not represent very many fishermen, but some things seem to me to be pretty obvious from the reports we have had.
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The fishing industry, which is one of the main industries in Atlantic Canada and employs tens of thousands of people, was operated for many years by private companies. For various reasons, some of which include overexpansion, high interest rates and cutbacks in the markets, the industry was going bankrupt. The banks could no longer carry the private industry.
That being the case, there was an agreement reached between the federal Liberal Government and at least two Conservative provincial Governments, the Government of Newfoundland and the Government of Nova Scotia. That agreement provided that the only way the industry could be saved and tens of thousands of people could be assisted was through massive Government intervention. That, Mr. Speaker, has been the history of so many industries in so many parts of Canada. The Government has intervened when the private sector could not do the job. This is not necessarily a criticism of the private sector, but that has been a fact of life.
The federal Liberal Government and the provincial Conservative Governments have reached an agreement. I am not competent to say whether that agreement is the best one that could have been reached or whether it will succeed, but surely it is obvious that the private sector did not and could not do the job. Yet it seems to me that the only solution which the Hon. Member for St. John's West has put forth as an alternative to what has been agreed on between the federal Liberal Government and the two provincial Conservative Governments is that somehow the Governments should give more money, either through grants or loans, to the private companies which have already failed. It seems to me that that is neither possible nor advisable.


John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for asking a sensible question. It is the only sensible question 1 have been asked this morning.
The situation is that this is not an industry like any other industry because the source of its raw material is controlled by the Government. The fishing industry is unlike the agricultural industry in which the farmer can decide how many turnips or how much wheat or whatever he will plant. The fish resources are common property resources controlled by the Government. As well, many other aspects of the industry are controlled by the Government, including the kind of boat that can be used, whether the fisherman can get a licence for a trawler, a 65-foot longliner or a trap skip, or whether he can fish at all. All of this is controlled and licensed by the Government, so we are not dealing with an ordinary industry.
We are dealing with an industry in eastern Canada which, because there are no large amounts of capital available to be invested, has always been undercapitalized while its equipment is becoming more and more expensive. It does not represent the normal industrial situation. The responsibility for what has happened in the fishery industry is, to a major degree, that of the Government itself because of some of those factors I have mentioned.
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
With respect to the two Conservative Governments, the Government of Nova Scotia itself has not yet reached any agreement with the federal Government except for a so-called agreement in principle. The details of that agreement which are more important than its principle have not been agreed upon.
The Government of Newfoundland had no choice but to accept an agreement that would give it some say in what would happen. Newfoundland is a Province in which the fishery industry is the most important of its industries and is the biggest employer of its people. The only reason anyone lives in rural Newfoundland is to work in the fishery industry and the fishery industry is not controlled by the provincial Government at all. It is as if the land and the grain and everything in the Province of Saskatchewan were completely federally controlled.
From the point of view of the Government of Newfoundland, first the fishery industry had to be saved and rural Newfoundland had to be saved. That could only be done by the federal Government and if the provincial Government could get an agreement to give it some influence over the issues that are to be decided upon in the future, that would be an advantage. Finally, after getting that concession from the federal Government, it entered into an agreement to which it had no alternative in any event. We cannot have fish plants all over Newfoundland collapse, and if the only way to keep them going is through money from the federal Government, the provincial Government of Newfoundland naturally must support that, just as I must support it because there are 23 fish plants in my district.
Although 1 am supporting the agreement on that basis, Mr. Speaker, it does not mean that 1 believe it is the right solution. 1 myself would have preferred to see the Government allow the industry to continue in private hands but have the Government take over the plants that it wants to operate for social reasons and operate them itself separate from the other companies. Fishery Products Limited should not be operating a plant that it does not think is economical because that would give it an excuse to say in future years, if it has not done well, that it was prevented from doing so by the fact that it had operated plants that were uneconomical. Those plants should be taken over by the Government. If they are needed for social purposes, they should be operated by the Government.
The Government should have made financial arrangements through loans or, to some extent, grants to assist the trawler companies to continue in business because it was the Government's own economic policies and incompetence that put the fishing industry in a position where it could no longer survive and made it impossible for the Bank of Nova Scotia to continue its financing. That would have been my preferred solution, Mr. Speaker.

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act


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


Miss Coline Campbell (South West Nova):: Mr. Speaker, I would say to the last speaker that perhaps his concern should have been made known to his own provincial Government before it went into the arrangement, because it is now a partner to an arrangement. At least we from Nova Scotia have only an agreement to co-operate between the two Governments.
Bill C-170 is an Act to authorize investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishery enterprises. It is by far the most important piece of legislation I have seen come before Parliament in the years in which I have represented South West Nova. It may not be the Constitution, the Crow Bill, any one of the budget Bills, or the six and five legislation, but to the people in the Atlantic Provinces this Bill will have a far-reaching effect. I believe that as politicians we must make sure that we get the most out of this Bill before it is passed in this House. Certainly my constituents feel it will affect them, and they want more information.
This legislation came about because of the Kirby task force. The powers the Bill gives to the Minister seem to be unlimited. The Kirby task force was established in January, 1982. It was to study the Atlantic coast fisheries and report to an ad hoc committee of Ministers on the Atlantic fisheries. In December of 1982 it made its recommendations on establishing and maintaining viable fishery enterprises on the Atlantic coast of Canada.
The Kirby task force set out three objectives which form the basis of its recommendations. I would like to quote from the Kirby task force report because I feel it is important for us to know the context in which we now have this Bill before us. At page VII the report lists three objectives in order of priority which should guide Atlantic fisheries policy. And remember, these are in order of priority:
Objective 1: The Atlantic fishing industry should be economically viable on an ongoing basis, where to be viable implies an ability to survive downturns with only a normal business failure rate and without government assistance.
That was the top priority. I will read the next two priorities:
Objective 2: Employment in the Atlantic fishing industry should be maximized subject to the constraint that those employed receive a reasonable income as a result of fishery-related activities, including fishery-related income transfer payments.
Objective 3: Fish within the 200-mile Canadian zone should be harvested and processed by Canadians in firms owned by Canadians wherever this is consistent with Objectives 1 and 2 and with Canada's international treaty obligations.
These objectives are important to remember because I feel that this Bill.and the restructuring of the fisheries seem to be in direct contradiction of these objectives, particularly the primary objective of economic viability.
Before commenting on the Bill itself, I would just like to go back a couple of years and review some of the history which brought about the Kirby task force, as well as the present
collapse of the five large fishing companies on the East Coast. This Bill, Mr. Speaker, does not seem to be taking history into account. What we saw happening in 1981 was that five large East Coast companies were holding inventories which were too high. This was mainly due to a softening in our existing markets. The East Coast fisheries had seen this happen before. In fact, the last time it happened was in 1973. In 1974-75 the federal Government put approximately $150 million into assisting these companies and their inventories. Again, at that time, Mr. Speaker, the markets were soft.
In late 1980 through 1981, with soft marketing conditions and increased fish landings, inventories were again high and the market price depressed. Fish inventories have always been financed by banks and in 1980 interest rates went up and continued to climb. The debt incurred to finance the inventories and to hold these inventories became too great for the companies and they came looking to the federal Government and to the provincial Governments, as well as to the banks, for financial assistance.
We also found at that time that we did not have any mechanism at the federal level to alleviate this problem. We had a fisheries prices support board which could only remove inventories and hold them at similar cost to the companies as that provided by the banks. The Government did not appear to have any ability to offer an outright purchase of the inventory and then try to resell it later when the market could take up the excess inventory, and thereby avoid dumping fish into soft markets at certainly lower prices.
The Government gave no financial guarantees to an industry which was the most important industry on the East Coast as far as employment and revenues were concerned. Some companies, in my view, might still be in existence had they been provided with some sort of assistance. Heaven knows, over the years federal Governments have assisted other operations in Canada, such as Massey-Ferguson, Canadair and Dome Petroleum, yet our basic resource industry got the Kirby task force.
I ask, Mr. Speaker, how will this Bill ensure orderly marketing when our marketing capabilities go soft? I have always felt that federal involvement, along with the provincial involvement-because the Provinces have the jurisdiction to market fish-should have been concentrated on establishing a voluntary orderly marketing program. Such a program would set up an organization which would be able to sell excess fish and not have to compete in an existing soft market. In other words, if there were high inventories these inventories could be removed at the wish of the company and sold into either new markets, which would have been established by some mechanism, or sold at a later date into the existing market when the market had hardened up.
Today we have before us a Bill which does not establish a voluntary marketing system on the East Coast. 1 must say that the Kirby task force does deal with marketing in great depth. However, this Bill does not mention any of this. In fact, the Minister stated in his speech on Monday that there would be three new marketing companies. Again, Mr. Speaker, are
November 17, 1983

these companies to compete among themselves and the smaller processors? Will they eventually have the same marketing conditions which have existed in the past, without any relief ?
My concern, Mr. Speaker, is that this Bill will set up and fund three super East Coast companies. It is a Bill which incorporates the exact amount of money needed to establish these three super companies and which, from what I have read, does not set up any financing for the small independent companies which may also be in trouble. This is a Bill which, in my view, does not even resemble the recommendations of the Kirby task force. We have in fact a Bill which talks about economic viability in the preamble, incorporating the primary recommendation of Kirby, but does not talk about the fishing excesses which the report says presently exists within the five companies which are to become two companies. In fact, Mr. Speaker, it is a Bill which suggests that the provincial and federal Governments are nationalizing the fisheries. Yet the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) and the Nova Scotia Minister of Fisheries talk about the privatization of the two companies. How will this take place? What will the Bank of Nova Scotia receive in real terms out of this? Will it be a benefit? What about the company owners, are they receiving a benefit?
We are told in Clause 4 on page 2 of the agreement between the federal Government and Nova Scotia that:
The governments agree that their participation in refinancing the company will be on terms such that the existing shareholders and financial institutions shall not be bailed out.
Yet we see an article in the Daily News in Newfoundland on November 11 stating that the CDC will receive $14.6 million for its shares. Then take that together with an article in the Evening Telegram of November 12 which says the federal Government will pay $14.6 million to the CDC, a major shareholder in Fishery Products.
We have been told shareholders will not benefit in this restructuring. 1 think that question has to be answered in committee because we already see some shareholders getting benefits. I think the people on the East Coast would like to know the answer to this question. Will the Nickersons receive a benefit? On the other hand, we hear they are going into receivership. These are all questions which have to be answered because they concern my constituents and other East Coast Canadians. They should be answered before we proceed further with the restructuring of the Atlantic fishery.
There are other questions about the agreement, Mr. Speaker. Why would the Province of Nova Scotia agree that the Nickerson scallop fleet go to Newfoundland? I would like to know in what way that benefits Newfoundland. I have already spoken about the economic benefits to existing shareholders and financial institutions. 1 am curious to know if we are going to be funding them. Clause 11 on page 3 of the agreement between the federal Government and the Province of Nova Scotia says:
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
The two governments will ask financial institutions to provide credit support to ensure the province's independent fish processors are able to maintain continued normal operations.
I know of several operations in my own area which are suffering because the banks have already increased interest rates as well as dropped the level of financing that the small producers were used to. When will the Province of Nova Scotia go after these institutions? When is the federal Minister going to go after them? How much power do these two Governments have over the financial institutions? Mr. Kirby is quoted in The Globe and Mail of November 5, 1983 as saying:
Governments and the bank have simply become the buyers of last resort, a possibility we had foreseen from the beginning-
1 do not see that in the recommendations.
-if no private investors could be found. And once we decided not to bail anyone out, we knew we were going to have to get something for our money and that something was equity in the new company.
1 know some Members have already asked this question, but what chance were private investors given to invest? Until the company goes into receivership, who can invest?
There are other questions the Bill does not answer. How are these companies to be formed? We are told they will be privately run with provincial and federal money. Who has control over the directors? The bank and the federal Government will appoint directors to each new company in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Will these directors not have conflicts of interest? It is inconceivable to me that the Bank of Nova Scotia, which will make appointments to both companies, could not make a decision concerning one company which would not be beneficial to the other company. Will there be a conflict of interest concerning the federal Government? What will be the objects of these two companies? Will they operate as a public company in competition with the smaller, independent processors? Or will they operate as a private company? If private, will they be allowed to operate on the basis of good business practices, which might mean the shutting down of some operations as recommended by Dr. Kirby?
The one thing we have is a Bill which gives wide powers, but we have only one arrangement or agreement before us, Mr. Speaker, the one between Newfoundland and the federal Government. We in Nova Scotia are waiting to see what the arrangements will be. There are different players. We do not know what the shareholders in National Sea will do, whether they will accept this agreement to co-operate. We have to wait and see. But in all the recommendations Mr. Kirby and his task force made, I cannot say it was clearly and specifically set out that this is what we would end up with.
There were other things in the Kirby task force report which have not been dealt with. A key example of that is one whole chapter dealing with the herring seining fleet where he recommends there be a Government buy-back to reduce the capacity of that fleet. What is in it for the poor fishermen who are trying to make a living with too few fish and fleet overcapacity? They are being asked to do their own buy-back.
It seems to me that the players who were there prior to Dr. Kirby have not been heard from. That in itself shows a

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act vacuum and 1 would like to know why. Why are the processors being bailed out, because we hear the CDC is being bailed out? Who else is going to be bailed out? What is going to happen to the other recommendations? Will the seiners be helped? What about all those small fishermen who, over the last few years, have seen their interest rates go up? Are they going to be helped out?
Mr. Speaker, I realize my time is up. It is my hope that the concerns 1 have raised will be fully discussed in committee. Unless we have a clear indication of where this Bill will take us and who it will help and affect, and unless those concerns are answered, we will have many days of graver concern on the East Coast.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. Questions, comments.


Mr. Forrestall:: Will the distinguished Member from South West Nova (Miss Campbell) in fact vote for the Bill in its present form?


Coline M. Campbell: The Hon. Member for Dartmouth-Halifax East (Mr. Forrestall) certainly has more experience than I have on voting. However, I have used all my efforts to get this Bill into committee to be studied. The Province of Nova Scotia with a Conservative Government supports this restructuring and the Province of Newfoundland supports it. I come from an area where there are a lot of independents in the fishery and my main concern has to be for them.
I certainly want to see the Bill go to committee. I know there is urgency on your own side. Your own Leader has said that he supports this Bill. When so many great people are saying this, who am I to say that it is not a good Bill? I will let it go to committee and we at least have the opportunity to study it there. I will have to wait and see what happens.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Further questions or comments?


Pierre De Bané: Is the Hon. Member aware that the official critic of his own Party-


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


Pierre De Bané: -has said in a speech that-


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Corbin):: Order. The Minister is not allowed to put a question to the previous questioner. That can only be done by unanimous consent.


John Carnell Crosbie: I thought the Hon. Member made a very reasoned speech, bringing up many of the points and conundrums that have not been answered. Has the Hon. Member put these points to the Minister privately and in caucus and has he provided any answers privately or in caucus? Is it just that he is impossible to get through to, or is he ignoring these issues? What is the problem? Obviously there is a communications gap between the Hon. Member and the Minister.


Coline M. Campbell: Certainly I have had discussions with the Minister of Fisheries regarding some of my concerns. The person that I have had not had too many discussions with is Dr. Kirby. It was Dr. Kirby who was negotiating the arrangements in Newfoundland. I would like to have him come before the committee so I can ask him some of these questions. I have raised these concerns with the Members of my caucus. I hope Members opposite have raised their own concerns in their caucus. This certainly does not appear to be the case, from what their Leader is stating and what we are hearing here.


Mr. McGrath:: The Hon. Member made a very interesting speech. Given her critical position as chairman of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry and her announced bias in the House against this Bill, will the Member remove herself from that position when the Bill goes to committee so there will be no question whatsoever that the Bill will receive objective, critical examination?


Coline M. Campbell: My chairmanship or my bias could be raised by the committee and if there is a vote of non-confidence in me, I will certainly step aside. In fact, I thought of asking my vice-chairman to handle this Bill so I could be better equipped to ask questions. The Hon. Member has sat on the committee many times and knows that the chairman must more or less ask questions with the consent of the committee members. I do not think I have a bias in its going to committee. My concerns are very much the same as those the Hon. Member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie) raised. Some of my concerns are very similar and 1 would think that we might have had the same researchers on some of them as far as the corporate structures of the companies go. I certainly do not think 1 have a bias against Newfoundland having made the arrangement.


James Aloysius McGrath: Just trying to protect your Minister, that's all.


John Carnell Crosbie: Does the Hon. Member agree that the Bill needs to be amended to ensure some accountability? At the moment it is a blank cheque to spend money and make guarantees. Would she agree that it would be sensible to have this Bill amended so that the Government must report to the House of Commons fishery committee each year on what has happened under the Bill, who have gotten guarantees, loans, grants and why, and exactly what progress there has been so there will be some accountability? Would the Hon. Member agree that this would be a good step?


Coline M. Campbell: The Hon. Member raises an important question. He must remember that sometimes chairmen of committees have to rule out amendments because they are not in conformity with the Bill. 1 suggest that we look to see where the accountability is. Is it to Public Accounts or is it to the Minister of Fisheries? If we continue the present trial rules in the House we could probably have accountability just under the general Department of Fisheries report at any time. I think that is a very favourable way of operating any committee. I think you put the chairman in a difficult position because
November 17, 1983

sometimes, no matter who is chairman, because they have been given advice by clerks, not politicians, they have to rule as to the viability, the length or breadth of the amendment. 1 think there should be accountability.


Mr. McMillan:: Mr. Speaker, how does the Hon. Member reconcile her apparent support for this Bill at second reading stage with an article that appeared in La presse on November 16 in which she is quoted as saying:
Fishermen and small businesses have numerous reasons for concern about the future this restructuring holds for them.
How does the Hon. Member reconcile that expression of outrage on behalf of independents with the apparent support she has for this Bill at second reading?


Coline M. Campbell: I am sorry, I missed that. Would the Hon. Member repeat it?


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member is quoted clearly in La Presse yesterday as saying:
Fishermen and small businesses have numerous reasons for concern about the future this restructuring holds for them.
How does the Hon. Member reconcile this expression of outrage against the Bill on behalf of independent operators with her apparent support for this Bill at second reading?


Coline M. Campbell: 1 think 1 raised all those concerns in my speech. I would assume that in committee the Bill will be studied. We will have people there who may answer some of those concerns. They are definite concerns of the fishermen and small businesses in the constituency of South West Nova and across Nova Scotia, as some of my colleagues from Nova Scotia have said and which they will probably speak on. If those concerns are not resolved there is an independence in backbenchers that has always been there. I ask the Opposition, who have already supported this Bill in principle, what they will do?


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask one further question of the Hon. Member because she is the very distinguished chairman of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry and that is a very key role in this whole process. Will the Hon. Member support the opening of the Gulf to Canadian trawlers to catch the surplus ground stocks that are there at the present time? Does the Hon. Member support that position?


Coline M. Campbell: I know from whence the question comes; it is from the former Minister of Fisheries in 1979. He knows the answer. One has to remember that the Gulf was closed because stocks were greatly reduced. I think there are scientific outlooks that indicate the Gulf stocks have rejuvenated. I assume there is to be some discussion as to whether or not they have been restored to such an extent that perhaps we could allow some extra fishing in there. It is my understanding that it is one of the terms they will look at in the agreement to co-operate between Nova Scotia and the federal Government. Certainly, if the fishing activity in the area is able to take the stocks, they should probably be given first consideration.
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
On the other hand, if those stocks have been rejuvenated there should be some consideration given-


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


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-170, the federal Government's legislation to restructure the Atlantic fishery. At the outset, I should make it clear that I have deep-seated reservations about the Bill, especially from the point of view of my own Province of Prince Edward Island.
Prince Edward Island's interests have been all but ignored by the Government, so preoccupied has it been with other East Coast Provinces, notably Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Yet the Prince Edward Island fishery is an important part of the total industry in Atlantic Canada. Indeed, the fishery is the second largest industry on the Island in terms of jobs and earned income.
The fishery is more than just another industry in the Province. It is an integral part of the culture of the Island. Many communities of the Province, from Tignish to Nufrage, were originally settled because of the fishery. It continues to be the lifeblood of most of those communities to this very day. The fishery is practically the only way of life that the people of that Province have ever known. Salt water is in their veins. To destroy the fishery through Government heavy-handedness, or to allow it to die through neglect or mismanagement, would be to destroy the people themselves.
Therefore, we are debating today not just another piece of legislation, nor simply a plan to rescue yet another industry, though clearly it has elements of that. In fact, we are discussing the survival of an important part of Canada. If such sounds like so much rhetorical hyperbole or flourish, let me assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I am not exaggerating. The Atlantic fishery provides some 100,000 people with jobs, with about equal numbers engaged in the catch and processing sector. That total number is approximately 25,000 more than the members employed in the entire automobile manufacturing industry of this country.
Now, after decades of abject neglect by the federal Government, it has taken a veritable crisis in the fishery to shock the Government into paying any attention at all to this important part of our national life, and only in the form of an after the fact rescue operation rather than in the form of a rational, well thought out, well planned strategy. With most of the large fish plants bankrupt, in receivership or on the verge of it, with thousands of plant workers and fishermen idle and with the entire region reeling from the economic impact, the federal Government has decided at last to take some action.
The Bill before us sets out to do several things. In general, it seeks to provide the legal and financial powers for the federal Government to restructure the Atlantic fishery. The Bill would empower the Government to acquire, hold or dispose of any interest in any enterprise engaged directly or indirectly in the Atlantic fishery. In particular, the Bill provides for an immedi-

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act ate appropriation of $138 million to finance the federal contribution to the so-called restructuring plan. The bill also authorizes the Government to make loan guarantees to fishery enterprises being restructured. As part of the restructuring, agreements have been signed or tentatively agreed to by the federal Government and Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to restructure the deep sea fishing plants based in those Provinces. In the process, two huge nationalized companies are being forged from the ashes of private companies.
I use the term "nationalized companies" advisedly. The Nova Scotia restructuring agreement will take the two large companies in that Province-National Sea and H. B. Nickerson and Sons-and make one large state-dominated company. The Newfoundland deal takes three major fish firms in the Province-Fishery Products, the Lake group and John Penney and Sons-and creates a massive company controlling 85 per cent of the processing capacity in Newfoundland. The two new super corporations will have the dubious distinction of being, respectively, the largest and second largest fish companies in the entire world.
Let us make no mistake about the matter. The so-called restructuring arrangement is, at once, a full-scale nationalization of the affected parts of the industry and a bail-out of not only the former privately owned companies but also the Bank of Nova Scotia which otherwise would lose millions of dollars in bad loans. Indeed, this scheme is a takeover, not a restructuring at all.
Neither Parliament nor the public has been allowed to know the details of the arrangement. The whole thing has been shrouded in secrecy and mystery from the very beginning. I think one may never find out the whole story. In the case of Nova Scotia, apparently the deal is yet to be finalized. But this much we do know about the Newfoundland deal. I mention it only in the context of my Province of Prince Edward Island which has been, to date, ignored in all of this. The super company is 85 per cent owned by Governments. Eight of the eleven members of the board of directors are Government appointed. The chief executive officer is a joint appointment of both Governments. Significant corporate decisions are subject to the veto of the federal and provincial Governments. Most relevant of all, management must consult both Governments before the company can act. This control is above and beyond that exercised by the federal Government through its general management of the Atlantic fishery.
What the country has received, therefore, is a Government-dominated industry, one in which the state will have a direct day to day vested interest through ownership and control, including corporate voting rights. Decisions affecting the companies, and therefore the industry generally, because of their size and influence, will most certainly be made on the basis of political considerations rather than on the basis of the best interests of the over-all fishery or of the region as a whole. The wonderful people who have made a hash of everything else they have controlled, from Canadair to the post office, are now going to put codfish on our tables.
The restructuring plan has the potential to devastate the fishery in Prince Edward Island, however important or however temporary may be the relief it could provide to Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. It could well ring the death knell to the independently-owned fish processing sector in my Province and consequently to a large part of the rest of the fishery there. The fact is, Sir, there are some 42 fish processing plants in P.E.I. About two dozen of them are independents operating outside the restructured companies and exporting produce on their own. The two largest independents, which process groundfish, are Georgetown Seafoods Ltd. in Georgetown and Usen Fisheries in Souris. The former, Georgetown, has not been in operation since the fall of 1981 but Usen and most of the smaller plants throughout the Province have been fully operational and profitable.
1 do not know what will become of Georgetown Seafoods. P.E.I.'s Minister in the federal cabinet, the Hon. Minister of Veterans Affairs (Mr. Campbell), has been saying from one end of P.E.I. to the other that the plant's reopening is imminent. He was saying that as long ago as last spring and early summer. Yet in reply to my questions in the House as recently as October 7, the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) refused to associate himself with that commitment given by his colleague.
Moreover, a secret federal Government document prepared by the Ministry of State for Economic and Regional Expansion last summer and obtained by the research office of my Party made very clear that the plant, in the eyes of the Government, was "permanently closed". Here we had a secret Government document, at a time when the federal Minister of Veterans Affairs was saying that the reopening of the plant was imminent, making it clear that, in the eyes of the same Government, the Georgetown Seafoods plant was permanently closed and its reopening was not imminent, as the Minister was pointing out.
Obviously, the future is grim for that plant. I believe the best bet is for the plant to reopen under provincial auspices and it is to be hoped with private investment money. But for that to happen, Georgetown Seafoods will need to be given back four of the original 11 trawlers still in the hands of the existing owners, H. B. Nickerson and Sons Limited. Those trawlers are now at Canso, having long since been wrenched from Georgetown, leaving it virtually impossible for the plant to operate profitably.
The new restructuring package has nonetheless loaded the deck of cards against all the independent plants across P.E.I. and, indeed, throughout the Atlantic region and parts of Quebec. Now, the federal Government is to be in the fish processing business itself in a massive way, why should it want to encourage competition against itself? From here on, the Government will hold all the aces. Who but the most extreme optimist would believe that the Government will not weight future programs and regulations in favour of its own client
November 17, 1983

companies, to the detriment of the remaining private
companies?
Even before the restructuring, the federal Government controlled everything from dredging operations to fishing quotas, to federal wharf construction, to DREE-type industry subsidies, to total allowable catches, to fish processing plant health standards, to import licences. Now the small, independent operators also face the prospect of having to compete against huge Government-owned and Government-subsidized fish companies in an industry where the Government could set all the rules to benefit its own industrial giants.
I have been in touch with many of the independent operators in my Province of P.E.I. and with both Premier Jim Lee and Fisheries Minister Roddy Pratt. Most of those operators are petrified about the potential impact of Bill C-170 on their plants. One such operator told me that if Bill C-170 passes as it stands he may as well close shop immediately. I know many others feel the same way. More and more of the independents are joining the Federation of Independent Fish Packers, recently formed for the sole purpose of fighting Bill C-170 that we are debating today. Premier Lee and Mr. Pratt share those concerns and fears, and I do too.
Independent operators have been assured by the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans that the restructuring arrangement is only a temporary one, made to support the fishery until it can find its sea legs, so to speak-stand on its own two feet. Assurances have also been given by the Minister and by other spokesmen for the Government that the new Government companies will then be returned to the private sector; they will be privatized. I ask you, Sir, if that is actually to be the case, why is the Government afraid to incorporate such a provision right into the legislation itself? There is absolutely nothing in the existing Bill to protect the independents.
I urge the Government to devise a new section to provide for the Government's orderly withdrawal from an ownership position in the industry according to a detailed schedule. Such a section should either specify a date by which all Government equity must be sold or, alternatively, set a limit on its equity; for example, less than 40 per cent by 1986. A section of that kind would have the effect of making the relevant assistance under the so-called restructuring program a one-shot impetus to the industry, not a prescription for permanent nationalization of it.
Bill C-170 is so important to P.E.I. and to all of Atlantic Canada that it should go immediately, or as soon as everyone has had his or her say, to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry for detailed study. Obviously, the Liberal chairman of that Committee, the Hon. Member for South West Nova (Miss Campbell), who just spoke at some length, shares my deep-seated reservations and concerns about Bill C-170, for she is quoted in La Presse, as I pointed out a few moments ago, on November 16, as saying that "fishermen and small businesses have numerous reasons for concern about the future this restructuring holds for them".
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act [Translation]


Coline M. Campbell: In French!


Thomas Michael McMillan: Mr. Speaker, I shall repeat the same thing in French later on.

I myself must insist, on behalf of the people I represent, on a full public airing of the views of independent operators in P.E.I. in committee. If those operators are denied a fair hearing, and if for whatever reason the Government denies a full and ample debate on the issue in committee, then 1 serve notice that I for one will muster every possible support from within the PC caucus and from the P.E.I. Government to fight this Bill at all remaining stages. In such a Fight I am confident of the strong backing of the independent operators in my Province.
More than survival of a few canneries is at stake. And even more than the continuing viability of the fishery itself is involved. At the heart of the issue is the very fate of the Atlantic region. We must not let our people down.


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


Mr. Alexandre Cyr (Gaspe):: Mr. Speaker, I represent a federal riding in Quebec where, as one of the municipal authorities in the Gaspe said recently on national television, fishing is the only valid alternative to unemployment and welfare. Today, Mr. Speaker, 1 wish to underline the very substantial role played by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in taking this industry in hand, and the Department's very definite intention to provide for restructuring of this industry through Bill C-170.
The House will recall that Quebec's Atlantic coast extends for over more than 3,000 kilometers. Here and there along the cost, there are a number of very small villages that depend largely on fishing, not only for a living but for their very survival.
That, Mr. Speaker, will be the focus of my comments in support of the legislation to restructure the Atlantic fisheries.
Not long ago, the TV news showed us some tragic pictures of Gaspe fishermen who were obliged to throw a day's catch back into the sea, because they were unable to find any fish depots that would take the herring they caught the day before. These fishermen had just been confronted with the dilemma that arises when supply exceeds demand and shore facilities can no longer handle the landing capacity of the fishing fleet. On television the situation even more dramatic, of course, but the point was very clearly made that such occurrences were not unique in the Gaspe.

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
In its report, the Atlantic Fisheries Task Force had already commented at length on the lack of infrastructures in the fisheries industry in Quebec, as well as on the need for restructuring, without delay, the entire industry in that Province and Eastern Canada, so as to make it economically viable, provide a decent income for Canadians employed in the industry and finally, to serve the interests of all Canadians.
As a result of the recommendations made by the task force in its report, it was clear that it would be necessary to reorganize the management of Quebec's ocean fisheries and also to renovate and modernize existing infrastructures in order to meet the pressing needs of an industry which in Quebec, in any case, had a lot of catching up to do.
it is also true, however, that in Quebec, there was a situation where responsibility for ocean fisheries was either shared or duplicated, and as a result, both levels of government were able to blame each other and meanwhile, for instance, equipment that came under one jurisdiction rather than another was allowed to deteriorate through lack of maintenance. In any case, this industry, which is not a major one for the Province but is very important to the Gaspe and especially to the riding of Gaspe, is desperately in need of upgrading, which will require very substantial funding by the level of government that will be taking on this responsibility.
I realize that the fisheries industry in Eastern Canada has experienced very severe problems in recent years. In the Atlantic provinces, there have been times when business was very poor and the threat of bankruptcy continues to hover over the fisheries. After long and stormy negotiations, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) managed to obtain a consensus on restructuring the fisheries industry in such a way that both the provinces and the private sector would share the cost and together make the effort required to revive the industry.
The Minister is therefore to be congratulated on the success of this manoeuvre, thanks to which this time, at least, the Government of Canada will not be left to bear the financial burden and related responsibilities alone.
Unfortunately, the Government of Quebec is still dragging its feet and would rather fund other projects instead of contributing towards the restructuring of this new industry over which it claims exclusive jurisdiction. This would in fact create a kind of enclave in a system where all parties are closely dependent on one another.
After concluding agreements with the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Government of Nova Scotia, and after clearly indicating his intentions to the Government of Quebec, the Minister is asking the House today to give him the means to fully implement a plan that has had a very positive start. In his speech in support of Bill C-170 which is now before the House, the Minister amply demonstrated how complex the issue is and how directly it depends on the
proposed restructuring. He made it very clear that he was anxious to give all partners in this plan an opportunity to be heard and to express their points of view. He emphasized they should be given an opportunity to contribute directly to and, eventually, to benefit, both individually and collectively from, the results of this plan.
Last week, when I visited my riding, 1 met several hundred fishermen and processing plant workers. They were very concerned about the future of the fisheries industry in Quebec, as a result of what the Minister responsible for fisheries in Quebec, the Hon. Jean Garon, was doing in the Gaspe. Since he became Minister of Fisheries, Mr. Garon's actions have been based far more on his political views than on any concern for the social and economic welfare of producers and fishermen in the riding of Gaspe and the Province of Quebec.
My constituents have asked me to inform the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans that he should proceed with his plan for restructuring the fisheries industry, because in the past, it was always the Government of Canada that managed to save the fishermen of the Province of Quebec.
Between 1975 and 1978, a decision was made to revive the groundfish industry in Eastern Canada. During that time, the Government of Canada gave Quebec fishermen and producers grants amounting to $6,111,400. In 1976 and 1977, Quebec fishing enterprises received subsidies totalling $566,000 for ships of 100 feet or more, based in the Gulf, so that they could go outside the Gulf to fish and unload inside the Gulf. In 1972, Mr. Speaker ... I believe I may call it one o'clock?


An Hon. Member:: You have one minute left!


Alexandre Cyr: -the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans introduced a program to protect Atlantic salmon and to stop commercial fishing, starting that year. The Government of Canada paid Atlantic and Gulf fishermen, including the Gaspe, to put away their fishing gear and refrain from fishing salmon commercially since 1972. In the Gaspe, people remember this, and they realize that it has always been the Government of Canada that managed to save fishermen in the province of Quebec. Mr. Speaker, may 1 call it one o'clock?


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


[Stage Direction]
AFTER RECESS

The House resumed at 2 p.m.
November 17, 1983


Mr. Douglas Fisher (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Finance):: Mr. Speaker, I want to draw attention to yesterday's announcement by the Minister of Finance (Mr. Lalonde) of the two-year extension of the Small Business Bond Program. This is a most important source of support for farmers and small businesses in temporary financial difficulty. In just two years the Program has accounted for more than 2,600 low-interest loans totalling over $500 million. More than half of these loans have been made to farmers, and the Program is expected to continue to be of major importance for agriculture. During a period of very high interest rates, this special Program has generated welcome relief indeed.
The extension of this Program is a vital part of the network of federal government support for both agriculture and small business. These loans are provided under normal commercial arrangements with the low interest feature made possible by a tax exemption to the financial institutions. The result is that loans can be made as much as five or six percentage points below market rates, a very significant benefit. I urge Hon. Members to promote the widest possible awareness of this excellent initiative.



COMMUNICATIONS


Mr. Dave Nickerson (Western Arctic):: Mr. Speaker, the last few months have seen an ever increasing volume of complaints directed toward NorthwesTel and the telephone service it supposedly provides in the western Northwest Territories. Public meetings have been convened to express citizens' concern with the deteriorating level of services.
NorthwesTel's policy of centralization just has not worked. The disastrous policy of laying off needed maintenance and service personnel has resulted in prolonged breakdowns, interrupted service, and long delays in telephone installation for both commercial and residential customers. HF radio communications are said to be in a deplorable state, with VHF not much better. Despite assurances to the contrary by the Minister of Transport (Mr. Axworthy), facilities such as those at Hay River have been continuously downgraded, with necessary staff being discontinued. Unless the federal Crown corporation, NorthwesTel, can bring its service up to an acceptable standard, it should be replaced by a private telephone company forthwith.



THE PARTI QUEBECOIS


Mr. Gaston Gourde (Levis):: Mr. Speaker, the MNA for Lafontaine, former Minister of Environment who had already stated that he was quite prepared to use provincial government aircraft to promote the advent of a separatist party on the federal scene, this acting leader of the Parti nationaliste and sometimes radio commentator, this man called Marcel Leger has candidly admitted recently that he was devoting all his time to pave the way for the arrival of the Parti nationaliste in Ottawa, to organize people, raise the necessary funds, and so on. Mr. Speaker, that is an open admission that the residents of Lafontaine are no longer represented. His attitude reflects his contempt for his duties as MNA and for his constituents who had expressed their confidence in him. After Gilles Gre-goire, a separatist who lives off his MNA salary behind bars, after the former MNA for Jonquiere who used to spend his spare time as Speaker of the National Assembly wishing that he would be appointed judge of the Provincial Court, and was, we now have Mr. Leger who bares his soul. So the Premier of the Province of Quebec is now saddled with three separatists MNAs who, for some time now, have not done anything for Quebec or their constituents. It proves that the Parti quebecois is sick, very sick, and 1 do not believe that Dr. Pierre-Marc Johnson will be able to cure this terminally ill patient.



BANKS AND BANKING


Mr. Gordon Towers (Red Deer):: Mr. Speaker, may 1, through this forum, draw to the attention of the Canadian people the fact that certain unscrupulous firms and individuals are taking advantage of The Canada Gazette's annual publication listing unclaimed bank balances. Members are all aware of the practice of the Bank of Canada to list names, by city and town, and by banks, and the amount unclaimed, and causing this list to be published in the annual edition of The Canada Gazette.
Certain operators calling themselves, in some cases, estate locators, are using this public information in a manner which may only be termed misrepresentation. For a price, or a finder's fee, these sharp operators are running a scam offering to inform relatives of deceased persons where funds are sitting waiting to be claimed.
This insidious, unethical practice can only be termed as bloodsucking, and the Bank of Canada, the Government, and the chartered banks ought to be asked to consult so as to make it illegal for anyone to profit from this information which is clearly in the public domain, and chartered banks ought to be encouraged to attempt more rigorously to contact the benefici-

November 17, 1983
aries of these unclaimed balances, many of which are in the thousands of dollars.



EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


Mr. Dan Heap (Spadina):: Mr. Speaker, Canadians are worried by statements of the Governments of the United States, El Salvador, Honduras, Guatamela and Costa Rica, threatening military invasion of Nicaragua and of the liberated areas of El Salvador. Although Nicaragua and the El Salvador guerrillas have each repeatedly offered to negotiate, the U.S. and those Governments it dominates have refused any answer except to build up huge armies and navies for invasion.
The Canadian Government, after being shamefully deceived by the U.S. Government about its intention to invade and occupy Grenada, cannot trust the U.S. Government to give honest information about its intentions against the peoples of Nicaragua and El Salvador. Therefore, 1 call on the Canadian Government to establish our independent presence in Nicaragua by sending our Secretary of State for External Affairs (Mr. MacEachen) to Nicaragua to discuss their recent proposals for mutual disarmament and removal of foreign military personnel, with on-site inspection, by opening an embassy in Managua to provide direct, independent day-today information about the illegal attacks by U.S. backed Somocistas, and by working closely with the Contadora group to block U.S. plans for war and to increase economic aid to Nicaragua.




Mr. Norman Kelly (Scarborough Centre):: Mr. Speaker, two days ago the northern portion of the island state of Cyprus seceded from that country and proclaimed itself an independent state. To sensitive, fair-minded people everywhere this is an unnecessary, tragic development in the life of the Cypriot people. As a Canadian living in a bilingual state and a multicultural society, I firmly reject the premise motivating the coup-that Greek and Turkish Cypriots are so fundamentally different in their lifestyles and aspirations that previous attempts to work out an accommodation within the established internationally recognized borders of the state should now be abandoned.
No one should forget that Greek and Turkish Cypriots had lived together in peace and prosperity for a generation before the armed might of the Turkish forces viciously divided the island. That experience must mean something. Surely it proves that the two cultures can co-exist, even thrive, under a common Cypriot citizenship.
Diversity is rapidly becoming one of the dominant features of the modern world. A wise leader knows that, and tries to build bridges, not walls. Mr. Rauf Danktash's actions have betrayed the history of the people of Cyprus and subverted the bright promise of their future. He should be roundly condemned by all of us in this House.



REFUGEES


Mr. David Kilgour (Edmonton-Strathcona):: Mr. Speaker, may I ask why the Government of Canada treats the estimated 4.5 million Afghan refugees who are now in Pakistan and Iran in a different manner than it treats refugees from Poland, Central America and elsewhere? One of my constituents recently returned from visiting his family in the camps in Pakistan and said that the impression there is that the Canadian Government sides with the Soviet Union on its invasion of Afghanistan.
I remind you, Mr. Speaker, that since 1979 Canada has accepted a total of only about 200 refugees from Afghanistan. West Germany and the United States have each accepted several thousand. Why can we in Canada not declare the Afghan refugees as a designated class for the upcoming year? I also remind you, Mr. Speaker, that Canadian aid to the Afghan refugees is currently running at about $6 per refugee per year.
In the words of Professor M. S. Noorzoy of the Afghan Cultural and Charitable Society of Alberta, Afghan refugees "come with skills and education, but above all, with a great desire to re-establish themselves productively without delay". Canadians generally believe that human beings everywhere should be treated with dignity and respect.



EDUCATION


Mrs. Ursula Appolloni (York South-Weston):: Mr. Speaker, in a brief presented this week to the Standing Committee on Labour, Manpower and Immigration, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business delivered a stunning and devastatingly negative report on unemployed youth. One of the main criticisms was levelled at those who, according to the report, simply do not know how to apply for a job or how to conduct themselves at an interview. If this is so, Mr. Speaker, then surely the young people deserve not blanket condemnation but constructive help and co-operation from all levels of society. In this spirit, therefore, I urge the Minister of Employment and Immigration (Mr. Roberts) to contract from the National Film Board a series of "how to" documentaries
November 17, 1983

which will be made readily available to all high schools throughout Canada.




Mr. Bob Ogle (Saskatoon East):: Mr. Speaker, once again 1 would like to explain to the House the difficulty that university students across Canada are having in getting financial assistance to continue at university or post-secondary institutions. This week I was told by A1 Shpyth and Beth Olley of the University of Saskatchewan Student Council about the difficulties experienced by students in that university. They explained that the situation is full of Catch 22's. Provincial Governments are blaming the federal Government, and the federal Government is blaming provincial Governments for problems encountered when seeking loans and bursaries.
This morning I received a letter from Mrs. Meridel Magnu-son, one of my constituents. Her letter explained the difficulties that her own two children were having in getting loans and bursaries needed to continue their university education. As we all know, it is a national problem and one which exists basically because the country has such a high level of unemployment. Universities are bulging, and many young students who are now attending university would not be there if there were a job for them outside the universities.
1 would call upon the Secretary of State (Mr. Joyal) and the person who is in charge of fiscal relations with the Provinces to get cracking and make sure that the Provinces are doing their fair share and are not hindering the process of seeing that young Canadians, our best natural resource, are receiving sufficient funds to enable them to continue their education.



AGRICULTURE


Mr. Gordon Taylor (Bow River):: Mr. Speaker, people of Canada, beware! Do not let the Liberal Government get its mitts on any of your money. It will either lose or steal it and then destroy the files, as occurred with the $1,000 instalment payment paid to Revenue Canada by a new Canadian who is operating a service station in Cochrane, Alberta, or it will hold on to it tenaciously like a bulldog, as in the case of the money paid into the Western Grain Stabilization Fund by the Farmers of western Canada, which amounts to close to $1 billion.
Progressive Conservative Member after Progressive Conservative Member has described the difficult cashflow problem now haunting farmers, and has begged and pleaded for a payout. The Grain Stabilization Fund was established to help producers when prices were down in times like this, but the Minister says that we should wait until the five years are up as
Oral Questions
specified in the Act. It is strange that the Government did not bother waiting when it wanted more money from the farmers. It just increased the payments from $500 to $900, to $1,200.
The Minister says the Government is reviewing the matter. How long will this review take? Long enough for a few more scores of farmers to go bankrupt? No wonder more and more farmers are wanting to opt out of this plan. The Government is hanging on to their money like totalitarian money-hungry sharks. A stabilization Act should have some flexibility. At least until the Government pays back the $1,000 to the new Canadian, and makes a sensible payout to farmers, people of Canada, beware!



ORAL QUESTION PERIOD


Hon. Perrin Beatty (Wellington-Dufferin-Simcoe):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. In an example of "Big Brother" government at its worst, the Department of National Revenue has written to the City of Kitchener asking it to duplicate its computerized data base and hand over those tapes to the Department of National Revenue for it to search. 1 would ask the Minister in which municipalities the Department has reached an agreement to have full or partial access to the computerized data bases. Second, will the Minister instruct his officials that this odious practice is to stop?


Hon. Pierre Bussieres (Minister of National Revenue):: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that in the request we sent to the City of Kitchener we did not ask them to send us a duplicate. According to my information, we did not request a duplicate of their computerized database but we asked them what kind of information they had in their computer. As soon as we receive this preliminary information, we shall then be in a position to decide whether the database contains any specific information we need and could eventually get from this municipality.


REQUEST THAT DEPARTMENT CEASE PRACTICE
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, I can give the Minister a copy of a memorandum received by the City of Kitchener officials which indicates that what Revenue Canada wants is duplicates of the computerized tapes.
Again, Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to ask the Minister with which cities such an arrangement has been reached. Second,

November 17, 1983
Oral Questions
will he instruct the Department that this practice is to stop? Third, in the letter that was sent to the City of Kitchener reference is made to other non-taxpaying entities such as hospitals, school boards and municipalities. Has the Department reached an agreement for direct access to the data bases of institutions such as hospitals and school boards, and, if so, in which cases?
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I think this is a good opportunity to explain that the Department of National Revenue is responsible for ensuring that Canadian taxpayers are paying the taxes they owe the Government, and that this is done out of a concern for justice and equity with respect to other taxpayers who pay their taxes in full. Thus, the Department has a monitoring function.
To discharge this responsibility of the Department of National Revenue under the Income Tax Act, we ask certain bodies, including municipalities, for information that will help us check whether a taxpayer has completed his income tax return in accordance with the provisions of the Income Tax Act.
Mr. Speaker, we are certainly not interested in having any particular arrangements for obtaining all the information municipal or other authorities may or should have. We are interested in specific information, in order to discharge the responsibility and comply with the mandate given the Department of National Revenue under the Income Tax Act.


Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, the Minister's answer indicates that 1984 has come a month and a half early.


DEPARTMENT'S AGREEMENTS WITH MUNICIPALITIES- REQUEST FOR INFORMATION
Henry Perrin Beatty: Mr. Speaker, the Minister lectures the House on his duties. Will the Minister tell the House whether he is aware of Section 4 of the Privacy Act which states that no personal information shall be collected by a governmental institution unless it relates directly to an operating program or activity of the institution? If so, will the Minister finally answer the questions I have twice put to him? With which municipalities and with which other institutions, such as hospital and school boards, has the Minister reached such an agreement, and will the Minister now instruct his officials that this practice is to stop forthwith?


Some Hon. Members:: Hear, hear!
[ Translation]


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member took the trouble to write to me a note and ask me about this matter, and I therefore made
enquiries and asked my officials which municipalities had previously been asked for such information.
Among our various district offices, there are a number through which we have requested specific information, not general information or a whole database as the Hon. Member seems to infer. Specific information was requested from a number of cities including Toronto, Winnipeg, Montreal and Calgary, and 1 could add several more. This is common departmental practice, when information is needed in order to discharge our responsibilities under the Income Tax Act, and the Hon. Member ought to know what those responsibilities are, since he himself, as the Opposition critic, is responsible for knowing what the duties are of the Department of National Revenue and the responsibility it has under the Income Tax Act for obtaining such information.
[DOT] (U20)


DEPARTMENT'S APPROACH TO HOSPITALS AND SCHOOL BOARDS
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Yeliowhead):: Mr. Speaker, I would like to pursue this extraordinary practice, this big state, Big Brother practice by the Minister of National Revenue. He has said, if 1 understand him correctly, that he is seeking access to the records of other institutions in order to verify that the tax reports of individual Canadians are in fact accurate. He has admitted that he is seeking information from the municipal records of most of the major municipalities in Canada. Will the Minister tell us what other institutions he is seeking records from? Is he looking into hospitals?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Yes.


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: Is he looking into schools?


Henry Perrin Beatty: Yes.


Walter Leland Rutherford (Lee) Clark: What other institutions is the Department of Revenue sending its people to look into, in the name of verifying the tax returns of individual Canadians? How extensive is this snooping?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, 1 am a little surprised and I would even say disappointed by the holier-than-thou attitude taken by the Hon. Member who put this question, and I must say that he is even more naive than his attitude would lead us to expect, if his question was sincere, because, Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member who put this question held, during his term of office, the most responsible position in this country, and when he was Leader of the Government, he must have known what his Minister of National Revenue was doing and that the Minister's duties and responsibilities involved enforcing the Act, and that to do so, the income Tax Act gives the Minister the authority to obtain information that will help to ensure the fair and equitable enforcement of the law in this country.
November 17, 1983


MINISTER'S POWERS
Right Hon. Joe Clark (Yellowhead):: Mr. Speaker, the Act does not give the Minister of National Revenue carte blanche-he does not have unlimited powers. Three times today, the Minister refused to answer, here in the House, our request for a list of institutions, other than municipalities, which receive enquiries we believe are made in excess of the Minister's legitimate powers. Once again, 1 want to ask the Minister for a list of other institutions that receive enquiries from the Minister, that is, hospitals, schools, and others.
I would also like to know whether, according to the Minister's interpretation, there are enquiries he cannot make under the Act.


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I do not think and I am even positive there are no enquiries. The nature of the requests that are made does not contravene the laws of this country, on the contrary. I believe they comply with our statutes.
I may also remind the Hon. Member that most of the information we are requesting is in the public domain, that is, if, for instance, any Member of this House or any citizen of this country, I myself as a citizen and taxpayer, if I go to City Hall and ask them for specific information, they will give me that information because it is in the public domain, because these are public data, and I fail to see-

[English)


SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Ian Waddell (Vancouver-Kingsway):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of State for Economic Development. Last summer I released copies of a report from the Minister's own Department called "The Rocky Road to the 1990s" which predicted substantial job losses by 1991 due to structural and technological change in the Canadian economy. Last week the Minister finally responded by spending over $500,000 on a conference called "Canada Tomorrow". Would the Minister agree that this conference was a failure, partly due to insufficient participation by labour and by women, and partly due to its focus on the financial aspects of technological change and not on the people aspect or the social consequences like job loss, de-skilling, and the constant need for retraining due to this great problem of technological change?


Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technology):: Mr. Speaker, I see the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway has his tongue tucked well into his cheek. He knows from at least others who were present at the conference that there was very good participation by labour. There were 75 representatives of labour. I wish he had prevailed upon his
Oral Questions
supporters in the CLC to ensure their presence. However, they will, of course, have the benefit of the report of the proceedings.
With respect to women, the participation of such people as Wendy Dobson and Dr. Margaret Fulton, just to name two of many who participated in the panels and workshops, should alleviate his concern that women were not represented. 1 might say, Mr. Speaker, that the lack of women in terms of absolute numbers is, quite frankly, a reflection of what happens too often in all areas of our society, particularly here in the House of Commons. The fact that we have only 14 women Members of Parliament out of 282 is, 1 believe, clear evidence that there is under-representation. Indeed, I would have liked to have seen more women represented from the various organizations which attended the conference. I am sure all Hon. Members of the House share that view. However, that having been said, I believe the points made by the women present were significant indeed and these women contributed very effectively to the proceedings. Therefore, far from being a failure I would say that it was a great success. I could go on, if it is the wish of-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I believe the question of the Hon. Member has been answered. The Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway on a Supplementary.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, if my tongue is in my cheek, I hate to speculate on where Senator Lawson's tongue was.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


CANADA LABOUR CODE
Ian Gardiner Waddell: My supplementary question is directed to the R2-D2 of the Cabinet over there. Is the Minister aware of the Harvard economist, Robert Reich, who has written, and I quote, "Unless members of a democratic society are persuaded-"


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order. Order, please. The Hon. Member is permitted a supplementary question. A supplementary question must be just that. It cannot be another question. Would the Hon. Member proceed?


Ian Gardiner Waddell: My supplementary question to the Minister is this: given these writings, and given the fact that workers in British Columbia showed they could fight back, will the Government do something for the working people, specifically, amend the Canada Labour Code to cover negotiating technological change, severance pay, conditions of work, and retraining of the worker who is affected by technological change? Is the Government prepared to give the House the commitment of amending the Labour Code, and doing it soon?
Hon. Donald J. Johnston (Minister of State for Economic Development and Minister of State for Science and Technolo-

November 17, 1983
Oral Questions
gy): Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member for Vancouver-Kingsway might have addressed that question to the Minister of Labour because certainly a good part of the-
Mir. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Chair has concern about a supplementary question which is not supplementary but is another question. The Hon. Member was recognized for a supplementary question.
The Hon. Member for Saskatoon West.


GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING
Hon. Ray Hnatyshyn (Saskatoon West):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs. It relates to the whole proposition of truth in advertising vis-a-vis the Government. The Minister will know that there have been a number of complaints with respect to truth in advertising by the Government and government agencies. Most recently, the Royal Canadian Mint has put out extensive advertising with respect to the sale of the so-called "silver" dollar for the Universiad. It turns out that the so-called "silver" dollar is 50 per cent alloy and only 50 per cent silver.
In view of the fact that there have been prosecutions of private citizens and private sector corporations, such as Sears being fined $1 million for misleading advertising with respect to jewellery, what does the Minister intend to do with respect to the clearly misleading advertising of "silver" dollars by the Canadian Mint?


Hon. Judy Erola (Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, this is the first time this matter has been brought to my attention. I can assure the Hon. Member 1 will look into it immediately and examine the advertising practices of the Royal Canadian Mint.


REQUEST THAT TRIBUNAL MONITOR GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING
Ramon John Hnatyshyn: Mr. Speaker, as the Minister will know, the federal Government is by far the largest advertiser in this country. In 1980 it spent three times more than General Foods, the second largest spender. In 1982-83 it expects to spend $70 million of taxpayers' money on advertising. In spite of this, there seems to be one law for the governors and another for the governed.
Is the Minister prepared to set up an independent tribunal to monitor government advertising so there can be the same standards for government advertising as there is for the private sector? Will she take some action?


Judith A. Erola: I would like to assure the Hon. Member that indeed those same standards do apply to all government advertising.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


IMMIGRATION
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Can he tell the House what safeguards he is putting into the immigration provision for entrepreneurs coming into the country so that this will not be abused by people who could use it literally to buy a Canadian passport, or by elements such as organized crime to gain legal entry into Canada?


Hon. John Roberts (Minister of Employment and Immigration):: Mr. Speaker, those who come in under that program will still have to fulfil the normal requirements of a security and medical check. That will at least partially respond to the latter part of the Hon. Member's concerns. There is also a provision where, having made certain commitments about the level of investment and number of jobs to be created, the entrepreneur has an interim period of up to two years to ensure he meets those commitments. It is a provisional entry on a two-year basis. If he fails to meet the commitments he made, then the entry permit would be rescinded. That trial period, I think, is designed and will respond to the kinds of concerns the Hon. Member expressed concerning safeguards in the operation of the system.


USE OF ENTRY CARDS-APPOINTMENT OF ADVISORY COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, on July 15 the Minister introduced a two-month trial program involving the use of landing cards for visitors to Canada, in order to control the flow of illegal immigrants. Can he tell us what the result of that assessment has been? Are the landing cards going to be permanent?
While he is on his feet, he might tell the House under what statutory authority he appointed the Hon. Member for Bona-venture-Iles-de-la-Madeleine to chair an advisory committee on illegal immigrants? Are there any emoluments or expenses to be paid to the Hon. Member?


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, those are two quite separate questions. The answer to the first is that the use of the entry card system at three airports, was on a trial basis and the results are being accumulated. I have not yet seen an analysis of the over-all impact. Once we have made that assessment we will consider the question of whether that system should be extended.
November 17, 1983

The answer to the second question is that there is no remuneration or emoluments attached to that appointment. As the former Parliamentary Secretary had considerable experience in that area, 1 thought it would be useful to use that experience in chairing the committee. I wanted to ensure the advice we receive from officials is tempered by some concern for the humane considerations which Members of Parliament in their work hold foremost in their minds. 1 answered that question previously from an Hon. Member of the New Democratic Party, and the answer 1 am giving today is essentially the same answer I gave at that time.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
Ms. Lynn McDonald (Broadview-Greenwood):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs regarding the extremely serious situation in Cyprus resulting from the illegal declaration of independence on the part of the Turkish-Cypriot community. Would the Minister expand on his comments in the House on Tuesday regarding what Canada is doing diplomatically to express its disapproval of this move and to seek a withdrawal of the declaration of independence?


Hon. Allan J. MacEachen (Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for External Affairs):: Mr. Speaker, the Hon. Member will recall we have already disapproved of this unilateral action. We do not propose to grant recognition to the new alleged Government of Turkish Cyprus. We are concerting with other countries at the United Nations to support the efforts of the Secretary General who, up until this unilateral declaration, had been working to bring the two groups together in Cyprus. Our efforts are in the diplomatic field, and at the present time they are centered at the UN with other countries, including the United Kingdom which is taking the lead in presenting a resolution which will be debated at the Security Council and on which Canada will speak.


SUGGESTED WITHDRAWAL OF CANADIAN AMBASSADOR FROM ANKARA
Lynn McDonald: Mr. Speaker, would the Minister comment a little further about what other diplomatic moves might be undertaken, especially given the fact the Turkish Government has recognized the new illegal Government? For example, would Canada withdraw its Ambassador to Turkey as an expression of disapproval?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: No, Mr. Speaker, that would not be appropriate in the circumstances. I understand the Foreign Minister of Turkey has stated that the unilateral declaration had taken place without the consent or
Oral Questions
knowledge of the Turkish Government, so in those circumstances the action proposed would not be quite appropriate.


EMPLOYMENT
Mr. Gerry St. Germain (Mission-Port Moody):: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Employment and Immigration. Does the Minister consider programs such as NEED, CCDP and others under the Canada Works Program, to be primarily ones of social security income support, or primarily of job creation and economic development?


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, I think both of these objectives are important to this Government.


GOVERNMENT'S POLICY
Gerry St. Germain: Mr. Speaker, I think they are social security programs, as does the Department of Health and Welfare in its booklet "Basic Facts on Social Security Programs". What is the Minister going to do about job creation?


John (Moody) Roberts: Mr. Speaker, on several occasions we have outlined to the House the general strategy for job creation. That is reflected in the budget presented by the Minister of Finance, a strategy which does believe that the private sector is the main motor force for creating jobs. We believe the tax arrangements brought forward by this Government will create a climate in this country in which that will happen.
On a short-term basis, through such programs as NEED and the Special Recovery Projects Program, we are undertaking direct job-creation programs until the full impact of the tax measures can be felt. If the hon. gentleman is concerned that unemployment insurance is an income maintenance program, the fact is that it is the kind of program which Parliament created. There are people who would argue that unemployment insurance contains too many social aspects and should be more narrowly an insurance program. There are those who take a very different point of view. The point I would make, Mr. Speaker, is that the Unemployment Insurance Program has just shown what a substantial and extraordinary benefit it is to this country.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: When the Minister's replies are long, it is difficult to discourage long questions.
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November 17, 1983
Oral Questions


CANADA DEVELOPMENT INVESTMENT CORPORATION
Hon. Michael Wilson (Etobicoke Centre):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue, with reference to the proposed sale of Canada Development shares in the market in the next few weeks. Unadjusted for inflation, the average price the Government paid for these shares over the years is $10.48. The current price is $6 a share, and the sale will probably be made at something less than that. Could the Minister explain to the public why taxpayers must accept a loss of at least 45 per cent on their original investment?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, I should think that the Hon. Member will appreciate that, his question being based on sheer speculation, it is impossible for me to give him an answer.


REQUEST THAT GOVERNMENT WITHDRAW FROM CORPORATION
Michael Holcombe Wilson: There is absolutely no speculation in anything I have said. The average cost is $10.48. The shares are trading now at $6. You can get the price in The Globe and Mail business section. They are going to be sold at less than that. There is a 45 per cent loss on the part of the Canadian taxpayer. It is another example of the mistakes that the Government has made over the years that have wasted taxpayers' money. Let me point out the reason for this. It is-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Will the Hon. Member please ask a supplementary question?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The reason for this is based on the fact that the Government meddled in the operations of this company some two years ago through the current Minister of Finance, by trying to impose its own management.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Would the Hon. Member please ask his question?


Michael Holcombe Wilson: Would the Minister tell the House how long it is going to take for the Government to get out of that company and let it be operated in a more effective way?


Pierre Bussières: Mr. Speaker, 1 think that the Hon. Member is aware enough of stock exchange operations to know that the shares of various companies trade at various prices and that even the companies which the Hon. Member or other Members may consider as being under the best management hold shares whose price on the stock market may vary from day to day, either up or down.
I also think that, before making any conclusion on prices, it is better to wait until a number of shares have been traded. In addition, the Hon. Member will agree with me that the measures taken by the Government will very likely contribute to strengthen the market value of CDC shares.


FISHERIES
Mr. Ted Miller (Nanaimo-Alberni):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. After the Pearse Report in British Columbia was brought down a year ago September, the Minister appointed a ministerial advisory board to study the report and make recommendations by this November. The Minister is also involved with his own Department in making recommendations to Cabinet. More recently the Minister appointed a ministerial committee with a senior adviser to his Department, to study those reocommenda-tions also. What is the relationship between the Minister's policy adviser committee to M.A.C. and his own departmental officials?


Pierre De Bané: Mr. Speaker, in one word, the closest co-operation and interaction between those different instances. What I need is the best advice of the most competent people within the Department, the advisers and also the participants in the fisheries, whether they are the native groups in B.C., or the commercial sector, or the sports fishery. 1 need the support of all those people.
1 am pleased to report to the House that the spirit that exists at this moment is really very encouraging. All of them are working together hand in hand. I hope that early in the new year I will be able to put before Cabinet an important program to give a new start to the Pacific fisheries, exactly as we have been doing for the Atlantic fisheries.


John Carnell Crosbie: We hope not.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER MEET ADVISORY COMMITTEE
Edward Allan Miller: 
Pierre De Bané: Mr. Speaker, I have never heard such an unfair criticism of one of my closest advisers who works with me on my staff. On the contrary, I have only the highest confidence in him. 1 can assure the Hon. Member that his opinion is not at all shared by the people. He is most dedicated and is doing exactly what I asked him to do. I have no intention whatsoever of doing what the Hon. Member is suggesting.


EXTERNAL AFFAIRS
John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Secretary of State for External Affairs who is used to being between a rock and a hard place. My question concerns the Bank of Nova Scotia which is being fined $25,000 a day by U.S. courts for not divulging bank records from the Grand Cayman Islands. At the same time, there is an injunction from a court in the Grand Cayman Islands forbidding the bank to give this information to the American authorities because of their secrecy laws.
Would the Minister advise the House whether the Government has made a decision to intervene before the U.S. courts to aid the Bank of Nova Scotia? The newspapers report that he has brought this up already with the Secretary of State of the U.S., Mr. Schultz. What was the response of Mr. Schultz? What action does the Minister plan to follow up this untenable position in which the bank has been placed?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Mr. Speaker, with regard to the meeting with Mr. Schultz, the answer is yes. We did have a continuing consultation on what Canada considers an unjustified extraterritorial application of American law. In this case the Bank of Nova Scotia and other banks are put in an almost impossible position in being asked to comply with American law which contravenes the local law. The American authorities have sought information in a way which we think is unnecessary as well as unjustified. We believe that a good deal of that information could be obtained legally through the application, for example, for the taxation treaties. All of this was discussed with Mr. Schultz. We have attempted to put in place some mechanism that will overcome this difficulty.
The Hon. Member asked whether we intend to intervene in support of the Bank of Nova Scotia before the American court. That matter is under consideration by the Department of Justice. I believe there is an intention to file an amicus brief or take that status at court. As far as I know, the exact details of the statement are still under consideration by the Department of Justice.
Oral Questions


UNITED STATES REACTION TO CANADIAN REPRESENTATIONS
John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, the Bank of Nova Scotia is being forced to pay $25,000 a day in the meantime. If I am correct in my mathematics, that is $100,000 every four days. I know that is not a lot to the Government, so I wonder if the Minister would consider this to be urgent. Was Mr. Schultz sympathetic and did he indicate he was going to attempt to take some action?
Is the Government considering the suggestion of Mr. Bell, President of the Bank of Nova Scotia, who suggested that we should hold the line on activities of foreign banks operating in this country until the matter is cleared up, in other words use some pressure with respect to the operations of foreign banks in Canada? There is a parliamentary report on that subject now. Is the Government considering that? Did Mr. Schultz indicate sympathy and that he is going to take some action?


Allan Joseph MacEachen: Yes, Mr. Speaker, in my opinion Mr. Schultz did show sympathy and understanding of this problem and would like to have it cleared up. My information is that the collection of the fine from the Bank of Nova Scotia has been postponed for a month. To that extent at least, there is some relief from the situation which the Hon. Member has described. I hope it will not be necessary for us to apply actions to American banks which, in our view, are unjustified when applied to Canadian banks.


ONTARIO BICENTENNIAL
Mr. Maurice Foster (Algoma):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Secretary of State. Could he state when the information on the details of the $1.5 million grant program for municipalities and community groups to celebrate the Ontario bicentennial will be available, so that the municipal groups and other groups can get on with their planning for this important celebration?


Hon. D. M. Collenette (Minister of State (Multiculturalism)):: Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State did announce earlier this week the allocation of over $2 million toward the Ontario bicentennial festivities, with the emphasis on the fact that these festivities should encompass all cultural communities within the Province of Ontario. A board of community advisers has been appointed to assist with the allocation of these funds and the details will be forwarded to Members so that they can give the information to community groups and municipalities within the next couple of weeks.

November 17, 1983
Oral Questions COMMUNICATIONS


CONTRACT ISSUED BY DEPARTMENT TO MAIL ENVELOPES
Mrs. Jennifer Cossitt (Leeds-Grenville):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Communications. It concerns the issuing and distributing of licences to C.B. operators. Would he explain to the House why it is necessary for his Department to contract the services of Prestige Mailing Systems Ltd. to place in envelopes licences which his Department issues, and mail them to the C.B. operators? Surely there are clerks in his Department who are capable of stuffing and mailing out envelopes, instead of adding to our horrendous deficit in such a ludicrous manner?


Hon. Francis Fox (Minister of Communications):: Mr. Speaker, we have tried to automate as much as possible the handling and issuing of all licences. We are doing so in the most cost effective manner possible.


DELAY IN ISSUANCE OF LICENCES
Jennifer Cossitt: Mr. Speaker, my supplementary question is for the Minister of Communications. Would he also look into the delay and distribution of the licences to the operators? Apparently it takes approximately eight weeks to have these licences issued because his Department is concerned about an operator's cheque bouncing and would like to save time in allowing for this. Is it possible for the Minister to instruct his departmental officials distribute licences faster, effectively and efficiently, perhaps by asking the operators to send their payment by money order or something of that nature?


Francis Fox: Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of the recommendation made to me to try to make the service even more efficient than it is at the moment, I will be pleased to discuss the Hon. Member's suggestion with officials of my Department.


REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Hon. J. Robert Howie (York-Sunbury):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Economic Development. Will an economic development framework agreement be signed with New Brunswick before the Finance Ministers' meeting is convened in December, in order that New Brunswick can maximize its potential to deal with very high unemployment considering that a very high percentage of its revenue comes in the form of transfer payments from Ottawa?


Donald James Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I am most anxious, as are my colleagues on the Economic and Regional Development Cabinet Committee, to sign an agreement with New Brunswick as soon as possible.
As the Hon. Member for York-Sunbury knows, work is moving forward in that direction.
I have had meetings and, in fact, Premier Hatfield has been in Ottawa and has met with the regional Minister and myself.
I am optimistic that such an agreement can be signed with New Brunswick within a short time frame.
When we talk about a deadline such as before the Finance Ministers' meeting, I can make no promises in that regard. Certainly 1 can say that the priorities and the economic development perspective which was developed by our committee, and upon which I believe there is broad consensus, and which the New Brunswick Government has in its possession, are of course available and known by the Minister of Finance and the respective Ministers of Finance who have participated in its development.
I do not believe that the absence of an actual signature on an agreement will be in any way detrimental to the discussions taking place, particularly with respect to Finance Ministers. Again, I emphasize that we are anxious, as I hope the Government of New Brunswick is anxious, to sign an agreement as quickly as possible.


J. Robert Howie: I thank the Minister for his answer.


REQUEST THAT SIGNING OF AGREEMENT BE EXPEDITED
J. Robert Howie: Mr. Speaker, the Minister is probably aware that most of the fast track programs which have been announced for New Brunswick are on a relatively slow track and have not yet created any jobs, and that unemployment remains chronically very high. As well, the Finance Ministers' meeting is billed as a pre-budget meeting.
In view of these facts, would the Minister be good enough to give the House the assurance that he will approach his counterpart in New Brunswick within the next few days in an attempt to facilitate and expedite the signing of the agreement?


Donald James Johnston: Mr. Speaker, I will not accept the premise that the fast track program is not on a fast track. In fact, I think things are moving well in New Brunswick. As the Hon. Member for York-Sunbury knows, New Brunswick has some very important projects, which range from general public works projects on routes, overpasses and so on, through to the most sophisticated kind of projects such as the Maritime Forestry Research Centre and the Forest Rangers School which is, of course, situated in the Hon. Member's constituency. I am sure he is most supportive of the program. 1 could go through the list of projects-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member has answered the question.
November 17, 1983


CANADIAN RADIO-TELEVISION AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION PAY TV-SALE OF FIRST CHOICE NETWORK
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of Communications. The CRTC spent ten years looking into questions associated with Pay TV. In its policy declarations last year, it spoke out specifically against vertical integration in the system. Now, in the case of First Choice, with only ten days' notice it stretched the rules, rushed through a hearing with haste that can only be called indecent and suspicious, and permitted a level of vertical integration that is unparalleled and contrary to policies it has announced. Will the Minister initiate an investigation into this irregular and unusual action by the CRTC?


Francis Fox: Mr. Speaker, the CRTC has come down with a decision in the Pay TV area, which is an area that has been under intensive discussion in Canada by all parties. I will not launch an investigation into what the Hon. Member calls irregular activities of the CRTC. On the other hand, I am quite pleased to see that the regulators in Canada are now in a better position to respond quickly to the needs of the people who must appear before them. On many occasions in the House criticisms have been voiced to the effect that Crown commissions do not act quickly enough to take to heart and hear the problems that may be required to be heard rather quickly.
1 have no comment to make on the merit of the decision since it is obviously a decision within the full jurisdiction of the CRTC to take.


REQUEST THAT MINISTER REVIEW COMMISSION'S DECISION
David Orlikow: Mr. Speaker, 1 am sure that the Minister knows that the application, and the decision which came out of that application, have been objected to by virtually every group concerned with the production of TV material. In light of those objections, surely the Minister can at least consider exercising the right he has to overrule the decision of the CRTC. I would urge him to do that, or at least to look at it.


Francis Fox: Mr. Speaker, indeed I can assure the Hon. Member that I will examine the decision of the CRTC very closely. After a preliminary reading of that decision 1 know that many of the points of view expressed in front of the CRTC were taken into consideration since, in allowing the application to go forward, the CRTC did indeed indicate a number of conditions that it considers to be essential to the decision it has taken.
Oral Questions CROWN CORPORATIONS


IDENTIFICATION OF NUMBERS
Hon. John Wise (Elgin):: Mr. Speaker, I wish to direct a question to the Minister of Supply and Services. I direct it to him due to his responsibility for Statistics Canada. We have received a number of press reports in the last few weeks, as well as other information, to the effect that there are approximately 300 Crown corporations and business enterprises in Canada. In fact, certain press reports indicate that there are some 306 various Crown corporations and business enterprises. Is the Minister of Supply and Services able to confirm or deny the accuracy of these reports?


Hon. Charles Lapointe (Minister of Supply and Services):: Mr. Speaker, I would say to the Hon. Member that Statistics Canada has never made a special statistical inquiry on the number of existing Crown corporations. I do not have that information.


NATIONAL REVENUE
Mr. Benno Friesen (Surrey-White Rock-North Delta):: Mr. Speaker, my question is directed to the Minister of National Revenue. On November 2 he told my colleague from Waterloo that his officials were going to pursue the full weight not of the law but of the regulations against organizations like the Canadian Mental Health Association and other such non-profit organizations. Since that involves their interpretation of such things as lobbying for changes in legislation, could the Minister explain the fact that earlier this year his Department gave charitable status to a school board in British Columbia?


Pierre Bussières: First, Mr. Speaker, I am not aware of the latest case referred to by the Hon. Member and, second, when the status of charitable organization has been granted, it is of course because the organization which had applied did so in accordance with the requirements and standards of the Department. As to the particular case mentioned by the Hon. Member, I cannot comment since I am not aware of the facts.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member for Don Valley West on a short supplementary.

November 17, 1983
Business of the House EXTERNAL AFFAIRS


ANGOLA-REPORTED HOSTAGE TAKING OF CANADIAN MISSIONARIES
Mr. John Bosley (Don Valley West):: Mr. Speaker, 1 have a question for the Secretary of State for External Affairs. Late reports this morning indicate that some Canadian missionaries have been taken hostage in Angola. Can he tell the House-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Order, please. That is not a supplementary.


PETITIONS
Mr. Deputy Speaker:: I have the honour to inform the House that the Clerk of the House has laid upon the Table reports of the Clerk of Petitions stating that he has examined the petitions presented by Hon. Members on Tuesday, November 15, 1983 and finds that the petitions meet the requirements of the Standing Orders as to form.


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Nielsen:: May I ask the Governmenet House Leader-I assume we will be on the fisheries legislation again tomorrow-to indicate the business of the House should we some time during the day tomorrow terminate the fisheries legislation? Could he also go on into next week and indicate what the business for next week will be?


Mr. Pinard:: Mr. Speaker, after consultations 1 indicated to my hon. colleague this morning that we would like to see Bill C-170 sent to committee as soon as possible. I now have an indication that will not happen today but 1 hope it will be done tomorrow. If, as the Hon. Member for Yukon has just indicated, there is a possibility the Bill gets sent to committee before the end of the day tomorrow, the following item to be dealt with will be resumption of the debate on Bill C-91. If that Bill is sent to committee, then we will deal with Bill C-96.
In so far as next week is concerned, as I indicated this morning, we will be dealing merely with the business of supply. I would like thereby to designate Monday as the third allotted day, Tuesday as the fourth allotted day and Thursday as the fifth and last allotted day of this period of supply. 1 hope by that time we will have the report of the committee on the fisheries Bill, Bill C-170.


Mr. Deans:: Mr. Speaker, there was a matter that came to my mind after the House Leaders met. The Government House Leader knows that there has been substantial representation made, I think, to many Members of the House with regard to Bill C-653. I have raised this matter with the
Minister on a number of occasions. Is there any possibility that that Bill might be reported back to the House in order that we could deal with it some time during the course of the next seven to ten days?


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, 1 will have to take into account the progress made on Bill C-12 and the possible amendments on Bill C-12 that have interrelation with some dispositions included in Bill C-653. I will have to consult and report to the Hon. Member later.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Don Blenkarn (Mississauga South):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise on a point of order. 1 want to draw to your attention a vote in Supplementary Estimates (B) that I feel is out of order. It is Vote 6b under Consumer and Corporate Affairs. It deals with the payment to the Canada Post Corporation for special purposes of $8,109,406. The Estimates outline "special purposes" as being the relocation of the philatelic mail order service to Antigonish, Nova Scotia; special employment initiatives; a grant of some kind for propane vehicle conversion; special construction repair projects and federal off-oil conversion.
Over the years, Mr. Speaker, you and your predecessors have ruled that the appropriations process should not be used as a substitute for legislation. To quote Madam Speaker's ruling of June 12, 1981:
-the government may not by the use of an Appropriation Act obtain authority that it does not have under existing legislation.
There is no legislative authority in the Canada Post Corporation Act to do the kind of things set out in this estimate. I would like to read into the record Section 28 of the Canada Post Corporation Act. Perhaps it is not necessary to read it in full but let me read Subsections (1), (2) and (3):
28. (1) Where at any time the available revenues of the Corporation are not sufficient to pay all the operating and income charges of the Corporation as and when due, the Minister of Finance, on the application of the Corporation approved by the Minister, may, with the approval of the Governor in Council, place at the disposal of the Corporation such amounts as may be required to enable the Corporation to meet all such charges.
(2)	All amounts placed at the disposal of the Corporation pursuant to subsection (1) shall be reimbursed to the Minister of Finance from the annual revenues of the Corporation in so far as such revenues are sufficient.
(3)	Where the annual revenues of the Corporation are insufficient for the purposes of subsection (2), the Minister shall cause the amount of the insufficiency to be included, in the form of a deficit appropriation item, in the next Appropriation Act laid before Parliament thereafter.
Nowhere in the Act is there any authority for an appropriation that is not an appropriation to pay losses. This is not a question of losses. This is a question of the post office entering into a series of activities that have nothing to do with its losses. Clearly if there were a loss in the post office, an appropriation could be made for the loss in accordance with Section 28 of the Act. But there is no provision in the Canada Post Corporation
November 17, 1983

Act for an appropriation to move an activity of the post office to Antigonish Nova Scotia. There is no provision for a loss, for special employment initiatives. It is not a loss necessarily to conduct a federal propane vehicle conversion program. In effect, what is happening is that this estimate is totally out of order.
I would ask you, Mr. Speaker, to investigate the matter. If 1 am right, and I believe I am, that Section 28 of the Canada Post Corporation Act does not allow this kind of estimate, 1 ask that the estimate be disallowed and removed from the proposed appropriation Bill.


Yvon Pinard: Before you rule, Mr. Speaker, 1 would ask that you take this representation under advisement so as to give the President of the Treasury Board (Mr. Gray) an opportunity to give an explanation, if he feels an explanation is required, either tomorrow or at the latest the beginning of next week, on Monday. I think this may enlighten you before you render your decision.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: 1 want to thank the Hon. Member for raising the matter. The Chair would certainly wish to extend opportunities for Members to rebut the argument made before rendering a decision-


Erik Nielsen: Or add to it.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: -and to take some time to consider the matter. Or add to it, as the Hon. Member says.


PRIVILEGE
Ian Gardiner Waddell: Mr. Speaker, I have a question of privilege of which 1 gave you notice. It arises from the question period. I feel my privileges as a Member have been unfairly abridged, namely that my supplementary question was cut off unfairly and there were unfair comments by the Chair after the question.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Would the Hon. Member please be seated.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: Do you want to listen to me?


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Would the Hon. Member please be seated.


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Would the Hon. Member please be seated. The determination of supplementary questions is always a difficult matter. The rules are clearly set out in Beauchesne for Hon. Members. In the judgment of the Chair,
Point of Order-Mr. Yurko
a supplementary was not accorded in that particular situation. This is not a matter of privilege.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: A point of order.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member cannot raise on a point of order what he has been denied on a point of privilege. If he is merely going to repeat his argument, the Chair can only restate its position. However, if the Hon. Member has a valid point of order, the Chair will hear it.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: I am just asking the Chair to check the "blues" with respect to what happened, and I reserve my right to raise it tomorrow.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member is simply repeating the same material as before.


POINT OF ORDER
Mr. Bill Yurko (Edmonton East):: Mr. Speaker, I want to thank you for finally seeing me today. I rise on a point of order in connection with a possible change in the order of business for today. 1 ask the unanimous consent of the House that Private Member's Bill C-691, an Act to pardon Louis David Riel, be brought forward today for second reading, consideration by Committee of the Whole House, report stage and third reading. I hope you will seek unanimous consent of the House.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is there unanimous consent?


Some Hon. Members:: No.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: There is not unanimous consent.


William J. Yurko: I did not hear you put the motion, Mr. Speaker.


Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry, but either because of difficulties with the sound system or for some other reason, I did not hear you actually put the motion respecting the Hon. Member's request for unanimous consent. I am not casting any doubt that it was done, but it could not be heard at this end of the House.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair recognized the Hon. Member on a point of order. The Chair's understanding of the procedures of the House is that he cannot move a motion under such circumstances.


Ian Deans: A point of order, Mr. Speaker.


Some Hon. Members:: Sit down.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: For the benefit of the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain (Mr. Deans), the Chair distinctly

November 17, 1983
Tabling of Documents
heard a request for unanimous consent to proceed in a certain way. The Chair asked if there was unanimous consent. There clearly was not unanimous consent and, therefore, the Chair proceeded to the next item of business.


William J. Yurko: A point of order.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: If the Hon. Member for Edmonton East (Mr. Yurko) has a valid point of order, the Chair will hear it. What does he have to say?


William J. Yurko: Mr. Speaker, I have the highest respect for the Chair; 1 always have for a number of years. I have to say that 1 do not recall, unless my eyesight is abandoning me-


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Chair distinctly asked if there was unanimous consent for the Hon. Member to introduce his motion. Hansard will have clearly recorded that there was not unanimous consent.


Ian Gardiner Waddell: You did not ask.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: You did not ask.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: With all due respect to Hon. Members, the Hansard record will disclose that the Chair asked for it.



ROUTINE PROCEEDINGS


Mr. Doug Lewis (Simcoe North):: Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present the twenty-second report of the Standing Committee on Public Accounts, the Canadair report, to which, pursuant to Standing Order 69(13), the Committee requests a comprehensive response. The report will be tabled in both official languages.


PUBLIC WORKS
Hon. Romeo LeBlanc (Minister of Public Works):: Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 46(2), I have the honour to table in both official languages copies of the Pollack report dealing with municipal grants in lieu of taxes.


PETITIONS
Mr. Rod Murphy (Churchill):: Mr. Speaker, 1 have the honour to present a petition on behalf of the people of the Town of The Pas. In their petition to the House of Commons in Parliament assembled, they point out that one of the prime objectives of the Canadian medicare system was to guarantee accessibility of health care to all Canadians. They also believe that the practices of extra billing, hospital user fees and premiums limit accessibility. Wherefore the undersigned, your petitioners, humbly pray that the new Canada Health Act reaffirm the cornerstone of medicare by forbidding these practices and thereby reinstating full accessibility to insured health services for all Canadians.


Mr. Doug Anguish (The Battlefords-Meadow Lake):: Mr. Speaker, I have a few petitions which 1 would like to present this afternoon. The first one calls upon Parliament to debate and pass Private Member's Bill C-678 standing in my name, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone. This petition is signed by some 538 residents of the Province of Ontario who stress that the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada can escalate the nuclear arms race and is, therefore, a serious threat to world peace. The petitioners from all over the Province of Ontario urge Parliament to recognize that multilateral nuclear disarmament must occur in order to secure peace in the world and that Canada, as a traditionally peaceful nation, can and must play a crucial role in achieving multilateral disarmament.
In addition to petitions which I have already presented from the Province of Alberta, I have the further pleasure today to present one signed by residents of the City of Edmonton who oppose the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada and call upon Parliament to debate and pass the Private Member's Bill standing in my name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone. This Bill, if passed, would allow Canada to act in its traditional and historic role as a peacekeeper and mediator in the world-wide nuclear disarmament process, along with other countries that would wish to participate.
The next petition I am proud to present in the House of Commons today is signed by residents of the Province of New Brunswick. The signatures were collected by Saint John Project Ploughshares to mark disarmament week. The petitioners met in a storefront in the city's new downtown centre to focus attention on the relationship between the arms race and development.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The Hon. Member realizes that there are certain forms with regard to petitions and that he should briefly state the purpose of the petition.


Douglas Keith Anguish: Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that. I have only a few more to present and I will try to deal with them as
November 17, 1983

expeditiously as possible. These people emphasize that the specific commitment of Project Ploughshares of Saint John is to work for nuclear disarmament. The petitioners call upon Parliament to debate and pass the Private Member's Bill standing in my name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone.
Earlier 1 presented a petition signed by some 538 residents of the Province of Ontario who oppose the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada. At the moment I would like to present a petition signed by another 74 residents of the Province of Ontario, most of whom are from Toronto and London. They also oppose the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada and call upon Parliament to debate and pass the Private Member's Bill standing in my name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons-free zone. The petitioners urge Parliament to recognize that multilateral nuclear disarmament must occur in order to secure world peace and that Canada, as a traditionally peaceful nation, must play a crucial role in achieving multilateral disarmament.
Also I have the pleasure today to present to the House of Commons a petition signed by some 203 residents of the Province of Saskatchewan who believe that the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada escalates the nuclear arms race and, therefore, is a serious threat to world peace. They also believe that multilateral nuclear disarmament must occur to secure world peace. The petitioners call upon Parliament to debate and pass Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons-free zone, an Act which, if passed, will allow Canada to act as a mediator in world-wide nuclear disarmament processes along with other countries that wish to participate.
I have the pleasure today to present to the House of Commons a petition signed by some 157 residents of Canada who believe that the testing of the Cruise missile is an escalation of the nuclear arms race and is, therefore, a serious threat to world peace. The petitioners call upon Parliament to debate and pass the Private Members' Bill standing in ny name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone which would prevent the testing in Canada of the Cruise missile and allow Canada to act as a mediator in world-wide nuclear disarmament processes along with other countries that wish to participate.
I have the pleasure today to present to the House of Commons a petition which stresses the urgent need for the House of Commons to debate the Cruise missile and Canada's role in the peace-keeping process. This particular petition is more than 200 pages long and contains some 366 signatures, many collected one at a time by concerned Canadians from coast to coast. The petitioners believe that the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada escalates the nuclear arms race and is therefore a serious threat to world peace. The petitioners, who represent a true corss-section of Canadian society, ask your indulgence and that Parliament debate and pass the Private Member's Bill standing in my name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone, so that
Motions
Canada as a traditionally peaceful nation can play a role as a mediator along with other countries that wish to participate in the world-wide nuclear disarmament process.
I have other petitions, but 1 will conclude with one final petition today. In the last few days I have had the opportunity to present petitions to the House of Commons from thousands of Canadians from coast to coast. Even though 1 still have more to present, 1 am extremely pleased today to present a number of petitions signed by the residents of many of the communities within my own constituency of The Battlefords-Meadow Lake.
The petitioners from such communities as Borden, Goodsoil, The Battlefords, Edam, Livelong, Medstead, Meadow Lake, Radisson, Dorintosh, Pinehouse, Meota, Turtleford and Vawn call upon Parliament to debate and pass the Private Member's Bill standing in my name, Bill C-678, an Act to declare Canada a nuclear weapons free zone. The Bill, if passed, would prevent the testing of the Cruise missile in Canada and allow Canada to act as a mediator in the world-wide disarmament process along with other countries that wish to participate.
I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to present these petitions in the House of Commons this afternoon.



HOUSE OF COMMONS ACT


Mr. Paul Dick (Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton):: Mr. Speaker, 1 rise today on an occasion which I know would be moved or seconded by the former Member for Nepean-Carleton because we shared a belief that the by-election laws in this country are very antiquated. In fact, they are the worst in the democratic free world. It is because of that common belief that 1 rise to give notice of a vacancy pursuant to Section 10 of the House of Commons Act.
"We, the undersigned, hereby give notice pursuant to Section 10 of the House of Commons Act that a vacancy has occurred in the representation of the House of Commons in the electoral district of Nepean-Carleton in the Province of Ontario by reason of the untimely death of the Hon. Walter Baker, the Member therefor". Given under our hands and seals at Ottawa, the seventeenth day of November, 1983, signed by myself, the Member for Lanark-Renfrew-Carleton, and the Member for Yukon (Mr. Nielsen).
* *


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Motions. May 1 dispose of the reading of the rather lengthy number of items under Motions?


Erik Nielsen: Mr. Speaker, we are prepared once again to suggest, without, of course, setting any precedent, that you simply call upon Members who have Motions on the Order Paper in their names to determine if any wish to raise them. If

November 17, 1983
Order Paper Questions
they do not, perhaps they could be stood without reading them seriatim.


Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, I would prefer that the proper procedure be followed.
Motions stand.


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):: Mr. Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 4,092 and 5,325.


Mr. Cossitt: 1.	What is a complete list of (a) all the types of contracts and the amounts (b) any moneys received from the Government by McLaughlin-Pollard and Associates and, in each case (i) what was the date (ii) who used their services and for what reason?
2.	Did the firm do work for the Department of the Environment, Statistics Canada and the Atomic Energy Control Board?
3.	Is the firm primarily engaged in public relations and image-making and, if so, in each case where the firm was used, for what reason did the Government consider that image-making was required?


John Leslie Evans: In so far as the Atomic Energy Control Board is concerned:
1.	(a) None, (b) $2,950. (i) October 7 and 8, 1981. (ii) McLaughlin-Pollard held a seminar entitled "Learning to meet the Media" for 10 AECB divisional managers who have occasional to regular contract with the media. The seminar addressed techniques for preparing for and participating in media interviews for both radio and television.
2.	Yes, see Part 1 above.
In so far as Environment Canada is concerned: 1. (a) None, (b) none.
2. No.
In so far as the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development is concerned:
1.	(a) One. $1,492.00 (i) March 10, 1982. (ii) Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development: To conduct a test training session to enable Program Senior Managers to evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of training managers in how to conduct themselves in interviews with print and broadcast journalists so as to fulfil the requirements of the government's guidelines to public servants on dealing with the public and the news media, (b) None.
2.	Not applicable.
In so far as Statistics Canada is concerned:
1.	(a) two contracts, (i) Contract for $7,500, April 11 to May 16, 1981. Actual payment $6,048. Contract for $7,500, Sept. 17 to Sept. 23, 1981. Actual payment $6,252. Payment for both contracts were paid May 25, 1981 and Nov. 1, 1981 respectively, (ii) Statistics Canada requested the services of McLaughlin-Pollard Associates in order to help managers effectively communicate to the public pertinent information regarding policies, practices and activities.
2.	Yes, see Part 1 above.
3.	McLaughlin-Pollard Associates describe the firm as a professional company which helps executive and senior management take advantage of news media opportunities. In addition to the seminar "Learning to meet the media", the firm offers a broad range of communication and research services including preparation and development of books, manuals and audio-visual presentations, and quantitative research in the areas of audience, programming and marketing policy.
All other Department and Agencies have no information on this subject.


Mr. Robinson (Etobicoke-Lakeshore): Have any suicides been recorded in Canada as a result of harassment by officials of the Department of National Revenue and, if so, how many?


Charles Lapointe: Statistics Canada reports: Although statistics on the number of suicides occurring in Canada are collected as part of the vital statistics program of Statistics Canada, no statistical record of the reason for the suicide is maintained.


John Leslie Evans: I would ask, Mr. Speaker, that the remaining questions be allowed to stand.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: The questions as enumerated by the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary have been answered. Shall the remaining questions stand?


Mr. Herbert:: Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the Parliamentary Secretary if he could investigate why Question No. 4,305, which was placed on the Order Paper on May 3, 1982 and which asks about repayments into the Consolidated Revenue Fund, has not yet been answered. I would also like to ask if he could explain why, since the fiscal year ended on March 31 of this year, it is still impossible to produce the answer to that question.
While I am on my feet, Mr. Speaker, may I also ask about two questions which were placed on the Order Paper on March 25 of this year, those being questions Nos. 4,747 and 4,748, both of which deal with tax expenditures? I ask if the answers to those questions which deal with the book and magazine industry could be pursued.


John Leslie Evans: Mr. Speaker, 1 will look into those questions immediately. I know the Hon. Member has a great number of
November 17, 1983

questions on the Order Paper, all of very great importance to himself and to the House, and I will look into those right away.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Shall the remaining questions stand?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.



GOVERNMENT ORDERS


[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. De Bane that Bill C-170, an Act to authorize investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishery enterprises, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry.
Alexandre Cyr: Mr. Speaker, before recess, I was talking about the various times since 1970 that the Government of Canada has intervened to help fishermen in the Province of Quebec. 1 said that under its program to re-establish the Canadian groundfish industry, the Government of Canada had paid Quebec fishermen and processors grants totalling $6,684,400 between 1975 and 1978.
Furthermore, that in 1972, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans introduced a program to protect Atlantic salmon. He had to suspend commercial salmon fishing in the Gulf, and again. The Government of Canada subsidized ninety-five salmon fishermen, from 1972 to 1980, spending a total of $1,840,000 or an average of about $20,000 for every salmon fisherman in the Province of Quebec.
In the summer of 1982, there was utter chaos in the fisheries industry as a result of the dire situation at Pecheurs-Unis. Here again, the Government of Canada stepped in to save the fishermen. In the spring of 1983, there was a recurrence of the same problem at Pecheurs-Unis, and the Government of Canada guaranteed a bank loan so that Pecheurs-Unis could start its operations and fishermen could start their fishing season.
Mr. Speaker, we, the people of the Gaspe, are not blind. We know what the Government of Canada has done for the fisheries industry in Quebec.
Within the framework of the Economic Development Plan for the Gaspe and Lower St. Lawrence, a total of $29,500,000 will be spent on the fisheries industry in the Gaspe in the next two years, for the construction of facilities for handling and
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act unloading fish, manufacturing and storing ice, storing and distributing bait, and also for improving harbour facilities in the area. These funds are being contributed exclusively by the Government of Canada.
What has the PQ Government done since it came to power for fishermen in the Gaspe, the Magdalen Islands and on the North Shore?
Looking back, Mr. Speaker, we see that first of all, this Government did away with gillnet subsidies; second, it cut in half the Quebec Government's subsidy on insurance premiums for fishing boats; third, it abolished the subsidy program for lobster trap replacement; fourth, it closed several ice depots; fifth, it raised the price of ice provided by departmental depots from $8 to $20 per ton; and finally, it introduced its special tax on gas which put a heavy burden on fishermen and fish processors.
I could go on for much longer, Mr. Speaker, but that is how the Hon. Jean Garon has helped Quebec's fishermen.
During the week's holiday we spent in our ridings, 1 also met independent processors from the Gaspe. They realize that restructuring of the fisheries industry is necessary. Through their ability, initiative and sheer hard work, these processors have helped to maintain fisheries-related operations in the Gaspe and Quebec.
Private entreprise is absolutely essential to the future of the fisheries industry in Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces. The independent processors are also concerned about what will happen to their processing plants when a new giant company is established, with the majority of shares being held by the Government of Canada. They are not necessarily opposed to this new fisheries corporation based in the Gaspe, but they would urge the Government to set up management and control mechanisms in order to protect private enterprise.
We must not make it difficult for private enterprise to develop, to progress and to create jobs. If private enterprise were to disappear from the fisheries industry in Quebec and the Atlantic Provinces, the resulting economic disaster would be far worse than the bankruptcy of Pecheurs-Unis. In the past, members of local co-operatives have had many problems with Pecheurs-Unis du Quebec. Today they are very pleased this organization will disappear when the new corporation is established, once the legislation before the House today. Bill C-170, is passed.
Consequently, Mr. Speaker, 1 urge Hon. Members to join me in supporting this Bill to restructure the Atlantic fisheries and to provide for financial assistance by the Government of Canada in defraying the cost of this restructuring, because of all the Canadians who depend on this and, perhaps also, because every day, our fishermen are exploring the living resources of our ocean boundaries and it is up to us to take advantage of these resources.

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
In committee, we shall be able to suggest amendments to this Bill. This morning, my colleague from South West Nova (Miss Campbell) wanted the Vice-Chairman, the Member for Gaspe, to chair the committee while this Bill is being considered. 1 can assure my hon. colleague that we can share the duties of conducting the debate in committee and thus ensure that the legislation is passed by the House before this session is adjourned.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Are there Hon. Members rising to ask questions of the Hon. Member who has just spoken? If not, the Chair will recognize the Hon. Member for Kamloops-Shuswap (Mr. Riis).


Mr. Nelson A. Riis (Kamloops-Shuswap):: Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-170, an Act to authorize the investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fisheries enterprises. I do recognize that this is perhaps the most important fisheries debate of any that we have had in this session of Parliament. I believe it was the Premier of Newfoundland who indicated that this was perhaps the most important phenomenon to happen to the Island of Newfoundland and Labrador since Confederation. I find it disheartening, though, Mr. Speaker, that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane), who sponsored this Bill, does not see fit to be in the House. While one might be able to understand the Minister's absence, I find it difficult to understand that even the Parliamentary Secretary is unable to be in attendance in the House of Commons today.


Mr. Nowlan:: It is an insult. Shame!


Nelson Andrew Riis: It really is an insult, Mr. Speaker, to the Atlantic fisheries and to fishermen and fish processors across this country. I think it indicates pretty clearly just how seriously Members of the Government take this particular legislation. I appreciate that what this Bill really represents to Canada, Mr. Speaker, is a recognition of what happens when there is a lack of adequate planning, a lack of any comprehensive planning regarding one of Canada's major economic sectors. Obviously, we are seeing today the result of what happens when the federal Government does not sit down with provincial Governments and with representatives of the fishing industry in order to develop some long-range comprehensive planning strategies. The result is that we have today what amounts, by and large, to a bail-out situation, throwing a lifesaver to an industry which has been extremely hard-pressed over the last number of months.
I would like to say that this particular drastic measure which we are looking at today is the result of Government activities, in part, over the last number of years, and the incredible optimism which both the provincial and federal Governments brought about in the industry because of the expansion of the 200-mile limit, with the suggestion that this was a sector of the economy, the Atlantic fisheries sector,
which virtually had unlimited opportunities and potential. People were encouraged to move into areas in which they were previously hesitant to move. Corporations, both large and small, were encouraged to borrow beyond their means in anticipation of this incredible bubble which was about to occur in terms of the Atlantic fisheries. I suggest, Mr. Speaker, that management decisions resulted in a great deal of over-capitalization and unnecessary debt which precipitated and persuaded the Government to act in this very dramatic way.
We also, of course, recognize that the present problems were compounded by the monetarist position which the federal Government took a number of years ago. I might say it was a position which was supported by the Conservative Party of Canada, represented through its short term in office by the then Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister, who supported the position of Governor Bouey and the Bank of Canada. This position was later taken up by the present Government. It was essentially a Government policy of high interest rates, Mr. Speaker, the recognition that high interest rates would somehow cause investors to hesitate to make the necessary investments, which would cause the economy to wind down, slow down, and that is exactly what happened. We are looking at a situation, Mr. Speaker, in the Atlantic fishery, where, because of this high interest rate policy of the present Government and of the short-lived Conservative Government, fishermen, fish producers and fish processors were simply unable to operate effectively and efficiently. I will also say, Mr. Speaker, that these problems were compounded by the rather political nature of the DREE program, by the sort of indiscriminate throwing of DREE money out for political gain; some DREE money here, some DREE grants there. This resulted in a fisheries infrastructure unfolding which was not always based on economic advice and common sense.
Similarly, there was the indiscriminate doling out of licences, which resulted in there being more fishermen than the industry could support. As a result of that, restrictive regulations were brought in by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which compounded the problem. I believe the most obvious over-exuberant expectations of what the 200-mile limit would bring about were demonstrated when the Department decided to dole out international fishing licences to foreigners to fish in our waters. That again was simply another factor which contributed to depleted resources and more pressure being brought to bear on an already over-extended resource.
This major problem of an industry which has floundered for years and years as a result of a lack of Government strategy in place can be seen on the West Coast of this country. Again, as a result of a lack of any real strategic planning with all the players involved, and with the lack of a comprehensive strategy for that resource sector, an ad hoc approach has been taken, which has resulted in chaos on both the East and West Coasts of Canada. It was certainly known many, many years ago that this would be bound to unfold in this way.
I remember the economic development task force, which was conducted by the New Democratic Party in Atlantic
November 17, 1983

Canada. Various fishermen's organizations and various fishing organizations brought to our attention at that time the financial and economic plight of the industry. However, the action the Government took was to appoint the Kirby task force, which of course resulted in Bill C-170 which we are debating today, the restructuring of the fishing industry into two fishing giants.
While having two giants in that industry will place it amongst the largest fishing corporations in the world, it raises a number of concerns. One of the major concerns 1 have is what this Bill provides in terms of power to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The Minister may acquire shares, debentures or securities of any fishery enterprise. The Minister may make a contribution or loan to any fishery enterprise. I use those two references in the Bill to show the unlimited powers which the Minister will receive if this Bill passes. Mr. Speaker, 1 feel that that ought to raise concern among Canadians generally because we are really being asked, as Members of Parliament, to have faith in the good intentions of the Minister. Through us he is asking people in the fishing industry of Atlantic Canada to have faith in what this Minister plans to do for the industry. Quite frankly, Mr. Speaker, when one looks at the rather abysmal record of the Government and the Minister regarding this very critical fisheries sector, I do not believe it is a reasonable request for the Minister to make.
As the critic for fisheries in our Party has indicated, this Bill really does not solve the problem. It simply breathes life into an ailing industry. What happens from this point on will be really critical. This is simply the first of a long trek to revitalize and restructure that very ailing industry.
I believe it is important to note the role of the banks in this solution. We have not to this point recognized that one of the reasons that the Government moved as it did to restructure financially this ailing industry was to provide relief to the banks which were involved. It was well known that virtually every chartered bank in this country was heavily in debt as a result of imprudent loans made to a number of large and small corporations. Once again, as we have seen so often in the past, Mr. Speaker, the people of Canada, the taxpayers of Canada, through the Government of Canada, have been asked to come in and bail out a number of corporations. And 1 believe that really the motivation has been to bail out the banks which found themselves over-extended in this very critical industry.
We have made a great deal of effort in Bill C-170 to assist some of the large players in the Atlantic fishery, including the Bank of Nova Scotia. But what about the 700 independents who have been left out of the equation and are now looking with some fear at these two megagiants in the fishing industry? They are being asked to compete alongside these major players. Are the banks going to be sympathetic to their plight? Absolutely not, Mr. Speaker. We have already seen the major chartered banks of this country saying to the fishermen that they are cutting back the lines of credit, they no longer have faith in the industry or the fishermen and their traditional
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act lines of credit are being reduced virtually as a matter of bank policy. When you consider the privileged position of banks in this country, Mr. Speaker, when you consider the responsibility they ought to accept as a result of that privileged position, this is not the kind of behaviour we would expect from our major lending institutions.
I believe it is critical that the Government of Canada view this problem not simply in cold, hard financial terms. There is the impression that the Government plans to privatize this restructured corporate amalgamation. While one will perhaps laud that as a long-term goal, 1 do hope we do not lose sight of the fact that, in getting these restructured companies back on their feet financially and then selling them off to the private sector, there is more to it than that.
I believe that what we are seeing here is not only a financial and economic problem, it is also a social problem. Because of the dependence of so many medium and small communities in Atlantic Canada on the fishing industry, an ailing industry will result in a tearing of the social fabric in many of those communities. After all, for a great deal of Atlantic Canada fishing is Atlantic Canada. What happens to the fishing industry, not only these restructured companies but the small independents as well, will reflect on the social fabric of Atlantic Canada in the months, years and decades ahead.
I urge, Mr. Speaker, that the Government keep in mind that financial viability is a major factor but it is not the only factor, and I suspect we can make a case that it is not the major factor. Long-term employment of people in Atlantic Canada, long-term economic stability in the fishing industry, ought to be the number one priority, as opposed to a rapid move to financial viability and a turnover to the private sector of these new-found corporations.
I want to take issue with some comments made by certain Members of the House, Mr. Speaker. The concern was expressed that the provincial and federal Governments, as well as the fishing companies, did not look actively enough for foreign money to come to the rescue. I think it is time that we as Canadians stood up and stopped using taxpayers' money to bribe foreign corporations into coming into this country. 1 believe, as do Members of the New Democratic Party, that we can do it ourselves. There is money in this country to do it ourselves. We do not have to go out on bended knee with grants and give-aways to the Japanese, Americans, Germans or others. We can do it ourselves.
I shudder at the number of people who have suggested in debate on this bill that we should have gone to foreign investors in foreign countries for the answer to our fisheries problem. If one could be so bold, one could perhaps argue the case that one of the reasons we have problems in many of our resource industries today is that in the past that is exactly what we did. We went outside of this country and asked foreigners to come in and make the investments, and more important the investment decisions, for this industry and the future of Canadians. I hope the days are long past when we have to look to foreigners to make a decision regarding the Canadian economy. I repeat, we do not need to use taxpayers'

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
money to bribe foreign corporations to assist us in the bail-out of this particular industry.
I want to close, Mr. Speaker, by suggesting that this provides an ideal opportunity for the Government to show some real leadership in carrying out its intention to divest itself of these investments in due time. The Government should consider other viable alternatives simply to privatizing this organization. 1 raise as a concern the possibility of major co-operatives becoming involved. In other words, the fish producers and processors, the fishermen themselves in Atlantic Canada, are quite capable of running many of these corporations. They are quite capable of making the necessary management decisions. 1 think it is time we gave people credit where credit is due. These individuals have spent every working day of their lives in the fishing industry in one form or another, and to suggest they are somehow unable to make the necessary management decisions is a slight to these individuals. I believe the Government now has the opportunity, as it moves out of its involvement in the months and years ahead, to look at the people involved in these corporations to play a more meaningful role than they have often played in the past, particularly when it comes to making financial decisions of a marketing or investment nature.
While we in the NDP will do everything possible to remove any impediment to a rapid passage of this Bill, we do want to use the opportunity of second reading, when we are asked to comment on the principle of the Bill, to make it clear that one of the reasons we are in this situation today is the lack of attention paid to planning the future of this industry, particularly given the Government's monetarist policy concerning high interest rates. Rather than see this as a time of gloom and doom, as some other Members have suggested, we see it as a time of opportunity to place in the hands of those people in Atlantic Canada who are directly involved the opportunity to participate in the development of the Atlantic fishery to the maximum extent possible.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, 1 am glad to have an opportunity to speak on Bill C-170, the Atlantic fisheries restructuring Bill. I speak as a very concerned Nova Scotian rather than as a Member who at the present time has a very large fishing constituency. I used to have, and my colleague across the way from Central Nova inherited, that part of Digby which was one of the real king counties for fish in Nova Scotia. My heritage lies in Digby county and I can thereby relate very much to the concern in that county, and frankly in all of Nova Scotia, about the implications of this Bill. This is part of the paradox. It is the very size of the industry in Atlantic Canada, which employs about 100,000 people compared to the 75,000 employed in the auto industry, which we hear so much about from time to time in Ontario. Considering that there are 100,000 people in Atlantic Canada involved directly and indirectly in the fishing industry, one should appreciate the concern over this Bill. In effect, that compounds the problem because we know the industry is in "dire straits", to quote a famous phrase. It is in dire straits because of the mismanagement of the industry,
because of Government policy, Government action and Government inaction.
When our fishing spokesman, the Member from South Shore (Mr. Crouse), replied to the Minister here on Monday he outlined, as other Members have, all the problems that the fishing industry had with a lot of the political interference that has adversely affected the fishing industry in terms of licenses, quotas and seasons. The entrepreneurial industry and the skills of those who ply the seas have really been hamstrung by Government interference and Government policy.
In the brief time that I have 1 am not going to review all those details. They were most ably reviewed by the Member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse). We also had a very interesting speech this morning from the Member for South West Nova (Miss Campbell). She is the Chairman of the Fisheries and Forestry Committee and has real concerns about this Bill. I am not going to waste the time of the House recounting what this Bill does. We know that the Government is pumping many millions of dollars into the industry to help it, but also thereby bailing out the banks who have over-extended credit to several of the major companies, two in Nova Scotia and three in Newfoundland. Out of this infusion of capital there are going to be two large fishing corporations, the largest and the second largest fishing companies in the world.
Mr. Speaker, we can bandy words about. I do not know what the official name is going to be for this new corporation or new corporations. I am apprehensive after having seen what happened with PetroCan and its establishment. It was the window in the industry, and there are some positive things to say about it. There are also things to be said about PetroCan and the national energy policy whereby PetroCan gets an unfair advantage against competitors in the oil and gas field. The new corporation, which I will call FishCan, for lack of a better word, may also have preferential treatment through the back door from a Government that is giving the funds. It is only natural to say that if the Government is going to create this Crown corporation, when the bottom lines are faced in the administration of a new corporation, the fears of the independent fish operators in Nova Scotia have a lot of merit. Until the lines of administration of the new corporation are defined and queried in the Committee I think those concerns are going to stay.
1 listened to the comments of the Member from the New Democratic Party who preceded me about some of his hopes and some of the ideology of the New Democratic Party. I cannot understand how we can have blind faith that the Government, which created the problem through this new corporation, is now going to be able to cure it. I can quote the political phrase of a former Minister of Finance who said those immortal words, "short-term pain for long-term gain". I am seriously concerned that because we see the carrot of many millions of dollars to help an immediate problem we are going to have short-term gain for long-term pain in the fishing
November 17, 1983

industry until we define how this new corporation is going to operate.
Mr. Speaker, the politicians across the way, and on this side too, have said with authority that the new corporation is not a Crown corporation in the sense of a Crown corporation. In actual fact, it is not. It is worse. It is strictly a creature of the federal Government with no one on the board from the private sector in Newfoundland. If we take that as a precedent for what might happen in Nova Scotia, we are getting a situation in terms of an administration of a corporation doing business which has to be approved by both levels of the Government, by the board and by political appointees. The problem is going to be compounded and not resolved. Regardless of how you lay down the rules, the Government is going to become a more dominant player than it already is. The Government already has a dominant interest in the fishing industry through its licensing practice, quotas and all the inspections it does. With all that dominance before the creation of the corporation, I do not have faith that the new corporation is going to be the cure that we are all hoping for in this very important industry.
I sympathize with those Members who have fishing communities in their constituencies where the plants are closed down and the boats are not at sea because the prices are down. If there were a free vote, which there is not going to be, it would be very difficult for them to vote against the Bill because of some of the principles that I think are wrong in this Bill. Philosophically, I have real difficulty, in terms of the history of Parliament, with the creation of Crown corporations to do business, not Crown corporations to do cultural things such as the CBC. The CNR was born out of a morass of bankruptcies in the railways and was a needed and necessary social creation. In some ways I can understand the argument for the social need for the Crown corporation.
Using the analogy of driving a car which goes off the highway and you need some help, you are obviously going to take help from anyone who comes along to give you help. However, you are not going to take help with as much confidence if the person who forces you off the road is the person who offers you the helping hand. I think that is the case here. I do not know if this new Crown corporation is going to be the octopus of the industry which will reach out with tentacles and unfairly choke, in a discriminatory way the independent fish operations. I do not know if it is going to be the shark of the industry which will eat some of the independent fish operators. 1 do not know if it is going to be a nice little sunfish which will sit in the sea with the other independent operators and get along with everybody in harmony.
Mr. Speaker, when the choice has to be made between the Crown corporation and the independent fish operator, it is only human and natural to say that the Government Crown corporation, which I call FishCan, is going to cut the deck for FishCan and not for the independent operator.
Mr. Speaker, there are so many questions that one has to ask. We all live by the sea in Atlantic Canada. It is part of our pulse. The sea is the womb of the earth. You cannot get away from that beat of the sea. I am proud of it. May I interject
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
now to say that I am glad that my colleague, the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), stood down to let me speak now so that I could catch a plane. He will be speaking later in his most eloquent style.
The sea is fundamental to us. I am appalled as a Canadian that this bounty of the sea is there to feed Canadians and the world. I would like to have the hopes of my friend from the Okanagan who spoke a little while ago. The reality is that we have mucked it up. We need to have questions answered. We have to know about the potential political power of FishCan against the independent operators. We have to know if there is going to be a back door subsidization program greater than what is there now in the infusion of initial funding. We have to know what the reality is about the privatization and the recognition. Is this just a temporary measure to help out an industry that is in dire straits for a time, or is it really going to be there forever and a day?
We used to look around the city of Ottawa and see temporary wartime Government buildings. They stayed there for 45 years. The most temporary law, which is still very much a part of the system of Canada, was the temporary Income Tax Act of 1917. That was a temporary measure. I suggest that we are dreaming in technicolour if we think that this is a temporary measure and the FishCan Corporation will back off once the immediate job is, hopefully, completed and the sales return, the prices rise and people get back to work. I believe we will be moving an amendment which will force Members to show if they believe that it really will back off in a programmed manner as the industry improves. It will be a sunset clause and we will see what happens when the Minister appears before the committee.
I do not get upset over socialization or nationalization. I fully support some of our Crown corporations such as Canadian National, Air Canada and the CBC. These have been creatures of compromise, talent and necessity which, despite the problems they do have, have done well and have provided a social need. That does not bother me. This is the creation of a state corporation but it is being called restructuring, according to the new jargon. I suggest it is misleading, especially for Members opposite who avoid mentioning socialization or nationalization and keep talking about restructuring. A rose is a rose by any name and a rose has thorns as well as a bloom.
I am suggesting most seriously to the House that in reality this is not a restructuring but a back door nationalization of the fish industry.
The Minister will have to be prepared to tell the committee what Canada's position will be with our friends to the south where the great fish market is. What will be the American reaction to public money going into this new FishCan Corporation when the U.S. is already apprehensive about many of our raw resources? They are already attacking the import of our potatoes and other raw resources into the States with countervailing duties, and if they believe there is an unfair advantage from using taxpayers' money to compete against

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their private interest, what assurance can the Minister give that the Americans will not slap on countervailing duties when we create the FishCan Corporation here? Because we can be sure that fish lobby in the New England States will say it is unfair trade. There are many questions which the Minister must answer before I will say how I will vote on this legislation at third reading.
The question is, what are the alternatives? They are difficult and, fortunately for Nova Scotia, we are still negotiating. There is not an agreement yet, as there is in Newfoundland. We have not received the assurances as yet from the federal Government, which 1 presume satisfied Newfoundland. I can think of several compromises in Nova Scotia, one of which would be one company going down and the other running the fleet. I personally believe that the record of Governments coming in after the event, having created the problem, is not good. We must face the reality. While it could happen that companies will fail and the fish stocks and inventories will deflate the market even further, that is the reality. Perhaps we should face that situation rather than postpone it for another two years while building up the infrastructure with the bureaucracy that is necessary to run a FishCan operation.
As I said earlier, 1 have real concerns about this temporary measure. We will see how serious Members are about its being temporary when the Member for South Shore perhaps moves his sunset provision. 1 suggest to my friend for South West Nova (Miss Campbell) that the Income Tax Act in 1917 was a temporary measure, and yet. 1 am not very confident about a return to private industry when I read the words of the Machiavellian author who is perhaps behind the whole thing. He is our friend, Dr. Kirby from Nova Scotia. He is an interesting individual with whom 1 have stimulating conversations on planes back and forth to Ottawa but, as he said, after the first agreement had been signed with Newfoundland and the Minister was flying to Nova Scotia to negotiate with that Province, as quoted in The Globe and Mail of November 5, 1983, as the plane hit the runway in Halifax-
Mliss Campbell: It was Port Hawkesbury, not Nova Scotia.


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: It says Halifax here. But the quote is the main thing. It is the same as what Churchill said about nationalization, "When you scramble an omelette, you cannot unscramble it." Mr. Kirby must have been thinking of Mr. Churchill when he said:
Whatever happens now, what we've pulled off-restructuring the industry and at the same time creating a new federal fisheries policy-can never be undone.
That is what gives me concern. We have an immediate problem, and this is a quick legislative fix that 1 believe parliamentary history has proven does not work. Until more questions are answered in the committee, I am not optimistic, and 1 believe we have legitimate reasons to try to negotiate a better deal in Nova Scotia.


Mr. Breau:: Mr. Speaker, 1 would like to ask the Hon. Member a question. 1 share some of his concerns about the policy behind the Bill. Without getting into that at this point, 1
simply want to know how he can base his argument by saying that the federal Government is responsible for the problems in the fishing industry? It was the federal Government, under the former Minister of Fisheries, which told the companies and the Provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland in particular not to overfish in the spring of 1981. Despite this advice they overfished and the Governments of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were in a war in competition for the northern cod. They opened up some new plants against the advice of the federal Government. It is the companies and the two provincial Governments, particularly the Government of Newfounland, that are responsible for the overfishing in 1981. That is what led to the high inventories when interest rates went over 25 per cent. How can the Member say that the federal Government is responsible when it told the companies and the Governments not to do that?


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: Mr. Speaker, I said earlier that I had to catch a plane.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


John Patrick (Pat) Nowlan: There should be no oh, ohs. I said that 1 was not going to review all the history since it does not resolve the problem. But it is another concern which I have. In his speech the Minister stated that we are setting up a FishCan Corporation-this is where I disagree with Mr. Kirby-because so far there is no new federal fishery policy. It is the same fish policy that got us into the problem. Does the Member believe that creating a new corporation will resolve the problem?
The fact of the matter is that one can read the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, The Globe and Mail or the speech by the Member for South Shore. With respect to the fishing quota, restrictions in the St. Lawrence, the restrictions on licenses to boats, on the size of boats, everyone in the fish trade, including Mr. Nickerson of Nickerson and Sons which went under, National Sea Foods which went under, and the three companies in Newfoundland which have closed the three plants, knew that the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans had a bias against modern fishing operations. He wanted political interference to help support his fishing communities in New Brunswick. He had archaic policies. We now have a new FishCan Corporation, and there has been no indication so far that the policy will change. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I had many other questions to ask the Hon. Member, but he is in the habit of hitting and running. I am sorry that he could not stay. I will just repeat that his assumption, like that of the Hon. Member for South Shore (Mr. Crouse) when he spoke earlier this week, that the federal Government is to blame for the demise of the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada, is wrong. The policy of the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and of the federal Government before the Kirby process started was one that would not have led to the problems in the fishing industry we have seen if they had been followed by the fishing companies, the main actors in the industry, and the Governments of
November 17, 1983

Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Rightly or wrongly, 1 cannot question the political motives of provincial Governments. 1 am not entitled to do that as a member of the public. If they want to pursue a certain political action, that is fine. They should bear the consequences of what they do however. The fact is that the Government of Newfoundland was in competition with the Government of Nova Scotia. When 1 say the Government 1 mean the two provincial economies which were in competition for the northern cod and for groundfish. They overfished. They overdid it. The companies did this against the advice of the former Minister of Fisheries, and they got themselves into a jam.
One cannot ignore the fact that the union which Mr. Cashin directs in Newfoundland is not only a union. I guess he would accept the definition himself that it is a social and political movement as well which had the industry on strike in 1980 or 1981. Do you expect that to be without cost? Do you expect to have a total industry in a province on strike without any cost? Are they accepting the responsibility for that? It seems to me that when you put an industry on strike you should know that there are consequences at the end, and the consequences can be bankruptcy, failure. I do not think those people have accepted that responsibility. I am not suggesting they were wrong to go on strike.


Daniel James Macdonnell Heap: Oh, oh!


Herb Breau: No, I am not. It is not for me to decide. When you go on strike and stifle an industry for about half a year, you have to accept the responsibility for what you do. They should accept the responsibility for what they did. Nevertheless, we are in this situation now.

Mr. Speaker, we are studying Bill C-170, an Act to authorize investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishing enterprises. This afternoon, 1 will not deal with the Bill because, in my opinion, there is no need for such a Bill, we should not have to study the Bill, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (M. De Bane) should not have had to introduce it in the House because, in the winter of 1981-82, there were ways to cope with the situation in fisheries. The problem is that, at the time, the Government decided to have the situation in fisheries reviewed by a group whose political master was not the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. Normally, such issues come under the structural and political responsibility of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The Government decided to involve a group which would analyze the situation and make recommendations.
In my opinion, Mr. Speaker, the group made a very serious mistake. It made the mistake of wanting to re-invent the wheel. It made a mistake when it listened approvingly to many interested parties in Atlantic fisheries, mostly the large companies and, in certain cases, especially the Government of Nova
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act Scotia which kept saying that everything done by the federal Governement in fisheries was bad, the kind of comments we have heard from the Official Opposition in the past two or three days. Anything done about stock management or about quota management was bad because that was interference in an industry which ought to have much more freedom. In my opinion, the Kirby Task Force naively swallowed that premise. It is partly for that reason that we are experiencing problems today, yet another analysis of the fisheries problems, an attempt at re-inventing the wheel, while we did have the statutory, legal, financial and political means to solve the problem of fisheries in 1981-82, notwithstanding the origin of the crisis.
I would rather not delve too deeply into those issues. Mr. Speaker, the problem with Bill C-170 is not the Bill itself, that is only part of a more serious and much more wide-ranging problem. I am wondering whether there is an orientation and a philosophy in the field of fisheries, or whether we are simply faced with bits and pieces produced by a committee whose approach has been to compromise with everybody. One can compromise to the point where one's statements no longer mean anything.
There is nothing wrong with seeking a consensus, but in a field such as fisheries we just cannot ignore the fact that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans is the federal Department which must be most politically aware, in the sense that it reacts to the people because, through that Department-and possibly it is the only one-the federal Government is related directly to the people. There is not other level of Government. A fisherman knows that he gets his permit from the federal Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, and he knows which jurisdiction, which sectors of fisheries come under the federal or provincial constitutional authority. It is therefore a highly political field.
So, Mr. Speaker, we do need a clear orientation and philosophy in the field of fisheries. And I happen to think that until the winter of 1982, we had a coherent federal policy in the field of fisheries. However, from that time on, it was decided to follow another path. As I said earlier, it turned out to be an attempt at re-inventing the wheel and to swallow faulty premises, therefore the analyses were wrong. And yet, we could have taken a different approach instead of introducing Bill C-170 and its famous concept of restructuration.
There is one thing which must be pointed out. The Hon. Member for South West Nova (Miss Campbell) did so this morning. The Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's (Mr. Simmons) spoke in support of the Bill and, although I disagree with some of his conclusions, as I disagree with the Bill, I find it extremely difficult to endorse the Bill. Still, in his definition of the problem, he said something which I found very interesting.

When the Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's (Mr. Simmons) at one point said that the banks had the Government in

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Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
a corner-I am paraphrasing what he said, but he said we have to do something-he was right. He defined it well. I believe that, very naively someone early in this crisis, once the Kirby process started, intentionally or unintentionally, gave signals to the banks that there was an easy way out for this, that this matter could be easily solved, that this restructuring concept could fix things. I think that was very naive. I think that is where the mistake happened.
I notice in the Minister's speech as reported at page 28850 of Hansard for November 14, that he said this:
History will note that in the case of all those commercial undertakings which I mentioned-National Sea Products Ltd., Nickerson, Fishery Products, Penny & Sons, North Atlantic, Pecheurs-Unis-hundreds and thousands of creditors agreed to wait and did not take any action because they knew that we were trying to find a solution.
They agreed to wait. Were they asked to wait? They must have been. Their creditors must have been asked to wait. Who asked them? Was it the political authority that asked them or was it Doctor Kirby?
Then we say that there was no private capital. There was no way for private capital to be involved in the restructuring. There was never any attempt to solve the matter through private capital. Private capital will not buy the debts of the bank. Private capital will not come to a company that is going bankrupt and say, "Hey, Sir, 1 am going to buy the company and take on your debts". Private capital will say, "Fine. Let the bank get a receiver, put the plant in receivership and then we will see if we will buy." Normally, I thought that was the rule of the game. The banks puts the outfit into receivership; then private capital may look at it. That is when we can ask a private entrepreneur, "Do you have a restructuring plan? What kind of assistance do you want from the Government?" Then we decide what kind of assistance to give. As soon as a signal was given that there was an easy way out or that the Government would not let the industry collapse or go bankrupt, of course the banks and others had the Government in the corner. That is a lousy way to proceed, in my view. It will be disastrous for the future, not only of the fishing industry but of other industries as well. If this Bill goes through and if the restructuring goes through, I am afraid there will be further demands for restructuring. Other banks will come around and say that in other sectors they cannot go on, that the Government cannot let them collapse.
There were ways to deal with difficult situations in the fishery before. The Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's and the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) were correct when they said that the federal Government could not just let the companies go bankrupt with their high inventories and that prices could have been depressed through panic sales by receivers, particularly in the United States. 1 agree. Anyone who knows anything about the fishery knows that there were ways to deal with it. We dealt with that in 1969 and 1974. The Fisheries Price Support Board has the legal expertise and is the financial mechanism by which to do it. I am told that all the companies had to do was sign a piece of paper. If 1 recall
correctly how it was done, there was a confirmation by the bank that it could not hold the inventory any longer. Then the Fisheries Price Support Board could finance the inventory, provide a loan guarantee and hold it until the price was acceptable. That is the way to proceed. That is the way to ensure an inventory is not sold by a receiver in a panic situation. Why was that not done? I know that was tried before they set up this new process of reinventing the wheel. Why did they not do that? That is what they should have done.

Mr. Speaker, we are told-and I am quite willing to believe the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans when he says this because, even though he is sponsoring Bill C-170, he is not responsible for this situation because he did not appoint the Kirby task force, he was not the one to choose its policy or to choose or even negotiate restructuring nor was he the one to negotiate and develop the restructuring plan-but when we are told that these corporations will operate at arm's length from the Government, I am quite ready to believe it, but whether we believe it or not, or whether all the Members of the House agree, it is not important. When a bill is passed and the Government acquires equity in a company, the matter of whether or not there will be political influence is not important.
However, Mr. Speaker, only two years ago, the Government tried to transform the Canada Development Corporation into a policy instrument for Canada. 1 was in agreement with that philosophy and with the fact that, if the Canadian Government held 45 or 49 per cent equity in the Canada Development Corporation, the Canadian Parliament should have something to say about the policies of this corporation, but there was an outcry at this suggestion and we had to reverse our decision. If we were trying to influence this corporation, why not do the same for this other one? I do not know which minister will be responsible for the equity in these companies one, two or three years from now. It could be someone who will want to make decisions and manage the company and who will put a stop to this. Once Bill C-170 gives the power to sell or buy shares, who can stop a future minister from doing so? Mr. Speaker, there is no danger for the federal Government to be judge and party with regard to fisheries decisions in the future. One of the reasons why the federal Government earned respect in the field of fisheries in the past is that, when the constitutional jurisdiction over fisheries was put into question, the fishing communities gave us their support; it is also because the federal Government has always acted as a an objective referee between small and large companies, between various fleets and between the provinces. But the moment we are no longer considered as an objective referee, because we have shares in companies such as National Sea Products Limited and in the other company in Newfoundland, no wonder the fishing communities are getting very nervous. People are wondering how the ground fish industry is going to survive, particularly in
November 17, 1983

New Brunswick, in Prince Edward Island, in certain parts of Quebec and Nova Scotia, because not only are we going to have a giant as we had before-we are used to having giants- but now it is going to be a giant owned mostly by the federal Government and the Government of Nova Scotia. Suffice to point out that the agreement with Nova Scotia had hardly been signed that already pressure was brough to bear so that Nova Scotia companies might gain wider access to the ground fish resources in the gulf. Of course, Mr. Speaker, because we can already see a link between the political interest of the new company established for Nova Scotia and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, when the Minister also says that the new company will look after marketing or will offer its marketing services to the independents.

I am talking here not only about plant owners. There are hundreds of communities in Atlantic Canada which have independent processors, independently-owned fish plants. They carry with them the community-fishermen, people who service the industry and people who work in the plants. There is a community spirit behind these independents. To suggest to independent processors that the federal Government, which provides a marketing regime or structure for wheat, dairy products and milk through the Canadian Dairy Commission, and for eggs, poultry and other products, will tell them that when it comes to fish they will have to go through a super company in Nova Scotia if they need marketing assistance is really very offensive and just about an insult. That is an abdication of the federal Government's responsibility in the marketing of fish, and that should not be allowed to stand as policy.
I was hopeful Dr. Kirby would come up with a clear idea about marketing. As 1 just said, we have a structure in our system for wheat, milk, poultry and other products. Why can we not have it for fish? What is the ideological sclerosis that we cannot have it for fish?

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, the political aspect and dimensions of that restructuration cannot be ignored. I said that it was an indication of a more serious problem, and fishing communities are wondering what is going on when all of a sudden the federal Government is concerned about saving the large companies, what is going on when the federal Government buys $14 million worth of Canada Development Corporation shares. A company cannot properly administer its own business, it reaches a point where its operations are down, practically bankrupt, yet the Canadian Government gets into the picture and buys $14 million worth of shares. I for one cannot see any logic in that, yet there is no money to give grants to fishermen to buy boats, there is no money to solve the problem created by the over capacity of herring seiners. I do not know-


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I note from the signal of the Chair that the Hon. Member's time is
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act expiring. I am sure the House would be prepared to grant him extended time so that he can complete this most interesting speech.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, whether one agrees with his views or not, the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) is always very charitable.

Mr. Speaker, in any case, I shall be brief. I have already said that the restructuring bill reflects a greater problem and that I wondered whether there has really been a clear strategy for fisheries since the Government decided to create the Kirby Commission. We really have to wonder whether there is a strategy. Sometimes, to be kind and not say that there is a bad one, I tell myself that maybe there is none. In my opinion, when we decided to reinvent the wheel in 1982, we may have rendered the federal Government and the federal fisheries policy completely powerless.
I have already mentioned the problem of herring seiners. There seems to be an excess capacity of herring seiners. Early in August, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced a policy stating that the solution would be to reduce the landing capacity. Leaving aside the issue of whether we agree or not, let us look at the mechanism suggested by the Minister. In my opinion, this mechanism is the most unfair that I have ever seen ever since I came to this House, a mechanism through which herring fishermen will be able to purchase the quota of another fisherman without the Government doing anything to reduce the landing capacity. Mr. Speaker, this goes against all the earlier policies developed for fisheries, which were aimed mainly at encouraging independent fishermen as much as possible; this means that a wealthy fisherman, who has already had good years in herring fishing and who has paid back the loan on his boat, will be able to purchase other quotas, while someone who came to the fishing industry a bit later, who is necessarily younger-


Alexandre Cyr: During the lean years!


Herb Breau: -during the lean years, as noted by my colleague for Gaspe (Mr. Cyr), will be able to buy what? He can buy nothing because he has no money. He owes money on his boat. He has just come into the fishing industry. He is young. He has a new boat. He has not seen the good years of herring fishing. What can he do? All he can do is to sell his quota. How can he sell his quota without selling his boat? He is stuck.
Mr. Speaker, this is the most unfair policy ever developed, but once more, I cannot say that the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans is wholly responsible for this concept, as once again was developed by the Kirby Commission. I wonder how someone who knew anything about the fishing industry could have developed such a concept! Here also, the Kirby report states:

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act There should not be any subsidies for fishing vessels. Mr. Speaker, the fishing vessel subsidy program was the means through which independent fishermen were able to acquire boats. Today, in New Brunswick, for instance, over 90 per cent of all fishing vessels are owned by individual fishermen and not by companies, thanks largely to the fishing vessel subsidy program. This year, this program has not yet been in effect. [English]
I hope that the Government and all Members of Parliament will look very seriously at this restructuring proposal, consider the broader problems and examine very carefully what went on since January, 1982. I hope we will consider the systems put in place then to deal with this kind of problem to see why they were not used rather than invent new concepts which gave a signal to the banks that we would not let the companies go bankrupt.
In conclusion 1 say that I was ready to accept the idea of an abnormal approach in Newfoundland. I was ready to accept that in the case of Newfoundland because of the relative importance of the fishery to the provincial economy. I do not think the economy of Newfoundland could absord any more shocks. Broadly speaking, there was justification politically for the Government to do something abnormal in the case of Newfoundland, to look at the problem there differently. The high unemployment rate in that Province is a chronic problem. That Province is isolated geographically. Its economy depends very much on the groundfish industry in particular.
In the case of Nova Scotia, no one will convince me that there was a need for an abnormal approach to restructure, if restructuring was necessary at all in Nova Scotia, other than to be involved in a political reaction because of the fact that Newfoundland would be receiving a restructured industry. Is the only reason for a restructuring proposal for Nova Scotia, an abnormal or different approach by Government, the competition between the two provincial economies as to who will get the fish? If that is the case, the restructuring proposals for Nova Scotia do not make any sense. They are a threat to the groundfish industry all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the Provinces of Quebec, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick.
As I speak today, people who own fish plants in the groundfish industry or whose plants involve an important element of groundfish are not sure whether they will have to abandon them. If that happens, the Government of Canada, along with the provincial Governments concerned, will have participated in the demise of an industry all around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the case of Newfoundland, that will not necessarily be the result. The threat in the Newfoundland situation is not the same as in Nova Scotia. It is not a mere coincidence that in the agreement signed with Nova Scotia there is a paragraph which deals with access to more groundfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. I believe that the new company, the federal Government and the provincial Government in Nova Scotia will try to establish a link between the federal fisheries policies and the management of this company. That is inevitable. When people assure me that that will not happen, I
believe that it is not their intention, but 1 cannot accept that as a political answer because I do not know what the political situation will be next spring, next fall or a year from now. 1 do not know who the Minister will be at that time. I do not know if the link will go much further than a mere peek at what management does. It may go much beyond that. This will mean that independent processors will not be able to obtain financing. They will not be able to maintain their marketing position because of the presence of super companies owned by the Governments, and the Bank of Nova Scotia.


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I would like to direct one or two short questions to the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) who just made a most interesting speech. He made a number of interesting comments which will certainly have to be looked at as the debate progresses, particularly when we get to the committee stage of this Bill. He said there are other ways in this Bill to go about solving the problems of the deep sea fishery of the Atlantic Provinces. That is a rough paraphrase, but he did say that. He then went on to put all the blame on Kirby and the banks. Obviously he feels very strongly against the method the Government has adopted and he spoke most eloquently in that regard. If there are ways other than the restructuring Bill now before the House, how does he intend to vote on this Bill in its present form?


Herb Breau: First, Mr. Speaker, when I said that there were other ways, I did mention, in the case of preventing the collapse of prices through a panic selling of inventory, that the Fisheries Price Support Board could have provided loan guarantees, as has been done previously in times of crisis to make sure that the inventory would not be sold at panic prices. That is one of the ways of dealing with the problem.
What I said in my speech, and what I do believe strongly, is that when the crisis occurred in the fall of 1981 and the early winter of 1982, but particularly in the fall of 1981, there were other ways to deal with the problem. Once the Government, either politically or through officials, or the Kirby Commission, started giving signals to the banks and everyone else concerned that the Government would not let the industry collapse or go bankrupt, then I am not sure if any approach other than this one could have been used.
At the time, Mr. Speaker, 1 think there was a restructuring process occurring, not only for the fishing industry but for other industries. This would occur in a case where a plant was being sold by a receiver, as occurred in my constituency in the spring of 1983. The receiver put a plant up for sale. The bank lost a good deal of its money and, as well, many people lost a good deal of money. A new group came in and said that they would like to buy this plant if the Government would give it assistance and provide the means. The Government, through the DREE Program, provided some assistance, and the plant is now in operation. That is a restructuring process but it is one that does not give off signals that everybody around the plant will be bailed out. 1 think that that is probably what went wrong in this situation.
November 17, 1983

The Hon. Member must be aware that according to news reports, the Canada Development Corporation has apparently sold its shares in Fisheries Products to the federal Government for $14 million. In this case, Fisheries Products in Newfoundland run their company into the ground for whatever reason and the result is that the Canada Development Corporation sells its shares in Fisheries Products to the Government for $14 million.
In answer to the Hon. Member's question, I am not sure that there is any other way to go about it now, but there was another way in the spring of 1982. As to the question of how 1 will vote on this Bill, frankly, I have not yet made up my mind.
I will listen to the debate very, very carefully. I said in my speech that 1 found it extremely difficult to support the Bill. I will reflect and 1 will listen to debate, after having added my speech to the debate, before I decide how I will vote.
I must tell the Hon. Member that one of the things that concerns me is the way his Party is trying to sit on the fence on this issue. The Hon. Member has not yet spoken and he normally does not sit on the fence. I hope I hear him speak from one side of the fence only. Either Conservative Members are for this kind of intervention or they are not, because there are some powers in this Bill that go way beyond what we were doing with Canagrex, with Canadair and with other Crown agencies, and the Hon. Member's Party attacks us all the time for those. I hope that I will hear that the Hon. Member for St. John's East takes a sincere position that comes from one side of the fence or the other.


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, with the kind of opposition the Hon. Member has given this Bill, he does not need any help from this side of the House.
1 would like to ask the Hon. Member one question. Many of the restructured plants will require access to the Gulf in order to get at those surplus groundfish stocks. That is a question that is very dear to the heart of the Hon. Member and I have the scars to prove it. I ask the Hon. Member if he would support opening the Gulf to deep sea trawlers so that they can catch that surplus stock and not allow it to die.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, first, the wide-ranging assertion of the Hon. Member that there is a surplus of groundfish in the Gulf is wrong. There is no surplus of goundfish in the Gulf. There is a temporary surplus situation with redfish, which is a kind of groundfish, but it is only a temporary situation. I know that the Hon. Member reads biological reports very carefully, as I do. Perhaps he should have read those reports more carefully in 1979, but I know that he reads them very carefully now. He should know that this is a temporary situation and that the assertion he makes that there is a surplus of groundfish in the Gulf is simply not factual.
In any event, Mr. Speaker, 1 have never been dogmatic on this issue. He must remember the way I approached the question in 1979. The issue here is whether or not the problem in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia with the offshore fleets is caused by a shortage of fish. That is the real question. Anyone who looks at the facts cannot honesty say that the problems
Adjournment Motion
are caused by a shortage of fish. Newfoundland has tripled its landings of groundfish since 1977. Nova Scotia has increased its landings of fish by over 100 per cent. New Brunswick is the only Province that has yet to recapture its fish landings from the early 1970s and the late 1960s.
The issue here is one of fairness. Do we give all of the fish to the regions-no, I will say fleets instead of regions because 1 do not like to talk about this situation in interprovincial terms. Do we give more fish to the fleets that have tripled their landings, or do we preserve the Gulf of St. Lawrence for those fleets that have no other place to fish, do not have the boats to go offshore and can only fish in the Gulf? I approach this issue, Mr. Speaker, from the basic position of fairness. The resources of the Gulf should be kept for those who have access only to the Gulf and do not have boats capable of going offshore. The other fleets which have tripled their landings have problems other than the problem of a shortage of fish. They should address those problems.
While 1 am on that topic, Mr. Speaker, let me remind Hon. Members that I said in my speech that unions have a great deal of things to say on these matters and they tend to be socio-political movements as well as unions. They should bear the responsibility for the fact that the offshore fleet is apparently not viable now. It is not making profits and it is in deficit. Apparently its way of fishing with offshore trawlers is not a good way to fish. The offshore fleet should solve the problem in ways other than asking us who have access only to the Gulf to be sacrificed in order to subsidize their non-viable operations.



PROCEEDINGS ON ADJOURNMENT MOTION


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: Before I recognize the Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath), may I deal with the adjournment motion for this evening? It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 45, to inform the House that the questions to be raised at the time of adjournment are as follows: the Hon. Member for St. John's West (Mr. Cros-bie)-Fisheries-Newfoundland representation in Cabinet, (b) Agreement between Government and Bank of Nova Scotia; the Hon. Member for Victoria (Mr. McKinnon)- Public Works-Leasing of Department of Veterans Affairs building; the Hon. Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster)- Agriculture-Stabilization program sought for beef industry.
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act



GOVERNMENT ORDERS

[Stage Direction]
November 17, 1983

[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. De Bane that Bill C-170, an Act to authorize investment in and the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishery enterprises, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry.
James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, we have just heard a most interesting and eloquent speech made by the Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau). In reply to two very simple questions, he told us in one instance that he is very much opposed to this Bill, has reservations about it and is keeping an open mind on it. That means of course, when one reads through that rhetoric, that if the Bill re-emerges at third reading in its present form, he will vote against it if he is to be consistent.
Second, with regard to surplus groundfish stocks in the Gulf, the Hon. Member would have us believe that there are no surplus stocks, and that would mean that the work of our federal Fisheries Department in rebuilding these stocks over the past number of years has been a total failure. That of course is not the case and he knows that.
He also knows, better than anyone in the House, that the capacity of the Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick fleets is such that they cannot catch all of the fish in the Gulf. That is a fact. The stock has grown beyond the capacity of the New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island fleets and the Hon. Member knows that. He knows that full well, and he also knows, Mr. Speaker, that these stocks, if not caught, will die. I think he also knows, because he was the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries for-


Pierre De Bané: Mr. Speaker I rise on a point of order. I have the highest respect for my predecessor as Minister of Fisheries, but may I remind the Hon. Member that we are discussing a restructuring Bill that deals with some failing companies. We are not discussing the fishing plans for the next year. That is a totally unrelated matter, and I believe he would recognize that the topic he was discussing, while most important, has no bearing upon the Bill that we are discussing.


James Aloysius McGrath: Mr. Speaker, I am really and truly surprised by that intervention because the question of Gulf stocks is one that is critical to this Bill. I prefaced my remarks by saying that if some of the restructured plants are not given access to that Gulf stock, they cannot survive. That is their whole raison d'etre. The plants on the south coast of Newfoundland, for example, that are very much a part of the restructured Newfoundland company, must have access to that Gulf stock if they are to survive and prosper, and the Minister knows that only too well. If he does not know that, then I would say that
we are in worse shape than I thought in terms of the administration of the fisheries of this country.
I did not want to get carried away with the question of Gulf stocks, Mr. Speaker, because that is a decision the Minister will have to make. And he will have to learn to live with that politically, as I did.


Some Hon. Members:: Oh, oh!


James Aloysius McGrath: I hear the laughter of the Hon. Member for South West Nova (Miss Campbell) and the Hon. Member for Gloucester. But they cannot have their cake and eat it too, because we will be watching very carefully at third reading stage of this Bill to see if they are prepared to put their money where their mouths are. Very simply, Mr. Speaker, they cannot have it both ways.
The Hon. Member for Gloucester went out of his way in his speech to blame the banks, the Kirby task force and the unions for the mess which brought us to the point where we had to bring forth this Bill. And, of course, he blamed the provincial Governments as well. He blamed everyone but the Government, of which he was a member at one time by being Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries for two or three years.


Herb Breau: Point of order, Mr. Speaker.


James Aloysius McGrath: I did not interrupt the Member when he was speaking, and these spurious points of order-[DOT]


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


Herb Breau: 1 know my hon. friend always wants to be accurate. Unfortunately, I was never the Parliamentary Secretary to any Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Towers):: That is not a point of order.


James Aloysius McGrath: That is not a point of order. Even if I have made a mistake in that regard, he has been Parliamentary Secretary to just about every other Minister. That is perhaps the only one he has not been assigned to. In any event, if he was not the Parliamentary Secretary, it is a known fact that he was extremely close to the previous Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who comes from an adjoining constituency or from the same part of New Brunswick as the Hon. Member.
The Hon. Member for Gloucester proceeded to blame everyone but the Government of Canada. The facts are very simple. When we declared our 200-mile limit in 1977 there was a great aura of expectation, and rightly so, because we were going to get control of our fisheries. There was also a great opportunity, which was missed at that time, an opportunity to put our house in order. Instead of seizing that opportunity, we went on a binge in terms of over-extending to the point at which we got ourselves in very deep trouble.
November 17, 1983

I will bring you to the point, Mr. Speaker, of the appointment of the Kirby task force, forgetting what happened in between, and the problems which plagued the industry prior to 1977 with the rape of the fishing grounds by the international fleets and the failure of ICNAF to address itself to that problem. We will skip over all that and bring ourselves to the point at which the Kirby task force was appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada (Mr. Trudeau) in January of 1982.
The plants were failing one by one during the summer of 1981. Why? They were failing and closing during the summer of 1981 because of a number of things over which this Government had some control, one being high interest rates. High interest rates of 22 per cent were coming about at a time when there was a change in the market in terms of the strengthening of the U.S. dollar, which made our European competitors more competitive. There was a change in consumer habits in the United States resulting from the fact that poultry was becoming more competitive with fish in the marketplace. All these things came together at a time when we had a monetarist policy in this country of 22 per cent interest rates. The companies could not sustain their inventories and the banks had to move in to keep those companies alive.
We made the plea during the summer of 1981. 1 made plea after plea in the form of telegrams to the Prime Minister and to the former Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to act before it was too late. But nothing was done. The result is that we are paying for it today. Nothing was done until a final realization on the part of the Government reaching right into the Prime Minister's office in the winter of 1981-82, which resulted in the appointment of the Kirby task force.
What happened then? We know what happened. The Kirby task force found itself getting in deeper and deeper, and the report was delayed to the point that when the report did come down, there was no reference made to the question of restructuring. What we have here is not what was contained in the Kirby task force report.
Notwithstanding how we got into this mess, Mr. Speaker, 1 want to make one thing very clear to the Hon. Member for Gloucester and to this House. This Bill is absolutely critical to the survival of the deep water fisheries in the province of Newfoundland. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. de Bane) will receive no quarrel from me on that. What I do have to argue against and warn against is the danger that this Bill may somehow be presented as a panacea, as some kind of magic wand which will solve all the problems of the deep water fishery. We have no agreement in Nova Scotia. I do not know where that will lead. However, we do have a signed agreement with Newfoundland which not only has the support of the Newfoundland Government, but has the support of the Fishermen's Union and the principal creditors. I say to you, Sir, that if the industry is to survive, then the Minister must have the authority to proceed with this Bill. That speaks to the question of urgency.
The Minister knew all this in July of this year, when he proceeded unilaterally, when he could not get an agreement with Newfoundland. He certainly knew in September, when he
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act finally did get an agreement on September 28, that it was a matter of some urgency. He knew back in the summer of this year that he would require legislation. He was warned that legislation would be required. He could not proceed without it. This was a major departure from normal procedure. It was a major venture for the Government of Canada, and it had to have statutory authority to proceed in this way. Yet, Sir, we were not presented with the Bill until October 31, one full month after the agreement with Newfoundland. We were then told we had to move very quickly. This was a matter of great urgency.
1 do not really question the urgency; however, instead of proceeding with the Bill, it was allowed to stand for a week. Finally, when the Government did decide to move with second reading of the Bill, we had one day's debate, and at the eleventh hour, without any explanation, the Government decided to proceed the next day with an Opposition day. 1 still do not understand why we did not continue with the debate on Monday and Tuesday. If we had done so, this Bill would now either be before the committee or back in the House for third reading. In that case the Minister would not have the problems he now has. I do not blame the Minister entirely, although one would expect he would have a little more influence on his colleague, the Government House Leader. If he was not able to exercise his influence successfully, surely he could have called on his colleague, the Minister of State for Economic Development (Mr. Johnston), who chaired the committee which brought about this whole affair in the first place. I am sure that between the two of them they could have persuaded the Government House Leader to get on with this Bill, to get on with the very urgent and important business of restructuring.
However, the Bill ignores, and the Minister deliberately ignores, some of the serious problems facing the industry, for example, fleet replacement. Who is going to pay for the replacement of the trawlers? We have 140 trawlers in the Atlantic Provinces with an average age of 14 to 15 years. Many of these trawlers are over 20 years of age. They have to be replaced with new equipment. That is a major financial undertaking. That is one of the problems which the new company will have to face, and very quickly, because that was one of the things which brought the existing companies virtually to the point of bankruptcy. They had to face up to these questions in addition to carrying the burden of debt placed on them by virtue of the high interest rate monetarist policy of the Government. Who is going to pay for these new trawlers? Is the Government going to set up a new Crown corporation to pay for and operate them and therefore totally control the harvesting sector, then, in turn, sell the catches to the giant companies? In other words, it would buy from one of its companies and sell to another one of its companies.
We are dealing with an industry directly responsible for the lives of about 70,000 or 80,000 people in the Atlantic Provinces and Quebec. It is as important to us as the Crow legislation is to western Canada. It is critically important to us

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act in Newfoundland. Yet no reference is made to the plight of the inshore fishermen. I would have expected the Hon. Member for Gloucester to have addressed that problem. God knows, we have about 48,000 inshore fishermen in the Atlantic region if you classify them as those who operate boats under 100 feet in length. The Minister knows we have serious problems with the inshore fishery regarding income and quality control. This year the inshore fishery in many parts of the Province of Newfoundland was a failure. Yet we still do not have any policy designed to address the problems facing the inshore fishermen which will give them an income they can depend upon and the opportunity to compete and survive. The average inshore fisherman in Newfoundland earns about $8,000 a year and works very hard for it. He has to content himself with unemployment insurance to get him through the rest of the winter.
There is no question in my mind that the moment this Bill is passed, and it will pass in this form or an amended form, someone will have to face these very serious questions of fleet replacement and our inshore fishermen, because you cannot deal with one at the expense of the other. I listened very carefully to the Hon. Member for Gloucester. He talked about the fact there was no underlying philosophy, that the Government was responding to task force kinds of responses in a dispirited way. On that score he was dead right, because that is very much a part of the problem. The Minister knows that full well because he inherited it, just as I did during my brief tenure as Minister. But at least we made an attempt to put our House in order. One of the first things we did as a Government was to order a total review of fisheries policy to try to get around some of the mistakes of the past, to try to get some kind of philosophy so that those depending upon the industry for their livelihood would know where it was going. That would deal with the question of fleet replacement, quality control and developing new markets. It would deal with the problems in developing new species and new markets for new species, which speaks to the whole question of research and development. All of these things were tragically ignored by this Government immediately it took office because it went right back to square one.
We put in place a total review of fisheries policy, which was immediately scrapped when the Liberal Government took over in 1980. We put in place a policy for rationalizing over-the-side sales, which at that time were chaotic. Both fishermen and Canadian processors would be able to take full advantage of this new marketing technique, but that policy was immediately undone by the incoming Government. We put in place a new salmon policy which called for the building of new hatcheries to preserve the Atlantic salmon. The only part of that policy followed through successfully by the Government was the conclusion of an international convention.
We are paying for these mistakes, Mr. Speaker, and paying dearly. We will continue to pay. What we have in front of us today is a Bill which is a direct result of the knee jerk, band-aid reactions of this Government to one problem after another facing the industry. 1 say to the Minister that the Bill
he has in front of him today is the only thing he can do right now. 1 do not agree with the Hon. Member for Gloucester. The Minister had no choice. There was no other way he could go, he had to save the industry. In order to do that, there had to be massive federal and provincial Government involvement as well as that of the creditors. It is all very well to dump all over the Bank of Nova Scotia, but it is going to carry its share of the new company as well. 1 have no grief for the bank or the other creditors, and there are other creditors, but they will have to work with the two levels of Government to ensure the viability of this company to the point where not only will they become economically viable and be able to stand on their own two feet and compete in the markets of the world, but to the point where they can be handed back to the private sector where they rightfully belong.


Herb Breau: Mr. Speaker, I wonder how the Hon. Member for St. John's East can, on the one hand, express concern for the inshore fishery and, on the other, argue for increased access to the resources of groundfish in the Gulf of St. Lawrence by larger trawlers. Can he reconcile those two positions? 1 do not really think they can be reconciled.
Secondly, when he says that the New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island fleets do not have the capacity to catch the groundfish in the Gulf, how does he arrive at that conclusion? Traditionally, we were fishing upwards of 60,000 tons of groundfish through the new Brunswick fleet alone.


James Aloysius McGrath: That can be reconciled by information which is available to anyone in this country from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It is available to the Hon. Member. If he was open-minded enough to make the inquiries, he would get the same information I was able to get. The fact is that the Hon. Member knows full well that is a trans-boundary stock anyway. He knows there are trawlers involved in catching that stock. He also knows full well-if he does not, he should-that there are plants on the South Coast and in parts of Nova Scotia which, if they do not have access to the surplus stocks- and I say "surplus" because the inshore fishermen must have first priority-then it is very questionable in most cases whether they can be viable, and in some cases they cannot survive.


Mr. Whelan:: Mr. Speaker, as the Hon. Member knows, I was at one time the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans so I know a little bit about it. As he and I both realize, one of the best warehouses is the sea but once a fish is caught, if it is properly taken care of, it is one of the most nutritious and best food products man can consume. Does he not think it has been a pretty poor marketing job?


James Aloysius McGrath: I cannot agree with the former Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of the Environment.


Eugene Whelan: It used to be fisheries and forestries, and then we made it the environment.


James Aloysius McGrath: That is right. When it became the Department of the Environment, fisheries became a mere service
November 17, 1983

within the Department of the Environment. That was taking place at a critical time in the growth of the industry. That is part of the problem as well. I am glad the Minister gave me a chance to put that on the record.
He talks about the fact that the ocean is probably one of the best storage facilities for fish. The difference is that if the fish stay in the ocean, they die. If they are caught and kept in cold storage, they are there to be marketed over a period of three months. The Minister put his finger on a very important problem which is going to be one of the major problems facing the new company. If we do not get access to the European market for groundfish these companies cannot survive. The Minister knows that full well and 1 am glad he gave me the opportunity to put that on the record.


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, the Department of Environment was created when I was with the Minister of Fisheries. It was not put in force until afterwards. It did not take over fisheries. There was still the Minister of Fisheries and Forestry at that time.
We know that when you catch the fish from the sea or from fresh water it is a product that can be used in many societies all over the world. I am accused of trafficking too much of it. I find in many instances our fish does not reach those people in the condition that it should. Mr. Speaker, that is bad marketing. This is what I am pointing out. I just returned from the World Food and Agricultural Organization meeting. I chaired the meetings attended by Ministers of Agriculture and Fishery. A lot of them in the Commonwealth countries have dual capacity and authority. Fisheries was one of their main topics. They are concerned about their own fisheries and needing assistance from countries like Canada that, they feel, have the know-how in conservation and the catching of fish. We know that we can improve that in Canada. I am sure the Hon. Member agrees.


Pierre De Bané: We need a "Fishagrex".


Eugene Whelan: The Hon. Minister of Fisheries says we need a "Fishagrex". Here is a product that we need to be distributed in the world. We need it to be marketed in a fashion that it can be put on many people's dinner and supper tables in such a fashion that they can afford to eat it. I am sure that if it is improved in the fashion that my colleague, the Hon. Minister of Fisheries (Mr. De Bane), wants it to be, the fisheries can become the fisheries that we want it to be, one that will be economically viable and look after itself.


James Aloysius McGrath: Will you repeat the question?


Eugene Whelan: Mr. Speaker, I understood I could either ask a question or make statements.


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


Mr. Brian Tobin (Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of Fisheries and Oceans):: Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak in support of Bill C-170 which is now before the House for
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act second reading. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans (Mr. De Bane) on Monday gave Members a detailed account of the measures that the Government proposes to take under this Bill. He has described very vividly the urgency of the situation which has caused the Government to introduce it.
Given that kind of introduction to Bill C-170, I have been somewhat disappointed in these last two days of debate to see that so many Members, rather than addressing themselves to the particular circumstances that now exist that give cause for this kind of legislation or to the fact that the legislation arises out of agreements that have been or are about to be reached with provincial Governments regarding the situation in the deep sea fishery, have instead applied themselves to talking about every kind of issue now affecting the Atlantic fishery, the inshore, deep sea, industrial, harvesting, processing side.
The Hon. Member for St. John's East (Mr. McGrath) warned the Government that this Bill is not a panacea. It cannot solve all the problems. I want to inform the Hon. Member opposite that the Government has never claimed this Bill to be a panacea that will solve all the problems of the fishery. We have said instead that this Bill is designed to prevent what is clearly, and has been accepted on both sides of this House, a disaster. This point seems to have been lost as every Member seeks to raise before this House his own personal priority as far as the fishery is concerned.
I intend to stick to the subject matter at hand. The deep sea sector of the fishery is the cornerstone of the fishing industry in Atlantic Canada. It is a sector which had sales in 1982 of $770 million, a sector which has meant jobs for 44,000 people, 20,000 fishermen and 24,000 plant workers. I ask Members to reflect for just a moment on what 44,000 jobs mean in a region as economically depressed as Atlantic Canada. More particularly, what do those jobs mean when you break them down to a few hundred in this community and a few hundred in that community? Regionally, the rate of unemployment is 25 to 30 per cent, but on a community basis where these jobs are located unemployment is sometimes tragically at 40, 50, 60, 75 per cent. That is what we are talking about, not every side issue that may be on somebody's personal agenda to be addressed using this Bill as an excuse.
When one relates the figures to the population of Atlantic Canada one can see the significance of these activities to the economy of the Atlantic region. In relative terms, the deep sea fishery is as important to the Atlantic Provinces as the automotive industry is to central Canada. This is not an expendable industry. It is too large, too central to the life of the Atlantic region. Beyond that it is too richly endowed with potential for us to allow it to go under.
When smaller companies and industries fall by the wayside, many times the effects can be contained and corrected without too much difficulty. The price of buying them out is oftentimes low enough to be tackled by private investors with relatively small resources. If a fast food franchise goes bankrupt, the communities in which they operate can absorb the shock.
When a giant like this one stumbles, the earth begins to shake. I assure you there have been tremors in recent months

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act
in Atlantic Canada. The deep sea industry cannot be allowed to fall, because in doing so it would create havoc and chaos throughout the industry. Because of its size, because it is a giant and because of its financial situation we cannot look to private sources to put it back on its feet. The Government knows this. We have looked. The industry, and the banks in particular, know this. They have looked to no avail. That is the reason why in this instance it takes the combined efforts of provincial Governments, the federal Government, and private financial institutions to get this industry back on its feet. Quite simply it is not feasible in this case to let the companies go bankrupt and wait for some entrepreneur to come along and, at so many cents on the dollar, pick up the pieces, and perhaps only some of the pieces, while 44,000 people are displaced directly. Indirectly, many thousands more are displaced in the name of private enterprise at any cost. I believe in private enterprise but not at any cost.
Let me give Hon. Members an example of the burden we are talking about. It has been estimated by financial analyses that the two consolidated companies visualized under this Bill will have to generate capital expenditures in the order of a quarter of a billion dollars each over the next five years. That is what they need for fleet replacement, maintenance of their plant capital, for new equipment to improve their productivity and other purposes. These are the kinds of obligations private investors, if you can find them, would be facing. Given the current condition of the industry, one cannot be surprised that investors are not lining up for the opportunity to shoulder them. If this lack of investment appeal were likely to be a permanent condition, we would face a much different situation. We in the House would probably be considering some very different action. But the evidence tells us that the condition is not permanent. There are solid reasons for long-term optimism.
There are many reasons why the deep sea fishing industry is in trouble. Inherent weakness and inadequate potential are certainly not among them. I am not one of those, as 1 have seen to my disappointment Hon. Members opposite do, to stand in the House and suggest that somehow all the problems in the current crisis that besets the Atlantic fishery can be written down in ten easy explanations and attributed to the policy of a single government. Anyone who really knows anything about the Atlantic fishery and who is really interested in making some helpful observations in the House will say that it is one of the most complex problems because of its socio-economic nature-I emphasize socio-economic nature- and one of the most complex industries that exists in this country.
The jurisdiction in the fisheries is shared. It is provincial Governments, not the federal Government, that control licences. It is provincial Governments that say how many fish plants there should be, where they should be, how big they should be and what they should process. It is not the federal Government. If one wanted to be strictly technical and was more interested in jurisdiction than in responding to a very
real problem affecting human beings, we would say as federal Members that, if it is not under our jurisdiction, then let us toss this Bill aside, not discuss the problem and let the Provinces handle it. That is where negotiations began at the table. There were the Provinces, the industry itself, the banks and the federal Government. Only one player reached into his pocket to put money on the table. It was the federal Government. Why? Because we wanted to spend $200 million or more of taxpayers' money? Because we wanted to get into the business of processing fish because we believed we could do it better than the private sector, the Provinces or the banks? No. Quite frankly, if we were to list 100 activities in which we would want to become involved, the processing and fishery business would not even be on that list. But we are interested in people, and that is why this Bill is before the House and that is why it needs an urgent and quick passage.
Let us address ourselves to the Bill. What are the consequences of not proceeding with this legislation on an urgent basis? We will see continuing uncertainty in the Atlantic fishing industry and in the communities which, as I have tried to describe, are so vitally dependent on it. We will see a continuation of existing plant closures and possibly further closures and lay-offs. I believe we will see distress selling by companies facing financial difficulty, with serious consequences for independent producers who have managed so far to keep afloat. What does distress selling mean? It means that there are a handful of corporate giants that are in serious financial trouble and are technically bankrupt in many cases. If we do not provide an infusion-not a bail-out of cash-by way of equity, those giants who are in trouble will find it easy to take all of the fish that they have warehoused and dump it on the market at drastically reduced prices, driving those small independent private enterpreneurs, who have survived and made a dollar, into bankruptcy together with them. They will not be able to compete, and that would be a consequence of not moving with this Bill.
We would see increased difficulties for creditors. There are many small companies throughout Atlantic Canada that are owed millions of dollars in total. Those dollars will not be paid, driving yet many doezens of other small companies into bankruptcy.
Labour contracts are currently expiring. These can be renegotiated only after new management is put into place.
The independents have been expressing a great deal of concern about the notion of having a couple of super companies in which the Governments have equity. I want to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for those independent producers and small operations which have managed to survive the rough times and still make a dollar. They have every right and should be concerned, and I understand that. I do not say that their concerns are justified or that I believe for one second that the consequences they envisage will occur. However, I do have some sympathy, because anyone who has been able to survive the last three years in this industry only to see now a couple of large companies being created which they believe threatens their existence, has every right to be concerned.
November 17, 1983

However, I suggest that the removal of a major uncertainty facing the entire industry will have a positive effect on the independents. If the Governments had not acted to forestall the collapse of the large processors, the entire industry, including independent processors, would have been threatened with collapse.
The restructuring focuses on the restructuring of strategically important companies whose size and socio-economic importance are of industry-wide importance. The restructured companies will provide an urgently required stability that will be beneficial to the entire industry, including the independents. The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans has said in the House and elsewhere in Canada during the last few months that these large processing giants will not be allowed and will in fact be specifically instructed against taking any action that will have a negative impact on small independent processors.
Many Members opposite, as well as some on this side, have suggested that this Bill is in some way a bail-out of the Bank of Nova Scotia. The Bank of Nova Scotia has not been bailed out nor given preferential financial treatment. The bank still has substantial outstanding loans made to the companies concerned with restructuring and has agreed to convert a major portion of that debt to equity. It is not walking away from the table. It has very much a stake in ensuring that this restructuring works because it still has a substantial amount of capital tied up in the two companies that have been created.
I was pleased to see the Hon. Member for St. John's East stand in his place today and indicate that there is absolutely nothing more urgent before Members of the House than Bill C-170. The Hon. Member indicated that quick passage is essential to the economy of Newfoundland and indeed to the economy of Nova Scotia. The Hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Breau) spoke eloquently in presenting his views from where he sits and as he sees them. I was pleased to see that he so well recognizes the urgency of this Bill, fundamentally to deal with the problem as it exists today.
I am not going to debate how we got where we are today. The Hon. Member for St. John's East said, "We are where we are today because the federal Government has mismanaged the industry, but when I was Minister and my Government was in power we had taken bold new strides". But Mr. Peckford, I recall, during the 1980 election campaign said that he preferred the former Minister, who supposedly created all these problems, to the Hon. Member for St. John's East. It is interesting to note, Mr. Speaker, that both the Hon. Member for St. John's East and Mr. Peckford are members of the same Party. 1 recall campaigning in my riding and, to my delight, saying "Yes, 1 agree with Mr. Peckford. Let us get Romeo LeBlanc back on stream." It is not good enough to say simplistically that the problems have been caused by one administration. No one administration, no one level of Government, even if it wanted, can cope with the complexity of the Atlantic industry. That is why I say to Hon. Members that this Bill is not a panacea. This Bill does not pretend for a moment
Royal Assent
to deal with or attempt to resolve every problem, every item that needs to be debated. This Bill, only as a first step, will ensure that the deep sea industry does not collapse. This Bill will ensure that the capital required for equity taken by Governments to maintain that industry, to renew it, to retool it, is available. It will ensure proper management and a businesslike approach. Then, in a number of years we can divest ourselves as Governments of these companies and turn them back to the private sector, back to private investors and risk takers who are prepared to run a profitable organization. That is what this Bill does, I say again, not because we want to be here but because we have no other choice. And if we had any concern for the 44,000 people in Atlantic Canada who, believe me, if they knew and were aware this debate were taking place would listen with bated breath, with patience, and would pray that this House of Commons will move quickly to see this Bill pass second reading, go to committee and finally go through this House and to the Senate, and that is what we should do.


MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: 1 have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed Bill C-155, an Act to facilitate the transportation, shipping and handling of western grain and to amend certain Acts in consequence thereof, without amendment.



THE ROYAL ASSENT

['Agreed and so ordered.', 'November 17, 1983\nAdjournment Debate']
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: I have the honour to inform the House that a communication has been received which reads as follows:
Government House Ottawa
November 17, 1983
Madam,
I have the honour to inform you that the Honourable Brian Dickson, Puisne Judge of the Supreme Court of Canada, in his capacity as Deputy Governor General, will proceed to the Senate Chamber today, the 17th day of November, 1982, at 5:45 p.m., for the purpose of giving Royal Assent to certain Bills.
I have the honour to be Madam,
Your obedient servant, Edmond Joly de Lotbiniere Administrative Secretary to the Governor General.

November 17, 1983
Atlantic Fisheries Restructuring Act ATLANTIC FISHERIES RESTRUCTURING ACT



[Stage Direction]
The House resumed consideration of the motion of Mr. De Bane that Bill C-170, an Act to authorize investment in the provision of financial assistance to the Atlantic Fisheries for the purpose of restructuring certain fishery enterprises, be read the second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Forestry.
Edward Allan Miller: Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the Parliamentary Secretary. We have not even formed a new company to save the Atlantic fishing industry and already the Parliamentary Secretary is talking about divesting the Government of ownership in that company. In view of the problems that communities such as Burin, Grand Bank, St. Lawrence and St. Anthony have had under private ownership, 1 wonder whether the Parliamentary Secretary may not fear, if this is turned back to private enterprise, that those same communities that were in fear of closing down permanently would not be in the same situation in the future? Would the Parliamentary Secretary answer the question about the community ownership and co-operatives in communities rather than turning them strictly back to free enterprise? Would the Parliamentary Secretary consider that an alternative to his haste to get rid of this company and put it back into private enterprise hands?


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, to respond to the Hon. Member opposite, I want to assure him that the reason for my remarks was not to indicate that we should try to pass the Bill today and sell the companies tomorrow, but rather to point out that the Government really has, as a first motive, no interest in being in the fish business for the sake of being in the fish business. The Government really has as a first motive no desire to say that we own X amount of equity in the fishing industry. The Government only has as a motive a social responsibility, a responsibility as an elected Government to respond to a very real need that affects a great number of people in Atlantic Canada.
1 want to say to the Hon. Member that to suggest that somehow when private capital is involved we run the risk of closures and people being negatively affected is really a philosophical question that we can address to any industry in Canada. The Hon. Member knows that his Party's position is one of public ownership wherever possible. I do not happen to share that view. My own view is that the private sector can do it best and can generate the greatest amount of wealth but that people sometimes fall between the cracks. That is where Government should be and that is where Government should step in, otherwise Government should not be there. This is an example. If you want to call it a crack, it is almost like the San Francisco fault line. But there is a heck of a big crack. Private capital is not available right now. We should move in but move in very clearly with the idea of running this company on a businesslike basis. That is why we said that if the company, if its board of directors, said if X or Y or B or C plant is not viable and it will close down, and if a Government wants that particular plant to stay open, then it is the Government, not
the company, that will pay the cost of keeping an unproductive plant open. I simply suggest that it be run on a businesslike basis and that when possible the Governments divest themselves of their equity position in these companies.


Douglas Keith Anguish: Mr. Speaker, I have a couple of comments to address to the Parliamentary Secretary. First, I can appreciate the importance of the Atlantic fishery. The fishermen. 1 am sure, have been under a lot of hardship lately. I fully intend to support this piece of legislation although I might not agree 100 per cent with all that has been said this afternoon. But in listening to the speeches that have been made today 1 have a little better understanding of what has been happening in the Atlantic fishery.
I would like to point out to the Parliamentary Secretary that during his speech he said that the fishery in Atlantic Canada was just as important as the automotive industry is in central Canada. 1 would like to extend that a little further by saying that the Crow rate was that important to the farmers of western Canada as well. I would have hoped that some of the Members would have given consideration to that at the time the same way as some Members in the New Democratic Party are now paying attention to this piece of legislation, and we will be giving some support to it.
Further, Mr. Speaker, I have been dealing with the Minister's office for some time trying to get resolved a fishing problem in my own constituency which has a freshwater fish industry. I can appreciate that the Minister has had a lot of his own personal time taken up with dealing with this piece of legislation and the larger fishing industries in Canada. I would like to see, as soon as this Bill is passed, the Parliamentary Secretary, if the Minister cannot find the time, join with me and some other Members in taking a very close look at the freshwater fishing industry which is getting into severe problems in places like northern Saskatchewan.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, in response to the Hon. Member's comments, I want to assure him that the Department, indeed, the Government, recognizes the great value, the activity that takes place in the freshwater fishery. I avail myself in my position as Parliamentary Secretary of the opportunity to travel west and to see firsthand some of the activities in western Canada. I can assure him that if 1 can be of any assistance to him in resolving problems he is experiencing, on behalf of the Minister 1 would be delighted to do so. 1 would be glad to sit down at any time with him, as would the Minister, I am sure, or his officials to discuss with the Hon. Member any problems he would like to bring to our attention.


J. Michael Forrestall: Mr. Speaker, I would like to draw the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary to a problem which may or may not be ahead. Perhaps he could reconcile the difficulties we will have when consideration of Bill S-31 has been completed. As the Hon. Parliamentary Secretary will know, this Bill will restrict or limit provincial participation in transportation to 10 per cent. In other words, it will put very
November 17, 1983

severe limitations on a provincial Government or an agency of a provincial Government to buy up more than 10 per cent of a corporation, particularly if it is directly involved in transportation or that transportation is the major sector of it. It seems that the provincial involvement under the agreement between the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the federal Government will be extended to more than the 10 per cent interest in the restructured product. How will that square with the content of Bill S-31, the measure now before the Senate?


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Member for his comments and his question. It gives me an opportunity to make a very important point which 1 attempted to make during my speech. My throat was becoming a little raw; perhaps the House could not understand what I was saying. The interesting thing about this particular Bill and the circumstances-


BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, 1 apologize to my hon. colleague; 1 know the Messenger from the Senate is on his way. However, I need to put on the record an agreement which has been reached with my colleague, the Hon. Member for Yukon. Before I reached the agreement with the Hon. Member for Yukon, I spoke with the House Leader for the New Democratic Party.
Therefore, I can state that we have reached an agreement, although I do not need an agreement, to undesignate next Thursday as the last allotted day of this supply period. Instead, I will designate the following Monday, November 28, as the last allotted day of this supply period.
In so doing, we have agreed that the Supplementary Estimates will be deemed to have been reported on Friday, November 25, at five o'clock. Notwithstanding the disposition of Standing Order 62(15) which indicates that the Supplementary Estimates are deemed to have been reported on the third day before the last allotted day, the agreement is that the Supplementary Estimates will be deemed to have been reported on Friday, November 25, at five o'clock and that the last allotted day will be Monday, November 28. That is the agreement between the two of us and, as I indicated, I talked with the House Leader of the New Democratic Party. He told me-and I want it on the record-that he was prepared to accept that kind of agreement. I did not indicate the specifics to him, but it is within our understanding of the subject we were discussing. In other words, the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain knows that I was to undesignate Thursday, possibly, and to push it a little further ahead to allow more time for the committees to study the Supplementary Estimates. Since this agreement produces exactly that result, I can say that the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain is in agreement.


Erik Nielsen: That is correct, Mr. Speaker. In the absence of the Hon. Member for Hamilton Mountain, it should be point-
Business of the House
ed out that I alerted him earlier in the day that the committees had not had the opportunity to examine Supplementary Estimates (B) and that the result of the designation of the allotted days made by the Government House Leader today meant that Parliament would not have the opportunity to examine Supplementary Estimates (B). He indicated that any arrangement made between myself and the Government House Leader which would enable such an examination would be acceptable.
For the sake of clarity, it should be understood that the votes which will now occur on November 28, the final allotted day, will be those votes which would normally dispose of the Estimates, the appropriation legislation and the like. In other words, the votes would all be on the Monday now rather than on the Thursday.


Mr. Huntington:: Could we not make it on the Tuesday?


J. Michael Forrestall: Some of our Members will be away.


Erik Nielsen: A further problem has just been drawn to my attention. I do not think it would inconvenience the House to put the vote over to sometime on Tuesday from the Monday at six o'clock. It would just be the vote. It would not be taking up any House time except the time it would take to vote.


Yvon Pinard: Mr. Speaker, this is a slight change in the agreement we have reached. I prefer that we stick to the agreement as we made it. However, I will be very openminded in having a further discussion about the possibility of postponing the votes to sometime early the following day. For the time being, failing a firm agreement, we will stick to the provisions of Standing Order 62(10).


Erik Nielsen: That sounds eminently sensible. The factor of which I was not aware when we had our discussions was a commitment that will keep many of our Members in British Columbia. They will not be able to return until late in the day on Tuesday. I do not think that will cause any inconvenience, but I am sure we can overcome it by agreement.


Edward Allan Miller: Mr. Speaker, it seems that we are carrying on a somewhat unusual procedure at this time. I most certainly accept the word of the Government House Leader and agree to the arrangement. However, if there are any other changes, we certainly hope that our House Leader will be consulted.


Yvon Pinard: Sure.


Erik Nielsen: He was consulted.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Is that agreed?


Some Hon. Members:: Agreed.


Mr. Deputy Speaker:: Agreed and so ordered.

November 17, 1983
Adjournment Debate



[Stage Direction]
A message was delivered by the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod as follows:
Mr. Speaker, the Honourable Deputy to the Governor General desires the immediate attendance of this honourable House in the Chamber of the honourable the Senate.
Accordingly, Mr. Deputy Speaker with the House went up to the Senate Chamber.
And being returned:
Mir. Deputy Speaker: 1 have the honour to inform the House that when the House went up to the Senate Chamber, the Deputy Governor General had been pleased to give in Her Majesty's name the Royal Assent to the following Bills:
Bill C-169, an Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (No. 3)-Chapter 164 Bill C-163, An Act to establish the Canadian Aviation Safety Board and to amend certain Acts in consequence thereof-Chapter 165.
Bill C-168, An Act to amend the Bretton Woods Agreements Act (No. 2)- Chapter 166.
Bill C-152, An Act respecting the organization of the Government of Canada and matters related or incidental thereto-Chapter 167.
Bill C-155, An Act to facilitate the transportation, shipping and handling of western grain and to amend certain Acts in consequence thereof-Chapter 168.

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

John Carnell Crosbie: Mr. Speaker, on September 12, I again had the unfortunate experience of addressing a question to the Prime Minister (Mr. Trudeau). It was, of course, a complete waste of time. 1 do not know where his mind is but it is not with us here in the House of Commons. Today he is riding his umbrella pursuing the peace cause around the world and we wish him well at that. We wish him more success at that than he has had with our domestic concerns here in Canada.
I asked the Prime Minister, in the context of the economic crisis in Newfoundland with 43,000 Newfoundlanders unemployed or 19 per cent of the labour force, what steps he was
going to take in connection with the fishing industry. Of course, he has taken no steps. I asked him whether we will have a representative on the Cabinet from Newfoundland. 1 asked him if he would appoint to the executive council a Member from Newfoundland. There are seven of us here in the House. 1 am prepared, if necessary, to make the sacrifice in Order to help the people of Newfoundland. In any event, there are five Liberal Members and two Progressive Conservative Members elected to the House from Newfoundland. When the Hon. Member for Yellowhead (Mr. Clark) formed his administration, both Conservative Members from Newfoundland were Members of the Cabinet. That is the kind of representation that Newfoundland then had in the House.
Today there is no representative from Newfoundland in the Cabinet of Canada and one of the Liberal backbenchers, the Hon. Member for Bonavista-Trinity-Conception (Mr. Rooney), says that Newfoundland is actually doing much better without a Cabinet representative than it was doing when the Hon. Member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador (Mr. Rompkey) was a Cabinet Minister. Now there is solidarity for you.
By the way, Mr. Speaker, there is opposite me today a young Hon. Member who might well, in 50 years or 60 years time, have sufficient experience and calibre to be a member of the Government of Canada and in the Cabinet.
The fact remains, Mr. Speaker, that we do not now have a representative from Newfoundland in the Government of Canada, nor will we, and we are suffering as a result of it. There are five representatives from Newfoundland here and the Prime Minister has turned his back on all five. Like the witches in Macbeth, the Prime Minister has had a look at them and does not like the looks of any of them. He dismissed the Hon. Member for Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador from his Cabinet. He found him not to be of sufficient calibre to be in his Cabinet. The Prime Minister has found no replacement since he appointed, for the ten days that shook the world, the Hon. Member for Burin-St. George's (Mr. Simmons). He has found, since then, that the other three are not desirable, either; not of sufficient quality to be in his Cabinet. Imagine, not one of the five Liberal Members in this House from Newfoundland could even be Minister of Fitness and Amateur Sport. Not one of them is fit to be Minister of Fitness and Amateur Sport, not to mention "le ministre des peches". Not one of them is suited to be Minister of Fisheries. Not one of them, apparently, is suited to be Minister of Mines. Not one of them could bear the responsibilities of being a minister without portfolio. The Prime Minister will not even give one of them a portfolio. He will not give them nothing; no way. And the people of Newfoundland are suffering as a result.
We see that today, when we notice facts like these. In constant dollar terms, DREE expenditures in the Atlantic region fell by 41.4 per cent from 1970-71 to 1977-78, while elsewhere in Canada DREE spending rose 5.9 per cent. That is complete political prostitution of the whole program to over-
November 17, 1983

come regional disparity. For the Atlantic provinces which suffer from that regional disparity, spending has fallen 41 per cent, while elsewhere in Canada, in Quebec and other politically important areas, the spending has gone up 5.9 per cent. We need a Cabinet Minister from Newfoundland to stop that kind of discrimination, that kind of twisting of the DREE program for political purposes.
Is the Prime Minister going to appoint a Cabinet Minister from Newfoundland? Are we all waiting with bated breath to see what happens in a certain court case-which shall be nameless-on December 2? Is there not one of the other three Hon. Members who has the pristine purity to be appointed to the Cabinet now? What is to happen if the results in early December are not as the Prime Minister would like them to be? Are we to continue for the next year or year and a half without a Cabinet representative from Newfoundland?
Why is it, for example, the International Centre for Ocean Development was just established in Halifax rather than in St. John's, which is the natural home for it? St. John's is the whole centre of the North Atlantic, and the most suitable area, with the best facilities for an International Centre for Ocean Development. But instead of that, it now resides in Halifax.
Nova Scotia has two Ministers in the Government. One of them is at present hopping with the kangaroos in Australia, the Minister of State for International Trade (Mr. Regan). The other is in the House here, but we cannot understand what he is saying in any event. He is a bafflegabber. However, he has a lot of respect, apparently, and power within the Government. Nova Scotia has two Ministers; Newfoundland has none. When are the backbenchers on the Liberal side going to rise up against this and persuade the Prime Minister that he should stay at home, look after the backyard and see that Newfoundland gets some kind of equal and fair treatment in this House? When will the Hon. Member for Humber-Port au Port-St. Barbe (Mr. Tobin), a young man with his future still very much in his past, put a stop to the way the Prime Minister is treating the Province of Newfoundland? When is he going to tell the Prime Minister to stay home and bring peace to Canada before he attempts to bring it to the rest of the world? When is he going to make an effort to solve our domestic problems here in Canada? We have unemployment at 19 per cent and the Prime Minister is going to spend all his time in the next three weeks in Bangladesh and Southeast Asia dealing with the problems of the Commonwealth and the world. Soon he will be dealing with the problems of the universe. There is no problem he cannot deal with, as long as it lies in the ethereal realm outside Canada, outside the real world and outside of helping the real people. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I ask the Prime Minister or his assistant to appoint a Minister from Newfoundland quickly and do something to help with the desperate situation in that Province.


Brian Vincent Tobin: Mr. Speaker, I must say it is with a great deal of sadness and disappointment that I stand here. I
Adjournment Debate
understood this time of the day was to provide more in depth and detailed information to Members who are seriously interested in the business of this nation. So I did a great deal of research and prepared quite an answer on the fishery. But I should not have been surprised because the Hon. Member for St. John's West (Mr. Crosbie), if nothing else, is consistent. An unguided missile! Not only do we not know where his tongue will lead him when he begins to talk, he does not know.
That has been the story of his life, Mr. Speaker. I remember when I was a great fan of the Hon. Member opposite when he was a Liberal-yes, a Liberal! Not only was he a Liberal, but a young Liberal. I remember when he was not only a young Liberal, but a young Liberal for new leadership. Now he tells me that an old, distinguished and experienced fellow like myself has my future behind me. He is not to be taken seriously, Mr. Speaker. I have visions of the future and I want to assure him, when he talks about Cabinet representation, that I remember we had two Ministers, the ministers of fish and chips; very dignified fellows. They performed so magnificently for seven months-


John Carnell Crosbie: The golden days.


Brian Vincent Tobin: -that in the subsequent election the people of Newfoundland returned five Liberals, including yours truly, out of seven seats. That was the response to your performance.


John Carnell Crosbie: They will not repeat that mistake.


Brian Vincent Tobin: When he talks about how Newfoundland is being represented, I want to assure him that if the people of St. John's West are unhappy with their representation, or if the people of St. John's East are unhappy with their representation, there is a Newfoundland beyond the city boundaries of St. John's. There is a wider Newfoundland. There is Humber-Port-au-Port-St. Barbe; Burin-St. George's; Bonavista-Trinity-Conception; Grand Falls-White Bay-Labrador where people returned five Liberals to contribute to this majority Government in 1980, much to his dismay, Mr. Speaker. Get ready for a repeat, John. Your ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory is renowned. You are consistent, we are going to do it again.
So with great disappointment Mr. Speaker, I answer this question with all the seriousness and intelligence of the manner in which it was asked. I would have preferred a much more sober performance.


PUBLIC WORKS-LEASING OF DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS BUILDING
Hon. Allan B. McKinnon (Victoria):: Mr. Speaker, I find that a hard act to follow, particularly that of the young man who claims he has visions.
I wish to extract some information from the Government on the subject of the lease arrangement for the new DVA Building in Charlottetown. On November 4 I posed a question to the Minister of Public Works (Mr. LeBlanc) on the subject. He was unable to respond at the time but assured me he would

November 17, 1983
Adjournment Debate
look into the matter and write to me directly. To date the Minister has not done so. Perhaps this debate will elicit some response to my original question, which was:
Can the Minister indicate to the House the cost of leasing the DVA Building from Rampart Enterprises during the term of the lease which is, I understand, for 35 years?
I also requested that the Minister table in the House the leasing agreement. Since then I have tabled a notice of motion demanding that these papers be tabled.
The saga of the DVA building in Charlottetown is a long one and it seems to be getting longer. A claim was made by this Liberal Government when it decided in 1980 to move the building to a site in downtown Charlottetown from the shoreline site which had been chosen by the Conservatives that construction would be faster downtown. The Minister of Veterans Affairs at that time said that the building would be completed by the end of 1983. The building is now supposed to be ready by the Spring of 1984.
The construction of that building was supposed to follow one pattern, but has followed quite a different one. It was supposed to be completed in two phases. Phase one was the foundation and superstructure of the building. It was to be constructed for the Department of Public Works through tendered bids. The cost of that phase was $2.8 million and was completed in December of 1981.
Phase two took off in a different direction and tenders were let for the completion of the building by a developer who would construct and own the building and lease it back to the federal Government. This is a very strange way for the Department of Public Works to go about constructing government buildings. Rampart Enterprises of Toronto received the contract to complete the building. Under this arrangement Rampart is given title to the building and Public Works leases it for use by the Veterans Affairs Department over a term of some 35 years. The federal Government also has the opportunity of purchasing the building from the developer at some point during or at the end of the lease.
Some clarification is needed on a number of points of this agreement. What are the exact terms of the lease to purchase contracts? What is the annual cost of the lease? How much will the Government have paid by the time it purchases the building? All this information should be made available to the House of Commons as soon as possible.
When the Supplementary Estimates came out a few days ago I had hopes that we would be able to extract this information from either the Department of Veterans Affairs or Public Works during the committee meetings on those Supplementary Estimates. I have yet to hear from the Chairman of that committee, the Hon. Member for Labelle (Mr. Dupras), who I thought would be in touch with me by now to see when we could arrange to have the committee meetings of the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs.
I hope that the Minister's representative will tonight be able to answer some of these questions. If he is not, I hope that he
will urge his Minister to reply to me as he promised to do in the House of Commons on the November 4, providing me with the details of the very unusual method that has been set in motion to construct the DVA building in Charlottetown.


Ian Deans: Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to answer the question put by the Hon. Member to the Minister responsible for Public Works (Mr. LeBlanc) on November 4 of this year, concerning the cost of leasing the DVA Building located in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and owned by Rampart Enterprises.
It is important to remember the facts. On April 25, 1982, the Minister of Veterans Affairs announced that a new building intended to house the central administration services of the Department would be built on property belonging to the Canadian Government and located on the corner of Kent and Grafton in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. In December 1981, the first stage of the project, which consisted in the construction of foundations and the concrete structure, was finished as a project carried out by the Crown.
In April 1982, Public Works Canada proceeded to let tenders for the construction of the rest of the building, according to the lease-to-purchase formula. So that the Department could assess all tenders on the same basis, bidders w'ere asked to tender their bids on the basis of a 17 per cent interest rate for financing.
Among the five builders who tendered bids, Rampart Enterprises made the lowest offer. With a financing rate of 17 per cent, Rampart's bid worked out to $191 per square meter for the first five years of the 35-year lease. These figures will be adjusted when the building is completed, taking into consideration the current Government of Canada rate for five to ten-year bonds.
Mr. Speaker, the building is expected to be completed and ready to receive its occupants by the beginning of 1984. Since interest rates have dropped considerably since tenders were let, it is now estimated that the annual rent over the first five-year period of the lease will be $150 per square meter. As for the rest of the lease, the annual rent will be adjusted upwards or downwards, depending on financing costs for each subsequent period.
Mr. Speaker, regarding the last part of the Hon. Member's question, I can inform him that the Department would be glad to table in the House the complete leasing agreement between the Crown and Rampart Enterprises or to make a copy of it available to interested Members.
November 17, 1983

[DOT]	(1825)


AGRICULTURE-STABILIZATION PROGRAM SOUGHT FOR BEEF INDUSTRY
Maurice Brydon Foster: Mr. Speaker, this evening I want to talk about a beef stabilization program for Canada. On September 15, 1983, i put a question to the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) asking him what progress was being made by the Department of Agriculture in the negotiations with the provincial Governments to establish a red meat stabilization program which would cover not only beef but pork as well. I understand that some progress has been made on this in the last few weeks but 1 would like to urge upon the Minister and the Department of Agriculture the importance of the red meat industry to the rural parts of our country.
During the past two years there has been essentially no increase in the price of beef cattle for the cow-calf operators, many of whom are in the Algoma and Manitoulin area and produce a significant percentage of the production in the Ontario region.
1 want to quote briefly from a letter I received from Mr. Allen McKenzie, a beef producer in my constituency, from Tehkummah, Ontario. He says:
I am writing about our concerns of the farming industry in Ontario particularly the cow-calf farmer of which we are one.
1 believe Ontario is the only Province without a program to subsidize the cow-calf man and it is here where the cattle industry all starts. Without us, there are no feeder cattle. What happens if we all go out of business because of low prices? One very startling fact is this: in 1973 we received an average price for our calves of 65 cents per pound.
In 1983-ten years later-we received an average price of 75 cents per pound. Can you imagine a 10-cent per pound increase in ten years? You figure the percentage increase in our income for this period and then think of the percentage increase of all our feed, seed and machinery which we have to purchase and tell me how a farmer is to keep going.
What percentage of increased income do most Canadians receive in one year? I'll tell you it is more than the one per cent that we have got for the last ten years.
I should point out that he has a herd of 35 stock cows, and the average increase in income over that ten-year period has only been $245 per year gross.
He concludes:
Do you not feel from this example that something needs to be done now? We sure do. We must remember that the cattle industry starts with us and without us where would we be. Thank you for your time.
I sent a copy of that letter to the Minister of Agriculture in order to make him aware of the desperate plight that faces much of rural Canada, especially those parts of our country which depend on the beef industry.
As I pointed out earlier, the actual returns are something like 25 per cent or 30 per cent less now than they were four years ago and, as Mr. McKenzie points out in his letter, there has been barely a ten-cent per pound increase average for cow-calf operators during the past ten-year period.
[DOT]	(1830)
As an indication of that plight 1 think we only have to look at the general downgrading that has taken place in rural parts
Adjournment Debate
of our country that depend on the beef industry. There are other sectors like the dairy industry and so on which have administered prices, or prices established by a formula, that are relatively more successful. But clearly for the beef industry some stabilization, some marketing program has to be put in place. I understand that the Ministers of at least four provinces met this year during July, August and October-1 believe they met even more recently-and are in agreement at this stage, but that a final decision and agreement has not been reached.
I would like to urge upon the Minister and the Parliamentary Secretary the importance of making a tripartite agreement very soon. I understand a tripartite agreement is what is being considered among the beef producers, the producing provinces and the federal Government. I think it is significant, as I understand the negotiations to date, that the four Provinces which have shown an interest in participating in the tripartite agreement represent over 80 per cent of the beef production in Canada.
If we look at the dairy industry we find stabilization payments of over $300 million. If we look at crop insurance, we find stabilization of $145 million. If we look at other forms of stabilization provided, for instance, in the grain industry, we find $140 million. In the federal budget there is $1,292 million for the entire budget of the Department of Agriculture, $682 million of which is for stabilization programs.
We are not just talking about assisting a few beef producers, we are talking about a large number of people. We are talking about that important sector of agriculture which really forms the backbone of many of our agricultural communities. I want to urge upon the Minister of Agriculture and his provincial colleagues, of which the Minister of Agriculture for Ontario is one, the urgency of establishing a stabilization program that is fair to the country, and fair to these valuable producers so that they may continue to operate in Canada and produce this valuable food for the consumers.


Mr. Maurice Bossy (Parliamentary Secretary to Secretary of State):: Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture (Mr. Whelan) I would like to respond to the question raised by the Member for Algoma (Mr. Foster) on the progress being made toward a new red meat stabilization program for beef producers.
By way of background, the Ministers of Agriculture from four Provinces, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, agreed on the general principles of a new stabilization program at the time of the federal-provincial Ministers meeting in Prince Edward Island in June. A task force was established, including representatives from these four Provinces and the federal Department of Agriculture.
After a series of meetings, a draft plan was established for cow-calf producers, slaughter cattle, hogs and lamb. On October 31, the federal Minister of Agriculture chaired a meeting in Ottawa, at which time three of the Provinces agreed to the principle features of these plans. The Manitoba Minister of Agriculture did not attend that meeting, but indicated it was
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November 17, 1983
Adjournment Debate
because of a prior personal commitment and not because he was no longer in support of a national program.
The Provinces that have agreed account for the majority of red meat production in Canada, and consultations are proceeding on the basis of the October 31 agreement.
The Governments involved have decided not to release the details of the plans at this time because they are changing as consultations proceed. Yesterday, representatives from the four Provinces and the federal Government discussed the proposed beef plans with the Canadian Cattlemen's Association. This morning they met with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture. This afternoon they met with the Canadian Pork
Council. Tonight they are meeting with the Canadian Sheep Council.
In addition, arrangements are being made for meetings with the provinces that have not yet agreed to the principles of the new red meat stabilization program. If all goes well in these consultations the new, improved program could be in place by 1984.


The Acting Speaker (Mr. Blaker):: The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow morning at eleven o'clock.
At 6.36 p.m. the House adjourned, without question put, pursuant to Standing Order.

Friday, November 18, 1983